How is learning presumed to occur within the context of Web 2.0?

Knowledge is constructed by the learners. Social interaction plays a prominent role, as they learn from one another’s insights, questions, and answers. According to the article, Minds on Fire, “we participate, therefore we are.” As far as I agree that social learning occurs, I want to acknowledge that there are other types of learning such as constructivism. Furthermore, social learning is not the all-encompassing way of learning. For instance, the strength of the learner plays a major role. Benjamin Franklin taught himself much of his knowledge by candlelight while sitting up in the room above the printing press where he worked. The effectiveness of study groups, however defined (large group instruction where we learn from peers’ questions and answers or small groups of four or five students huddled around a table working through their chemistry lab), cannot be understated, as social learning plays a major role in the formation of knowledge for me personally. I am keenly aware of my teachable moments when in conversation with knowledgeable friends and how my former way of thinking can change based on their input. Speaking of online communities that extend a person’s social networks for constructing knowledge include wikis, blogs, and tagging sites.

What are the differences in the role of the learner and the facilitator as compared to ‘traditional’ learning environments? (Do you consider these roles and processes viable/valid given your philosophy of learning?)

Students are the future, not teachers. Guide on the side versus sage on the stage is my preferred philosophy of learning. Have I already attained the art of teaching my classes this way? I have a lot to learn before I can go that far. Nonetheless, I aspire toward this newer model of teaching because I believe that students need to have ownership of their learning. If they construct it with one another, it becomes more meaningful to them. The role of the teacher as a facilitator, one who sets up a challenging and stimulating learning environment with the necessary resources for exploration and learning to occur, is appropriate toward the goal of educating lifelong learners. In a more traditional learning milieu, on the other hand, students take on a passive role. Teachers are the experts who deliver the content; students listen and ask a question or two.

What implications do these shifts have for how we think about designing learning environments?

John Dewey eloquently described one alternative in reaction to these kinds of shift when he talked about “productive inquiry.” As defined in the article Mind on fire, productive inquiry is “the process of seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.” For this reason, students need to be the active participants in knowledge construction. Teachers need to design instruction so that students are learning by doing as they pursue solutions to relevant problems with attainable challenge. Giving students access to one another, as well as other contributors in the field such as researchers or foreign-nation peers, needs to be a key ingredient in the learning environment in the Web 2.0 era.

Shifting the idea of how people learn, especially students, is a hard task to accomplish in a nation that already has their philosophy set. As mentioned in the article “Learning, Working, and Playing in the Digital Age,” these digital natives learn best through self-discovery and constant interaction/communication. Students should be able to communicate openly and freely with various sources throughout their learning experiences. Students collaborating with one another or with experts in the area of interest proves to both be instrumental in fostering deep connections that brings this style of learning to a higher level. In the article, “Minds on Fire,” it reinforces the concept that it is not about what the students are learning but about how they are learning. I had read an article before called, “Changing what and how children learn in school using computer technologies,” that stated that learning happens through, “active engagement, peer interaction, interaction and feedback, and connections to real world contexts.” All of these areas are key to helping students of today learn. With this in mind, educators need to be willing to change the traditional practices that are embedded so deeply in our country.

As an educator, I believe that when shifting to an approach of discovery based learning, the role of the educator changes dynamically. Instead of the teacher being the head of the classroom, they must instead become more of a coach/advisor to student learning. Students should have the freedom to research and complete projects in an area that is of interest to them. As mentioned in the articles, there are various projects already started where students can actually participate in submitting valuable data as part of research and development of new findings in science. Beyond the mentioned sources in the articles, I have also heard of a program called GLOBE which allows students to collaborate with scientists to help collect and evaluate data for different science experiments. When taking this approach, students are able to demonstrate their learning in a manner that best suits their learning style. Keeping in mind the idea of multiple intelligences, teachers could best embrace this by having student’s independently complete Web 2.0 tasks that meet their needs. Students could be creating presentations, videos, music, etc. to help demonstrate their understanding of the subject they are learning. This approach motivates student learning and allows them to actively engage in their learning.

