Reflection on "Emerging Technologies in E-Learning"

Reading: Emerging Technologies in E-Learning

Since I am really into integrating technology (desktop and webtop applications) into curriculum, what I find interesting are the various types of technology mentioned.  I've had experience with a few of them, peripheral attempts at some others.  However, there is a lot more that I have no idea about and would love to find out more (when I have time, obviously).

• Digital Storytelling:  My students have been doing digital storytelling for a few years and this remains one of the top activities.  We've used Photostory to create them, and I am working on VoiceThread this semester.
  
• Communities of practice:  We've used blogs and content-management system to create CoPs where students can share, exchange, and help each other.
  
• Personal broadcasting:  Students record and upload their speaking online.  We've used mypodcast.com, podbean.com, ning.com, edublogs or bloggers with Audacity.
  
• Online Meetings: tried using Gizmo/Skype, but it was too hard to coordinate amongst students' limited schedules.
  
• Wikis: I am pushing it big time this semester.  I am currently using it as a place where all students contributes to create a review sheet for each lesson.
  
• P2P file sharing:  Google Docs!
• Social Computing:  No formal use in class, but have leisurely cross paths with students on Myspace and Facebook.  I've used materials from YouTube, and will be using Flickr this semester.
• Mashups: Google Apps!

The following few are completely  new to me and hopefully I'll gain more understanding as time goes on in this class...so then I can try them in my classes...

• Educational Gaming
  
• MMOGs
  
• Extended Learning
  
• Intelligent searching
  
• Webcams and video from cell phones
  
• Mobile Learning
  
• Context-aware environments and devices
  
• Augmented reality and enhanced visualization
  
• Smart mobs
  

Reflection: Educational Goals for learners in the digital age

Reading:  Learning in the Digital Age by John Seely Brown

• Information: gained independently
  
• Knowledge: transferred by a knower

With these two ideas in mind, I had to re-think what the educational goals for my students be at this time in history where technology is flooding our lives.

When I first started teaching, I thought technology is a cool tool to help the students learn, share, practice, and apply their learnings.  And technology did help my students and I achieved all that.  

As I gained additional experience using technology in my teaching, and with the fast growth of various Web applications available for educational use, I started noticing that the teaching has gone beyond just curriculum. 

As much as we think the students are tech savvy, it is not true for all of them.  The only thing I can say is that they are not afraid of technology.  However, students lack web literacy skills, such as navigating, researching, and filtering.  They also lack etiquette, or Netiquette.  This is especially evident when I asked them to give constructive comments.  Students tend to use shorthands/slangs in their comments, and the comments are usually very superficial, such as "very good," "I like it," "interesting," etc.

So teaching literacy skills and netiquette became part of the curriculum in order for the web tools to be effective.

As more Web 2.0 applications become available or even designed specifically for educational use, it also demands a great amount of time for the teachers to try out the application, think about whether it can benefit the students (and in what way), how to integrate the technology into the classroom (teaching how to use the technology to achieve curriculum goals).  It is not an easy task for the teachers.

Anyway, coming back to "Educational Goals for learners in the digital age".  Well, it really depends, doesn't it?  Who is the learner?  What is the aim of the instruction?  I don't know if this is a question that can be answered easily.  Then again, nothing in life ever is.

Wiki reflection

I was a bit worried in the beginning about collaborative writing where I won't be near the others. It does take a lot of "trust" for it to work. Trust that the others will do their part. Trust that our stories will flow smoothly. Trust that we will be able to work together without much conflict.

To my surprise, the process is really smooth. It, in a way, cuts down on the time wasted. We don't have to "worry about getting a consensus," or "worry about offending people," or "coming up with a compromise where everyone is happy."

I think one of the reason why it worked is because each of us has a specific purpose or task. This is something I need to consider when I am giving similar collaborative assignments to my students.

