30
Jan

Online education, self directed learning and student centered learning

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Future, Higher Education

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In their article in USDLA’s Distance Learning for Educators, Trainers, and Leaders Maria Puzziferro and Kaye Shelton ask questions regarding online education and distance learning that we as educators in online courses and programs should be asking ourselves as we review our courses and programs for quality.

One assumption that they question is “how do we define student or learning centered and students are in control of their own learning (pp 10).   this made me stop and think..it is easy to assume that this latest “buzz word phrase,” of the day drives the direction of online education today and education in general.  If we can say that our courses, programs and services are student or learner centered..then job done..we are meeting the needs of students.  But do we really know what this means?  does the student?  Does your educational institution or organization have a common agreement regarding what learning/student centered means and does it matter?   or are these just good PR buzz phrases?  Here are some various definitions of the terms and the institutions who use them…

We use the term “learner centered” to refer to environments that pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting.…Teachers who are learner centered recognize the importance of building on the conceptual and cultural knowledge that students bring with them to the classroom…. (retrieved from ..http://cndls.georgetown.edu/crossroads/vkp/resources/glossary/learnercentered.htm, January 30,2010)
Learner-centered education places the student at the center of education. It begins with understanding the educational contexts from which a student comes. It continues with the instructor evaluating the student’s progress towards learning objectives. By helping the student acquire the basic skills to learn, it ultimately provides a basis for learning throughout life. It therefore places the responsibility for learning on the student, while the instructor assumes responsibility for facilitating the student’s education. This approach strives to be individualistic, flexible, competency-based, varied in methodology and not always constrained by time or place. (retrieved from http://www.abor.asu.edu/4_special_programs/lce/afc-defined_lce.htm )

...in the learner-centered paradigm, knowledge is the combined efforts of the teacher and the students. Under the guidance of the teacher, the students synthesize the gathered information using problem solving, critical thinking, and inquiry skills.

… the learner-centered classroom instruction, greater emphasis is given on the meaningfulness of knowledge. Students acquire knowledge to address real-life issues and problems.
In the learner-centered classroom, the students are actively involved in seeking out knowledge.
in the learner-centered classroom, the importance of right answers is overshadowed by the importance of creating better questions. Thus, assessment tools vary to embrace the multiple facets of learning. Besides paper tests, there will be portfolios,  and others.

…in the learner-centered paradigm, assessment is intertwined with classroom instruction. The results of a test are used to discover learning difficulties. The functions of the assessment are to diagnose learning problems and to encourage better learning.

The perspective that couples a focus on individual learners (their heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs) with a focus on learning (the best available knowledge about learning and how it occurs and about teaching practices that are most effective in promoting the highest levels of motivation, learning, and achievement for all learners). This dual focus then informs and drives educational decision making. The learner-centered perspective is a reflection of the twelve learner-centered psychological principles in the programs, practices, policies, and people that support learning for all. (McCombs & Whisler, 1997)

Premises of the Learner-Centered Model

  1. Learners are distinct and unique. Their distinctiveness and uniqueness must be attended to and taken into account if learners are to engage in and take responsibility for their own learning.
  2. Learners’ unique differences include their emotional states of mind, learning rates, learning styles, stages of development, abilities, talents, feelings of efficacy, and other academic and nonacademic attributes and needs. These must be taken into account if all learners are to be provided with the necessary challenges and opportunities for learning and self-development.
  3. Learning is a constructive process that occurs best when what is being learned is relevant and meaningful to the learner and when the learner is actively engaged in creating his or her own knowledge and understanding by connecting what is being learned with prior knowledge and experience.
  4. Learning occurs best in a positive environment, one that contains positive interpersonal relationships and interactions, that contains comfort and order, and in which the learner feels appreciated, acknowledged, respected, and validated.
  5. Learning is a fundamentally natural process; learners are naturally curious and basically interested in learning about and mastering their world. Although negative thoughts and feelings sometimes interfere with this natural inclination and must be dealt with, the learner does not require “fixing.”
(McCombs & Whisler, 1997)
Student-centered learning (SCL), or learner-centeredness, is a learning model that places the student (learner) in the center of the learning process. In student-centered learning, students are active participants in their learning; they learn at their own pace and use their own strategies; they are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated; learning is more individualized than standardized. Student-centered learning develops learning-how-to-learn skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and reflective thinking. Student-centered learning accounts for and adapts to different learning styles of students (National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. 1999).
Students are actively involved.
Emphasis is on using and communicating knowledge effectively to address enduring and emerging issues and problems in real life contexts.
Professors role is to coach and facilitate.  Professor and student evaluate learning together.
Teaching and assessing are intertwined.
Assessment is used to promote and diagnose learning.
Emphasis is on generating better questions and learning from errors.
Desired learning is accessed directly through papers, projects, performances, portfolios and the like.
Approach is compatible with interdisciplinary investigation.
Culture is cooperative, collaborative, and supportive.
Professors and students learn together.
(retrieved from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/instruction/assessment/dictionary/learnercentered.html  01/3/10)

After reviewing the above definitions I have reached the conclusion that defining learner centered is varied and without much to ‘hang your hat on” in regards to using as a foundation for quality, student success, development of quality and measuring the effectiveness of the program or course.

The most current term that I hear bandied about is “self directed learning..” exactly what is self directed learning and what does it mean for students?

Defined as:

self-directed learning (SDL), the individual takes the initiative and the responsibility for what occurs. Individuals select, manage, and assess their own learning activities, which can be pursued at any time, in any place, through any means, at any age. (retrieved from http://www.selfdirectedlearning.com/ 01/30/10)
Be sure and read Roger Hiemstra’s article on self-directed learning which includes the following definition:

Several things are known about self-directed learning: (a) individual learners can become empowered to take increasingly more responsibility for various decisions associated with the learning endeavor; (b) self-direction is best viewed as a continuum or characteristic that exists to some degree in every person and learning situation; (c) self-direction does not necessarily mean all learning will take place in isolation from others; (d) self-directed learners appear able to transfer learning, in terms of both knowledge and study skill, from one situation to another; (e) self-directed study can involve various activities and resources, such as self-guided reading, participation in study groups, internships, electronic dialogues, and reflective writing activities; (f) effective roles for teachers in self-directed learning are possible, such as dialogue with learners, securing resources, evaluating outcomes, and promoting critical thinking; (g) some educational institutions are finding ways to support self-directed study through open-learning programs, individualized study options, non-traditional course offerings, and other innovative programs.
(retrieved from http://www-distance.syr.edu/sdlhdbk.html, 01/3/10)

Regardless of how we apply these terms, how learners learned, and how teachers teach those students who are now working their way through the public school system (elementary and secondary), virtual schools, and charter schools, will be the genesis for tranformative change in our higher education institutions.   One question that I kept returning to is how do measure success or failure when through these definitions we are seeking to put more and more of the accountability for learning on the student.  And who should be accountable in this age of “no child left behind,” standardized testing of everything and the cookie cutter approach to education that entails ..if “student centered learning” en-vogue movement of the day, especially in online education.

What is quality in online education, what should we be measuring and evaluating?

