Category: Grad School

Thinking Computers and Education

This module’s question:

What is the trend among educators relative to beliefs in technology, culture and the power of computer assisted learning? As you respond to this consider the notions of construed reality, own cultural influences,  influences from cultures unfamiliar to you, and the view that computers will likely be able to achieve human like thinking ability. You might also scan the links below:

My Response: (Notes on individual sources follow)

What is the trend among educators relative to beliefs in technology, culture and the power of computer assisted learning?

I’m not sure that I can speak to a single trend beyond anecdotes. There seem to be several groups that dominate the discussion, from technophiles such as myself, to the guarded (not early adopters or technophiles, but willing to engage with guidance) to the resistant.

Within the ESL/EFL/ELL field, there are special interest groups related to CALL (Computer-assisted Language Learning) that goes back to the days of language labs and headsets for every user to practice simulated language use. I think most teachers are willing to engage with technology where there is evidence that it can improve outcomes for students. Resistance appears to come from educators generally uncomfortable with change or comfortable in their current ability to bring students to set outcomes.

 

Sites to Scan: These were identified to provide you with links to a variety of resources that contain trends, developments, perspectives, philosophies and other tid-bits of information.  As a collection it is disposed only as an incomplete base.  At best the links provide you with a starting point from which to view a host of ideas on the topic of this module.  Within the links you will find trends, collection of philosophical views, issues, position papers, chronicles, titles, training opportunities etcetc

This resource is no longer available.

Basic history of calculators from 1950s onward.

Network access assessment tool called “Checkmate” uses “neural networks” to determine the intent of a user’s access on a network and block out hackers as effectively as human network administrators. Sold commercially.

Sadly, this link points to the same article as above.
  • Harris, Mishra, and Koehler provide a small collections of views and philosophies on Teachers technological and pedagogical practices related to computer integration into learning: http://mra.onefireplace.org/Resources/Documents/TPCK%20Article.pdf (JRTE, 41(4), 393–416. Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology Integration Reframed. Judith Harris, Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler)

“TPACK encompasses understanding and communicating representations of concepts using technologies; pedagogical techniques that apply technologies appropriately to teach content in differen- tiated ways according to students’ learning needs; knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress concep- tual challenges; knowledge of students’ prior content-related understanding and epistemological assumptions, along with related technological expertise or lack thereof; and knowledge of how technologies can be used to build on existing understanding to help students develop new epistemologies or strengthen old ones” (Harris, J., Mishra, P., Koehler, M., 2009).

This article reinforces the idea of how technology, content knowledge and pedagogy must work together (TPACK), and suggests how to plan to use all three in learning activities for students.

Basic jist is that teachers aren’t using technology to its fullest educational potential: “Researchers emphasize technology uses that support inquiry, collaboration, and reformed practice, whereas many teachers tend to focus on using presentation software, learner-friendly Web sites, and management tools to enhance existing practice” (p. 393).

Seems to be offline (2012.10.23)

Dense. My head hurts. I’ll have to reexamine this one later.
I have to completely agree with the introduction: The breathy adulation for the newest form of media through which we transmit information is not closer to the ideal “freedom of information” that some espouse – it’s merely appropriate for the context of the time it is tied to. While the written word, and its ability to transmit information over time and space was transformative, as was the newfound accessibility through the printing press, the radio, the TV and now the Internet, it is still constrained by the characteristics of the delivery system. While the accessibility is wide, the freedom of the press is still limited to the person who owns one. Without the tools of access and creation, the information may as well not exist at all.
In the summary of the paper to be presented by Blanchette, I noticed this quote: “while digital humanists may well benefit from engaging in “computational thinking,” I will argue the computing infrastructure implicitly performs much of that thinking, before a single line of application code is written” (“Infrastructural Thinking” as Core Computing Skill, para. 2). I could not help but be reminded of McLuhan’s “the medium is the message.”

CN: Ten Stages of Working the Web for Education, Tom March

Assignment:

Discussion Activity Review Tom March’s Ten Stages of Working the Web for Education found at this website. In this piece Tom comments:

“…You may have noticed that the first three stages to Web-Use Nirvana had to do with your personal and professional growth. The middle chunk all relate to curriculum design. What ever happened to teaching, with kids, in a classroom?” And then he asks “…So what is the New Job for Teachers?”.

Given your experiences as a teacher and in using technology to teach, what would you say to these questions?

———————-

Purpose of the article: “The goal of this article is to offer identifiable milestones to help educators effectively use the Web to engage students in advanced thinking. This could serve as a self-assessment or as guidelines when mentoring others.”