Educators would need to help foster a community that collaborates with each other and safely with the outside world. The first examples that came to my mind that would benefit communication and collaboration safely in an educational setting were blogs, wiki’s, Edmodo, and Google Docs. Through all of these tools, students can talk and collaborate on tasks to help enhance their thinking and create an environment of effective learning. With Edmodo, students could even have interaction with their teacher as well as to discuss questions about the core content being learned in class. Blogs, Wiki’s, and Google Docs all are built with the understanding that more than one person can work at a time on a given project or task. Students can edit, share, modify, enhance, etc. each other’s work in order to make a more cohesive project that demonstrates thorough understanding of the concepts being presented.

As we start to move from the traditional teaching environment to more social and discovery based learning environments, we need to keep in mind that many administrations will have a hard time changing from teacher-centered lecture style classrooms. With the constraints of testing and the demands for high scores, administrators are not as open to changing learning styles unless bountiful research backs this approach. We would need to be okay viewing a classroom as a working, non-structured area where students are talking, researching, doing different projects, etc. Also, the constraints of allowing students, especially in the primary grades, to access these Web 2.0 tools would need to be eliminated in order to best meet each students learning need.

-Marie

• How is learning presumed to occur within the context of Web 2.0?According to “Minds on Fire,” student learning increases when students are allowed to view each other’s work, work collaboratively in groups, and see the feedback given to each other. When student’s can see each other’s work, a sense of collaboration, but also competition is created.  “Minds on Fire” mentions a course where students were able to see each other blog posts after a few weeks – and when they did so, their standards of work increased.  Our competitive nature kicks in and sometimes boosts our willingness and eagerness to learn.With all of the different ways that students learn, Web 2.0 tools provide a variety of ways to reach every student in the classroom, no matter what their learning style.  I really liked the example of using the web to like older generations with the young kids in school today.  Teachers were able to get a message across that may have been lost had it not been told by someone who lived the era, a generation removed.
• What are the differences in the role of the learner and the facilitator as compared to ‘traditional’ learning environments? (Do you consider these roles and processes viable/valid given your philosophy of learning?)The learner must take more responsibility for themselves and their education in these types of settings.   The teacher can facilitate but can not be the basic source of knowledge for students.
  Students must seek to interact with their peers and continue discussions on the topics outside the tradition classroom. This is the way learning should always occur, whether “traditional” or not. Learners are living in a “demand-pull” world where resources are rich and expectations of learning are very high.  With so much information at their fingertips, learners must recognize their abilities to change and add to their knowledge at any time.Facilitators, according to Brown, must understand that today’s digital learners are constant multi-processors. We must then teach them in the new way that they learn. And because their are no established sources of information on the web, we must teach our students to question and rethink all sources of information.
• What implications do these shifts have for how we think about designing learning environments?These shifts allow us to create learning environments that are conducive to all student learning.  These shifts, especially web dependence,  change what is expected of students in the 21st century.  Brown alluded to the fact that because students are expected to know more and problems solve better, we need to consider the “new normal” when creating learning environments for these “web-based” learners.Brown also points out that our students are “do-ers.”  They want to see what is being done around the world via the web and then try and out do it.  We need to challenge them to continue this practice!
• Courtney Blackhurst

Week 2: Learning and Web 2.0
Within the context of Web 2.0, learning occurs in a vastly different way than it has in the past. Understanding is reached not by simply consuming knowledge, but by interacting with and participating in discussions and activities which provide knowledge. Connecting with individuals who have similar, as well as different, experiences from the learning in order to build an understanding of a concept is a key difference in learning in this day and age. It is also an incredible means of learning about less “popular” subjects as anyone can post anything about any arbitrary subject to the web with ease and without expertise.

