Explain the irony in using the Angel Course Management System for this course.

Cape Town Open Education

Budapest Open Access Initiative

This class, Immersive Worlds, is excellent. The tasks are progressive and meaningful. The learning curve is appropriate challenging the learner to explore and do some individual learning and yet providing enough information and teaching that the learner is inspired to pursue additional tasks, e.g., explore other organizations in SL.

The biggest barrier I found was that SL was blocked in my school! I would like to attend some meetings and classes in SL during my prep periods or lunch times, or illustrate virtual worlds to my students in my classes, however, I am unable to download the program at school. I am currently preparing a proposal that would allow the software to be used in my curriculum or perhaps another grid such as Reaction Grid or Open Sim.

Strategies to improve the course–while the course is excellent, there could be additional tasks such as more field trips, more scavenger hunts, guest speakers from corporations in SL, e.g., IBM or Toyota.

I have had such a positive experience in this course that I plan on exploring more activities and islands in SL, not necessarily just for my curriculum–but of course, anything I do for personal knowledge relates to my curriculum! I now know what I am looking for and what the terms mean so that I can review other grids for my students.

I read the article on Overcoming the Entry Barriers to Second Life in Higher Education and will refer to this article as I am preparing my curriulum proposal. This article lists recommendations on overcoming the institutional, pedagogical, and technical barriers of a VW. Virtual Worlds is an example of innovative educators using emerging technologies. Educators who are not innovative will not bother to learn SL or other VW but those who are need to influence those who are not. Something good such as SL will have issues (technical, griefers, undesirable characters) but innovative educators need to be persistent in moving this technology forward with a solid argument why VW are an important 21st Century literacy so that students at all levels have the opportunity to become experienced in immersive worlds–preparing learners for the digital economy not the industrial age!

Thank you Fleep–this has been a amazing opportunity–you are an amazing instructor!!

Converting Flash for mobile devices is a recent development. I did a fair amount of searching to find a reliable program that would do the conversion without losing the resolution and effects of the animation. The Flash file is interactive, however, converting for mobile use, Flash does not provide for interactivity. This is currently being developed for use in the near future but is not yet available. Java is the platform for interactivity for mobile devices. I have used iWiSoft to convert this file. The watermark signifies a free download and upon purchase of this program the watermark would be removed.

Our students are working on a variety of educational Flash videos and will be sharing them with students in the primary grades. I will convert them for mobile use so that students can take them home or play them anytime, anywhere.

Enjoy!

http://ebrownorama.podbean.com/

A good educator always faces challenges in preparing lessons and teaching students. This is because a good educator wants the best for the students and therefore is always looking for opportunities to improve learning. The support that I receive in my school from my administration is excellent. As well, the school division is working on a fibre optics networking plan which should be in place somewhere in the next six months. However, there are other challenges that I face in using mobile devices “in my classroom” or out of the classroom. Three prominent challenges are described here.

Challenge #1 – Technology Tools – Most students at the high school level have cell phones. Our school policy now is that there shall be no use of cell phones in the classroom. Students are allowed to have cell phones at school but use is restricted to between classes, before and after school, and lunch time. However, our administration is open to individual teacher discretion if cell phones are used for lesson purposes.

mLearning 10

Short Paper #1

Eva Brown

My viewpoint for this discussion is in regards to high school students, grades 10 to 12 and the importance of preparing them for higher learning as lifelong learners which is to become mobile learners.

High School students see the classroom as the place where learning happens. Most of these students do not perceive learning taking place anywhere and anytime. The challenge for the education “system” is to convert the delivery of education to maximize the learning opportunity for digital natives. This “system” is run by digital immigrants! Many of these digital immigrants are not lifelong learners.