There are new paradigms in education that should be considered in evaluating the online course or program.  How does that course or program engage the students, provide them with opportunities for synthesis of the materials, critical thinking, multi “everything,” validates their learning, provides for opportunities of natural and designed collaboration, communicate across multiple modalities to multi dimensional/diversified audiences?  How do we measure how students create content that is pertinent to the outcomes of what they need to learn, how they are teaching and learning with others.    How the use of PowerPoint is applied in an online course suddenly doesn’t seem so important as we prepare students for working, accessing information, communicating, and collaborating in a fast paced global society. Finally we must ask ourselves why it is so compelling that we
“control” our students.  Why must we funnel their access to content through our ‘filters,” and why do actually think we are really exerting any control any way.

So how do we define quality and does it make sense to measure the quality in online education against that of face to face..in my opinion that is a cop out…we should stretch the boundaries of where technology can take us in online education by expanding our definition of what that means outside of the parameters of face to face education.  There is so much more that we can do with technology, increasing the amount of time that a student spend reviewing online content, researching on  their own, and multi-modalities of delivery that meets an individual student’s needs.

It has been asserted that students, who have been dissatisfied with the content in their courses have actually reviewed the content in similar open courses available on the web. they do this in order to  supplement their face to face and online courses.

So then what is the role of teachers, faculty, and administrators.  This is the disruption of education that is occurring, we don’t know, our roles are in transition.  Do students and learners need us, can the tools of technology facilitate and define what student need to learn …will technology remove the education “middle” ground of delivery in much the same way that the music industry has been disrupted, cable televisions, newspapers, and publishing.  I ponder that in order for the ideal definitions of “student centered learning” and self directed learning to be achieved the educational institutions, the teachers, and administrators have to be removed from the equation?

As an educator I acknowledge that my profession is changing, when the student or consumer defines how to validate what he or she has learned and that validation is widely accepted then our educational institutions have been disrupted.   While I am excited by change, as always ..I am apprehensive and selfishly concerned how this change will impact me.

McCombs, B. L., & Whisler, J. S. (1997). The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

17
Jan

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence,

by Cathy in Uncategorized

1 Comment Comments

When I set out writing this blog it was not my intent that I ponder on what the singularity is, how great Google is or any of the other initiaitives occuring in technology that are impacting our lives, this is just sort of happening.  I am not an expert in any of these areas, this blog is just a reflection on how I feel about these things, how I think they could be connected and what the future may hold.  Given that, I think the future is now, in some aspects the singularity may be happening somewhere right now only it’s so small and so isolated that we are not seeing it on a global scale.  Google does have  vast stores of information and knowledge and will continue to grow…this is one genie we can’t put back in the bottle folks ..and trying to keep up is next to nearly impossible.

Take Google street view for example..oh you aren’t familair with that one?  Well “google” it then and see what it’s all about.   Here is how Google describes it: when you’ve zoomed all the way in you find yourself virtually standing on the street….and indeed you do and all of sudden real life is now blended with virtual life.   The most concise way to describe this is to say Google is giving you ’street level imagery” of an address you input, your journey and your destination. Thee are some entertaining videos on how this is done on this Google site. If you want to know if Google is visiting your neighborhood you can find out by visiting this site.

In the last blog I wrote about Google gathering all the knowledge of the world ..you may scoff, but is that so far fetched?  And all that knowledge is going into an array of interconnected computers or servers…and ala “Twilight Zone” for your consideration .. that knowledge maybe somewhat loosely joined now but what will the future hold when it’s interconnected, when it double loops, and when it thinks.

We look at what we do individually on the web without thinking about how that ripples out and intertwines with what others are doing on the web…I have recently uploaded almost 20,000 non duplicated pictures and other artifacts to Flickr.  Some of these are digital photos that I have taken, others are scans of amateur photography I have collected over the years, and scans of paper ephemera.  Ultimately though within that collection of images are the patterns of human existence, nature, and artistic creations of life on this earth that can be processed and interpreted via artificial intelligence.    Have you ever uploaded photos to Google photo albums, have you noticed how picasa seeks out faces of people and tags them?

Ok so what do I know about artificial intelligence…well what do any of us know about this obscure concept that is seemingly a very science fiction like term.   You can find an article on artificial intelligence here on Wikipedia.  However what I find is not exaclty what I think the future will be like…”is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as “the study and design of intelligent agents,”[1] where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success.[2] John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956,[3] defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.”[4]“   Why is “intelligence’ artificial if it is that of machines?  And what is intelligence anyway?   And in the spirit of not taking Wikipedia as first source here are more definitions of artificial intelligence:

A May 23, 2009 article in The New York Times by Joh Markhoff describes Artificial Intellgence this way…”Artificial intelligence is already used to automate and replace some human functions with computer-driven machines. These machines can see and hear, respond to questions, learn, draw inferences and solve problems. But for the Singulatarians, A.I. refers to machines that will be both self-aware and superhuman in their intelligence, and capable of designing better computers and robots faster than humans can today.”

The basic artificial intelligence website presents the following:  “It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.
and addresses this question;

Q. Yes, but what is intelligence?

A. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.
Well back ts artificial intelligence site ..’Kurzweil finesses the issue of runaway AI by proposing a pathway where machine intelligence is patterned after human brains, so that they would have our morals and values built in…”  Hall also speculates that the possibility of computer based intelligent machine being better equipped to make better decisions than humans is near.

I have long been a fan of Kevin Kelly, I have included his blog as a resources here…it is interesting. He gives an excellent explanation of the Singularity here at this site. So you have to read Kurzweil and Kelly..and then speculate..what if the singularity is here already in some respects?  What if artificial intelligence already exists?  It is just disaggregated?

As an educator am I going to wake up some morning and find that teaching and learning in the way we do it now has been disrupted  in such a way that I as learner flip on my machine and find that what I “need to know’ has been provided to me based upon information I have provided in my profile which includes information on my career/job, my education and my experience?  My learning happens daily, inobtrusiviely, is individualized and the resources are ubiquitous.  Or is this happening already in such a manner that I am not really aware, that it is information I requested via Google Alerts, my social networks, and Google Reader?

Resources for further review:  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Artificial Intelligence Depot , Science Daily; Artificial Intelligence News, Kevin Kelly’s website,Ray Kurzweil’s Artificial Intelligence Website

29
Dec

Google, Google, Semantic Web, and Singularity

by Cathy in Semantic Web

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Yesterday, as I was on a lengthy drive, I was sorting out a possible connecting between Google Search, Google Books and the Semantic Web—>tied to Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity.  I think my brain grew a new wrinkle but whether or not the connections I was trying to make make sense or are part of the scheme is probalby beyond my ability to determine.  But, that observation aside I set out to learn more about Google Search, Google Books, and Semantic Web and present that here and finally take another look at Kurzweil’s Singularity.

First of what what is it about Google Search that makes them unique, how do they do it?  Well according to various sources. Fundamental to how Google operates and even why it does what it does is it’s mission;

The company’s mission is to organize the immense amount of information available on the web and make it universally accessible and useful.

And while it is not my intent to discuss the history of Google here it should be noted that:

Their (Brin and Page) goal was to make digital libraries work, and their big idea was as follows: in a future world in which vast collections of books are digitized, people would use a “web crawler” to index the books’ content and analyze the connections between them, determining any given book’s relevance and usefulness by tracking the number and quality of citations from other books. (retrieved from http://books.google.com/googlebooks/history.html0

That mission, in my opinion could be expanded to include all information, even that which is not on the web, digitizing it and putting it on the web.

How do they do this though?

