BP24_2009114_PersonalizedLearningEnvironments

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PLEs

Personalized Learning Environments

The standardized one-size-fits-all educational solution does not work for everyone anymore. There is an expectation by today’s learner that each student’s individual needs should be attended to and accommodated. This is a very different paradigm than the traditional educational model. Whether factoring in multiple learning styles or differentiated capabilities, playing to each student’s strengths is the new mode for education. Maintaining student engagement in the educational topics at hand, despite their attention spans and interests that may distract or lead them elsewhere, is the top goal of education today.

One way to accomplish this is by setting up a Personalized Learning environment, a customized portal to the information that is targeted to each student’s individual preferences. This allows each person’s best methods to be implemented, so all have their own ways of accessing the information.

Our Education class example had all students setup an iGoogle portal to a set of very specific criteria. The specifications gave explicit instructions so each student could have a setup with both recommended and required components that would cover all needs within the scope of the class. Rather than being a free-for-all of personal expression, there was structure provided, with individualization of colors and themes allowed.

While the goal of a PERSONALIZED learning environment is to have each individual custom-tailor it to their own needs and preferences, if TOO unique it cannot easily be tracked and monitored by an instructor. Students could be given more leeway to explore which components were relevant to them, and to explain why each was chosen for inclusion. Whether to enforce coverage of necessary components or to facilitate grading, some guidance and structure in the setup of Personalized Learning Environments would be recommended.

Now that I am aware of this PLE component of education, I’m seeing it’s use in more and more places. The offer of a personalized portal is becoming ubiquitous online. iGoogle is the example that we used for ourselves in class, but many other customizable home page options are being offered. My new AT&T phone service offers a “landing page” at www.att.net, which can be configured to your ideal setup. Like sports? All sports? No sports? You can choose the live feed of news and information offered to you as a first-step onto the internet. Yahoo has MyYahoo, MSN allows you to customize your home page, even eBay has My eBay.

By translating these PLEs as personalized but structured information portals into the education arena, we will be able to start to customize education and thereby serve the individual learning needs of each student.

BP23_2009112_Discussion Board_Media Literacy

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Week 2 - Media Literacy - Discussion Board 2

“In the 20th Century, literacy meant the ability to read, write, and present cogent arguments on paper. In the 21st century, literacy is going to extend well beyond that and into what could be termed, a language of screens” (Barish, 2002).

Considering the quote above, what exactly does it mean to be literate in today’s society? How are we, as educators, going to ensure the students we are sending out into the world have an understanding of the messages they are receiving as well as what messages are being sent to others as they create new media and communicate with the world around them? 

Discuss the concepts you think are most important for learners today to understand.
Content and presentation have always been linked, with the content being critical and the presentation often being just a delivery method. In the past, presentation may have been an afterthought of standardized typeset black words on white paper, but now it is more important than ever. In today’s multi-media environment, words and pictures are not the only aspects of our information being presented to the world. We now also have audio and video, which contribute tone-of-voice and visual context adding additional layers of meaning, which may also make the content more complex. The addition of online presentation formats may mean that technical factors of resolution, navigation, color gamuts, download speeds and file formats, will add to the impression – positive or negative - of your digital content.

Understanding the separation of presentation and content aspects, such as in standardized XML formats like DocBook, are going to be critical for information to be “neutralized” and portable seamlessly across platforms and media formats. (Muellner, Walsh)

If it were YOUR school, what would you make sure your students understood about literacy and why would you choose those concepts?
In my digital design school, control of the “language of screens” as the delivery method – whether a computer monitor, kiosk, or handheld device - would have to be mastered to ensure clear communications with the user. This responsibility of the creators of the information will ensure that the users of the information get what they need. An important facet of HCI (human-computer interaction) is the securing of user satisfaction (Wikipedia) I would want students to understand the subtleties of interface design and how clarity of navigation supports the ability to find and understand information. The study of HCI, also referred to as man–machine interaction (MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI) crosses cognitive psychology, behavioral science, computer graphics, human factors, communications and interface design. This is key for successful communications, no matter what the content.

