Author Archives: gxh40

Week 9 – Educator Podcast

Podcast with John Kotter

In this week’s assignment, I created a podcast by interviewing an educator, Dr. John Kotter.

https://sites.psu.edu/ghall/wp-admin/post.php?post=719&action=edit

Why Interview John Kotter?

He is a good candidate because he is internationally known educator and widely regarded as the foremost speaker on the topics of Leadership and Change.  His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually achieve successful transformations. The Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and a graduate of MIT and Harvard, Kotter’s vast experience and knowledge on successful change and leadership have been proven time and again.

What was Podcast Process?

I interviewed Dr. Kotter over the phone about his book, A Sense of Urgency. I recorded the interview using Garage Band, an app on my Apple computer. I edited the interview to 10 minutes, down from 60 minutes, using Adobe Audition.

What Do I want to Adopt in My Own Practice?

I want to use podcasts in my professional career as a way to interact with thought-leaders. I have a website – www.driveontheocean.com – and will create an internal site on my company’s intranet using a software, SAP JAM, which we have. My JAM site will be a place for me to upload thought-leader inteviews of educators I believe are changing the world through education, such as Salman Khan.

John Kotter Podcast

 

Although Dr. Kotter doesn’t talk directly about social media, he reflects on his book using social media, which is significant.

Week 8 – Pokemon Go

How can principles from Pokemon Go be leveraged within corporate learning settings?

An augmented reality project was designed by a team I led at SAP to support learning goals at a premiere sales event in January with networking platforms, education and strategy sessions, expert thought-leaders, and sales leaders. Working with a team of award-winning creative design professionals and AR experts, we built, launched SAP’s first successful AR campaign. Augmented Reality ‘experiences’ were designed to be unlocked with mobile devices to bring printed materials to life. These experiences also offered the following:

  • Exclusive Content
  • Surveys
  • Sweepstakes Mini-Games

The software platform Auasma was used to design enhanced reality interactions. In these exercises photos or videos are used, trigger points are selected, and then inserted to ‘hover over’ the image. Learners look at the image through an iphone or ipad, where the images came alive.

Last year, Pokémon Go, a popular augmented reality application, captured the hearts of youth and adults by encouraging them to explore the communities for elusive Pokémon. Pokémon Go, from a game design typology perspective, is a mobile alternate reality game, which adopts game mechanics from card collection and trading, and from treasure hunts.

Pokémon originally began as a Japanese Nintendo game in 1996 for Gameboy and then launched in the United States in 1998. It’s a role-playing game, and you control the protagonist, who is on a quest to capture all 150 pocket monsters (Pokémon) by throwing Poké Balls at them. This is ostensibly scientific field research to catalog every Pokémon for the protagonist’s mentor, a professor. Along the way, this main character cares for and strengthens his Pokémon by battling others.

By investigating the fandom that surrounds Pokémon, we can uncover 9 important principles that can energize informal learning strategies in a corporate environment:

  1. Active Learning Principle: Design learning environments where learners are engaged in active and critical, not passive, learning.
  2. Design Principle: Design learning environments where learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.
  3. Symbolism Principle: Design learning environments where learning about and coming to appreciate the game as a complex system is central to the experience.
  4. On-Going Learning Principle: Design learning environments where learners must adapt to new or changed conditions at higher and higher levels of the game. Leverage cycles of new learning, which require learners to adapt to new or changed conditions.
  5. Situated Meaning Principle: Design learning environments where the meanings of various aspects of the game world are discovered bottom-up via experience in-context.
  6. Multi-modal Principle: Design learning environments to where meaning and knowledge is built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.
  7. Intuitive Knowledge Principle: Design learning environments where intuitive or tacit knowledge can be built-up in repeated practice and experience.
  8. Affinity Group Principle: Design learning environments where knowledge can be built-up in association with an affinity group, where it can be respected or even honored.
  9. Insider Principle: Design learning environments to where the learner is viewed as an insider – a teacher, and producer, not just a consumer – who is able to customize the learning experience and domain/game.