Educators and those in positions of making decisions for the direction of education, i.e., school division and department of education consultants/directors—“the system” needs to be educated on digital natives learn. We are all scrambling to catch the train of the future but we are not working together as best as we could to do this in the most efficient way. For example, I am enrolled in this certificate, Emerging Technologies, and am passionate about getting the speed of creativity to my students; however, the steps are small. As the department head of technology in my school, I am able to implement some of these strategies into my classes and share with my department teachers and administration these ideas and have had great support at my school. Many teachers in other departments, however, do not share this passion of allowing students to have a customized learning space.

Preparing the curriculum to be customized to the students’ learning spaces requires several things: revising/updating the curriculum, training of teachers, and acquiring hardware, among other things. A number of distance courses have been created and are available to students in an on-line learning format, however, again not easily accessible. Students must pay a $100 deposit per course (which is refunded if the student passes the course) where regular classroom courses have no additional fee, and only select on-line courses are available in each school division—due to limited budgets to assign teachers to these courses.

If students are to be responsible for providing their own hardware, we need to allow these in the classroom—not prohibit them, and to provide web Wi-Fi access and not block sites for learning.

I refer to the article, “Mobile Learning in Higher Education” by Ruth Reynard and reference it to the high school setting. Students need points of input—information being available anytime, anyplace and in any format. This requires time to prepare this information and to prepare references for students so they can obtain valuable information.

Course content – traditional educators need to become educated in mobile learning and come away from the notion that content has to be delivered in linear format rather than be available to students in a customized format which is relevant to the learning of digital natives. We have many teachers who are near or beyond retirement age and are not involved in education as lifelong learners. They are stagnant and in fact are obstacles in the advancement of learning. The phrase, “students learn in spite of the teacher” is sad but true in these cases.

Output – We are trying to provide for multiple points of output in our programs. Our Flattening Classrooms Project at our high school provides for a variety of output points—connections with teachers, students, other classes and globally. This is a challenge to find output points that are allowed by the “system” as social networking and other communication tools are often blocked.

Accessing course material – right now this is somewhat of a challenge in that some valuable sites are blocked in our school division. I often tell my students to do certain Internet tasks at home because we are prohibited from doing these at school. This makes for a broken learning experience because we need to take the time at home to follow through with our intentions and interruptions stop us from fulfilling our intentions.

Several questions I have are:

1. How do we customize the learning space to make the information relevant and how it should be worked and used? What is the process?
2. How do we use the right technology to achieve the learning outcomes? I refer here to Alan November’s video in our week 2 resources, 21st Century Education, Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom. Technology is not the end but a tool to use along the way to achieve the end effectively and efficiently.

Another decision that is often made by administration when assigning teacher course loads is to fill the teacher’s load with whatever is left over. This often makes a situation where the teacher is not an expert in the subject area but budgets dictate such action. Students are not provided with optimum learning experiences and teachers lose passion to teach if they find the job overwhelming in preparation.

Hopefully we the digital immigrants will be able to overcome the challenge of designing optimum learning plans for the digital natives so that they will be able to acquire the necessary skills to advance learning to future generations—whatever they might be called!

Short Paper 1: My Position on Connectivism

There is an abundance of knowledge, available freely to most people. Years ago, if one wanted to know something, the process to acquire the wanted knowledge could be lengthy and/or costly. Encyclopedias had to be purchased with static information and at exorbitant prices. Content of university or college courses was only privy to those who paid course fees. The process to obtain knowledge has changed phenomenally. Factors that have affected this change include technology, lifestyles, and economic among others.

Connectivism is defined as a learning theory for a Digital Age. (Siemens, Connectivism, 2008). Acquiring knowledge, formally or informally, today may appear to be easier; however, information filtering processing is much more complex.  Too much knowledge is available. We don’t need it all. It can be distracting to the point that we really don’t make progress in pursuit of our goals. The acquisition and use of knowledge must be filtered in order for it to be useful to prevent chaos and cluttering of one’s life.