References:
Center for Media Literacy. (2008). Retrieved November 8, 2009 from, http://www.medialit.org/


Muellner, L and Walsh, N. (2008, August 12). What is DocBook? O’Reilly Media. Retrieved from http://www.docbook.org/whatis

Wikipedia. Human-computer interaction. Retrieved 08 November 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–computer_interaction

BP22_2009111_Discussion Board_Anti-Teaching

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Week 1 - Discussion Board - Anti-Teaching

• Based on the assumption that the educational systems as we know them do not work for the vast majority of the students moving through them, what would work?
I am unsure about the validity of the statement that "the educational systems as we know them do not work for the vast majority of the students moving through them". Traditional learning systems do their best to deliver the bulk of information to the majority of the learners in the most efficient and effective way possible. This is usually in the format of a group lecture, where all students are receiving the same information at the same time. This may no longer be practical, as the learning results are not as high as desired overall for the group. Now that we have available methods to easily and reasonably deliver more customized solutions, sending more targeted information to each individual student is possible, and may be more effective.

• Are virtual learning environments with course management systems the answer?
Personalizing the learning environment for each student, or allowing this individualization, poses significant challenges for the instructor and the school system. A prime example is our own experience in this class. Our “Personalized Learning Environments” are structured by the teacher in order to facilitate and simplify the evaluation and grading of these student portal sites. While some individualization is allowed (colors/themes, additional widgets/gadgets), the bulk of the setup has been pre-determined and standardized. Keeping a coordination between the “official” and “personal” learning environments will be an ongoing challenge.

• What about PLEs and Web 2.0 tools? Is technology itself enough?
I think that having too much individuality in designing one’s own learning environment creates too much open-ended choice, and not enough instructional guidance and direction. Similar to school uniforms, which take an element of choice out of the student’s experience, they also remove those decisions and distractions from a student’s preparation for school and minimizes interactions (fashion, style, preference) that might distract attention from school-related topics.

• What are the key components you would include in new schools?
For new schools, staying as current with 21st century technology tools that are used outside of the education arena in homes and workplaces is a critical factor to student success in having an integrated learning opportunity both within and outside of classes.

• What are the key components for 21st century schools and “learning beyond the test"?
Critical thinking and decision-making skills should be the goals for modern schools to build students that are well-equipped for life outside of the classroom.

BP21_2009113_socialmediatoolsweek

This week has been designated as International Social Media Tools Week!

There will be a virtual industry conference introducing the top social media tools for business, which will showcase the newest and most compelling Social Media tools from around the world. All speakers are active social media practitioners, and the sessions are all about how to use social media in business, including best practices. This fully-online event is sponsored by Social Media Academy - Education and Research Institute for Applied Social Media. See http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/index.cfm for information.

While definitely geared to a corporate audience, there is sure to be relevant information in many of these presentations that can be adapted for educational uses.

For example: Thursday Nov 19: Social Media Reporting and Analytics tools. These sessions may give ideas on how to track student and/or parent involvement in the social networks for participation, grading, and feedback purposes.

Check out Tools Universe at http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/html/toolslist.cfm for a list of over 150 links to Web 2.0 tools. As the site says: "The following list may give you some interesting links to social media tools you may find helpful. Most of the places and spaces are suitable for social media business purposes. We did not list any game or dating networks."

Get a free virtual "ticket" by registering at http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/html/toolsweekregistration.cfm

BP20_2009113_one_minute_message-diigo

One Minute Message: Diigo

http://www.diigo.com/

The name "Diigo" is an abbreviation for 
Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff. (http://www.diigo.com/about). 
Focused on helping its users to "Research, Share, Collaborate", Diigo is a shared tagging site that allows overlaid comments and markup as well as social bookmarking for web pages by using a "Super Bookmarklet"! This system is facilitated by installing a "Diigolet" plugin with a simple drag-and-drop onto the Bookmarks Bar, which works within the browser to give ready access to the diigo features while you are surfing the net.

The annotation features include the ability to highlight text or add sticky notes anywhere to a page. Because these virtual ways of adding notes and markup parallel the physical methods of highlighter markers and Post-It notes, they will likely be familiar and comfortable methods for any real-world user to apply in a digital mode. These would be useful in a learning environment to create a study guide for later review, or as research notations for future reference.

In an educational setting, the use of pre-agreed tags to coordinate within a class group would be a targeted way to share specific class-related topics either from the instructor or between students. In a group project setting, each person could contribute their own views to an existing web page, with the comments being visible to all who were invited to participate. This type of onscreen collaboration would help with compiling the viewpoints of all project team members into one location, and in the context of the original materials. Diigo snapshots of transitioning pages would ensure that the info is available online even after the source page has been changed or removed, to ensure stable lesson components.

Diigo can be valuable to create shared annotation and tag references for any personal, professional or academic use.

BP19_2009113_Discussion Board_Virtual Worlds_BenefitDetrimentAge

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Week 3 - Discussion Board - Virtual Worlds

What are the benefits of virtual worlds in educational settings? Can they be used for any age group?
I agree with Telitha Lucier when she wrote: “The teacher needs to match the age of the student with the content of the virtual world.” Charles Mills also pointed out that “There are age appropriate sites available for everyone capable of manipulating the computer technology required to explore.”