The Ten Stages:

  1. Getting to know the web – Browse directories (this is written pre-web 2.0 popularity and pre-Wikipedia) and see what’s actually on the web, and not what you think is on the web. 
  2. Find your web– Find a place to call your own. Find places you want to come back and revisit (bookmark them!)
  3. Meet your neighbours – The value of the web is the connection to other people, so connect to them. When you appreciate someone’s work, let them know.
  4. Using the web with students – Students are depending on you to know what to do with the web, so become an expert in the first three steps before you engage them in it.
  5. Design Goal-based Activities – March here lays out some ideas (knowledge hunt, for example) that are simplified versions of what others call for in terms of problem-based learning and previous articles on WebQuests. [Needs a link]
  6. Advanced Goals-based Design – WebQuests and other activities included here.
  7. Pursuing Transformation – First guide students to develop expertise, then put them into a situation that requires them to use it. Role-based deliberation can be one such method. Expertise, while laudable is insufficient. 
  8. Welcome to Your New Job – Stages 1-3 are personal/professional growth for the teacher. The middle section is curriculum design. Carrot: Great websites designed by students through ThinkQuest competition. Stick: Plagiarism is easy and convenient; challenging mental engagement is not. We must: maintain the connection with the authentic, maintain motivation and compelling experiences, stay learner-centered, and teach both cognitive and people skills.
  9. Taking off the Training Wheels – Coach rather than teacher. Analyze strengths and areas for improvement. Come up with ways to prompt expert performance. Give practice in authentic scenarios as much as possible. Work on metacognitive practice with the students. 
  10. All that’s left is learning – the process is internal, not external. What looks the same on the outside can be very different based on cognitive processing.
At step four in this article, I’m starting to get a bit weary of it’s age. The idea that students don’t know what to do with the web is 2012 is a different assumption than it was in 1999. This is still partially true, however. Students today are quite aware of what to do as far as their own communication needs and personal interests are concerned. However, even in the World’s Most Wired Nation™, many of my students are still very ignorant of what their technology and access to the Internet can do for them in their educational and other goals. The Korean-language web is not devoid of good content, as far as I can tell. Rather, it seems that the delivery methods are still very primitive. While most companies in the west have bought into the idea that no website is a death knell, companies here, when they do have websites, may be using what Western users would consider the equivalent of Geocities or MySpace to disseminate information, what limited information it may be. Koreans still largely connect by phone. Email is only a way to transfer documents and collect spam; few, if any, use it as a primary communication tool.
The application sections were interesting, and the more I learn about PBL I wonder how I can employ this for my own students in a culture that is very teacher-focused and still stuck in the Grammar-translation method of language instruction. I remember how a colleague of mine had developed a series of stages in a game scenario (played out in Second Life or Open Sim) where students had to engage with the target language and use it to solve problems and mysteries and win the game. In a science university with high levels of game use recreationally by students, this was very popular.
While considering how to make this relevant to my own practice, I did some searching and found the following article to be of assistance:
  • Brief: Problem-Based Learning and Adult English Language Learners This downloadable brief examines some background on PBL and Adult ELL, and provides walk-throughs for teachers and administrators interested in using PBL in their learning environments. Does not provide suggestions for dealing with classes of entirely the same L1, where moving like-L1 students to separate groups does not solve the problem of L1 use. 

Learning Styles and Intelligences

We’ve been studying different learning styles and intelligences. This module asks us to take a couple of learning style tests* and examine what they say about ourselves. The guiding question is:

How are learning styles and multiple intelligences similar? Different?

My tests came out as 1) visual learner, 2) visual learner, 3)even split visual-auditory-tactile/kinaesthetic 4) the chart below:

Graph showing my learning styles

Given my even balance on visual, physical and Aural above, I’m not surprised that I came out with an even 4-4-4 split in test 3, where there were fewer questions (the test with the graph had 70).

Reflecting back on my multiple intelligences (MI) test results, the results of the learning style test appear strongly correlated. As in the graph above, which shows a low level of learning in a solitary way, my interpersonal MI was one of my highest scores. Additionally, my kinaesthetic and visual scores were high on the MI test, so it would seem that I also use these in my learning.

After taking the tests, we were to review the following article and answer the guiding question listed above. Here’s the citation for the article:

Solvie, P. & Senske, L. (2009). Teaching for Success: Linking Technology and Learning Styles in Preservice Teacher Education. In I. Gibson et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2009 (pp. 2681-2684). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

So to answer the question, how are MI and Learning Styles the same and different? For starters, there is some crossover in categorization: visual, kinesthetic, aural, all seem to correspond directly to different intelligences, but there are more intelligences than categories of learning style. It would seem that each learning style is able to encompass aspects or totalities of these intelligences.

Learning Style: Intelligences

Visual: Visual/Spatial

Social: Interpersonal

Physical: Body/Kinesthetic

Oral: Musical?

Verbal: Linguistic

Solitary: Intrapersonal

Logical: Logical-Mathematical

Outside of these are Naturalist and Existentialist, which may fit into solitary, visual and logical for naturalist, and solitary and logical for existentialist.

Applications

When I think about MI and learning styles in the context of my classroom, I see quickly how lacking the current curriculum and near-mandatory lesson plans are. I spent some time today on my commute thinking about how I might open at least parts of the curriculum for students who, like me, don’t necessarily work well with just processing text. I spent some time thinking about alternative homework to even making learning teams among my students to allow them to work with the target language in ways that were beneficial to them, rather than the boring, out-of-date methodologies proscribed by the required text. I wondered if I could create some MI and learning styles test for them during the first week to create these groups. I also wonder if I will be able to adequately prepare my students for the unified written exams that all students in my classes must take with the rest of the cohort. I don’t want to be self-defeating before I even try, but I have concerns about leaping off a cliff and not doing it well.