According to the Wikipedia article on Google Search they use a Google search-results page is ordered by a priority rank called a “PageRank.”  Which is:

… a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page,[1] used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).  (retrieved fromWikipedia, 12/29/09)

In terms that make sense to me .. Google indexes web pages based upon key terms, the more popular key terms on a website and  how they are phrased all have something to do with how your site and content is indexed by the search engine.

Integrating this indexing of text or content from websites with the massive Google books project seems huge ..to date various resources indicate that over 10 million books have been digitized by Google.   As Tim O’Reilly noted the key to Google is.. “database management. Google isn’t just a collection of software tools, it’s a specialized database.”  Indeed the Google Books project is just that a vast digital warehouse of text, knowledge and information.    Integrated with that project is:

The Google Books Library Project is an effort by Google to scan and make searchable the collections of several major research libraries.[1] It and Google’s Partner Program comprise Google Book Search. Along with bibliographic information, snippets of text from a book are often viewable. If a book is out of copyright and in the public domain, the book is fully available to read or to download.[2]

(retrieved from Wikipedia, 12/29/09)

Now having established that Google “views” the web and the web content as one large searchable database, that it has taken web based content and made it searchable, and is now taking vast amounts of non webbased content and digitizing it as well..and further adding to the database..where does the Semantic Web come into this? \

According to this website the Semantic Web is:

…the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web.

In order to apply or understand the semantic web it is necessary to understand that it requires adding semantic metadata, or data that describes data, to information resources…further definition from the “How Stuff Works Website“  indicates that … Semantic Web proposes to help computers “read” and use the Web. The big idea is pretty simple — metadata added to Web pages can make the existing World Wide Web machine readable…”

As is indicated this does not create an ‘artificial intelligence” definition for the WWW yet.  However digging deeper in to Kurzweil’s Singularity may allow us to harness that wealth of information to create an artificial intelligent WWW.

Wikipedia provides an overview of technological singularity as follows:

Technological singularity refers to the idea that technological progress would reach such an infinite or extremely high value at a point in the near future. This idea is inspired by the observation of accelerating change in the development of wealth, technology, and humans’ capability for information processing. Extrapolating these capabilities to the future has led a number of thinkers to envisage the short-term emergence of a self-improving artificial intelligence or superintelligence[1] that is so much beyond humans’ present capabilities that it becomes impossible to understand it with present conceptions. Thus, the technological singularity can be seen as a metasystem transition or transcendence to a wholly new regime of mind, society and technology.

I propose that we are driven, by our very need to learn and learn more to achieve the singularity, to harness the ‘energy” of the world’s knowledge..the abillity to do so is at our fingertips…Brin and Page designed the mission of Google to achieve this aim, whether they did this knowingly or not is immaterial, reality is they are achieving this aim through Google Books, Google Search and now with the advent of the Semantic Web, which provides a means to harness this vast wealth of information .. we are close to achieving Superintelligence via machines.

From the companion website for the book The Singularity is Near Kurzeil notes:

The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.

Google harnesses the computing power of hundreds of thousands of interconnected pc’s, billions of pages of data, and now that information can be pushed to us in a systematic fashion via semantic web processes…the potential of solving problems that we can’t address due to limited knowledge or disaggregated data is limitless.

The Internet is huge..

Microsoft’s Bing team puts the amount of web pages at “over one trillion“.

And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses.

More information on indexing of web pages by Google can be found on theGoogle Blogs

and another source of information on the number of web pages here:  http://hubpages.com/hub/How-many-webpages-do-you-think-actually-exist-on-the-Internet.

19
Dec

Free Textbooks..information and resources from the web

by Cathy in Education, Free Education, Higher Education, Open Courseware, Open Education Resources

2 Comments Comments

In today’s economy and rising prices for everything cutting costs for students in areas where we can has become and will continue to be of paramount importance to students and their families in making a choice on where they can go to college.  Mainstream media has jumped on the bandwagon with various articles on free and reduced cost textbooks over the last couple of years.  These include articles in US News and World Report which provides an overview of available textbooks resources from free to reduced cost.

In September 14, 2008 the New York Times reported in an article on the various options of providing textbooks at reduced costs including  print on demand options such as Lulu and Flatworld Knowledge,  allowing free downloads in Word and PDFs versions of textbooks, and sites such as Merlot and Connexions.   In an LA Times article dated August 18, 2008 economic text author McAfee noted that it does take work to find online textbooks and resource.  More on McAfree’s work and rationale for open sourcing his textbooks can also be found in this Inside Higher Ed article.

There are some student run sites such as Textbook Revolution which provides:

Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world…. links to textbooks and select educational resources of all kinds. Some of the books are PDF files; others are viewable online as e-books.

Another similar site to this one, but not student run,  is the Open Textbook Registry which is:

a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Of course one must be concerned because the cost of textbooks seems to increase the likelihood that students will engange in illegal activities to get the books that they need for little or no cost as related in this article from Boston.com ..

“We think it’s a significant problem,” said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich. Sampson said that in any given month, 200 to 300 of the company’s titles are posted illegally as free Internet downloads. Distributing books for free without permission violates copyright laws and deprives publishers of revenue.”

We will be evaluating the use of Merlot in the months to come, however it is important to note that Merlot plays a significant role in the affordable textbook initiative.  Membership in Merlot provides individuals with the opportunity to contribute learning materials, create a personal  collection, share online expertise, and receive peer recognition. The Open Textbook project for Merlot is found at this link on their website and contains 279 resources.   Of course membership is not required to access the resources on the website.  It is important to note that their resources undergo an peer review and are rated.

Do you use any of the resources below in developing your course content, if not why not?  If you favorite resource is not here would you note that in the comments?  If you do why?  What are the advantages? How are these received by students?

I posed the question regarding free/open source textbooks to the DEOS list serv,  this is a list serv for those who work in the field of distance education, and received information back regarding the Orange Grove. The Orange Grove was also profiled in Inside Higher Ed in September. The Orange Grove is actually an example of a university press providing course/textbooks online and downloadable for free.  Another good example is that Anthabasca Press http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/bySeries/2 which includes:

Anthabasca University Press is part of the growing collection of the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library (LHCADL). AU Press’s open access, digital collection of peer reviewed scholarly work provides valuable educational resources (e-books, journals, website publications and videos) that support Lois Hole’s vision of accessible research and learning.

Another example of efforts in promoting open access resources is this on e of an individual keeping a resource base of applicable web based resources on the Technology Training Center of Porterville College.  See this comprehensive list of resources here:  http://www.portervillecollege.edu/tlc/resources.htm#OER

Freetextbooks: This site seems to have a little of everything from lecture notes, to free textbooks, and other webbased resources.

Learnout loud:  your one-stop destination for audio and video learning.   Browse over 20,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and video.

Further examples of open education resource depositories include Wikimedia. Under the umbrella of Wikimedia is Wikiversity, Wikisource, and Wikibooks both provide accessible resources for textbooks and course content.

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning.

Wikisource is an online library of free content publications collected and maintained by our community. We now have 135,382 texts in the English language library.

Wikibooks a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003; since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 38,399 pages …

Wikia Education; A list of University / Education Wikis

Wikiversity:  a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities.

Open Education Campaign Wiki:

An open university is one in which

  1. The research the university produces is open access.
  2. The course materials are open educational resources.
  3. The university embraces free software and open standards.
  4. If the university holds patents, it readily licenses them for free software, essential medicines, and the public good.
  5. The university network reflects the open nature of the internet.

where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty, administration. The Declaration was a joint statement of the community at the [Free Culture 2008 Conference] in Berkeley, CA.

