I found Peachey's ideas about the individual being 'protected' by second life unconvincing; I certainly prefer an atmosphere of the 'real world' for education - can't say too much as using this and Bayne in EMA!

However, I felt that both articles are far more connected to 'identity' rather than 'education', and identity was an important element of my earlier studies, and seems to becoming more important as the world becomes more globalised.

Personally, as a tutor, I do do not wish to 'hide' my identity with an avatar, and would tend to be a little suspicious of those who do, although equally I can understand the student response of not wanting to be 'known' - in my experience it is often the extremely clever students who do not wish to be identified as such, but this risks the debate becoming philosophical rather than educational! (although undoubtedly an area for further research)

Jiang (2011) makes a case regarding the danger of adding a 'game layer' to the real world, and my view is that second life or similar are a step too far in the direction of gamification (Deterding et al, 2011)

References:

Bayne, S. (2005) 'Deceit, desire and control: the identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace', in Land, R. and Bayne, S. (eds) Education in Cyberspace, Abingdon, RoutledgeFalmer.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R. and Nacke, L. (2011a) 'From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification"', Envisioning Future Media Environments. New York, New York, MindTrek '11 Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference,

Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L., O'Hara, K. and Dixon, D. (2011b) 'Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts', Envisioning Future Media Environments. New York, New York, MindTrek '11 Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference,

Jiang, K. (2011) 'The Dangers of Gamification:why we shouldn't build a game layer on top of the world', pdf-release.net, pdf-release.net, 01 December 2013 [Online]. Available at http://pdf-release.net/2841688/The-Dangers-of-Gamification:-Why-We-Shouldn't---Get-a-Free-Blog (Accessed 10 July 2014).

Peachey, A. (2010) 'Living in Immaterial Worlds: Who are we when we learn and teach in virtual worlds?', in Sheehy, K., Ferguson, R. and Clough, G. (eds) Virtual worlds [electronic resource] : controversies at the frontier of education, New York, Nova Science Publishers.

The first thing that I noticed about the categorisation of the comments was that it was broadly similar in areas to those I had made and others had shown, the actual detailed breakdown was less negative and more attempted answers ;

Table 3: Comparing ‘Ann Other’ Bales’s analysis by hand and by OpenMentor

It will be very interesting to see the breakdown from the rest of the group, but I could understand the reason for the computer assessments.

I read the ARG pamphlet almost with disbelief, as it seemed so old and dated. The reason for that is that having recently completed a PGCE Secondary in MFL, I had to write, as part of that course, a summary of the differences between Assessment FOR learning and Assessment OF learning. All of the points raised by ARG (1999, 2002) are now 'built-in' to the training programme - not necessarily successfully, but the assumption is made that that is how assessment WILL be done.

However, having read Elliott (2008) and Whitelock (2010) I find that perhaps these principles are not applied quite as widely as I had been led to believe! After years of building 'learning dialogues' and giving 'positive feedback', and encouraging 'peer assessment', I find that, apparently, there are still people teaching who only use assessment to meet the requirements of the curriculum.

Elliot (2008) says assessment 2.0 should be;

And I fully agree with all of these points, and have always attempted to meet all (or at least most) of these criteria when carrying out assessment. I admit that this is not always easy, as there is often pressure to do 'marking' instead of 'assessment', but have always found it far more helpful.

References:

Assessment Reform Group (ARG) (1999) Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box [Online], ARG, Available at http://assessmentreformgroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/beyond_blackbox.pdf (Accessed 20 June 2014).

Assessment Reform Group (ARG) (2002) Assessment for Learning: 10 Principles [Online], London, ARG, Available at http://assessmentreformgroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/10principles_english.pdf (Accessed 20 June 2014).

Elliot, B. (2008) Assessment 2.0 [Online], SQA. Available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/461041/Assessment-2-0 (Accessed 20 June 2014).

Whitelock, D. (2010) 'Activating Assessment for Learning: Are we on the way with WEB 2.0?', in Lee, M.J.W. and McLoughlin, C. (eds) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics forTertiary Teaching, IGI Global.

EYPS

I was born before 1980 (two decades before!). i am well aware that there is a large part of my generation that is not 'techno-savvy' and are in fact technophobes, but I cannot subscribe to the view of a 'net generation'. Partly, this is because effectively, my generation gave us; Bill Gates, Bert Woszniac, Steve Jobs - hardly technophobes!

I have also dealt with and learned about computers and computer technology from 1977 onward, and I find that there will always be some truth in the feeling that the generation that follows 'ours' (whichever we belong to) will be able to do with ease things that we did with difficulty. This is getting closer to philosophy than education, which was not the intention, but as a final point; my friend's son, 21, born 1994, always asks his dad  (born 1960) for help and advice on anything to do computers, on the basis that 'he has studied it for longer'.

the ECAR report and the paper by Judd and Kennedy (2011) did not, for me, contain any surprises, although it does seem surprising, when combined with Selwyn's (2011) research that anyone continues to buy into the 'net generation' myth.

My own experience tends to agree with the findings, although I have done a lot of distance study.

I do like the expression 'enabled to learn' in a personal conversation with a friend recently he said; "The best teachers at my school were the teachers who taught me how to find things out" (My italics, obviously!)(Little, 2014)

References:

Dahlstrom, Eden., Walker, J.D.,Dziuban, Charles. (2013) ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, Louisville CO, EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research,

Judd, T. and Kennedy, G. (2011) 'Measurement and evidence of computer-based task switching and multitasking by ‘Net Generation’ students', Computers & Education, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 625-631.