*I also took the test to look at my motivation style, and it came out to be purely learning. Sure, I valued some of the items in “Goal” and “Social” sections, but if I were honest about what mattered most, it was the learning option.

CN: Gender, Education and Technology

Assignment Response: (Notes follow)

A little personal background that may cloud my reading of the articles we had to look at. Okay, it did, mostly because I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes. Quick summary: I grew up the eldest of three daughters, and my mom often told me our father was determined that none of his daughters would be captive to anyone for lack of skills. So I spent my very early years on construction sites, had a computer at home to play with by age 7 (where I learned the basics of DOS), and was encouraged to excel in shop class as much as home-ec. I know my way around a tool belt just as well as a set of kitchen utensils. I grew up skipping the fashion pages of women’s magazines and wore out my science magazines for children. I love computers, can hand-code in HTML and CSS, and was sad when I lost my de-commissioned Andriod phone and wouldn’t have a new toy to explore the capabilities of. But enough about me.

Have you observed differing gender approaches in the way students use present classroom technology?

My students don’t engage much with technology from an educational standpoint, but they do really love their smartphones. I would say, anecdotally, that while both male and female students are likely to be distracted by Kakao Talk (a free chatware program that is almost ubiquitous in Korea), the males are more likely to be playing Minecraft or game on their phones than the females are.

Does the type of technology being used make a difference in gender neutrality?

As far as type is concerned, there may be a difference in how the technologies are used rather than which technologies are used, or their intended purposes. As mentioned above, the women seem to be exclusively concerned with social matters, while the men split their time with socializing and games. Both watch TV and play music on their devices.

Have circumstances in computer mediation changed in the last ten years?

I have to agree with what Mark Rooney posted earlier [in the class chat] about the rise of a commenting culture and its lack of civility. As a woman who has posted in very male-dominated fora, my comments have sometimes been quickly dismissed or sexualized (and then dismissed) rather than taken for their content. It seems rather adolescent, these hyper-masculine environments where people are constantly scrapping to be alpha male, rather than concerned for content of argument. I am happy that this seems to be limited to certain corners of the Internet, and that many other places the value of what you contribute will get you thanks and respect rather than the gender you present.

Do females participate differently when on-line?

This is entirely my perspective, but I would say that in many ways the Internet amplifies your character. If you’re lacking in public civility under a veneer of politeness, that’s going to come out. If you’re insecure and want to look like a hot-shot, that’s going to come out. If you’re primarily motivated to help people, learn and expand your personal horizons, that’s going to come out. Without the social boundaries that face-to-face contact enforces (generally speaking), behaviour is a little more raw, a little more unfiltered, and reveals something about us that may normally stay a little more hidden.

So from that idea, I would say that everyone participates a little more differently online. If you have a desire to speak up and be heard, you’re going to have fewer barriers to that. If you want to sit back and observe, lurking is a well-known phenomena online. I would say that both females and males participate differently online than in real life; it’s a consequence of the media itself.

Do you agree with the views and steps that need to be taken to insure gender equality in use of computer technology?

Yes and no. Yes, we need to encourage our female and male children to explore what they are curious about, to learn how things work and learn to master our tools. These things, however, are not sufficient to change the culture and bring more women into positions of authority and decision-making power as CIOs or other agents of change. There is something deeper in our culture that is perpetuating the dominance of males in these roles, and it’s not a lack of merit on the part of women, as some of the articles in the readings demonstrated (the one from CIO outlining the stories of several women, for example). If females are succeeding in school and teachers are focusing their efforts on males causing disruptions over education in general (Ostrander, 1996), it’s not just the females that are losing out on instruction time. I find Chapman’s (n.d.) assessment that it’s a problem with teachers’ behaving in a way that discriminates against girls to be overly simplistic and perhaps mis-directed. It’s not simply that  teachers are giving boys disproportionate amounts of time and attention because they are favoured; boys demand that much time and attention just to keep them on task and maintain a safe learning environment for all the students.

What are the beliefs and strategies employed by parents and teachers that inform their perspectives and approaches to gender and computers?

Notes from: Gender Bias in Education (Chapman, A., n.d.)