Amser:  AMSER, Applied Math, Sciences Educational Repository, is a portal of educational resources and servicesCommunity and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. built specifically for use by those in

Private industry is also getting involved in the opencourseware initiative as well as indicated by the Novell Opencourseware site. They state that:  OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes. By making these materials available to the public, we hope to extend to all people worldwide the opportunity to access these high quality learning materials.

Open Culture University: Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free university courses, free movies, free language lessons and other enriching content — it’s all here. (from their website)

Videos,  I Tunes v-casts, podcasts, etc., all provide the educator and student with access to a broad spectrum of educators in their field of discipline:

Ted Talks: TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 450 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks feature closed captions in English, and many feature subtitles in various languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. (retrieved from their website)

FORA.tv helps intelligent, engaged audiences get smart. Our users find, enjoy, and share videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world.

We gather the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. We present this provocative, big-idea content for anyone to watch, interact with, and share –when, where, and how they want.

With our community of savvy users and an extensive, growing library of smart videos, FORA.tv is at the forefront of the ongoing integration – and transformation – of the traditional media, TV, cable, and online industries from mass-market to high-quality, high-value content. FORA.tv was founded in 2005 and is funded by a select group of investors including William R. Hearst III and Adobe Ventures.  (retrieved from their website)

Psychology/about.com About sites usually provide a detailed list of web based resources in a variety of areas.

LearnOutLoud audio and video resources for Psychology (from their website) Check out 10 of the top free online psychology audio books, lectures, & podcasts. For the past three years we’ve featured dozens of free psychology resources as part of our Free Resource of the Day Emails

EduFire:  Live Video Learning Online Classes Fit Your Busy Schedule Learning is easy with top instructors. Learn anytime from anywhere.. from their website they state:

We have a simple (but not easy) mission: Revolutionize education. Our goal is to create a platform to allow live learning to take place over the Internet anytime from anywhere. Most importantly…for anyone. We’re the first people (that we know of) to create something that’s totally open and community-driven (rather than closed and transaction-driven.

As you can see there is an endless supply of resources on the web and it grows daily.  If this is not enough for you or your class they can collaboratively create their own content via blogs, webcasts, wikis, and podcasts!  It’s a whole new age in education of self-created content, self learning to group activities, collaboration and building on or “meshing’ up the knowledge of other resources.


21
Nov

Open Courseware, social networking, thoughts on the future of education..

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Free Education, Higher Education, Open Courseware, Open Education Resources

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I have some observations on open education resources, open courseware, and open access, what I think it is and what I think it is not.  Over time our online world has become well populated with “learning opportunities, objects and events,” not only do we need to filter and sort through this but also determine if we are going to validate these and if so how. In the last several months many new social networking, collaboration, and information ‘tools” have burst on the scene..and soon to follow are those of us in education who start evaluating these tools for the application to education.. I think this is a good thing, however  I also have to question if we are expending our energies appropriately.

On one side of the equation are the early adopters who are scrambling to apply new technology to their courses, introduce it to faculty or infuse its use system wide, on the other end are those who strongly feel that new tech tools, social networking, virtual worlds, and social networking really has no place in education  and is a distraction in the classroom. Open education resources or (OER) are no exception to this as well.

I have often heard the statement made…there is no evidence or research that demonstrates that any institution uses OER for development of a course much less a program.   There is also no research demonstrating whether or not individuals use OER to facilitate their informal learning and whether or not they have sought to have that learning validated.  I have yet to delve into any research so am not certain whether or not these observation are credible or not.

However I do contend that open(ness) or open source does have a demonstrable track record of success as it has its genesis in the open source software movement.  The open source software movement can be given credit for driving progress in information technology, software, and even demonstrating the power of collaboration in today’s society.  Open source started, according to sources in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s given this history and continued evolution into today I believe that it provides evidence of the direction that open education resources can take given the right conditions.

What are the elements of this “perfect storm”  (referred to also by Adler and Brown in their article Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0)  of resources and people who will make the application and use of OER to learning..many things and there may still be some ingredients missing, however I believe that some of the most essential are in place.  Open courseware sites and institutions do not grant certificates or degrees, no instructional support is provided, there may also be certain terms of use associated with the course materials.

I currently see:


Disruptive technology:  it seems that there are many freely and widely available technical tools that provide a platform for delivering content to learners, however the problem, in my opinion is the overwhelming amount of that content that is available.  In regards to the tools it seems that there is a rush to get them online and available to users, they maybe overshadowed and or ‘out-shined” by someone else’s innovation they are the first on the market.   An example of the growth in content includes the evidence provided on the OpenCourseware Consortium website which indicates collaborations with over 200 higher education institutions.    A great advantage of the technology we have today and technology of the future is that it provides us with educational content through a variety of channels via text, audio, video, live web casts, and virtual worlds.    Not only that the technology provides for multiple points or networks of communication which provides for groups to collaborate, discuss and remix content.  This is the network age, this is the age we all learn together and from eachother.

Another ingredient to this perfect storm is the availability of content on the web, there are now a plethora of sties and resources for educational content, these include:


YouTube. edu: I strongly suggest the reader to look at Youtube.edu carefully, look at the number of viewers on some of these lectures, review the comments and determine how viewers are using these lectures.  I am certain that viewers, outside of the professor’s classroom are reviewing these lectures and making them part of their personal learning network.

Open Education Resource Commons:  “Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.”  Examples of their resources include:  courses, interactive mini lessons, adaptations of existing open work, peer-reviewed electronic textbooks, K-12 resources.

Wikiversity:  a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities.

Connexions: a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

  • authors create and collaborate
  • instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
  • learners find and explore content


ccLearn: ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources.

DiscoverEd, a search prototype that provides scalable search and discovery for educational resources on the web.

FreeLearning: Here you will find FREE TO USE learning resources that you can use to supplement your own course materials or learning. Some of these are from BC-based projects while others are from Open Educational Resource projects from around the world.


Utah Open Courseware: Utah may have “lost funding” for their  open courseware project however the website is still very much alive.  The website states: Utah OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational material used in our formal campus courses, and seeks to provide people around the world with an opportunity to access high quality learning opportunities.

The Chinese Opencourseware initiative is one to watch, in fact I first learned about when I was touring educational sites in Second Life at the Educators Co-op.  I have heard claims that “no one” has gotten a degree or even completed a course using open courseware…my guess is they don’t know what is going on in Asia or India with the use of open courseware.

FETP Open Courseware: From the website: students may use FETP’s materials to guide independent study. Course syllabi, lecture notes, reading lists and problem sets used in many one-year mid-career program and executive education courses are already available online and over time FETP OpenCourseWare will include all Fulbright School materials (subject to copyright law).

Japan OpenCourseware

John Hopkins Open Courseware:  J ohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW) project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses.

Notre Dame OCW: Notre Dame OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners throughout the world.



Private industry is also getting involved in the opencourseware initiative as well as indicated by the Novell Opencourseware site. They state that: OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes. By making these materials available to the public, we hope to extend to all people worldwide the opportunity to access these high quality learning materials.

BBC Online Courses: These online modules and guides are free for you to use. They were originally designed for BBC staff and in publishing them here we have not made many editorial changes to them.



Podcasts for education:

The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.


Learning in Hand: Students and teachers from all over the world are learning from audio and video programs on desktop computers, laptops, iPods, Pocket PCs, Palm handhelds, and other devices.

