I would just like to wish everyone happy holidays and of course a great new year (already 2007!). I'll be taking the remaining days of this year off, but have no fear - I'll be back in the new year with fresh ideas and thoughts :)
Today I came across an interesting story on Reuters: Popular gadgets may make painful Christmas presents, which reminds us about repetitive strain injuries (RSI) that can be caused by high-tech gadgets. And gadgets are no longer used just for fun; they are now an integral part of our everyday lives and are now increasingly present even in learning (which is something I even try to promote). And here I wonder - do we, as e-learning enthusiasts, give enough thought to health problems that new technologies might be causing? We all want to use the power of modern technology, but how often do we talk about its proper usage, the importance of taking breaks during work or proper sitting or typing positions? Are our students aware of these problems at all? Why aren't we talking about this in our schools? And actually, I'm writing this post while wearing a wrist band because of the pains I got after a few days of intensive at least 8-hours long typing plus of course "leisure" browsing.
Dear Browser, I wish you could help me keep track of my browsing in a better way. What do I mean? Well, lately I'm just finding quite some opened windows/tabs and had no idea where they come from or why I opened them. How does this happen? The usual process: in the morning I open all the feeds that have new posts, right click - open in new tab on those that seem interesting, quickly read through them, click on a few links, and then if I'm still too sleepy I grab a cup of coffee that of course wakes me a bit, so I decide to minimize all opened browser windows and start doing something else - writing, researching, reading.... And an hour (or even more) later I remember those minimized windows and realize I still have some posts to read. Cool! I read the most interesting posts more carefully, and then... hm... why do I have this window opened? It was in one of the posts I read... but which one? The one I just closed? Hm... Yep. You can see my point. And this is really getting irritating. I know, I know, it's all my fault, I should try to do one task at a time etc. etc. etc.
I've just finished reading The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture - a book by John Battelle. As the title promises, the author presents the (hi)story behind search engines (where Google is of course a major player) and the impact the search technology is having on our lives.
Yay! Today is a good day! We finally managed to open all content of the site Moodle.si to the public! Moodle.si is an attempt to establish an online community of Moodle users in Slovenia, so anybody from Slovenia that is reading this post and is a Moodle user is invited to join the community ;) (By the way - the site is exclusively in Slovenian language, so if you're looking for a Moodle community in English I suggest the official Moodle site.)
For example, I recently got a new mobile phone (Sony Ericsson Z610i) and I'm just amazed at what this small beauty can do - the web browser can pick up RSS feeds (that's something even Internet Explorer didn't do until recently!), it has a special RSS reader, the memory card can be upgraded upto 1GB, the phone connects with computers through USB and can charge its battery this way and even work as an USB storage key, it supports java applications, video calls, direct picture blogging (to Blogger), quite comfortable browsing speeds in the UMTS network, and I can use it to listen to podcasts! With these advanced features that make mobile phones much more than just phones - they are now slowly transforming into small portable computers - I see a lot of learning possibilities both for individuals and for educational institutions.
So all in all I think the benefits of public sharing are much greater than possible threats. And I can happily say that a Google search of my name has my blog on the first results page. And to that I can only say: mission Google accomplished! But of course the work isn't done here, it is in fact just starting: a web presence without content does one no good, so I have to work on providing quality content for the loyal (or random) readers of my blog :) and in such a way add my humble contribution to the vast Internet library of knowledge.
Also, I think that the possibilities for interaction and collaboration are what make technology so appealing. Of course it's great to use a word processors as they make writing so easy and fast (well, most of the times - at least up to the point when they *cough* Microsoft Word *cough* start having their own weird moods :-] ), but what is really making ICT increasingly popular and appealing is the chance to connect to other users. We don't buy a computer because we want to have a computer, but because we want to do something with it - and in most of the cases "doing something" involves connecting with other people - either by chatting with friends, accessing various opinions, creative expressions, hear news about people around the world, play an online game or do research and learn new things. Whenever my Internet connection is down I really feel that my computer has become less useful, less interesting.