  • boys and girls perform equally when they enter school, but girls fall behind by graduation from high school.
  • Yet, boys are also more likely to be failing, “learning disabled,” and involved in criminal activity, be it drugs, alcohol, or other crimes.
  • Boys are also more likely to drop out
  • Yet, it seems the strengths of girls come in spite of their treatment, lack of attention to sexual harassment, boys are given leeway with rowdiness, and in other socialization.
  • Teachers socialize for feminine traits: neatness, quietness, calmness; boys for independent thinking, active participation and speaking up. Girls are socialized to see popularity as important, educational performance and ability less so. Boys learn to value competence and independence.
  • 2001 study by Reay listed in the article citied female assertiveness as a negatively-regarded trait, while for boys it was merely self-assertion.
  • sexist, racist, homophobic and violent interactions are under-disciplined, and comments that boys cry or throw “like a girl” go (apparently) unchecked, reinforcing the idea that girls are inferior.
  • Texts and other resources have implicit gender socialization, and are unbalanced toward women as scholars, inventors and initiators of events.
  • Article argues that to combat inequities, teachers need to be made aware of how they are being unequal in their teaching and then given methods to change their ways. The results of one study demonstrated that these resources could combat poor pedagogy.
  • In addition, teachers need to be critical of the teaching resources and textbooks. Good texts should be “inclusive, accurate, affirmative, representative and integrated” and include the stories of both males and females in a way that includes the experiences, needs, and interests of both. From here, teachers can also help Ss identify biases and take a critical approach to their own texts. (is this enough? Is it sufficient to be critical, or do the stories outweigh the criticism, or “what we know in our heads to be true”? Also, can we equally represent everyone? Will that maintain the qualification of “accuracy”?)

Notes from: Equity in Computer Classrooms (Ostrander, 1996)

  • social norm: computer literacy is the domain of white, male hacker-types
  • computers and high-tech equipment are related to math and computer science, typically male-dominated areas.
  • Article says females and minorities are rarely encouraged to aspire to higher levels in the disciplines.
  • teacher feedback reinforces gender norms, with maleness being associated with high achievement and femaleness with low achievement.
  • Boys of every ethnicity get more attention than girls (mostly to prevent/manage behavioural problems)
  • feedback to boys is more critical and precise, helping them improve their skills, while girls receive neutral feedback, less geared toward how they’re doing and how they can improve or succeed.
  • several myths around technology instruction also exist, highlighting “natural” reasons for male superiority, socio-economic reasons to teach them computer expertise, and perceived biases in teaching that people learn better from their own “type.”
  • General statements without support about many people believing the myths and society reinforcing them.
  • These attitudes are particularly dangerous to our futures, as we are increasingly reliant on computers for just about everything in our lives.
  • concludes with a list of attributes of an equitable classroom, reinforcing ideas stated earlier in the article.

Notes on: Gadget makers target women (Hermida, A., 2002)

  • Skip the specs and tell women you have a version in pink.
  • Puke.

 

CN: Myths, One-liners and Technology in Education

Notes from: Public Perceptions of Nanotechnology and Trust in Government – Major Findings of 2004

  • Macoubrie (2005) warns of uncritical acceptance of nanotechnology in our day-to-day lives as we don’t have sufficient information regarding its long-term ramifications, encourages productive and regulatory stakeholders to consider public opinion when determining what oversight is necessary.
  • Draws highlights from two 2004 studies by National Science Foundation to explore citizen perceptions of nanotech. The first focused on how the ideas were presented to the general public and who the public trusted to protect them from possible dangers. The second dealt with how informed citizens were reacting.

The national, general survey

  • showed positive reaction to the potential benefits although general ignorance about the technology.
  • This was centered around medical concerns/breakthroughs.
  • The West Coast and Midwest showed the lowest trust in the government to manage risks in these areas.
  • Public uncertain of risks/benefits having positive ratio

The informed citizens survey

  • had effectively no trust in government or industry to manage risks
  • Concerns were not based on present information but on evidence of previous scenarios where downsides were not recognized until much later
  • Concerns not specific to nanotechnology but rather general failures to manage risks with other new technologies (once bitten twice shy)
  • Concerns largely mirrored contemporary political memes (“evil doer,” world military), along with health and environmental impacts
  • higher education positively correlated to distrust in government risk management.
  • This article is a collection of myths that have come to define how some interact with their computers.

Notes from: Computer one-liners

  • A collection of puns, etc, on the topic of computers/computing, most, like other one-liners, lame.

Notes from: Advantages and Disadvantages of Computer Networks

  • Explains what a computer network is, and highlights pros and cons of using one.
  • Highlighted Pros: File sharing, resource sharing, increased storage capacity, increased cost efficiency.
  • Highlighted Cons: Security issues, rapid spread of viruses, expensive setup, dependency on main file server
  • I would argue that the final idea of a primary file server is unnecessary depending on setup (such as torrents use). The computer only needs to know where the files are stored to obtain them.