Apple and education podcasts

Education podcasts: Education podcasts from universities, colleges, students, teachers — everyone who uses podcasting to learn and to teach others. We’re all life-long learners, aren’t we? Even some of the littlest ones in k-12 schools are podcasting. Be transported back to your elementary days…if only this technology were available then.

A good resource on educational podcasts is here at Shambles.net.

Education World (from their website) has compiled the Web’s latest and greatest podcasting resources to help you get started with this exciting and doable technology. Included: How-to articles, lesson ideas, free and fee-based software download sites, and much more!

Social networking is another part of the perfect storm and the technology that underlies this rising tide of “connectedness,” (yes I am in George Siemens and Stephen Downes Open Course on Connectiveness).  There is, of course, Twitter, Facebook, and Ning, there are also efforts by learning management systems to better incorporate networking tools into their systems.  However can an educators use tools such as Ning, Elgg, Twine, and .. well there are so many tools out there now I overwhelmed at the moment.

I am a member of several Ning Communities and still trying to figure that out.   Ning  allows the user to join social networks which provides memberships to communities that have similar interests, etc., Elgg seems to be similar to Ning but you can host it on your own website.  I hope to have an Elgg site eventually in order to test it for delivery of course materials.    From their website:

Ning is a platform for creating your own social network. Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be for anything and anyone. You start by naming your social network and choosing a combination of features (photos, videos, forums, events, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. You can then customize your social network’s appearance and launch it! People who join your social network will automatically have a customizable profile page and will be able to message and friend each other.

Elgg is an open source product which “comes with advanced user management and administration, social networking, cross-site tagging, powerful access control lists, internationalisation support, multiple view support (eg cell phones, iPhone), an advanced templating engine, a widget framework and more.

I used Twine for  a while to collect content..I think it has great potential. I understand it is currently undergoing some major revisions, I can’t wait to see what they do next. According to their website Twine allows you to:

Collect content. Join a twine on any subject or start your own to track your interests. Twine organizes your content by topic, so you can keep track of it and share it with anyone you want.

Share interests. The Twine community is interested in the same things you are. Find people who are passionate about your interests. Join conversations. Learn something new. Share things you find with relevant communities.

Get custom recommendations. The more you use Twine, the smarter it gets. Fill out your profile to discover new info and interests through Twine’s personalized recommendation

Why do I think that we are or are not expending our current energies appropriately because not doing anything and think that education and students will be what it was 10, 5 or even a year ago is deceiving ourselves.  Education is now going down the path of being irrevocably and forever changed.  Someone will find an acceptable way to measure that learners who “self learn” are achieving the appropriate learning outcomes, of providing learners with the appropriate content that they need to learn, networked learning will be the norm.  It doesn’t mean the end of colleges and universities …they will look much the same way in 10 years as they do now..the experience of college will always be a vital part of our culture and our society ..but how the classroom looks and how students access content may be very different than it is right now.

So are we in the “eye of a perfect’ storm with all  these factors in  place which also includes many that I have not covered such as education experts such as Curtis Bonk, George Siemens, Stephen Downes, John Seely Brown and many others advocating for open courses, understanding the technology that it takes to make this vision happen as well as advocates for social networking.  In addition to this the credibility given to University of the People via its receiving support from the United Nations and Peer to Peer.  In addition to this we are seeing a push for education on a scale, globally that we have never before seen, an economy that can no longer support the expense of traditional education, a coming tide of retirements by faculty and administrators from educational institutions, and a universal realization that education IS lifelong if one is to keep current with trends in his/her occupation.





11
Nov

Random thoughts on the book by Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near…

by Cathy in Future, Semantic Web, Uncategorized

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I have been reading Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near When Humans Transcend Biology, and maybe I should say…TRYING to read this book!  What follows are some of my random notes and observation on this book and the concepts, theories presented by Kurzweil, those things which I found significant from my reading of Kurzweil.   Fundamentally this is a fascinating book that is based upon science FACT…everyday that I get up I read something about an advancement in technology that demonstrates that why Ray Kurzweil presents in The Singularity is happening all around us everyday.

We are more dependent upon our technology for our day to day routines than we were 10 years ago … one may even ask if you can live in this world today without some sort of dependence upon technology..and the answer to that would be … no. Even without reading Kurzweil’s book, watching the videos, or reading articles about singularity what he presents is truly evident in today’s society.

So what is the Singularity. Kurzweil defines this as a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid and the impact so deep that our lives will be irreversibly transformed. (pp 7)  Kurzweil sets the date for the singularity, representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability as 2045.

In my perspective what is happening now, and what provides a foundation for Kurzweil’s singularity are the concepts behind artificial intelligence.  I am not a student of artificial intelligence, it is somewhat of a “murky” concept for me.  A web search indicates that artificial intelligence is..AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as “the study and design of intelligent agents,”[ where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success.John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” (retrieved from  wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence)

Advancements in the field of research of artificial intelligence and brain research will tie the concepts together and provide machines, computers specifically, the ability to do “pattern recognition” which is what are brains are outstanding at doing.

Kurzweil identifies several things that our brains differ from computers  .. a quick summary of these are:

1.      A brains synapses are very slow
2.      The brain operates massively parallel
3.      The brain combines analog and digital phenomena
4.      The brain rewires itself
5.      Most of the details in the brain are random
6.      The brain uses emergent properties
7.      We contradict ourselves
8.      The brain uses evolution
9.      The patterns are important
10.      The brain is holographic
11.      The brain is deeply connected
12.      The brain does have an architecture of regions
13.      The design of a brain region is simpler than the design of a region.   (pp 150-153)

Kurzweil describes Moore’s Law, or the exponential growth of technology.  It is important to note that this exponential growth of technology does not extend itself just to computers, but extends it self to many areas such as development of alternative energy and capturing, for example solar energy.  This theory also extends itself to biology and the field of medicine, extending our life spans, almost everything that impacts our lives…is going to be impacted by this exponential growth of technology.

As Kurzweil describes it..we humans view growth as linear..however that is not the case, growth is exponential.  This is defined as:  “intuitive linear” view of technological progress rather than the “historical exponential view.” To express this another way, it is not the case that we will experience a hundred years of progress in the twenty-first century; rather we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (at today’s rate of progress, that is). (retrieved from Kurzweilai.net  http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1)

What seems to underpin much of what Kurzweil presents is the law of accelerating returns.  The Law of Accelerating returns is defined as:

We can organize these observations into what I call the law of accelerating returns as follows:

Kurzweil proposes that we can, in my words, reprogram our cells..reprogram our biological “computers” to increase our longevity..can we live forever?  An article from The Futurist magazine...presents more on Kurzweil’s theories and launches a trailer on a movie on Kurzweil The Transcendent Man.   As this article conveys..what makes Kurzweil’s paradigm on The Law of Accelerating Returns and Moore’s Law is that it is based on tracking history of technical change back to the dawn of man.    In other words (my observations) our learning from one technical change to the next has been exponential since the dawn of our history.

So if change is happening as Kurzweil presents..why don’t we notice it, why isn’t more significant..because these changes are somewhat imperceptible to us for the most part.  If it has some significant impact on our jobs, disrupt our routine, or is a technology that we could fix ourselves one day and had to call in a specialist the next… I contend that these changes are not easily identifiable.