So, once again I think that our key question as educators should be: "How can we make learners want to learn this?". If we find ways to engage students learning can be efficient and fun in both traditional and virtual classroom - and the psychology of learning environments can also be a factor in making learning work, but it can't be the only one. If I make reference to the example of an enchanting classroom that was used in the classroom: the Divination classroom surely managed to capture Harry Potter's attention on the first day, but poor teaching methods made him drop out of the class later on ;) So, I think that we should definitely try to enchant students with comfortable learning environments and also with relevant content that will be delivered in such a way that it will motivate students - learning is after a challenging and valuable process when we want it and when we feel comfortable in doing it!
Here I am back again from the MIC'06 conference in Koper (Slovenia) where I presented my article Communication in a Virtual Classroom (read the abstract). The conference was focused on management and business topics, but there was also an e-learning section. There weren't many papers in that section, so I didn't really attend to many of the presentations. But of the presentations I did attend, I most enjoyed Alex Koohang's presentation of his paper In Search of a Learner-Centered Instructional Model for Blended Learning in which he presented his blended learning model (in this context blended means half face-to-face and half online learning) and some of the constructivist methods he uses with his students. And although our students come from a different background, I think that they could benefit from the methods that Alex mentioned. I really liked the idea of students writing short essays with their reactions to some material and then having to read, comment, analyze and react to essays written by their pears. That's really constructivism in action!
This year I was finally introduced to the world of Macs and Mac OS X (Tiger). After a few months of heavy daily usage I can now say that I got used to the UI pretty fast, learned new keyboard shortcuts, but I can still catch myself using certain persistent Windows 3.1 methods that aren't really adding to my work efficiency. You want a practical example? (If not, move to the last paragraph ;) ) Here it is: I wanted to modify a contact in my address book - and what did I do? I opened Address Book and started looking for the contact in the list. It was only after a few seconds of intense reading through the list of names that I said to myself: why don't I use the search box? And so I did - I typed the first few letters of the name I was searching for and ta-da! the contact is ready to edit. Ah, so simple.
Now that we are familiar with the theory we can see that WebQuests promote an active way of learning through the transformation of various web resources and prior knowledge to a learning outcome that students relate to. WebQuests can use different types of tasks (for a classification of WebQuest tasks see A Taxonomy of Tasks) to activate students and stimulate their learning and understanding of a subject.
In this post I'd like to provide a list to some of my favorite education/learning related quotes. Why? Because I think they can be used to as an reflection on what we are doing as educators and how is this affecting our students - and although thinking reflection will not by itself make big changes in our work, it can be the first step toward great new practices and ideas that can make a change.
While I was tutoring the course, I checked for new posts AT LEAST 3 times a day - first thing in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening; and that is how I was able to quickly respond to all questions and all unexpected situations. And why is that so? Because one of the advantages of e-learning is the flexibility in time and space - students can freely choose when and where they will work from. Some do it when they get to the office in the morning, some do it in the afternoons, and some in late evening after they put their kids to bed. And if you as an online tutor want to be there for them you have to keep track of all these groups (luckily for me we don't have students in different time zones or I'd probably be awoke by concern in the middle of the night to check the evening activities of american students and morning activities of asian students ;) ).
We still have to test the Database module for teaching purposes (as a study activity), but what we were already able to do with this module is a database of open source free software that provides a good alternative to (sometimes better known) commercial software. Any registered user of our virtual classroom can also add his/her own favorite software to the list, and also post comments to the existing entries. Also, for this specific database I also created a custom template for displaying entries that looks really cool. I think this module provides teachers with great flexibility, and the only limitation when using this module is our imagination. Although it is a pity that there is yet no option for saving different database templates or the option of being able to choose from a given set of pre-made templates. For this reason I'm a bit afraid that teachers that aren't that familiar with HTML will refuse using the database module, as it might seem to difficult to set (although it really isn't).