 

 

Week 6 – Ed Tech Tools

Week 6 – Ed Tech Tools

The following Ed Tech sites are very interesting:

  1. Google Cardboard
  2. Versal
  3. Noisli
  4. Teachers Pay Teachers
  5. Games for Change

There is so much creative content out there – it is mind boggling!

1-GOOGLE CARDBOARD

Remember View Masters, those devices that showed two pictures of the same thing, but separated so they looked 3-D? Imagine those, but a LOT better. A virtual reality (VR) headset gives users 360-degree experiences in just about any environment imaginable, and Google has recently introduced its own.

Google Cardboard is: (1) an app you load onto a smartphone which delivers a variety of virtual reality experiences; (2) a viewer (pictured below), which is where you put the phone in order to view these experiences. The viewer comes in its original cardboard version and is also available in other materials and colors, designed by other companies. Google even offers downloadable instructions to make your own viewer at home.

Once you’ve set up the app and gotten your hands on the viewer of your choice, you can then download other VR apps that work inside Cardboard: travel apps, concerts, games, even a camera app that allows you to turn images from your own life into VR memories. Here are some ways VR headsets could enhance learning:

  • More advanced and complex science experiments and simulations can occur with no equipment.
  • Students can take tours and experience simulations of historical places and events, archaeological digs, and unique geological and natural formations.
  • Students can practice public speaking or presenting to a simulated “audience.”
  • Virtual experiences could be used as prompts for creative writing assignments or to provide material for research projects.

Watch as these students experience Cardboard for the first time. One of the most exciting Cardboard-related projects is the Expeditions Pioneer program, where Google supplies classrooms with a set of Cardboards and takes them on incredible tours of far-off places. As of this writing, they are still accepting applications from classrooms that would like to participate.

The Cardboard is for sale through Google, but lots of other manufacturers are also making their own. This one* already has over a thousand positive customer reviews on Amazon. As the video above illustrates, there really is nothing like experiencing it for yourself, and at a cost of less than $20, it’s definitely worth a try!

2-VERSAL

If you’ve already experimented with flipping your classroom, it may be time to take it to the next level. With Versal, you can create full courses that live online, using any combination of text, video, downloadable PDFs, multiple choice quizzes, and short response questions. But it doesn’t stop there: Versal also offers a drag-and-drop menu of items that would normally require advanced coding, but don’t in Versal: interactive diagrams, Thinglink images, Quizlet flashcards, timelines, LaTeX math equations, music tools, and even an interactive chess game can be added into a course if the teacher wants it there.

Accountability is built right in: When you set up a course, you can track the progress of learners who are taking it, with the ability to see which students have taken which lesson and how far along they are. Learner reports also show scores on quizzes.

Not only would a tool like Versal work beautifully to bundle and deliver your regular content, it would also be a wonderful platform for differentiating instruction for advanced learners, offering training or professional development to employees, or having students create their own courses to demonstrate learning.

 3-NOISLI

Noisli is basically a white-noise generator, offering a menu of different sounds you can combine to your liking, creating a nice hum in the background that can help you stay focused. As I type, my favorite combination of sounds is going in the background: “coffee shop” set on a higher volume, with “rain” and “fireplace” set on medium. So it’s like I’m working in a coffee shop, sitting right by a fireplace, while it’s raining outside. It’s lovely.

 4-TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS 

Teachers Pay Teachers (or TpT) is a community of millions of educators who come together to share their work, their insights, and their inspiration with one another. THEY are the first and largest open marketplace where teachers share, sell, and buy original educational resources. That means immediate access to a world of expertise and more time to focus on students and teaching. I  bought an ebook for $25. I am amazed at the creativity involved.