There is more so much more to this book…I could never hope to cover it in one blog..my observations are superficial.  What is important or significant to me may be different for another reader.  In the back of my mind remains the thought of how this would impact education and learning….of course Kurzweil’s Moore’s Law and Law of Accelerating Returns will certainly require increased cause and support for the “lifelong learning movement,” support for movement such as Micheal Trout’s “Learn anything, anytime anywhere..”  as well as his Eduit or eSingularity.

Resources on Kurzweil:

Kurzweilai.net

Inteview of Kruzweil by Dag Spicer at the Computer History Museum

This google video of Kurzweil’s presentation at Stanford.

Google Book:  The Singularity is Near when Humans Transcend Biology

The book is available on Amazon.

1
Nov

Change, singularity, and Education

by Cathy in Education, Education Technology, Open Courseware, Web 2.0

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Change has changed.  The old saying..the only thing that remains the same is that things will change, holds true but how change happens has changed as well.    Some will believe, hope and try …to not play a role in this change, deny it, push back against it, all for good reasons.  It will impact their jobs, those values they have held dear for their entire lives, those simple pleasures of their lives.  It will change those things they looked forward to sharing with their children and their children’s children..reading a book, watching television, where they live and how they communicate..these things are all changing.    My thoughts on change have been driven by a book I am now reading.

I have finally picked up and dove right into Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology, admittedly a lot of this is over my head, but as I read it I was not certain whether or not to become excited about the future of society that Kurzweil illustrates or dive under the covers and wait until the “epoch” is over.    In fact Kurzweil identifies and defines six epochs that define human society, some in the past and some in the future..what then is an epoch.  Dictionary.com defines epoch as follows:  a particular period of time marked by distinctive features, events, etc.; the beginning of a a distinctive period in the history of anything…

What then does singularity mean?  Kurzweil defines singularity as a future period, during which technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversible transformed. The changes in technology happen so rapidly that Kurzweil defines it as exponential, the law of accelerating returns. I am not going to describe the history of technology and computing here, as Kurzweil does it much better than I do.  However it is also illustrated here:

Timeline of computer and Internet history:       http://www.warbaby.com/FG_test/Timeline.html

A History of Artificial Intelligence:                   http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/History

Living Internet;                                          http://www.livinginternet.com/

What we don’t know about the future of the Internet and technology may be defined by the user, what are their needs, what do they need?  The Pew Internet’s research on the future of the interest, based upon a survey technology experts and survey analysts maybe a good start, however it is just that a start, it difficult to determine trends based upon the observations of these individuals.   Their predictions include the following:  the emerging era of the blog, experts believe the Internet will bring yet more dramatic change to the news and publishing worlds. They predict the least amount of change to religion, we have already seen the changes to how our news is delivered, how we can influence the news, and changes to how we buy books.  This report also identified the following from this website:

  • Some 77% said the mobile computing device (the smartphone) with more significant computing power will be 2020’s primary global Internet-connection platform.
  • 64% favored the idea that 2020 user interfaces will offer advanced touch, talk and typing options and some added a fourth “T” – think.
  • Nearly four out of five respondents (78%) said the original Internet architecture will not be completely replaced by a next-generation ‘net by 2020.
  • Three out of five respondents (60%) disagreed with the idea that legislatures, courts, the technology industry, and media companies will exercise effective intellectual property control by 2020.
  • A majority—56%—agreed that in 2020 “few lines (will) divide professional from personal time, and that’s OK.”
  • 56% said while Web 2.0 is bringing some people closer, social tolerance will not be heightened by our new connections
  • 45% agreed and 44% disagreed with the notion that the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the Internet will heighten individual integrity and forgiveness.
  • More than half (55%) agreed that many lives will be touched in 2020 by virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality, while 45% disagreed or did not answer the question.

As I interpret this information, other things I have read, trends, and the use of technology I ask myself what does this mean, what, besides newspapers, the music industry, and communications will be disrupted next.   Will publishing be disrupted with the prevalent nature of self-published  content on the web?  Yes.  It has already happened. I can write in isolation or publish  my writing and allow the reader to shape change and contribute to my writing.  Chances are self-publishing will become the norm as is evident by these sites:

Lulu:  A self-publishing site for authors, writers and photographers

MIxbook:was started with the idea that friends should be able to create books together. Though Mixbook software makes book creation easy and fun, it also allows groups of people to build books together. Now friends finally have a way to share their memories online!

How libraries are used has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.  Use primarily for their computers, Internet and ease of accessing resource the role of the librarian has changed to information technology expert, who understands the application of academic resources to certain discipline areas, the history of literature and writing to forward thinking technology expert.

The use of mobile technology i.e.) Ipod Touch and Cell phones provide for ubiquitous computer and any where anytime access to learning objects, resources and information.  This access to information around the world will support the tenets of Friedman and Bonk in their assertions that The World is Flat when it comes to globalization and business and The World is Open in regards to education.

It has been demonstrated by Google and other search engine technology that the parallel processing systems of the brain have been replicated by computers.  These interconnected networks of computers, as described by Stibels in his book Wired for Thought,  have allowed for pattern recognition  or optimal processing of the brain.  There is a certain uniqueness, non linearity and chaos if you will, to the processing of the brain, (a distractedness?) that this process may never be able to replicate.   What underpins new search engine technology?  What drives search engines such as Bing?Cuil? Cluuz?

Cuil: Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.  Try it you might like it I know I did!

Cluuz: generates easier to understand search results through patent pending semantic cluster graphs, image extraction, and tag clouds.

The difference between standard search engines and Cluuz is in the fact that Cluuz does some work for you. A standard search engine shows links in a list. Cluuz instead peers into the searched web pages, extracts important terms and images, clusters them and gives them in chart format (semantic graph) and in a tag cloud where you can click on any entity to further focus your search…

Search engines abound. The focus is now on the “real time” web. What is the real time web?  What does this mean? According to Wikipedia real time web can be defined as: a set of technologies and practices which enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates.   On October 29, 2009 Mashable published this article on four emerging trends on the real time web.    These trends are real time collaboration, real time analytics, real time search and real time ecommerce.

These trends in technology will also impact education.  Education may be one of the institutions said to be slow to respond to change, but underlying currents of the economy, driving demands of the job market for high skilled workers, a continuous change in medical, communication, mobile technologies, and changes in the economy all drive a change in education.  In addition to that external pressures such as a rise in competition to the traditional education model will also drive change.  Open education resources, a more educated class of people from China, India, and other countries besides the United States have put increasing demands on the education system of the United States.

It maybe easy to scoff at models such at the University of the People, Peer to Peer, and the fact that Harvard is providing a free Master’s degree in education.  These initiatives may seem like a drop in the bucket to the huge education market, and taken singularly they are not significant, however taken as a whole they are, I believe the “perfect storm.”

Some people in the field of education are anxious for the change of open education to happen, for change to happen in the online world to the learning management system, for free textbooks, open access resources, and free education.  However, I feel it is critical to keep in mind that these people are in the minority, even though their arguments have merit in regards to the benefits of student and to student learning.    Reports are that students are already at the forefront of taking advantage of open education resources as they look for improved courseware and materials, from an open education institution, in courses they are enrolled in at a different institution.  In essence what I am saying is that students may enroll in a course at one college but access the course materials that are available at a different institution for a variety of reasons..but if they can access those materials and get through a course faster, have a better understanding of the course materials, and also do this for the purposes of convenience they will do so.