Some weaknesses of connectivism are that there is too much knowledge available, it is too time consuming to gather the knowledge, and not many people have the discipline and skills to be digital learners. The majority of learners given flexibility do not have the skills to stay focused and on task. This can be for various reasons. Often the pressures and forces of daily responsibilities interfere with and dominate the digital learning process. Some may think that this should be an advantage of connectivism, and it can be and is for some, however, not for most. Moodle becomes muddle, i.e., the filtering process is intense. Technology tools for filtering might be Google Reader, Blogs, Forums with posts such as Moodle, Twitter and others.

An observation that I have made about CCK09 is that at the beginning of the course, perhaps the first three weeks, participants (both those registered and those auditing) were eager to post comments in the Moodle forum. Since I receive these posts on my Blackberry, my PDA was constantly “vibing”. Now there may be one or two a day, if that. Enthusiasm is dwindling. That leads me to some questions about what is the relevance of social networking and what kinds of networks are being formed. Are some networks valuable for a specific purpose, i.e., discussing a topic or an issue, etc., and what are some techniques to maintain interest in such networks?

The sessions in Elluminate vary in interest and participation as well. If these sessions were compared to f2f sessions, I think some professors/teachers would become frustrated with the level of student interaction about details that are irrelevant to the topic of the speaker. This happens in the typed posts at the left side of the screen. A big advantage to the Elluminate sessions is that we (students and teachers) can participate in sessions with people bringing together knowledge from around the world. This is a flat world—any time, any where, technology will connect us. CCK09 has some structure and much flexibility. There is a regular communication from the instructor via The Daily and the weekly Elluminate sessions and there is also the flexibility for students and instructor to communicate whenever it is convenient for each person and do the readings and research as each person’s schedule allows.

Connectivism is fairly new to my learning style (within the last five to seven years) because mainly traditional learning styles were available to me throughout my education. However, I am a lifelong learner and I adopt the styles available in order to provide my students with the styles that they have the opportunity to use. I want to keep up with current-day technologies finding this to be a learning process for me as well as my students. I am constantly changing my methods of delivery as well as the content of the courses. As a technology educator this proves to be an opportunity for me and therefore resonates positively with my learning experiences. Many educators, however, do not see connectivism as an opportunity. They fear it because acquiring knowledge in different ways demands change. Acquiring an abundance of knowledge also demands that the knowledgeable “do something with the knowledge such as teach better or differently. All this requires effort. I think that digital learning will become the norm as digital natives filter in and through the system.

References

Bubnic, A. (2009). Creating a Personal Learning network with Twitter. On CUE , 9, 13.

Hawes, S. (2009). Professional Learning Communities–Can Our Students Do This Too? On CUE , 10.
Siemens, G. (2008). Connectivism. Retrieved from http://design.test.olt.ubc.ca/ConnectivismSiemens, G. (2006). Knowing Knowledge. Winnipeg: WordPress.Thornburg, D. D. (2009). Personal Learning Networks: Face-to-Face to the ‘Net. On Cue , 5, 7.
Wright, A. (2007). Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.

I also am not sure how to post my papers if required or requested. However, here it is nonetheless.

Short Paper 2: Changing Roles of Educators

CCK09 – due November 22, 2009

For this paper, I will focus on my role as educator and the changing roles I encounter in my field as the department head of business and technology at River East Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I have been an educator for thirty years and I can say definitely and emphatically that many things have changed during my career. I can, however, also say that some things have not changed.

“I’m glad I’m a teacher … I learn so much from my students!” My role as a technology teacher has changed and is continually changing in content and delivery methods. It is important to teach the world of reality to students. This means using current applications in the classroom and having students develop assignments that are relevant to business and industry today. For example, websites must meet design and marketing standards. This develops competency and competitiveness in our students. It is also nearly impossible for educators to work through all applications, learning all the features before teaching the app. Students are curious and find software features that we as educators can’t possibly spend the time on to be expert in all applications. Although, having said that, educators should make a whole-hearted effort to learn as much as is humanly possible about the content to be competent! In my classes, we share features that we’ve discovered so we all learn – yes, me too! It is important as an educator to not be so proud to think that we know it all because no one does. Be prepared to learn. We have the pedagogical training and experience that our students don’t have to take the features of an app further to help students do more—we facilitate students to explore possibilities. In comparison, a teacher was previously expected to be the sage on the stage and now we are the guide on the side.