5-GAMES FOR CHANGE

 I played a gamed, Never Alone, profiled on http://gamesforchange.org/. The game received 10/10 stars and required purchase, $14.99, but I was curious to see what it was about that I bought it. World class game makers worked with Alaska Native storytellers and elders to create a game which delves deeply into the traditional lore of the Iñupiat people to present an experience like no other. Never Alone focuses on how life is sacred, how unique cultures are fragile and should be appreciated and preserved.

Never Alone focuses on how life is sacred, how unique cultures are fragile and should be appreciated and preserved. I first noticed the incredible attention to detail: the game’s music was a contemplative, reflective piano. The fonts used were rustic, primitive, and looked-like wood. The graphics faded-in-and-out. The narration was in Iñupiat or Eskimo, and the overall tone was like a drama. The game was very action-packed and engaging. Since the native tribes are supposed to have thrived in a difficult, formidable environment, the first thing that ‘happened’ to me was I was mauled to death by a polar bear. I quickly learned to run and jump to escape it. There was no joy stick or mouse to control my running it was all buttons, like ‘D’, and reminded me of PC video games from the 1990 like Hitman. My path to run away from the bear was obscured by the Apple app ribbon on the bottom of the page.

 

Week 5 Blog Post – June 2017

My module 5 blog post is below, outlined as 4 separate questions:

 

1-What components of critical media literacy, such as social networks,  are most critical given the media streams we encounter on a regular basis?

 

Today, instruction offers a rich, rewarding, and unique learning experience. The educational environment isn’t confined to the classroom but, instead, extends into the home and the community and around the world. Information isn’t bound primarily in books; it’s available everywhere in bits and bytes. Students aren’t consumers of facts. They are active creators of knowledge. Schools aren’t just brick-and-mortar structures – but centers of lifelong learning. In such an environment, the following 7 components of critical media literacy are essential given the media streams we encounter on a regular basis:

  1. Who is conveying this message? (e.g. is the who clear – The Daily Council – or hidden – The Committee of Patriotic Americans Supporting X)
  2. What incentive might they have to convey information from this perspective (e.g., slanted left or right)?
  3. What language and media (e.g., text, audio, video, graphics) are they using to describe this message?
  4. What audience is this message crafted for?
  5. How is the media and language displayed tapping in to commonly held stereotypes or representations or symbols?
  6. How are these points valid or in opposition to current research?
  7. What communication strategies and representations might refute any attempts at misinformation?

These components will help learners to read like fact checkers.That means not just reading “vertically,” on a single page or source, but looking for other sources – as well as not taking “About” pages as evidence of neutrality, and not assuming Google ranks results by reliability. The kinds of duties that used to be the responsibility of editors, of librarians now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses a screen to become informed about the world.

 

The need for these critical fact-checking skills becomes clear when you consider the impact of fake news, outlined in the article, .

Media’s Next Challenge: Overcoming the Threat of Fake News

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/business/media/medias-next-challenge-overcoming-the-threat-of-fake-news.html?_r=1

 

If you have a society where people can’t agree on basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy? The cure for fake journalism is an overwhelming dose of good journalism – and fact-checking but consumers of that journalism.

 

Finally, in the article, Google is not ‘just’ a platform, we see that even search results can be skewed by fringe groups. The authors write: “A vast and growing ecosystem is encroaching on the mainstream news and information infrastructure like a cancer. Google, with all its money and resources, is being “owned” by hate sites who have hijacked its search results”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/11/google-frames-shapes-and-distorts-how-we-see-world?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

If you are not critical in your thinking and a savvy consumer of information, you might mistake fringe-hate speech for fact.