In essence what this comes down to is that it is the user who will drive where we go with technology. It is the user who is the innovator.  It is the student or the user who will ask for change in the status quo, and if they don’t receive what they are seeking they will find someone or some entity which will..that is the nature of what the advances in technology have provided us today.  Their needs will be underpinned by the economy, by their jobs, and the need for convenience and technical sophistication … they will question why not?  What if? and they will communicate what their experiences are with others..and not just their close circle of friends but with the world at large…

31
Oct

Personal Learning Environment/Network

by Cathy in #cck09 connnectivism education leanring web2.0

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As somewhat of a lurker in the Connectivism 2009 class facilitated by Stephen Downes and George Siemens I have been squeezing in viewing the Elluminate archived sessions when I can. I have to say I am grateful to George and Stephen for their work on this course, it has been fascinating. I am also grateful for the opportunity to be introduced to and begin to define my personal learning network/environment (PLN) and ponder the resources I have in my PLN.

Before I launch into all the different nodes on my Personal Learning Network or Environment (PLN/E) it seems to me that defining what these terms mean is in order. According to my current favorite resource, Wikipedia, a personal learning environment is a system that helps learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners set their own learning goals, manage their learning; managing both content and process and communicate with others in the process of learning and thereby achieve learning goals. A PLE may be composed of one or more subsystems: As such it may be a desktop application, or composed of one or more web-based services.”

At the foundation of my PLE/N are the Google Alerts I have set. Google Alerts basically harvest new stories, blogs, and other resources on the web for information on topics that I have set. I receive this information back, on a daily basis, in an email. There are directly links to the website, however more importantly each item is listed with a line or two of text the is just enough for me to determine if I want to continue reading the article or not. I usually read these on a daily basis..if I let too much time elapse I can too far behind. These alerts go in to my Gmail account where they are automatically sorted in to folders for me to review. I also use Google Reader, however I continue to see as kind of “clunky,” perhaps with time and use I will change my perception, but for now it is something I look at about once a week. The essential benefit of Google reader to me is to be able to set feeds for blogs, websites and individuals I like to follow online.

Another primary tool of my PLN/E Twitter. I use Twitter for many things, to identify people to follow who will provide me with those specific resources that are related to my particular interests. In addition to that I also use Twitter to present my own blogs, those of others and articles related to my area of interest for feedback and comments from the followers I have attracted over the last several months. Someone once mentioned it is not so much about who is following you but who you are following..and I truly agree with that, there are certain people I either search for to see what they are tweeting or those I quickly identify in the tweet stream, who consistently have good links. I also look for Delicious, which are automated tweets based upon bookmarks put into the social bookmarking system and I get alerts from Tweet me news.

I also use Evernote. Evernote captures all those Tweets I want to use as future resources when I put @myen at the end of my tweet. Evernote captures websites, images, and documents or reports that I want to use for future referral. I can tag and sort all of this by projects. The real bonus of all of this for me is that I can access these resources from any PC.

I also have Livescribe Pen. I have found it essential that I take handwritten notes on somethings as I plan out what I am going to write, sometimes to even get motivated on what I am going to write for a blog, for work or just as reminders. On occasion I find that these handwritten notes are just what I need to overcome writer’s block. I have never been a journal keeper but the use of the Livescribe Pulse Pen has given me the means to do that. What I like about the pen and notebooks is that my notes are up-loadable to the web and search-able. The only drawback I have found is that my handwriting is bad enough that the translation of the written notes to word processing has not been particularly successful. I also blog and love to blog..obviously. I maintain two other blog sites in addition to this one, www.cathyandersonblog.com and www.cathyanderson.com. Steve Hargadon noted that he uses Google Docs as part of his PLN in a discussion with HOward Rheingold and I now use Google Docs almost exclusively having purchased a new PC and not following my usual pattern of purchase MS Office for this computer.

I have also used Twine, since starting to look at and use Evernote I have kind of drifted away from Twine, but I hope to take another look at it again. I think this is kind of an example of the problem with their being too many tools…sometimes you can lose focus on a certain Web 2.0 tool before fully evaluating it. I do think Twine is wonderful and has great potential. I understand that revisions are being made to Twine and an upgrade will be made available around the first part of 2010 if not earlier.

I am also in Second Life®, I have benefited a great deal from a variety of professional development activities in Second Life.® These range Metanomics, to Gronstedt’s Train for Success, Pathfinder LInden’s office hours, and events held by VIO Business,to evening events. I also have spent a great deal of time touring Second Life’s® education sites, and chatting with others who share my interests. There are many things which illustrate the potential of Second Life for professional development to tour, historic sites such as Caledon, events like Burning Life, educational conferences and events as well. I am also a member of the Second Life Educators list serve and it seems that there is a continuous stream of thoughts, questions and observations on education in Second Life® from that list serve.

Two WEB 2.0 tools I think I have neglected are Facebook and Linked In. I need to work these sites that I have established to present a more “polished” image to those who view these pages. I view my Facebook page as more personal, for family and friends, however the groups that available for professional development via Facebook seem to be overshadowing that use of Facebook and I am seeing that there is a great deal of overlap. The connections that i have made via Second Life over lap a great deal, not just on Twitter but Linked In as well. Many of my Second Life connections are also my Linked In connections.

I have several connections beyond the virtual in my real life. These extend beyond conferences that I attend in person! I am a member of several national organizations and serve them in one capacity or another as well. These include Merlot and WCET. I find that I can access the people from these organizations with questions regarding the work that I do as it relates to their organizations.

When I remember I try to catch Steve Hargadon’s Elluminate sessions through Learncentral.org/Elluminate, these are in the evenings and if I don’t catch them “live” I can listen to the podcast later. I subscribe to a variety of podcasts. It’s not possible to catch them all but I do what I can!

Last but not least, I have blogged about this before, is my participation in John Jamison’s Imagilearning SLemester class. I have enjoyed this opportunity very much and looked forward to an ongoing relationship as an alum of the program which focuses on virtual worlds for education and training. John always has a recommendation for another good book to read!

There is also the interesting work of Micheal Trout and the connections that I have made by working with him on eSingularity.

Other resources (and these are sporadic) include Ted Talks, Fora TV and You Tube, I have to confess I am not a huge user of these, my use of these define as sporadic at best. For the last several months I have spent a great deal of time exploring Second Life® almost exclusively.

There are some tools I have “on the back burner” so to speak that I intend to pick up and use more diligently. These include Zotero, Mixbook, Ning, and FolkSemantic.

25
Oct

My other sites

by Cathy in Uncategorized

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I also have postings at:

http://www.cathyanderson.com

http://www.cathylanderson.blogspot.com

12
Oct

Second LIfe "Mash – Up" of research and observations

by Cathy in Distance Education, Second Life, vritual worlds

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The following is a synthesis of observations of three resources on virtual worlds, specifically Second Life, and how this medium can be applied to education, training, and learning. This is my initial presentation using these resources, it is a “mash-up” if you will, to determine if these is a common theme or thread that can be identified and defined as a best practice(s) in using Second Life for education. The three sources I have identified for this initial paper are: Commentary: Virtual Planning and the Online Studio by Justan B. Hollander, David Thomas from the Journal of Planning Education and Research 2009, Avatars, People and Virtual Worlds, Foundations for Research in the Metaverse, Alanah Davis, John Murphy, Dawn Owens, Depepak Khazanchi and Ilze Zigurs, in the February 2009 Journal of Virtual Worlds Research and finally Thomas Malaby’s book Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life.