The shift to Web 2.0 has caused a change in the role of the facilitator in many ways. Prior to the Internet, learning was all done through the facilitator, teacher, or expert. As much learning and understanding has shifted to the Internet, the facilitator is no longer the sole resource for learners to access in order to acquire information. Learners may access information from various organizations and people from across the world. Most of today’s jobs require employees to access information and problem-solve without much guidance or direction. As children progress through school and become adults, it is imperative that educators prepare them for the jobs they will have upon completing their formal education. Web 2.0 allows educators to provide students with the practice participating in the Open Knowledge Exchange Zone by allowing students to combine knowledge from multiple sources, use knowledge to learn from others’ knowledge, and to create representations of knowledge (Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by Brown & Adler).

In designing appropriate learning environments for the 21st century learners entering our schools today, it is important that we are considerate of the shifts occurring in the way students learn as well as the shift in the jobs coming into existence. We must consider the end result we anticipate for our students, what they will be expected to do upon completion of their formal education. Flexibility, initiative, and a basic understanding of various subjects are required of most employees nowadays. Therefore, we must create learning environments using the resources Web 2.0 provides in order to fulfill the current needs of students as well as prepare them for their futures.

-Erika

• How is learning presumed to occur within the context of Web 2.0?

In the context of Web 2.0, learning is through a community of engagement, which allows students to participate with other learners about the material.  In this process, they are able to construct their own understanding of the content and understand it at a deeper level.  In this way, Web 2.0 learning is a form of constructivist learning or as described by The Difference Between Instructivism, Constructivism, and Connectivism, by Terry Heick (http://www.teachthought.com/learning/the-difference-between-instructivism-constructivism-and-connectivism/), a form of connectivism in which learning is occurring in informal ways with others through the use of technology.  This is an interesting article as an introduction to the concept of connectivism, which is a term that is very new to me.  I was intrigued by the concept of bricolage from the John Seely Brown article, Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age.  I have students who share with the class a particular site, video, or article that they found helpful in understanding of applying the lecture material.  I have other students who design their own lecture outlines, study guides, and Facebook pages and share these with other students.  They learn and  continue to learn how to learn from each other.

• What are the differences in the role of the learner and the facilitator as compared to ‘traditional’ learning environments? (Do you consider these roles and processes viable/valid given your philosophy of learning?)

As a facilitator, I often need to take a step back and allow the students to apply the material on their own.  In my online courses, I do this by encouraging discussion and assigning research assignments on the material.  These assignments encourage the students to find articles that relate to a particular topic or apply textbook concepts to real life situations.  For example, in describing the process of mitosis, I encourage discussion about cancer and assign individual research projects about cancer.  Since most have personal experience within their family, this allows them to understand better why the process of mitosis is important and how problems with this process can lead to cancer.  I like to call these activities, meaning-making, or “Why do I care?” activities.  In my on campus, face to face courses, I have very large lecture sections that tend more towards a traditional learning environment with presentation of content to the students.  However, I incorporate discussion, video segments, and short quizzes to encourage interaction and learning.  My face to face course does break into smaller 16 person lab sections in which I can lean more towards a facilitator as the students work in small groups to apply the material from lecture.  I often have students say that they learn much more in the lab setting, as they can utilize higher order thinking by working together on the lab.  Becoming a facilitator of learning was difficult for me when I first started teaching about ten years ago, since my models of college instruction came from the traditional large lecture setting, such as my freshman 8AM biology lecture with 800 people in Schwab Auditorium!  However, looking back, I see that I was simply memorizing material instead of truly understanding or learning that material.   I have had to turn my own perception of learning around as I have developed my teaching style over the years.

• What implications do these shifts have for how we think about designing learning environments?

Brown describes how attention spans of managers (and most kids!) ranges between 30 seconds to five minutes.  Students are used to constantly checking their phones for text messages and emails.  Sitting through a 50 minute traditional lecture would lead to boredom and loss of attention.  I have tried to format my “lectures” with constant questions and interaction to maintain my students’ attention.  In lab, I allow them to use their phones, tablets, and laptops to help them as they work together on the material.  For anatomy lessons using lab models, many students take pictures of the models with their phones and make digital flashcards to use to study whenever they have a few minutes available.  Some students make videos of themselves pointing out parts of anatomical models that they can watch again and again until they have the material mastered.  I promote the use of these tools and encourage the students to develop the best method to learn the material that works for them.  In this way, I also learn new methods to use in my future teaching!  A major implication of Web 2.0 is that educators need to not be afraid of using these tools, but instead develop the  best ways to use the evolving tools in their own learning environments.