 

2-How has this changed since Alvermann & Hagood’s “New Times”? 
In Critical Media Literacy: Research, Theory, and Practice in “New Times”, authors Alvermann and Hagood discuss the popular consumption of media, which they describe as neither a passive nor a predictable process. Traditional, 20th-century educational practices are predicated on the following assumptions:

 

  • In Alvermann and Hagood’s time, high art was considered superior to common/popular culture. This is the idea that some forms of art “higher”, “better”, or “more cultured” than others. Is classical music a higher form than rock music? Is poetry above detective novels? Most people are aware of a distinction between high and low art. High art is appreciated by those with the most cultivated taste. Low art is for the masses, accessible and easily comprehended. The concept of high and low can be traced back to 18th century ideas about fine art and craft. Writers in the 1700s drew a line between work that is contemplated purely for aesthetics (fine art) and work that has some sort of utility or function (craft). The fine art grouping of painting, sculpture, music, architecture and poetry was established at this time. The familiar phrase “art for art’s sake” comes out of this view, and is so culturally pervasive that many people accept it as the “correct” way to classify art (see diagram).

 

  • Teachers, in Alvermann and Hagood’s time, were considered the active knowledge-organizers and sole providers of information, students are passive knowledge-takers. Instruction should consist primarily of lecturing to students who sit in rows at desks, dutifully listening and recording what they hear.

 

3-Have these assumptions changed since the Alvermann and Hagood article?

Yes. Authors Alvermann and Hagood wrote their article, Critical Media Literacy: Research, Theory, and Practice in “New Times”, in the year 2000. This article was intended as an early warning to educators, a recognition that these assumptions were no longer valid. They predicted that unless education changed certain core assumptions about knowledge and instruction, then schooling in postmodern conditions runs the risk of becoming irrelevant – “building simulated competencies to nonexistent subjects”.

 

  • Our future 21st-century learners, they felt, pushed by various cultural changes, would need to build critical media literacies that legitimate the inclusion of both curricula texts (high art) and the texts of students’ out-of-school literacy lives (common/popular culture).
  • The model of instruction at that time was predicated on information scarcity. Teachers and their books were information oracles, spreading knowledge to a population with few other ways to get it. Alvermann and Hagood recognized that this model was no longer valid.

 

  • The lens on what counts as literacy needs to be broadened. As recently as 150 years ago, literacy was defined and measured as the ability to sign one’s signature as evidence of reading and writing abilities”. Today’s media and communicative technologies are “raising the bar” in terms of what it takes to function competently in the world.

 

  • Our 21st-century learners, they felt, would face what the authors call “:New Times”, must acquire certain analytic tools necessary for critically “reading” all kinds of media texts-film, video, and the The authors argue that critical media literacy should be part of the school curricula.

 

  • Learners, in New Times, will eagerly embrace technology offered and use the media and popular culture to break down the age-old distinctions between high and low culture and shape the creative processes involved in the popular culture around them. The distinctions between in-school and out-of-school literacies will need to be blurred if we are to move beyond the current discourse and to begin to learn about, and to meet, the changing literacy competencies required in a highly technical and global 21st century.

 

4-What are specific steps you would consider to foster critical media literacy within your company?

To foster critical media literacy at my company, a Fortune 100 company, I would look to address the massive revolution in knowledge and information technology. Specifically, I would consider the following next steps:

 

  • Replace our facilitators, starting with our new hire onboarding programs, with trained MA-level teachers and change their job title to “Teacher”. Facilitators, in a corporate setting, act like teachers but usually have no formal teaching training and are largely unaware of the changes in mindset, which most contemporary teaching would bring to their classroom. This lack of mindset largely degrades the quality of instructions they deliver as para-professionals.
  • The facilitator of an onboarding program, for example, functions like an instructor in a school – but with a 20th-century mindset of an untrained educator. If we replaced our facilitators with trained teachers, these educational professionals would bring a nuanced view of their relationship with our employees, their students, and colleagues; the tools and techniques they employ; their rights and responsibilities; the form and content of curriculum; what standards to set and how to assess whether they are being met by employees; and their preparation and ongoing professional development as teachers.
  • Changing the underlying model for corporate education, an education factory, which prepares employees to take-on the responsibilities of their roles as quickly as possible.

Facilitators stand in front of the class and deliver the same lessons year after year. Facilitators are told what, when, and how to teach it. They are required to educate every employee in exactly the same way. They are expected to teach using the same methods as past generations, and any deviation from traditional practices was discouraged by institutional stakeholders.