This experience has convinced me, as a language teacher, there are benefits that I can do by using wiki in the classroom for collaborative work for students. I am already using blogs where students write about their week in Chinese. The main purpose is to give students a place where they can practice Chinese (language and typing) without worrying about being graded.

Now, with wiki, since the students already are doing collaborative work (writing dialogues), it will be a good way for them to collaborate on a dialogue. I usually would like the students to type up the dialogues after the final draft anyway, it might be good to find a way to integrate wiki into it. This will take some thinking but I am excited now.

Educational Wiki Sites

After doing some search on the 'Net, here are two that I thought I would like to model after/learn more about:

• http://cartierm.wikispaces.com/ : It's a wiki done by a middle school teacher.
  
• http://gmiller.wikispaces.com/
  

I also found a good resource site for teachers: http://wiki.classroom20.com/ Here are lots of 2.0 tools used by other teachers.

SocialText

It was very interesting to hear Eugene Lee, CEO of SocialText talking about how social software is changing the way we interact with each other and how it enables more communication where we can continue a conversation without being face to face or voice to voice.

It was also good to see how the various types of social software are being put together into an enterprise package: SocialText. For a very long time, many adults look down at the social software, thinking they are just toys that take away students time for nonsense communications. I, myself, at one point, also feel this way about some of them. The only thing is, being a high school teacher, I am open to experiment with all these software so I am in touch with my students. I start to see some value in some of them. The only thing I want to do right now is to see how these software can be applied to increase student-teacher interaction in a productive way.

Some ideas:
- Twitter: I can use it to solicit student response, using the Chinese language. I already found out that Twitter takes Chinese if I use the web to input. So now I need to get the students on Twitter. The next problem to tackle is reading and typing Chinese on their phones.
- Wiki: collaboration for cultural projects and chapter reviews.

hopefully more to come...

Three resources for teachers

ALI - Apple Learning Interchange
Thinkfinity.org


Hippocampus.org - high school and college level

Connectivism Video on YouTube

I came across this video and I thought it was very helpful in getting a quick overview about connectivism and how powerful it is. At the same time, it also makes me wonder how ready our teachers are to be the guide, the leader, the moderator, the guiding light to our students today.

Actually, I think I am worried. Even though I've only been in the teaching profession for a few years, I don't know if my students and my colleagues are ready for the connectivism world. I don't doubt that it's important and maybe essential that we understand and apply connectivism in our teaching and learning, but I see so many challenges that, if I stop to think, I would probably freaked out. (Good thing I just forge ahead, for the most part.)

Some of the immediate challenges that popped into my head:
teacher readiness & willingness
student readiness & willingness: 'Net literacy, language skills, navigation skills, problem solving/critical thinking skills, research skills, information gathering and filtering
technology resources availability, both at school, at home and in our communities

I think it's time I stop and just explore more about how I can understand and incorporate connectivism rather than finding reasons not to....

Reflection on Connectivism

Connectivism can be powerful but also disasterous.

Through Web 2.0 technologies, there are so many ways to get connected, push out, and pulish  information.  The problem, then, is to learn the necessary skills on making smart decisions so you are not drowned or misled by the information out there.   It's no longer "tell me what to learn and set my goals for me".  It must become "what do I want to learn and how do I get what I need so I can construct the knowledge I need."

As a teacher, the basic skills to reinforce in the classroom is to teach students:

• critical thinking
  
• media literacy
  
• decision making
  
• filtering
  
• research and validity checking

As a learner of Web 2.0, I would like to learn more about how these different tools can be used together to create a better information web or a filtering system so I don't become overwhelmed.  The problem I see and have experienced is that, technology changes so fast and vast, information are being pushed and edited as I am reading it, how do I get what I need out of it.

I would also like to find a way to stay on top of the development of Web tools.  As it is, I am already overwhelmed with all the blog and email subscriptions.  It is to the point that I scan the subject line and decide immediately whether I delete or open the email to read.  Perhaps I will never be on top but hopefully I would not be drowned by the information wave.