Notes from: Technology and social control: The search for the illusive silver bullet

  • “The last half of the 20th century has seen a significant increase in the use of science and technology for purposes of social control.” (para 1)
  • “As used here social control refers to efforts to enforce norms by preventing violations or discovering and apprehending violators, rather than to other aspects of social control such as the creation of norms, processes of adjudication and sanctioning, or the broad societal guidance and integration which was of concern to early theorists of industrialization and urbanization.” (para 2)
  • The view that derivatives of science (ie, new technologies) are fair and impartial does not account for the social interpretation of the outputs or information gathered by these technologies.
  • Security, from its earliest forms of locks and moats, has been about social control
  • contemporary control is more manipulation than coercion
  • in an engineered society, violations are eliminated or limited by controlling the physical and social environments. The key is prevention. Problems are anticipated and designed away, or where this is impossible, some deterrence (identification and apprehension; reduction of gain) is employed.
  • Six social engineering strategies:
    1. Target removal: cashless society, furniture that is part of the structure, graffiti-resistant bus/subway exteriors, etc
    2. Target devaluation: self-destructing car stereos, dye packs in bank robberies, access codes for consumer technologies, biometric identifiers, etc.
    3. Target insulation: gated communities, skywalks, networked video of public space, etc.
    4. Offender incapacitation: chemical castration, tranquilizers, pepper spray, cars that have breathalyzers connected to ignition, background checks on firearm purchases, adding a foul odour to aerosols to prevent huffing
    5. Exclusion: electronic anklets/bracelets, potentially eugenics, jail
    6. Offence/Offender/Target identification: document the occurrence, offender, and apprehend them, personal alarms, possession removal alarms, organized citizen snitching

Other concerns: Not all of these have equal weight in different cultures. More research has been performed on those who violate rules than those who enforce them.

Implications: Technology is the purview of those who can afford it. More technology creates a greater demand for neutralizing solutions, high or low-tech. False-positives are common.

What does this have to do with myth? Perhaps the myth that technology can make us safe. 

Notes from: Computer intelligence will outpace the human brain by 2030

  • Behold the mighty computer! We are on pace to make something smarter than ourselves!
  • Maybe.
  • If we can get it to “think” like us.

Notes from: Computers and cultural transformation

  • This article is a bit dated, citing technology popular in the mid-90s as current (IRC, MUDs, etc)
Notes from: Computerized Gods
  • Enjoyable!
  • The central thesis is that science is our newest monotheistic religion, and the computer represents our god. Having made god in our own image, we then conflate reality with the idea that we are little gods (the computer in the head). We have created a deserving offspring to outlast our eventual demise as a species, carrying on through space, calculating and working on our behalf, even when we are gone.
Final comments: I think I’ve become a little tired of reading as I get toward the end of this section.
The assignment is:

  • Once you have reviewed scanned/read the above, spy out a trend, one liner, issue, argument, concept, revelation, hype, etc…..that you found particularly interesting, worrisome, intriguing etc.
  • Provide some short statement of what is meant by the statement to describe what you have found…. and then go a bit further….locate a more focus description of same.
I found several of the articles interesting. The first article about nanotechnology caught my eye as I am involved with bringing current research on nanotechnology to publication by proofreading and providing basic feedback on papers bound for publication. The research and its applications are truly fascinating. I found the distrust by the “educated” in this research to echo my own sentiments, although I would suggest the warnings against wide-eyed embracing of technology simple wisdom because it’s new to be appropriate regardless of the promises offered. I think we are all looking for something to improve our quality of life, and many are so desperate, for reasons of illness or otherwise, that they are willing to be human guinea pigs in pursuit of a slight extension of life.
Additionally, I would like to add what seems to be a technological fallacy, despite the relatively recent nature of the article. In it, Srivastava (2011) lists a disadvantage of networks in its dependence on a main file server. While this is true of some networks it certainly is not true of all. This position does not reflect the current reality of torrents, through which file-sharing (a listed advantage) occurs without the file being hosted in a central location. Rather, it is entirely de-centralized and can remove the need for a main file server that is vulnerable to failure. Another example contrary to this is a botnet, a decentralized army of computers created (usually) by virus or worm that brings thousands of infected computers together to share resources and complete a task, albeit often malicious.

 

Multiple Intelligences and My Learning Style

As per the guidelines of one of my grad school courses, I was to take this test on Multiple Intelligences and reflect on the following questions:

  • What are your areas of personal strength?
  • How should learning be structured to best meet your personal needs? What needs to occur in the teaching-learning process to help develop your other intelligences?

Here are my test results:

Kim's Multiple Intelligences Test Results
My results.

The complete list of intelligences and their relationships to learning are available if you’d like to look a them. I’m not too sure what to make of it. I’m not very surprised that my music score was high, but I am surprised that my visual/spatial was not higher. Also, while I didn’t do well in French class in high school, I have always used writing/note taking as an integral aspect of my learning process. Often going to lectures and taking notes (which were thorough enough to command audiences at exam time) was sufficient for my studies. Reading alone, however, has been a struggle, unless I have a high degree of intrinsic motivation for the subject matter.

To answer the questions:

  • What are your areas of personal strength?

My strongest area is Musical Intelligence. As I mentioned above, this comes as no surprise, nor should it to anyone who knows me. Aside from singing, I have learned at some point to play about a dozen instruments to varying degrees of mediocrity. While not a fantastic player, I learned to play most of them to a level of personal satisfaction and good enough for public performance, but hardly the calibre of professional performing musicians of any stripe. Most of my extra curricular pursuits from elementary onward involved some sort of music study, and even now I love few free-time activities as much as attending a concert, although I seldom do so.