  • Encouraging facilitators to adapt and adopt new practices that acknowledge both the art and science of learning. The day-to-day job of the facilitator, rather than broadcasting content, is to become one of designing and guiding students through engaging learning opportunities. An educator’s most important responsibility is to search out and construct meaningful educational experiences that allow students to solve real-world problems and show they have learned the big ideas, powerful skills, and habits of mind and heart that meet agreed-on standards of performance. The result is that the abstract, inert knowledge that students used to memorize from dusty textbooks comes alive as they participate in the creation and extension of new knowledge.
  • Shifting the fundamental job of facilitation to no longer distribute facts. Instead, facilitators will help learners learn how to use them by developing their abilities to think critically, solve problems, make informed judgments, and create knowledge that benefits both the students and the company.

Week 2 – Wordle – Summer 2017

My Wordles have to do with three groups of topics, which I am involved with to one extent or another in my role as a learning technologist at a major software company:

Wordles

Systems

Learning Systems, Learning Tools, Learning Apps, Technologies, Learning Management Systems, LCMS, Collaborative, Social Systems, Mixed Reality, Workplace Performance, On-Demand, Video, Robots, 3D Printing, Drones, Wearables, iBeacons, “Affordances”, Gaming Platforms, Audience Response Systems, Usability, User Ready, User Friendly, User Expandable, Next Generation

Next Generation

 

Khan Academy, Social Networks, Machine Learning, Badging, Big Learning Data, Learning Personalization, Mobile Learners, Learning Personalization, Learning Innovators, xAPI, Data Dashboards, User Created Content, Trackable, Social Learning, Document Management, Curation, User Experience, Usability, Governance, Management, Real-Time, Benchmarking

Curation

Curation, “Open” Content”, User Created Content, Performance Support, OJT Curation, The Learner as Curator? Learner “Recommendations”, Ranks, Ratings and Advice, Curation Skills for Learning Professionals, Curation for Transfer, Learning at the Moment of Need, Curation and Learning Designers, Producers, Curation Taxonomy, Tags, Keys, Sorts, Machine Learning, Curation, Curiosity Based Curation, Siri, Alexa, Virtual, Learning Lab, Innovations, Hackathon Ready

 

Week 2 – Learning Philosophy Summer 2017

Philosophy of Learning

My philosophy of learning builds on a deep personal respect for the inspiring and transformative power of learning. A motto I admire is ‘Mens et Manus’, which literally means ‘Mind and Hand’, reflecting my belief that education is always for practical application. Four principles support part 1 of this philosophy, my role as a learning professional, an instructional technologist:

Part 1

  1. Developing and sharpening critical thinking skills

My ultimate goal, as an educator and learning professional, is to help my learners become intelligent and astute consumers of information. Observation, analysis, and reflection help learner help learners make judgments not based on what “seems reasonable” but on critical thinking.

 

  1. Applying technology to accelerate learning

I aspire to apply educational technology to make learning more immediate and personally valuable. By encouraging independent thinking, I press learners to find examples of the concepts taught from their own lives. I look for technological solutions that provide tools to learners, challenging learners to seek the roots of contemporary issues. As I see it, when learners appreciate the relevance of what they are learning, they are intrinsically motivated and engaged.

 

  1. Making learning memorable for today’s learners

I want to design learning material that leave an impression on learners’ minds. To illustrate concepts, I carefully create learning assets and materials that are both attention getting and information producing.

 

  1. Creating a collaborative atmosphere with my clients.

It is very important for me to create a personable, collaborative team atmosphere where clients and colleagues know that I am genuinely invested in the advancement of their projects and initiatives.   I believe my demeanor with clients and colleagues exudes my passion for learning technology. Ultimately, I want my enthusiasm to create a ripple effects in the lives of those I work with or design learning for, empowering them to apply new knowledge to their personal and professional pursuits.

