Personal Blogs

In H800 we had to make an overview of my PLE which you can find here
These are the technologies I'm currently using.

For my study I use iGoole as my main account for Blogging and reading others' blogs. I find iGoogle a very useful tool because as soon as you open your account you get an overview of all your used applications. In my case this is: Google Calender (a shared calender with my class parents and students), Google Mail, Google Groups (virtual environment for my different classes), Blogs and Google Reader (aggregator for reading blogs).

For my e-portfolio (storing evidence) I use Google docs and Office Live. Lately I use Office live more often than Google Docs because I use quite a lot of Excel files which are not really compatible (IMHO) with google docs. I store my written work for the OU course and I have stored all my work files (worksheets, planning, time tables etc). I can share these documents with others as well but I have to invite them first and on the receiving end one has to create an account (same as with Google Docs).

For Blogging I use various accounts (all stored in Google Reader). For the OU I use my OU blog which is quite simple, but it does the job. I mainly write my personal reflections about what's keeping me busy during the course. This can be either personal notes and/or reflections regarding articles we have to read. When I write my TMA's I look back on what I've written, what kind of responses I've had. I also store interesting comments or blog posts in my iGoogle account (shared documents) which I also use for my TMA's.
On a personal level I also have a cycling log in which I write reviews about various cycle routes throughout Europe. I also have a class blog, where my primary students write about their schooltrips (protected area).

Favourite links, websites, articles and other stuff I find intersting, are saved in my Delicious account. I tag all my files to create an overview of my pile of links. I find this most useful especially when you are part of a network and see what others are saving. Sometimes I start searching for documents in Delicious first. Another interesting fact is the way people are tagging. For me this is quite often a learning experience, to see how other people are using specific keywords.

I have stored all my documents on the net (backup on a mobile hdd) except for my bankdetails and private details. I have no documents left on my laptop or computer anymore.

Currently I'm trying to experiment with "My Stuff" as well. Looks promising. I have to figure out all the different possibilities though. I quite like the "save" buton which directly saves interesting articles, video and comments into "My Stuff". I find this very usefull. I used to copy and paste interesting material into a Word document and then save it in Google Docs or Office Live. This is a fairly quicker way!

I'm wondering if anyone else uses other applications as well? Eportfolios, blogging, storing and sharing...I find this most interesting and above all very useful in my professional, student and private life.

Cheers, Eugene

Busy with revision of Learning Activity in Part C. Will send progress report soon Alex. It is on its way!

Cheers!

Well, I consider myself as an digital immigrant. I am quite computer minded and consider myself an early adopter of technology. When it comes to being an e-learning professional I believe I'm a fanatic amateur. I'm not part of an elearning community yet and I'm not making my money out of it. I'm learning though by being involved in an elearning project in our school by trying to set up a virtual learning environment.....but there is so much more to learn in the digital world.

Cheers, Eugene

Without any prejudice, I want to try to describe what I understand e-learning to be.
In H800 we had to describe "learning". We came to the consensus that learning was mainly gaining knowledge in various ways. If I think about e-learning, the word "learning" is a key factor. The letter "e" stands for electronic. So e-learning should be described as gaining knowledge electronically. Learning through technology inside and outside a classroom. I could live with that description.

According to messages on the e-learning centre (www.e-learningcentre.co.uk) e-learning has evolved as well and one could speak nowadays of e-learning 2.0

It all sounds very interesting. Unit 1 is about to begin and maybe by the end of the course I'll want to change my description. It's pretty likely that I will.

Cheers,

Eugene

Still working on the ECA Introduction and in the mean time I''m getting myself updated for my next course...H808. It looks like an interesting course with already active forum traffic. Better keep myself up to date.

Cheers,

Eugene

Yahoooeee, I finished my TMA04...I can go to the pub now and see other people!!!!

What are the two main ways in which interventions intended to change how teachers teach actually attempt to do this? (page 26)
The UK government, for example, has invested significantly in establishing computer-based and networked infrastructure in schools, colleges and universities, and has, in parallel, introduced many e-learning initiatives.
Many of these initiatives have been top-down and strategic, including the Department for Education and Skills(2005) e-learning strategy document introduced to facilitate and guide developments in pre- and post-16 education sectors (Department for Education and Skills 2004).