From there, I have a clump of intelligences for the next six, starting six points down from Music and themselves having only a six-point spread. Then it’s another seven-point drop to Intrapersonal. From this I can see a clear separation between my strongest and weakest points to “the pack,” but the middle has very little differentiation, and may be partially due to my answers on this particular day or the questions asked.

I often call myself a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, and in my own life have had a difficult time settling on a graduate program to pursue. I’ve been interested in international relations, business, communications, graphic design, computer science and linguistics; I’ve even considered going back to school and doing a professional degree in engineering or architecture. That’s really quite the gamut. I frequently find my time-wasting on the Internet drawn to one of these areas of interest. It comes as no surprise that I have such a clump of intelligences so tightly packed around the middle.

But of the two intelligences tied for second-place, I would have to say when it comes to formal learning, the body/kinaesthetic aspect is more important to me, usually in combination with visual/spatial. While some would argue that my note-taking in high school and university was more evidence for my linguistic intelligence, I believe it was the physical creation of the words on paper, manifesting them in something visual as I listened to the lecture and observed my professors, that helped ingrain these ideas onto my memory.

I love all things mechanical and creative. From early elementary school I have memories of taking apart machines just to see how they worked. I was thankfully wise enough to limit myself to what a screwdriver or set of pliers could put back together; things that were soldered or glued in place were left alone for fear of upsetting my parents by “breaking” something. Thankfully it never came to that, and I secretly continued to pull things apart for the mere joy of understanding them and putting them back together. I think this disassembly-reassembly grew in concert with my visual-spacial skills, making it easier for me to visualize multiple dimensions in my mind when constructing or creating things in my heads’ space.

 

  • How should learning be structured to best meet your personal needs? What needs to occur in the teaching-learning process to help develop your other intelligences?

To meet my personal needs, learning should take place in an environment where I receive some visual instruction as well as have the opportunity to physically process either the information or the physical product I am studying. If it is possible to put rote memorization to music, I am more likely to remember it; as evidenced by my memory of my musical multiplication tables from over twenty years ago to high-school history jingles for classes I never even took.

To develop my other intelligences, I would most need to focus on my intrapersonal skills. My areas of particular weakness are self-understanding and sometimes with self-paced instruction. Where I am highly motivated, I have no problems progressing through materials, but without this I find more interesting pursuits for my time. As my greatest strength is music, either putting a series of tasks to a jingle or short song/chant might work as a meditation to keep me on task. I also find using outside time managers (such as the Pomodoro Technique) help me to get in some solid work time toward completing an undesirable or externally-motivated task. To help with my inner, personal development, again some kind of music-based chant or song might be enough to help me reflect on the day or task I have completed and visualize for the day ahead. I am not sure how any particular course or program that was not intentionally designed for such growth could encourage it.

In closing, I thought the exercise was interesting, as were the results, but I’d like to take the test again, and possible have another person take it on my behalf based on how they see me. I find the very idea rather attractive and it could lead to some very thought-provoking results. And maybe that’s just what I need.

Safety, the Internet and South Korean University Students

This short essay is for one of my online classes, Issues and Trends in Educational Computing. The focus on this unit is on Internet safety in my teaching context. A few websites and resources were given to students, from which we were to surmise some themes and work toward answering these three questions:

  1. Which aspects of WEB safety are of most concern in your teaching institution?
  2. How do teachers better effect positive change in students who routinely access knowledge and fact through the use of computer and when conveying information?
  3. What is a useful method that could improve the handling of WEB safety or the values (ala text readings) in your profession and in your school?

Here are my answers:

1. Which aspects of WEB safety are of most concern in your teaching institution?

As I work with adult learners (undergraduate students), my institution does not have the same concerns about student safety as a K-12 program might have. Students are expected to be independent and responsible for themselves. With high-speed Internet penetration exceeding 100% (that is, there are more high-speed connection points than there are people, and the population is 50 million), Internet access is moving beyond pervasive to invasive. In every pocket, the Internet is a welcome distraction for most and, perhaps most worrying for South Koreans, an addiction for others.

While I assumed that phishing and online bullying would be concerns for my students, when asked, they had different answers. One cited loss of control over who sees their personal information on social networking websites. Another was worried about viruses and only viruses, while a third responded that he was concerned about hackers breaking into unsecured servers and accessing their personal data. This third student cited several instances over the past few years in which hackers breached security measures and stole the personal information of two thirds of the population (35 of 50 million people). Because until recently, Korean law demanded real-name identification to register for a website, which included the use of citizens’ personal identity numbers, this was a massive breach. This student was concerned that his identity could then be used to access websites that he himself would not use, and gave adult video websites as an example.

The students in school today are referred to as “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001), Selwyn (2009) notes that proponents of this idea may be short-selling the dangers this always-on generation faces, both to their person and their intellect. In addition to the physical, social and sexual harm that may come from unfettered, unguided access to the Internet, students may also suffer from a “dumbing-down” that results from how they interact with information (Selwyn). To this end, determining the quality of information found online is a skill students may not have unless they have previously learnt it. Selwyn goes on to note that students, far from being digital natives, constructing their reality in digital form, are more passive consumers of entertainment rather than active in the creation of content. All of these play into the issues students bring with them in their access to information on the Internet that teachers can assist with.