What are appropriate responses to change? Embrace change – this means educators must spend time learning new content, new technology tools, new methods of delivery, and new methods of learning in order to teach to reality. Personally, I enjoy the challenges of learning new content and new tools. I find this to be an exciting part of my work as a teacher. I view this as opportunity not duty. Another response is to guide other educators to embrace change along with you.

What are impediments to change? Many educators fear change and fear inhibits motivation to learn (Brooks, 2009). Students see the fear in educators and therefore the opportunity to learn is stifled. Budgets impede change—hiring qualified experts in subject areas is not always the practice. Instead, schools shuffle the timetable to fit currently employed educators into “slots” and sometimes teachers are told to teach courses in which they are not experts, and sometimes don’t know much, or nothing about! Sad! There isn’t always enough money to purchase the required technology—hardware and software and teacher training—to deliver an effective program.

How can current trends be best utilized to serve in the traditional role of educator? The question should not be “Does technology fit into my traditional way of teaching my class in high school?” but rather “How can I modify and further improve the learning environment, ongoing assessment methods, and opportunities I provide students to interact with each other and our curriculum?” (Fryer, 2006)

I concur with what Wesley Fryer says about our approaches to serving the needs of our students today. “When is your local school district going to start following the lead of innovative districts like Irving ISD, and walking down the road of 1:1 learning? No, your teachers are not all ready, but they never will be: They are mostly digital immigrants, after all. Are the kids ready? Absolutely. They were ready years ago for something different. We’re the adults, and we can be the leaders. We’ve got to encourage and model DIFFERENT teaching, not merely DIGITAL teaching.” (Fryer)

Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. (Siemens, Connectivism). This statement is so true. Times have changed. These are more than survival skills—rather the process of developing skills for lifelong learning providing us with opportunities forever.

Thoughtful teachers need to engage students collaboratively across the web. (Fryer) Flattening classrooms is huge today and could well be what brings peace and unity to our world, not by politicians but by educators and students.

What could be – I see a world where everyone has the opportunity to learn with people around the world. Social Studies could take place in your classroom wherever you are but connected to a teacher and class in Hong Kong, Math could be in Australia, Technology in Bangalore and so on. This could all be with huge screens (video) and audio providing a lifelike experience.

As I said in my opening paragraph, some things have not changed. These are the three basic needs of education: (1) a need to belong and feel connected (2) self-determination or autonomy, and (3) the need to feel competent (Brooks, 2009). Students still have the desire to learn and to succeed. Students still have questions and are still curious. It is important to see the world through the eyes of the students with whom we work. That has not changed. The world that we see has changed.

Bibliography

Brooks, D. R. (2009, November 17). Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Ellis, D. M. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://eleed.campussource.de/archive/3/1081

Fryer, W. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.speedofcreativity.org/

Fryer, W. (2006, August 21). Laptops Should Be Disruptive of Traditional Education. Retrieved November 20, 2009, from Moving at the Speed of Creativity: http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/08/21/laptops-should-be-disruptive-of-traditional-education/

Medley, M. (2009, October 24). Retrieved November 20, 2009, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Three-Current-Trends-in-Education&id=3147673

Siemens, G. (2005, January). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved November 21, 2009, from http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm

Siemens, G. (2008, October 10). New structures and spaces of learning: The systemic impact of connective knowledge, connectivism, and networked learning. Retrieved November 21, 2009, from http://elearnspace.org/Articles/systemic_impact.htm

As for social networking, or distributed knowledge, knowing where to get the knowledge is sometimes necessary even if we don’t have the knowledge. However, as an educator in the classroom, I need to work to learn and be current in teaching technology. It can be time consuming and not conducive to learning if I can’t teach students immediately and have to look up information–oday, tomorrow, or whenever.