What are the six main ways in which practice has currently been modelled? (page 27)
• Practice models developed to describe or prescribe specific approaches by practitioners [e.g. Salmon’s (2000) five-step model of online learning; Laurillard’s (2001) conversational model].

• Other practical accounts that don’t fit any modeling framework such as case studies, action research reports, project findings and staff development materials.

• Theoretical accounts designed to provide coherent explanations of learning activities and practice (e.g. systems theory, activity theory, cognitive/constructivist theories).

• Taxonomies and ontologies (structured vocabularies)developed to provide systematic ways of labeling and organizing features of the learning situation.

• Standards and specifications such as Instructional Management Systems Learning Objects Model and Learning Design or ISO SC36; also representations such as workflow diagrams, Unified Modeling Language models or instantiations of standards in working systems.

• Organizational models designed to ensure an institution’s processes make best use of learning systems and best practice standards, such as quality assurance documents.

What are the five main factors that Sharpe (2004) identifies as influencing the success of interventions intended to improve practice? (pages 28–9)
- Usability
- Contextualization
- Professional learning
- Community
- Learning Design

What do the authors mean by ‘reverse engineering’ of their practice by the participants on the workshops? (page 33)
Represent context of teachers’ own teaching. Teachers had to consider their own processes and context of teaching in a different context: out of their own teaching and learning context (acontextuallity)

How does Wenger’s concept of reification help you to understand why pedagogical models cannot just be ‘given’ to practitioners with any hope of their being implemented successfully? (page 36)
A reification, Wenger proposes, is something that a community produces through its shared practice. It may be an outcome of practice (e.g. something that is produced, such as a lesson plan) or may reflect the process of practice (e.g. guidelines on how to design lessons).
When these reifications are produced, their meaning is clear to the producers, because they are aware of both the practice and the reification that seeks to describe it.
It cannot just be ‘given’ because reifications emerge from practice, but they do not define it; the valorization of any model (e.g. as ‘good’ practice) must therefore be treated with caution.

 

Nevertheless, why are reifications necessary for sharing practice, particularly between practitioners from different contexts?
When this reification is passed on to others (whether as a model, a design tool or an account of ‘best

practice’) members of that new community must work to make it meaningful by constructing a link between the reification and their practice. In Wenger’s view, then, the meaning of any model is situated, arising from the way that particular communities attempt to appropriate them.

 

Personal Notes

The four dimensions, identified by Wenger, for design of learning

Participation and reification: participation and reification come as a pair. As a result, design cannot simply involve a choice between the two. One cannot assume that reification is unproblematically translated into practice, and participation is not necessarily coordinated enough to constitute a design.

Design for practice is always distributed between participation and reification – and its realization depends on how these two sides fit together.
The process of design involves decisions about how to distribute a design between participation and reification – what to reify, when, and with respect to what forms of participation; whom to involve, when, and with respect to what forms of reification.

 

The designed and the emergent: In a world that is not predictable, improvisation and innovation are more than desirable, they are essential.

Practice cannot be the result of design, but instead constitutes a response to design.

As a consequence, the challenge of design is not a matter of getting rid of the emergent, but rather of including it and making it an opportunity. It is to balance the benefits and costs of prescription and understand the trade-offs involved in specifying in advance.

When it comes to design for learning, more is not necessarily better. In this regard, a robust design always has an opportunistic side: it is always – in a sense to be defined carefully for each case – a minimalist design.

 

The local and the global: no practice is itself global. From this standpoint design will create relations, not between the global and the local, but among local­ities in their constitution of the global.

Designing for learning, therefore, cannot be based on a division of labor between learners and non-learners, between those who organize learning and those who realize it, or between those who create meaning and those who execute. It cannot be fully assumed by a separate man­agement, educational, or training community. Communities of practice are already involved in the design of their own learning because ulti­mately they will decide what they need to learn, what it takes to be a full participant, and how newcomers should be introduced into the com­munity (no matter what other training these newcomers receive else­where). Whenever a process, course, or system is being designed, it is thus essential to involve the affected communities of practice.