2. How do teachers better effect positive change in students who routinely access knowledge and fact through the use of computer and when conveying information?

Keeping in mind the concerns of their students, it is important for teachers to evaluate the technology they require their students to use. For my situation, ensuring that the terms of service and privacy structures of the website, service or software do not violate the rights of their students to personal privacy and safety. Whereas my students are ESL/EFL students and often struggle with simple registration processes in the use of online technology, they cannot be expected to read, let alone understand the Terms of Service they agree to when they register. Additionally, if they are required to participate in class via this medium, then the onus is even more heavily on the teacher or administration to ensure their students are protected; if the online work is a required part of the students’ grades, the power in the relationship is entirely in the hands of the teachers and thus their responsibility to manage ethically.

Part of effecting the change is to help students learn how to be safe, smart digital citizens. We as teachers need to be cautious to scaffold appropriately and not assume students are able to do things that they have not yet learned to do. Online and blended learning software, such as the Moodle LMS, lean heavily on constructivist pedagogy (Foster, 2012), but if the generation is accustomed to consumption over production, there may be a gap between how students expect to use the Internet and how their teachers envision their engagement (Selwyn, 2009). This includes how to protect their own safety and privacy when engaging with the Internet and online services. Working with students to raise their knowledge and awareness of safety and processes online is a necessary responsibility for teachers at all levels. Additionally, it is important to teach students the same critical thinking required to establish the authority of a source, be it on the internet or in an analogue or other format.

Teaching these kinds of personal and social responsibility will better prepare students to be safe, healthy and smart digital citizens of the future, native or otherwise.

3. What is a useful method that could improve the handling of WEB safety or the values (ala text readings) in your profession and in your school?

My school has, along with others across the country, jumped on the blended learning wagon. While I am not privy to every discussion and decision, it does not appear that much attention has been given to any of the student needs listed above. Rather, it appears that the decision to engage in blended learning has been more for the reputation of the school than for the educational benefit of the students.

To improve, there are many things that could be done. First, a new course in digital citizenry should be developed. It doesn’t need to be for credit or last a full semester, but an introductory semester covering online research, responsibility, safety and other concerns could greatly benefit the students. Secondly, greater concern with finding technology that does not present barriers to student learning with technical glitches abounding. Anecdotally, I probably spend as much time managing and troubleshooting technology with my students as I do assisting them with the content of the course.

Finally, it may be of greatest benefit for the school to find an in-house solution for their educational needs, rather than relying on outside providers. These outside providers do not have our students’ best educational interests at heart, and do not create products (and they are for sale, and as such are truly products) that specifically meet the needs of our students at our school. Rather, this product is intended to be as broadly applicable as possible to obtain the greatest return on investment possible.

As a teacher, I need to ensure my students have true understanding of how to use the technology requirements of the course. As I am working in a second language with them (either theirs, or mine when I engage them in their L1), many details get lost in translation. I have set them up for on-demand help from me via phone chats, which they use regularly. Having patience when things go wrong, providing extra help when the technology fails, and being prepared to extend deadlines as per the cultural norms all play into success with the students. I’m honestly not sure if the language or the technology is a greater hurdle for my students; I wish neither were the case.

 

 

 

 

References

Foster, H. (2 February 2012). Moodle Documentation: Philosophy. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Philosophy

McCurry, J. (2010, July 13). Internet addiction driving South Koreans into realms of fantasy. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/13/internet-addiction-south-korea

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Innovate: Online Journal of Online Education, 5(3). Retrieved from http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol5_issue3/H._Sapiens_Digital-__From_Digital_Immigrants_and_Digital_Natives_to_Digital_Wisdom.pdf

Selwyn, N. (2009). The digital native – myth and reality. Aslib Proceedings, 61(4), 364–379. doi:10.1108/00012530910973776

Yonhap News Service (2012, July 22). High-speed wireless internet distribution tops 100%. The Korea Times. Retrieved from http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/07/123_115610.html

 

Reflections on Semester 1: No Limits.

After a semester as a student again, I’m more aware of some of the problems in my own classes, some of which is my own making. In my next few posts I’m going to focus on issues that were particularly frustrating and consider how I would have approached them, and also how this applies to my own teaching. The first post is below.

Limitations

One of the most frustrating things I encountered this semester was limitations. In one of my classes, I was limited in which journals I could use for my research assignments, and as a result, doing research became very difficult. While 30-50 journals to choose from may seem adequate on the surface, other limitations in the titles of the articles, content, or focus of the journals themselves made the projects near impossible to do in a timely manner. If I had access to journals in their paper forms, skimming for main ideas, themes, etc, would be a lot easier- pick up the journal and look at the cover. When working with journals that are a mix of on and offline, and some that haven’t updated since 2007, it’s hard to “browse” for themes as one could at a library. To visually “browse” each journal via Google Scholar is likewise a daunting task.

