pedagogy

In this podcast we feature a conversation with Barbara Sawhill, Director of the Cooper International Learning Center at Oberlin College, and Jude Higdon, Instructional Technology Support Team Coordinator at the University of Minnesota. This discussion was recorded at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Some technology experts question whether we can use the term "Web 2.0" in a meaningful way since many of the components have existed since the early days of the web. There are many definitions floating around for the term. What is meant by "Web 2.0", specifically from a pedagogical standpoint? And how can these tools be used to enhance learning?

Barbara Sawhill co-presented the session "Who's Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS? A Digi-Drama About Fear 2.0"at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Video and slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. This plenary session is entitled, "Connectivism".

In this 58 minute podcast, we feature a session by George Siemens, Associate Director for the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, entitled, "Connectivism". This speech was recorded at the ELI 2008 Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

The waves of technological and social change have eroded the effectiveness of traditional views regarding what, how, and why to educate. To effectively educate learners, fundamental assertions need to be rethought: the design of schools and curriculum, the nature of knowledge in a connected world, the relationship between educator and learner, the means and methods of authenticating information and knowledge, and, perhaps most significantly, what it means “to know” in complex, rapidly developing, and chaotic environments. This session will present connectivism as a theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit.

 

In this 50-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from Edward Chapel and Richard Wolfson in a session entitled Putting the Pedagogy First: The Classroom 2008 Project. They explain the project, which explores how  technology can be infused into the pedagogical practices of faculty as opposed to having faculty adapt to new technologies as they appear in teaching spaces.

A number of SL users will be attending the Spring ELI focus session on Virtual Learning Environments, and there will probably be back-channel interactions going on in SL during the conf.  Nick Noakes has created a wikipage where you can connect with other SLers who will be there in one avatar or another.

Via Axel Bruns, via Howard Rheingold, comes this post from DIY Media Weblog, which reports on a recent attempt by Todd Richmond to model the changing roles of producer-consumer and teacher-student in the digital economy.

Richmond is Adjunct Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television, and a Fellow at USC's Annenberg Center and its Center for Creative Technologies. The DIY Media post highlighted a recent presentation of his on October 19, at an Annenberg seminar.

Richmond's presentation highlighted the phenomenon of convergence, and its implications for the future of education, comparing "the future technology-triggered transformation of educational institutions" to "the 'perfect storm' that hit the music industry when several different factors intersected to disrupt the existing institutions for making, distributing, and monetizing music". It's a familiar argument -- and, to a degree, a self-interested one. After all, we're all in the business these days of promoting our own "disruptiveness".

So, the PLE bit of the JISC's e-learning programme has nearly finished its reference model work.

I hope this doesn't mean that it's already too late to respond to some of the issues raised, and hopefully, to contribute to the direction it takes. Regular readers of my blog will know I'm not entirely happy with the PLE concept as it seems to be developing -- all the more reason for me to engage.

The Discussion notes from the JISC/CETIS PLE Event raise four key issues.

To try and focus my discussion, I'll restrict comments to the first three of these.

...There were opposing views on current institutional systems

Ie., we can't agree on whether existing systems enhance or detract from learning. Good. This debate is important, because it focuses on pedagogy and how best to support learner engagement - ground-up, first-principles stuff. May it flourish. But we've been sidetracked! Instead of discussing the benefits and constraints of existing support systems, there appears to be an emerging consensus that VLEs are Just Not Good, Mmmmkaaaaay. Instead, there's a battle going on between those for whom the PLE is really a VLE in sheep's clothing, versus those who believe the PLE is its antithesis.

In October of 2005, I emailed about forty individuals who have expertise in faculty development as it pertains to instructional technologies. In my email, I asked them this question: in a workshop or training program that's designed to help instructors learn to use online technologies in ways that promote active, student-centered learning, at what point should those instructors actually be introduced to the technology? That is, should one discuss the technology before discussing the pedagogy, or should one discuss the technology after discussing the pedagogy, or should one blend together the discussions of technology and pedagogy in an iterative manner? As it turned out, there was a clear consensus among the 37 individuals who responded to my query; I discuss that consensus in the attached PDF, which comprises a synthesis of the responses as well as an appendix that includes all of the responses in their entirety. -- Mark
PS I've replaced the original PDF, which wasn't opening in all versions of Acrobat. It now should open in any version. -m

Though I don't think it uses the word "folksonomy" anywhere, this article in eSchool News contains -- if you can wade through the gee-whiz style -- a couple of neat ideas for application of tagging tools in the classroom. The examples are provided by K-12 educators but could easily be adapted to any instructional context.

One part of my job as Instructional Program Manager is to help faculty members develop pedagogical strategies that work effectively in an online environment. There are a number of challenges to this, and the primary one is probably the looming presence of the technology itself: that is, the complex and powerful online course management system is there in front of the instructors -- they can almost stub their toe on it -- and so when they start to think about incorporating an online component into one of their face-to-face courses, the first thing that comes into their mind is "how do I use the technology" rather than "what do I do with the technology." In other words, they are well aware that they need guidance and probably even training with regard to the nuts and bolts aspects of logging on, making online quizzes, using the online gradebook, and so on. But this focus on the technology AS technology causes them to overlook less tangible things, such as the need to develop new pedagogical approaches, and the need (and opportunity) to make online learning as active and student-centred as possible. On a day to day basis, this problem is manifested in the fact that many of our faculty mistakenly think that our unit -- The Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3)-- is a kind of "technology help desk," the place that they phone when they are having a problem with a computer or with software. In short, it's lamentable that LT3 sometimes gets confused with IST (Information and Systems Technology); and sometimes we are also confused with other quite distinct units, such as Distance Education.