 

Part 2

 

Sixteen principles, part 2 of my philosophy of learning, help me clearly see my learners and the new skills as they are:

 

  1. Living in a world where they must acquire new knowledge and skills on an almost continuous basis. Learners must shift, extend, refine, switch and re-think their assumptions about learning.
  2. Working against a ‘culture of distraction’. Kraus (2012) describes a modern learning environment as one where learners are often overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient:
    1. Increasingly disconnected from the people and events around them
    2. Often unable to engage in so called ‘long-form thinking’
    3. Feel somewhat anxious when their brains are unstimulated
    4. Prioritize their phones, for example, over people
  3. Looking for a wide range of options to access and consume their learning. Flexibility in where and how they learn is increasingly important to them. They want to learn from their peers and managers as much as from experts. Learners reportedly have only 1% of a typical workweek to focus on training and development.
  4. Taking more control over their own development. Learners make themselves more productive by thinking consciously about how they spend their time; deciding which tasks matter most to them and their organizations; and drop­ping or creatively outsourcing the rest

A. Birkinshaw and Cohen (2013) suggest learners should look at all their daily activities and decide which ones are (a) not that important to either you or your firm and (b) relatively easy to drop, delegate, or outsource.

B. Their research sug­gests that at least one-quarter of a typical knowledge worker’s activities fall into both categories, so learners should aim to find or reclaim about 10 hours of time per week.

  1. Building a deep portfolio of skills while working full-time. Learners know that they need to remain ‘current’. Learners need to be not only skilled in their current roles, but be very adaptable to changing business needs.
  2. Acquiring ‘learning agility’. Learning agility describes an ability to ‘flexibly and fluidly’ study, analyze, and understand new situations and new business platforms in a timely manner (Bersin, 2015).
  3. Creating informal learning networks. Learners need to actively pursue tools that develop their informal learning capabilities that can help them learn at the moment of need (Bersin, 2013).
  4. Exploring new ‘learning experiences’ that are like journeys. Theses journey start where the learner is now, and end when the learner is successful, however defined. The end of the journey isn’t just knowing more; it’s doing more (Dirksen, 2015).
  5. Assessing their own progress while on their learning journeys. Learners must understand their own learning gaps or the gaps between their current situation and where they need to be in order to be successful (Dirksen, 2015).
  6. Building their own learning paths. By actively directing their own learning by joining or starting communities of practice, attending conferences and trainings, reading, or writing blogs, these learners understand present applications and future trends.
  7. Recognizing the need to acquire new learning ‘literacies’. New digital literacies are skills that integrates navigation, discovery, borrowing-building upon ideas, judgment, and thoughtful action.
  8. Folding ‘situated action’ into a needs self-assessment. By shifting their focus more toward social learning – in situ with and from others, they create feedback loops for themselves. These feedback mechanisms are important as navigation, experiential learning and judgment all come into play in situ.
  9. Understanding that learning itself is very social. Learning is as much social as cognitive, as much concrete as abstract, and becomes intertwined with judgment and exploration. They see the internet or the web as not only an informational and social resource but also as a learning medium where understandings are socially constructed and shared.
  10. Understanding that content itself is socially constructed. Content is interpreted through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems (Brown, 2008).
  11. Believing that learning involves an ‘enculturation’ process. Learning is social and involves operating in a community of practice. They see that enculturation lies at the heart of learning. It also lies at the heart of knowing. Knowing has as much to do with picking up the nuances of that particular sub-profession as it does with its conceptual frameworks.
  12. Recognizing that the boundaries between the production and consumption of knowledge are fluid. They know that knowledge can get produced wherever serious problems are being attacked and followed to their root (Brown, 200

Week 5 – 21st Century Educators

Becoming a Networked Learner/Teacher

 Over the past two weeks, we have been reading about the change in learner roles and the change in the learning ecology. At the same time, teacher roles have also shifted and changed within the context of Web 2.0. Teachers are becoming facilitators and guides to help students validate knowledge and communities of learning and practice that might be of interest and use to the learners.