Little, R. A. (2014); Personal conversation with A.A.A., 10th May 2014. Quoted with full permission.

Selwyn, N. (2011) 'Digitally distanced learning: a study of international distance learners' (non)use of technology', Distance Education, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 85-99

The OU live session was small, almost personal, since there were only two of us present, but we discussed the paper and the questions raised, and the input of another student was informative and helpful.

I think that there are three predominant and predicable parts to learning and understanding;

1. Understanding: it is necessary to understand the course materials, as without this understanding, assessment cannot take place (this is true for teachers and for learners).
2. Memorising: Good, old fashioned, learning by 'rote'. Again, this appears to be applicable to both parties, the teacher has to know the course work ahead of the learner, and the learner is usually interested in 'knowing the answer'
3. Strategic Approach: This is simply about achieving high grades - the learner finds out from the teacher what the examiner wants to hear. That is then all that is learnt, since that is all that is needed.

Point 3 can narrow the learning perspective to the degree that the learner actually knows very little about the subject. Point 2 works well for some kinds of knowledge, but not others, but Point 1 is probably the most important.

Title Basic Arabic for advanced learners

Narrator

I was the tutor and facilitator for the course

Situation

The setting was a room in Bristol University, where a group of PhD students, each of whom is writing a thesis on Middle-East Social Politics, have come together with a desire to learn the basics of Arabic in order to further their studies. None of them had any previous knowledge of the language.

Task

I hoped that I would be able to teach them the rudiments of Arabic, as well as a few pre-fabricated phrases that would be useful in context. This should give the ability for the individual to at least begin to understand the meaning when a political broadcast is made. I would feel that I had been successful if the students were able to view a report from Aljazeera and then discuss it – even if the discussion was in English, they would have to have understood enough to talk about it afterwards.

Actions

The first step was an introduction to the spoken word in Arabic, learning basic greetings and respectful phrases. This produced no surprise results, but the PhD group did grasp the basics very quickly. The next step was to introduce the written word in Arabic. This is a more complex field, and required deep concentration from the students. I did not expect the group to be able to read after just one lesson about the alphabet, so I was not surprised when no-one was able to do so. The lessons gave the history of the language and the links to religion (Islam), we then moved on to pre-fabricated phrases related to social politics.

Results

The students all gained a good background of Arabic culture and language; the students used the target language for instruction very quickly, with a rapid grasp of basic religious and polite phrases. I am meeting objectives, but each day I check if progress has been made (through plenaries), and adjust lessons accordingly. The additional outcomes were that the students were very quickly able to respond to questions in Arabic, and to write from right to left,

Reflections

The main reflection is that I should make more use of audio-visual (VARK) resources, as I found that students learned more quickly using this method. I also discovered that prefabricated phrases can teach a lot if the students are willing and ready to learn.

I agree with Julia. I use 'realia' in language lessons - to put my students in touch with the language, to help them grasp the physical reality of an object. As you said, anything could be a learning object, books, CD's, online articles, e-books, you tube stuff and many others. I think the most striking point of all these objects is that there is a steady move from physical objects to the ephemeral objects, on the web, portable, accessible and available anywhere and any time.

My first experience of open education was with the Open University, when I completed my BA (hons) degree in Modern Foreign Language. This lasted for three years, and involved a lot material such as books, CD's, DVD's and some face-to-face tutorials. It also included some live discussion using Illuminate, and some on-line oral exams for German and French, Spanish was done in traditional exam. conditions in the OU branch in Bristol.

Overall, the experience was very good, and I not only made new friends, but was also able to move on to a post-graduate PGCE Secondary MFL qualification at Master's level from the UWE.

My other experience of open learning was when I completed my Certificate and then Diploma in Forensic Linguistics. This course was completely online, including the certification. It was an extremely interesting course, building on my knowledge of languages, and I use this knowledge to improve my language analysis for determination of origin, and also helps with translations, avoiding the literal translation and fitting the target language translated to the local culture.

Now, I am involved in open education from the other side, giving distance tutorials in Spanish and Arabic to students worldwide.

In the title of the article Siemens (2004) asks the question whether this is the learning theory for the digital age. My feeling is that the answer to this is ‘not quite, not yet’ as it seems from this article to be incomplete. The principles seem complete and are quite clear;

“Principles of Connectivism:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.” (Siemens, 2004, p. np)

However, it seems to me that it does not fully address the purpose of education, and the idea that “The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe” (Siemens, 2004, p. np) does not seem reasonable in this context, since an oil pipe that contains water is of no use to anyone, and likewise a water pipe full of oil will cause more problems than it solves. I do believe that all the current theories of learning are linked and intertwined to such a degree that choosing just one of them as being ‘correct’ is self-defeating, and Connectivism is no different; it relies on parts of the older theories but still does not give us a unified theory of learning that will fit every situation.

Reference

Siemens, G., 2004. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. elearnspace [online], 2004(December), p. np.

Reflections on OU Live session.

I found the session very helpful and well organised - splitting us into separate groups allowed the discussion to move smoothly and swiftly. The level of engagement and interaction was very high. The overall agreement that both metaphors remain important was not unexpected, and the use of both metaphors for language teaching seems almost universal, with participation and practice being almost synonymous in this context. 

What needs to be questioned is grade or level of participation, as well as the context; the beliefs, history and mentality of a particular 'group' all affect the way that they participate.

Overall, I found this to be a useful and helpful session, and was able to listen to (and learn from) the experiences of other members of the group, including of course the tutor leading the discussion.