While the intent of the exercise, as far as I could surmise, was to familiarize us grad students with the current issues in what the professor determined were the major publications in the field (which I should hope she is a capable of determining). Okay, this seems like a reasonable goal. I’m not sure, however, that throwing a list of about 4 dozen titles at the students and telling them to determine the themes AND write a paper about it in under 25 hours is a reasonable request. And I have access to some of the fastest internet anywhere, when I’m home. *sigh*

Given the educational goal, how would I have run this exercise? I may have required 50-60% of the research to be pulled from the reading list instead of 100%. It seems to me that there is much crossover in discipline and much can be gained from drawing on sources parallel to education and technology. In any normal literature review, a scholar would pull from all appropriate, peer-reviewed sources, books, etc, in an effort to give strength to her position.

Another aspect may have been giving a list of recent trends and having students make the connections between the trend and how technology is being applied, or seeking consistency in the technology used to create or support this trend. Another possibility would be a list of old trends and have students examine what has supplanted it and how.

Finally, I would have provided students with explicit access to examples of good, better and great work with explanations as to how each example met the criteria I was expecting, especially if I were going to be a stickler for format on equal grounds to content.

Applying it to My Classes
Students new to a content area can find a lack of limits paralyzing. This is particularly true if they don’t have a clear vision of the goal and requirements of the project. Limiting my students to a single method and content stymies creativity and only assists my grading ease. Giving student freedom in either what they present or how they present it (keeping the course goal constant) allows freedom for variation in interest or ability. When both the content and the method present challenges, but only one is relevant to the course, either teacher, student, or both end up missing the educational goal of the activity.

An example of this is most certainly the mandatory online homework that I had to assign to my students last semester. The vast majority didn’t even register, let alone do the assignments. As a result, most students, and certainly the students most in need of it, missed out on the practice that could have helped them on their assessments.

The other issue is assessment. My program doesn’t have measurable outcomes, and as such it is impossible to identify whether or not students succeeded. Having measurable goals and keeping these in mind make assessment easy. Without them, assessment is subjective at best and more likely impossible.

Your Take
How have limitations served or hampered your students’ learning? How can you change how you limit your students or what you limit in your classes to help your students reach their educational goals?

Is there anything I missed? Do I have any wrong assumptions or reactions? What do you think I could be doing better?

Pre-Grad School Reflections

I have reactivated my blog/site as I’m starting grad school in a few weeks, and given that I’ll be taking classes entirely online for a degree that specializes in online learning, I thought it might be wise to track my experiences and reflect on them to help make my own online learning development better for my own students. And it will be a fantastic procrastination tool.

While the application process for the degree was fairly simple, the initial enrolment procedures have been anything but. Universities, I am rediscovering, are a labyrinth of administrative protocols, a plethora of loosely-interconnected websites all requiring some sort of informational input, and occasionally conflicting or unclear information. Facing each different interface for the first time and determining the needs of the site is always a challenge. And I’m pretty good with this whole interwebs stuff.

Another concern I’ve been coming up against since receiving my letter of invitation to the program less than a week ago is the coming registration tomorrow evening. It took some scrounging to find at least screenshots on how to register, what the page was going to look like, etc, so that I could make the best use of my time. I still haven’t determined if there’s an easy way to know which courses are online and which are on campus. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

These ideas are especially pertinent as I teach (and have been teaching) some variation on blended classes for about 4 or 5 years now. The take-away for me here is, remembering that my students are often working in L2 (their second language) to:

  1. Keep visual input to a bare minimum. Branding is reassuring, but too many options leading me out of a page to somewhere else aren’t helpful. I need to clearly know what I’m supposed to do, where I’m supposed to enter information, exactly what is required, and how to get all that done. Video demos are helpful. Help pages (popups/AJAX) are good. Rabbit-holing through series of links and general search boxes only mildly assistive, and then only when I can find what I’m looking for. It’s also very annoying.
  2. One page does one thing. See above.
  3. Succinct lists of what I need to do in one place, and auto-updating checklists of what I’ve accomplished.  In my invitation letter I received a checklist that was for every possible situation. I know the university is making it easier on themselves to send out one list for each student with sub-sections, but it’s not easier for the student. Ideally, I’m told where to log in and create a profile. Then I get to answer a questionnaire determining my next steps. From there, the website takes me through a full process where I can save my process at any step, much as my university’s online application process was completed. It was easy to see what was done, what needed to be done, and for me to walk away and get additional information without losing what I had started.
  4. Websites that work. If I need to accomplish something important, like getting my ID produced so I can take exams, it’s good to have that webpage functioning. That is all. For my students, testing, testing, testing. My students this year have to use a website created by a textbook supplier. We found out a couple weeks into the process of getting students signed up that they couldn’t use the dominant web browser (or the version after that, but needed at least TWO upgrades) to use the web page. And professors couldn’t use the most recent Mac OS X version with the materials we had been provided. Well, that would have been good to know going in.