This week, we’ll be introduced to some resources that help us to identify ways in which to think about what kinds of tools teachers/facilitators can use to foster connected learning for learners and for themselves. See below for videos, readings and options for further exploration.

 Resources

Blog Post Questions

Please address the following questions:

  • What do you see as the most important areas of professional development for educators to become 21st century educators?
  • What are specific steps you would consider as part of your effort to become a 21st century connected educator?
  • How might you think practically about integrating technology in your classroom or context re: your thoughts on your own practice and possible next steps for professional development and personal learning?

Blog Post Answers

1-What do you see as the most important areas of professional development for educators to become 21st century educators?

 The single most important area of professional development, which will help build 21st century educators, involves cultivating ‘new media Web 2.0 technology literacy’.

New media Web 2.0 technology literacy is defined as an individual’s ability to understand, evaluate, manage, and use Web 2.0 technologies that enhance constructivist and social-constructivist communication and collaboration to create knowledge and learning products.

If in constructivist communication and collaboration learning results from learners’ active creation of their own knowledge/their own representation of the world while engaging in meaningful learning activities, then 21st century educators must learn to help learners engage in knowledge construction via a variety of cognitive activities such as:

  • Access and assess information
  • Organize and integrate it with prior knowledge
  • Generate alternatives
  • Evaluate choices and
  • Draw conclusions

These Web 2.0 tools:

  • Facilitate the cognitive activities that build critical thinking skills
  • Provide opportunities for users to think meta-cognitively by reflecting on their own thinking during learning
  • Regulate their learning by setting goals, modeling, monitoring, and evaluating their progress
  • Categorize, organize and integrate information (e.g., tagging)
  • Offer opportunities with self-reflection, group reflection (e.g., Weblogging)
  • Support individual and group knowledge construction (e.g., wikis).

Instructional Strategies

week-5-instructional-strategies

To employ a social-constructivist view of learning, 21st century educators must learn to emphasize interactions in which knowledge is distributed among others as a condition for learning. In such classroom collaborations, users co-construct knowledge with instructors and their peers while sharing their thinking. This social interaction enables students to learn from different perspectives that challenge them to examine and evaluate their understanding. Built for sharing and participation, Web 2.0 technologies provide teachers with a venue for their students to learn by collaborating in innovative ways that could not be achieved easily through earlier computer and Internet technologies. Three ‘common’ Web 2.0 application literacy skills include:

  • Tagging (Folksonomy)
  • Collaborative writing (Wikis and Docs) and
  • Journaling (Blogs)

2-What are specific steps you would consider as part of your effort to become a 21st century connected educator?

As an Instructional Designer working in a Fortune 500 corporate setting, the first step I took to support my transformation into a 21st century educator is to put together a ‘learning lab’. This learning lab has tools, which support tagging, collaborative writing, and blogging.

I want to leverage blogging to help learners integrate material from E-Learning with ILT resources. Weblogs or blogs, thought of as an electronic personal journal or diary with links to the outside world, are a new media Web 2.0 technology whose content is published on the Web and thus, shared with others through the Internet. Updated daily or frequently, blogs can reflect the personality of the author and provide a venue for individual voice that can reach potentially a world-wide audience. Beyond the personal journal or diary, blogs also provide a channel for conversation between writers and readers. Readers are able to add comments to an individual blog to which the writer can also respond. Through this interaction, a community that includes writers and readers are formed. Blogs can also be connected to other blogs through embedded hyperlinks and all the blogs connect into a blogosphere where all blogs “exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities)”.

I also want to include Web 2.0 collaborative writing Tools – interlinked databased documents known as wikis, and stand-alone collaborative documents commonly understood as word processing documents, presentations, or spreadsheets—enable individuals regardless of location to work together to create common understandings and develop new knowledge. An easy way to understand wikis is by thinking of an online encyclopedia that has been written by many people. The company already has a social collaboration tool called SAP Jam. I plan to investigate this tool more fully and talk with SMEs to better leverage the tools full capabilities in support of the sales training modules I am designing.