Every prac­tice is hostage to its own past and its own locality. In the process of or­ganizing its learning, a community must have access to other practices. Designing for learning always requires new connections among locali­ties, connections that do justice to the inherent knowledgeability of engagement in practice while at the same time recognizing its inherent locality.

This complex relation between the local and the global can be ex­pressed by the following paradox of design:
No community can fully design the learning of another. And at the same time: No community can fully design its own learning.
Design for learning must aim to combine different kinds of knowledgeability so they inform each other.

Identification and negotiability: design requires the power to influence the negotiation of meaning.
It must shape (or form) communities and economies of meaning.
Design is a stake in the ground, something on which to take a stand. In this regard, it is a proposal of identity:
1) it creates a focus for identification – and possibly for non-identification
2) it is a bid for ownership of meaning – and possibly for sharing this ownership.
Dilemma: Design creates fields of identification and negotiability that orient the practices and identities of those involved to various forms of participation and non-participation.
As a consequence, design can:
-  invite allegiance or be satisfied with mere compliance;
- it can thrive on participation or impose itself through non-participation.
- It can seek enough identification to focus energy on its realization;
- it may prefer to be less dependent on widely shared in-spiration.
- It may seek a realization by restricting negotiability and re-fusing to share the ownership of its meaning;
- or, on the contrary, it may endeavour to share this ownership and endow all involved with enough negotiability to decide how to participate in the process meaningfully.

Again, my personal notes for week 24

In our (Thorpe & Jones 2009) view, design is a social practice that implies a constant interaction between theoretical understanding and practical action. Far from practice being seen as distinct from and potentially opposed to theory, we see practical action as an outcome of some previous theoretical understanding, however much that previous theory might have become almost routine and absorbed into common sense.

 

Our argument is that learning is at least two steps removed from design. Firstly, the tasks, spaces and organisations that practitioners design rely on being inhabited by actual teachers and learners who enact the designs at particular times and in particular contexts. Secondly, learning does not have a clearly defined relationship to the communities, places and activities that are constituted by teachers and learners. Goodyear (2002) has summarised these distinctions as an indirect approach to learning, and their relationships are shown in Figure 1.

 

Each designed space is inhabited by students and teachers who constitute the places in which learning takes place.

Organisational rules and rules of etiquette can be provided for online or face-to-face interactions. What cannot be designed is the community that may or may not develop from these. We are sure many of you will have had the experience of the same organisational or structural forms having different outcomes when inhabited by different cohorts of students.

Designers set tasks, which are prescriptions for the work the students are expected to do, while the activity is what students actually do.

Students construct their setting, their own learning context, out of the technology and infrastructure, the other tasks they have to face, other calls on their time, their past experiences and their understanding of what their teachers actually value and these factors range much more broadly than the design itself.

 

I've just finished assignment 5&6..reading Jones and Ingraham about network metaphors..,,I think I've read the articles 3 times and still don't have much of a clue what they were talking about...Is it just me or has anyone else the same difficulties?

Thanks, Eugene

1. What is your experience of being a learner?
As a learner I’ve acquired different skills in different ways. The internet plays a big role in my learning skills nowadays.
Resources:
the internet, books (informal learning), colleagues, friends
Tools:
See my revised PLE here
Where:
Home, School, when traveling professionally (train, plane)
When:
Basically when it suits me, sometimes in the evening, sometimes in between classes, sometimes in the weekends

2. What tools and resources do you use?
I mainly use tools from the internet, see my PLE. The internet is one of my biggest resources. Besides the Internet I still use books for learning as well. I either get them at a library or order them on the internet (Amazon)
I also use my colleagues as a form of resource, communicating in meetings and reflecting education is always very helpful to me!