For young children, a cute and fun virtual world can be a way to “trick” them into learning by making the lesson more like a game. Bright colors and animations keep their eyes (and hopefully their attention) on the screen.

For older students, a virtual world can be an enjoyable immersive experience that captures their imagination. Like the competitive and exploratory aspects of a scavenger hunt, it can be a more active and shared way of getting information than the passive process of reading a book alone.

For adults, I feel differently. Although I have seen examples of corporate sites in SecondLife, with virtual conference rooms and even gatherings around a pretend campfire, I see only a surface entertainment value to these. Rather than leveraging the engagement of the “digital native” twenty-something, it seems to be pandering to their short attention span and aversion to boring grown-up business activities like meetings and classes. Tempting them into participation by placing it into a virtual 3D game-like setting devalues the importance of the engagement.

Yes, a class session or a business meeting may be long, and you may get distracted, and you may not want to be there, and every moment of it may not be directly relevant to you. Couching that required reality in the context of a virtual setting that resembles a video game seems like a novelty to get and keep the participants’ attention, which should not be required in a professional context. If the content is important and relevant enough for the adults involved, a spoonful of VR sugar should not be needed to make the medicine of onscreen meetings go down.

Will learning within virtual worlds somehow be a detriment to the educational processes? What do you think?
Critical aspects of human face-to-face interactions such as tone of voice and facial expressions are lost with avatar representations. Participants will be less empathetic and less responsive to inter-personal dynamics because they are not well represented in a virtual world. As Romel Muex wrote: “Children from ages 5 to about 8 are still learning socially appropriate behaviors for the classroom and functioning appropriately in a virtual education setting may be more than they could handle…”

Also, the overhead for equipment setup, environment build-out, training, implementation, and technical maintenance of virtual worlds may be too costly of an investment to be practical. As Van Manson wrote: “trying to figure out how much time is needed to introduce, learn, and use these virtual worlds can become very time consuming, considering that all you are going to use it for is a virtual field trip: seems a little much.”


References:

BP18_2009113_Discussion Board_Virtual Worlds_LearningEnvironment

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Week 3 - Discussion Board - Virtual Worlds

How might you use virtual worlds in your learning environment?
Synchronous group collaboration is available in many formats online. I have used several forms of online group connections for business meetings, from WebEx and iChat and Skype to ConnectNow. These can include audio, video, text chat, polls, whiteboards, file sharing, and screen sharing… more than enough adequate ways to communicate.

I would not use a 3D virtual world in my corporate learning environment unless the physical dimensional space was a critical information factor to be shared, and there was no practical way to do it in a real-world setting. This may be due to time-zone and location differences of the participants, or due to the actual space being inaccessible, or even space being in development and not yet created. Architectural planning and real estate showings and location tours would be prime examples of relevant use of digital dimensional space. For these to be viable, the digital build-out would have to be accurate enough to be a reasonable representation in a scale and level of detail that makes sense for a valuable virtual world experience, which takes a major investment of time and effort that would have to be justified by enough critical use.

I would not use an avatar-based virtual world in my corporate learning environment. The “cute factor” of making a little pretend digital character to represent yourself seems to me to be a time-consuming distraction from any professional activities at hand. Visual impressions of others are definitely a relevant and contributory factor to in-person and avatar-based communications. Individualization of an avatar is valid way to express many aspects of personality. Consideration should be whether this adds to or detracts from the interaction and communication. Should avatars be required to be realistic? Should the fat people be fat, and the tall people be tall? Should any evidence of age such as grey hair and wrinkles be included or avoided? What about wardrobe, should “business casual” be enforced, or are wings and capes allowed? Should all avatars be undifferentiated in a default setup to be “fair and equal” as in a Harrison Bergeron context?


In most cases, I do not think that the logistics of navigating an avatar in a virtual world add to the value of a group meeting or shared class experience. Pretend walking, flying and dancing are cute and kinda fun. Bumping into each other or accidentally falling off the edge of a stairway/building/cliff are distracting. Getting everyone to where they need to be - from virtual Point A to virtual Point B - is necessary. Combining these is OK, as long as it doesn’t take up too much time and effort on the fun stuff or diversions of the inadvertent actions to get the necessary result. If the fun stuff is needed to keep the participants’ attention in the experience, it would be important to measure how their focus is differentiated between the fun aspects of the experience and the necessary engagement in the event.