A review of the Malaby’s book is helpful. Malaby does a fine job of exposing the inner workings of Linden Labs, the history and the culture of the business. It is in this context the mission, the vision and the overall philosophy of Linden Labs that one can begin to design a strategy for applying the use of Second Life as a learning environment. In determining the appropriate use of Linden Labs in education presenting the mission of Second Life/Linden Labs seems key: “It is our mission to connect us all to an online world that advance the human condition.” Another, what I term “philosophical statement’ identified by Malaby is “The eye observes the world, the hand shapes it. For this reason many cultures embrace the eye-in-hand as a symbol of creation that springs from knowledge as do we. Take it as your invitation to create a Second Life that inspires ever more wonder, ever more imagination.” In the context of two statements it is little wonder that Second Life is finding itself as the virtual world of choice for educators. After all what is the purpose of education but to inspire wonder and create motivation for individuals to seek more knowledge and create more knowledge?

Holland and Thomas sought to pursue answers to the following concerns:

“For planning educators, do these new 3-D environments offer a chance to dramatically improve the curriculum or simply sit as one more technological distraction to the important work of training planners?” In order to address the researchers looked deeper asking,(1) How does physical planning pedagogy benefit from using a tool such as Second Life? or What are the benefits of using a tool such as Second Life for physical planning pedagogy? and (2) What are some of the implications of moving education off the drafting table and pin-up wall and into an active, simulated computer–based world?”

Furthermore the question may be asked in this context: Can learning be designed in virtual worlds to provide a sense of engagement and presence that maybe lacking in a “traditional learning management system?”

The methodology of this research required that students keep journals, observations, end of semester course evaluations, with both closed and open ended questions. The students were also asked to wrote a final essay evaluating their learning experiences using Second Life. Finally the 71 students involved in the program were required to address a last essay question detailing their experiences in Second Life. The findings of this research were based upon the following:

(1) integration of skills and knowledge in a field example, (2) development of teamwork skills, (3) improvement of problem-finding and problem-solving skills, and (4) exposure to a professional social experience (Hollander and Thomas 2009, Greene 1988; Dutton 1987; Schon 1984; Heumann and Wetmore 1984).

This study sought to address the benefits of using Second Life in these specific areas:

Field experience, teamwork skills, problem-finding and problem-solving skills and professional socializing experience. Benefits were found in the areas of field experience and teamwork skills, with little or no benefit noted in the areas of problem finding and problem solving skills and professional socializing experiences. The authors noted that students spent a great deal of time together to work on projects but chose to not activate social networking tools and that “…students were able to successfully improve their problem-finding and problem-solving skills, but only marginally better than in a traditional studio.” It seems that on these two points there is a parallel result between the application of virtual worlds and traditional learning environments, the use of Second Life did not prove to motivate or enhance either points. However it is not noted how the teams were established either in traditional working environment or what sort of problem solving projects the students were given and how the parallel each other in scope.

Ultimately the researchers noted that the “biggest strength of Second Life is also its biggest weakness,” this being the unstructured environment this world provides. This lack of structure which may prove to be a barrier to some also proves to provide an environment that facilitates invention and creativity. In providing a 3D environment for learning what sort of advantages does Second Life offer beyond programs such as Sketchup and AutoCad? The authors noted that ..”Such programs pale in that regard in comparison with what Second Life offers: it creates a forum for exploring planning and design as social interactions and processes, rather than as simply knowledge and technique. Second Life goes beyond
visualization to a unique quality: virtualization, introducing the user to a real-time virtual 3-D environment that can be a powerful learning tool.”

In the Davis, et. al., article the researchers sought to identify the following:

“The potential for contribution to knowledge lies in several areas. First, the study of virtual teams in a metaverse environment can contribute to a deeper understanding of virtual collaboration and teamwork in traditional contexts. Second, a theoretically-defined set of technology capabilities can show how metaverses are different from other kinds of environments and how their uniqueness might enhance the functioning of virtual teams. Third, a clear insight into metaverse capabilities and use can lead to recommendations for the continuing design of advanced technologies for virtual team collaboration. Our overall goal is to enhance research and practice for virtual teams working in a metaverse environment. We present a conceptual model for understanding metaverses and develop a set of recommendations for research in this new area. Our proposed model is different from earlier models of group support and collaboration technologies because it accounts for the unique technology capabilities of and behaviors in metaverse environments. Organizations and academic institutions that are exploring the use of metaverses can benefit by seeing how team interaction might be enhanced. Virtual team managers can benefit by being aware of the basic characteristics of this new environment and how its technological capabilities have potential to provide a richer form of interaction for virtual teams. Researchers can benefit from the foundation for future research in terms of constructs, propositions, and research challenges.”

This article meshes well with the Holland and Thomas article because to seeks to identify strategies that facilitate team collaboration and work in the metaverse, furthermore their research seeks to identify those technical challenges that may impede the progress in these areas. The researchers identified several dimensions which are critical to facilitating teamwork in the virtual environment these are: presence, communication, technology, rendering, interaction, and team process. Each of these are defined as:

Presence:

The term “presence” is related to a wide field of research. Lombard and Ditton identified six different explications of presence that have been used in the literature: presence as • social richness, the extent to which the medium is perceived as sociable, warm, sensitive, or personal when it is used to interact with other people; • realism, the extent to which a medium can seem perceptual and/or socially realistic; • transportation , the sensations of “you are there,” “it is here,” and/or “we are together”; • immersion, the extent to which the senses are engaged by the mediated environment; • social actor within medium, the extent to which the user responds socially to a representation of a person through a medium; and • medium as social actor, the extent to which the medium itself is perceived as a social actor (e.g., treating computers as social entities2
(retrieved from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/lombard.html, 10/09/09)

Communication: having the tools to effectively collaborate and communicate in and out of Second Life is critical. Second Life has group features which allow for group text chat and voice chat as well as voice and text chat in “local” venues and one on one private voice/text chat.

Technology: The researchers also addressed the issue of technology. Technology does impact the ability of teams to form and work together. While a platform may have excellent technology on the sending end of things it is only as good as the technology on the user end. Because of this one must ask…is the technology of Second Life and other virtual worlds too sophisticated, does it impede the use of virtual worlds in learning, can it be ubiquitous?

Rendering: Rendering is defined as the ability to create life like images on the screen and it is supported by the capabilities of personalization of an avatar appearance; they can also have a personal focus through direct contact with other avatars. One may find communication, immersion and presence enhanced by the ability to demonstrate non verbal speaking animations in world.

Interaction: While this is noted by the researchers I believe it relates back to communication and is the underlying theme of team processes.

Team Processes: The researchers note that effective tools and strategies are not completely in place to facilitate collaboration in virtual worlds.

In review it is evident that it was not the mission of Linden Labs/Second Life to provide the design or game design to users to address and solve problems. Instead Linden Labs provides the means to allow user to be creative in designing their own space, groups, communicating, and games. The user has to stratgize how to implement these. It goes without saying that in achieving this aim users are challenged, the platform is sometimes not malleable in meeting these demands, however there is evidence of success. Recognition goes to those users who are savvy enough to use the tools available to them to be creative, to be innovative and develop a learning environment that meets the needs of their students. In reflection I now recognize that Second Life will not give you a “cookie cutter” approach to addressing the needs for presence, communication, technology, how to develop teams and team processes..but will provide you with the tools and the expectation that you, as user, will design those aspects to best meet your needs.

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