How is learning presumed to occur within the context of Web 2.0?

Learning within the context of Web 2.0 is successful for multiple reasons. As Brown states, the Web is a place where “learning, working, and playing co-mingle”. This quote really stood out to me because I find it to be very true in my life as an educator, co-worker, family member, and friend. The Web helps me in different ways depending on the role that I am playing at the time. For example, I am able to give advice to my brother who lives in Colorado about the house he is thinking about purchasing, while at the same time I can be exchanging E-mails with a co-worker and setting up conference dates with my principal. The web ultimately helps us to find information, share the information, and use the information in a new way, or in a new context.  One of the topics brought up in Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age reminded me of a book that I have read. Brown discussed the idea that not one person is the expert when it comes to learning within the context of Web 2.0. Brown says that the real expert is the “community mind”. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki is a fascinating read. The book highlights many examples proving that large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant those elite few are. For example, the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged. The average was closer to the ox’s true weight than the separate estimates made by cattle experts. I believe that this shows the “power of crowds” and the internet reminds me of one huge “crowd”. When you mix together a diverse group of individuals who all have their own ideas, the potential for learning is great.
*If you are looking for an interesting summer read, I would highly recommend this book!

What are the differences in the role of the learner and the facilitator as compared to “traditional” learning environments? Do you consider these roles and processes viable/valid given your philosophy of learning?

The “traditional” learning environment consists of one classroom containing students of the same age. These students are following the instructions given by an educator. The facilitator’s role is to teach an outlined curriculum and the role of the learner is to demonstrate the mastery of the content. In a Web 2.0 learning environment, students are listening to stories and telling their own stories. Students are engaging in discussion/study groups. They are coming up with new ways of thinking and they are sharing ideas. Each student has unique interests, which sometimes are not common interests with the students they are surrounded by. Students can navigate using the Web to find people with common interests. The role of the facilitator changes because they are providing their students with more access and more opportunities to learn the curriculum. The role of the learner is still to demonstrate the mastery of the content; however, they can succeed by using multiple intelligences. I believe the overall goal (learning the content) is still achieved. Learning can occur OUTSIDE of the classroom.

What implications do these shifts have for how we think about designing learning environments?

Brown believes that the “digital kid” is always multiprocessing. This is a hard concept to really grasp if you are unable to do this yourself. For example, I am unable to comprehend what I am reading if I am also listening to music or watching TV. I find myself doing a lot of re-reading when I do try to multi-task; however, students in our classrooms may be successful with multiprocessing. When designing a learning environment, I believe it is becoming important to allow flexibility and freedom to a certain degree. There is not only one way to complete something today. Kids growing up in this era use a trial and error method. They go out and find what works and adapt the information to fit their individual needs. If we set up a learning environment that allows our students to do just this, we may witness amazing learning taking place that is meaningful (like a 7 year-old student learning about penguins from an expert at an Ivy League University).

Welcome to Week 2! Here’s what we’ve got coming up for this week.

• Reading: Brown & Adler, Minds on Fire; Brown, Learning, Working & Playing in the Digital Age; Bellinson & Garrett, Tips on Commenting
• Diigo: comment on Brown & Adler
• Blog post (see page 2 under Lessons>Week 2 in Angel for suggested questions or topics to consider
• Blog comments: comment on at least two other students’ posts

If you are new to Diigo, you can tag, annotate, and comment very easily by downloading a browser extension. They have extensions for Google Chrome and Firefox. You can find more detailed information from their Help page here (it also includes short video tutorials).

A little about me, my name is Hannah and I work for Education Technology Services managing the Media Commons initiative here at Penn State. I’ve been working for the university for about 10 years now after graduating in 2002 with a B.A. in Communications Film/Video Production.