3. What are your views on different technologies?
I try to critically engage in using new technology for my learning. I have experienced through H800 various new technologies which I was not familiar about. Some I found useful, some I have strong doubts about. In general I believe that technology can enhance my learning. However, I still believe that some web 2.0 applications are not useful for my learning, but might be useful for others. In week 21 & 22 I found Sclaters argument about using a default tool for learning a valid one. If we don’t use a default tool, we might miss-communicate with one another.

4. Can you think of examples where technology has made a significant difference to the way you learn?
Informal learning:
preparing my songs I have to learn for various performances with my band. I used to sort them out by ear, but since the internet and numerous of online bass player communities, it is easy to get the transcription.  Makes me lazy though!
YouTube is a fantastic resource. The most difficult bass lines played in front of you on your screen and presented to you step by step.

Formal learning:
Having access to online libraries for my OU study has made a significant difference
Having e-books as pdf files
Using my Smartphone to access my forums and blogs in which I participate

5. Can you think of counter examples where you had a bad experience of a particular technology?
Not necessarily a bad experience but I would prefer to call it a less useful tool in my learning process. I still can’t see the benefits of Twitter as a learning tool for me. It only made sense to me when others from my H800 course participate, but other than that I can’t see the benefits at the moment. I still try to Tweet, but find it sometimes very useless. I can find relevant links on other websites as well, I don’t need to use Twitter for that. I would say that Twitter is my least favorite learning tool at the moment.

6. What did this do to your motivation for learning?
It made me look for other options if I hadn’t one already. When I don’t like the tool, I search for other alternatives and look for tools that suit my needs in another way, a better way.

7. How did you deal with the situation?
See answer from question nr. 6. When it doesn’t suit me I continue to search for better options which suit my needs better.
Google Docs is another example. I like the idea and I’m using it a lot, but our reports are made in massive excel files, which Google Docs couldn’t handle but Office Live could. So I use for my report excel files Office Live, for anything else, Google Docs is fine for me.

 

I decided to post a part of activity 1 in my Blog. The terminology of TEL is posted in our group wiki otherwise the posting in the Wiki would have been, in my opinion, too long.

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  1. What do terms like computer-assisted learning mean to you?
     CA-learning means to me that I learn with the computer as a tool to assist me in my learning. The literal meaning basically. The computer helps me to learn.
     For example: I use my computer for writing a document, I use my computer for research for an assignment. My course content is in books and I attend face-to-face courses.
  2. Is this different from e-learning or technology-enhanced learning?
     In my opinion it is.  I see TEL or e-learning more as terminology in which the computer plays a bigger role. It replaces some key features like books, classrooms and tutors. CA-leaning is for me a level beneath all of this:  the computer is just a tool to help me.
  3. If these terms do differ, is it just in theory definition or do they carry a broader metaphorical meaning?
     E-learning and TEL carries in my opinion a broader metaphorical meaning. E-learning implies to me that learning is done solely with the computer. TEL implies to me that the computer takes over specific roles in the learning process (classroom and tutor roles for example)
  4. If the terms do carry such implied meanings, what are they
     For me the following terms have the following meaning:
     CA-learning: learning in a traditional way (classrooms, face-to face tutorials) with the computer as an aid.
     E-learning: learning done through the computer only, replacing tradition pedagogical tools like books and libraries
     TEL:an overarching metaphor.  A step further than e-learning:  use of social websites and other new technologies (web 2.0) to enhance learning, the use of micro-blogging to communicate and learn as well
     
     and how might they affect the way you think about the area you are studying?
     The way I study is solely through the computer. I don't attend to face-to-face tutorials and all my course content is online. I access this content through a VLE and I use my PLE for learning. The computer has taken over the role of the classroom, content and the way I communicate with other students.
     I conclude that I am doing an E-learning course with TEL tools (wiki, blog, Twitter).
     It has not affected the way I think regarding the area I study. However it made me realise that different terminology can cause confusion: web 2.0, TEL, Elearning, VLE, PLE, LMS, ILMS. It is therefore useful for me that I can describe the various terms and make a clear distinction in the meaning between those terms.

Cheers Eugene