Week 4 Discussion

Learners are using wireless computers such as PDA’s, wireless laptops, mobile phones, Smart Phones, Tablet PC’s and hybrid devices which include a mixture of mobile phones and tablet PC’s for the ability to connect anytime, anywhere, as long as an Internet portal is available. The PDA was first invented and used in 1980; in education, adaptation occurred starting in the late 1990’s. We are not the early majority since PDA usage is now being used in high schools and elementary Grades. Costs can be minimized since a lot of students already have their own PDA’s. There is no need to furnish one. Grants are available for usage of PDA’s in classrooms. The average cost is about 400 dollars (Dominick, 2002). They have a high mobility which could cause an increase in grade scores. They also have an operating system that most students are familiar with, the “Start” menu.

Wikispaces and blogs can be deployed for collaboration (Mason, 2008,p. 49)
as well as PBL or problem-based learning (Dabbagh and Bannan-Ritland 2005). Actually, in development in the corporate world, we constantly had problem based learning. We just called it an average day. Even, Electronic Mail has a great resource for tracking projects through tasks. Twitter and Skype can keep all members of a community updated and informed.

Siemens sees the instructor as “guide on the side” and leans to the connectivism theory of education (2008). I also see this as a project manager that guides the workers; but ultimately it is the group that does the collaboration and communication. In real life, you learn how to be autonomous and self-directed (Annand, 2007, 2). Why not in academics?


Annand, D. (2007). Re‐organizing universities for the information age. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 8(3).

Dabbagh, N., and B. Bannan-Ritland. 2005. Online learning: Concepts, strategies, and
applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Dominick, J. (2002). Ready or not—PDAs in the Classrooms. Retrieved 01 20, 2010 from http://www.campustechnology.com/Articles/2002/09/Ready-or-NotPDAs-in-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=1

Mason, M. (2008). What is complexity theory and what are its implications for educational change.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 35–49.

Siemens, G. (2008, January). Retrieved on 01 05, 2010 from Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. ITForum.

Graphic Organizer- Week 4

Work in Progress - Storybook

Getting Closer.

Playing with new movies

Role Playing

In this video, notice that the students are role playing in the Great Depression but they are working together as a group to learn and they are actually having fun! See the smiles!






Marcia

Assessment

Herein lies the situation, too long has academics graded on the individual progress but not the group’s progress. As stated by Siemens Four models of peer assessment, instructor assessment, group to individual assessment, metrics assessment. All four models are lacking. (2008)We fail to establish and provide true group attainment if we continue to primarily assess the individual. If you are assessing each person, you never truly assess the group? If we elect to assess a blended environment, of individual and group work, which is worth more? Usually in this environment of distance learning, we are still assessing individual work at a greater percentage. Look at any distance learning class that contains a blended environment and you will notice that the percentage of assessable work is based on sole attainment.

To true obtain a community, we need to devise a system in which group work is solely the only qualifications. This way we are building an online community and not just an academic easy route to grading? In the corporate world, as a developer, my pay increases and bonuses were directly linked to how well group projects fared and how the group devised a solution to a stated problem. We need to devise another approach to online community assessment. (Siemens, 2008)

Writing and linguistic skills can affect a fair and equitable form of grading. I am not the best writer so someone who has published or written articles frequently would surpass me by miles. Also, APA formatting is not one of my strengths so I spend hours trying to figure out how to do the formatting. Does this affect my time in which I have to compose? Yes! I am concentrating not on subject matter but the technical aspect of research.

First, as Palloff and Pratt mentioned that the facilitator can not be a fly on the wall. It is the instructor’s role to monitor students that do not participate. (2005) It can not be taken for granted that the student is not participating purposely. In this age of electronics, a blown hard drive or missing Internet connection can be devastating to participation. As for the group, good communications need to be established so that levels of participation, or non-levels, can be addressed openly and freely. The group needs to trust each other first in order to build this type of communication. (Hurst & Thomas, 2004) The impact on non-participation can be deadly to a group. If everyone is apathetic, it is a spirally down effect for the entire group.

Marcia

Hurst D. &Thomas J. (2004). “Developing team skills and accomplishing team projects online”. The theory and practice of online learning. Ed. Terry Anderson

Siemens, G. (2008). Assessment of collaborative learning. Vodocast. Laureate Education, Inc.

Multinational Conference in Chicago on Distance Learners

This video is pretty long but is well worth it. It talks about global learning and how Motorola has incorporated global diversification. The differences from one culture to another that they had to incorporate.

I had the pleasure of working with different nations. The oil sheiks use to come all the time. A friend of mine made the okay sign to me as we were using sign language in front of them. It is the sign that ,in their country, means a round hole in your butt! Cultural faux de pas! We didn't realize until later, after talking to our Arabic co-workers, why their faces all clouded over.