3-How might you think practically about integrating technology in your classroom or context re: your thoughts on your own practice and possible next steps for professional development and personal learning?

I might practically integrate technology by actually pursuing purchasing SaaS tools, to accelerate my development by working on real projects with cutting-edge tools such as Qstream, a sales capability platform (see 2 min video), can help measure and manage the strengths of sales teams might have. The app consists of approximately 25 questions, answers, and explanations. Learners answer two questions from their laptop or mobile device every other day. Since many sales people are squeezed for time yet have to understand complex product attributes and competitive positioning, Qstream is an effective way to push this information in a mobile-friendly, highly consumable way. Qstream has a robust backend with a pre-and-post sales skill assessment capability that can yield metrics useful in sales coaching:

  • Overall Proficiency Score vs Win Rate
  • Discovery Skills Score vs Pipeline
  • Team profiles (weak, moderate, strong) on selling skills

I also want to consider using a flipped classroom like the Khan Academy.

week-5-flipped-classroom

To implement a ‘Flipped Classroom’ in my corporate setting, I would task our videographer to record the facilitated sessions and then build-out, as an Instructional Designer, the video modules. This would be a large project to move into a Flipped Classroom format and require SMEs to ensure all content was covered in sufficient details and with sufficient instructions. Peer learning and team exercises might be designed to further enhance the learning opportunities possible.

Week 4 – Connected Learning

Week 4: The Networked Learner

This week we explore a bit more how Web 2.0 is also enabling different roles for learners and teachers/facilitators. Specifically, this week, we read about research focused on helping to reconceptualize the learner’s role. Based on what we see digital learners doing, the learner is networked, entrepreneurial, a maker, a tinkerer (see John Seely Brown video), and passionately involved in topics of interest, such as cooking, gymnastics, stamp collecting, or football.

Assignment

Questions

  1. What are the ways in which the learner role is being conceptualized within the context of connected learning?
  2. Is it different from how it has been conceptualized in the past, and why?
  3. What do you see as challenges to implementing this view of the learner in formal and informal contexts?
  4. How do you see the role of teacher as learner and what challenges and opportunities are possible?

Answers

1. What are the ways in which the learner role is being conceptualized within the context of connected learning?

The learner, referred to as the 21st Century Learner, according to the MacArthur Foundation, will need a love of embracing change, curiosity, bottom-line orientation, and a questioning disposition. Often called the ‘gaming disposition’, epitomized by the mantra, ‘If I ain’t learning, it ain’t fun’, this ‘digitally native’ approach wants to be measured and to see how much they are improving, will produce and consume digital media, and are often inspired by the idea of developing.

21st century learners will need different skill sets than learners in the past. In traditional learning, learners are taught not to ask ‘too many’ questions but instead to listen and repeat the expected answers while learning a set of basic skills, which may no longer serve a modern society. Although learners must acquire knowledge, learning content is not enough. Today, the meaning of ‘knowing’ has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to locate and evaluate information effectively.

Today’s users are active, engaged, and headed into a busy and competitive world full of uncertainties, joining a well-qualified and mobile workforce, building careers that span multiple jobs, positions, and skill-sets, need to be fully prepared for successful learning in the information age.

Learning needs to promote creative and critical approaches to problem-solving and decision-making, introduce ways of working emphasizing virtual communication and collaboration, leverage tools for information-literacy, and foster ICT literacy, or advanced literacy with Information and Communication Technology reflecting the ability to think critically and creatively, about information and about communication, as citizens of the global community using ICT responsibly and ethically.

2. Is it different from how it has been conceptualized in the past, and why?

Yes. A 20th century learning approach would be focused on the content. A 21st century approach to learning is more focused on the tools and skills of re-making that content and becoming the creator and the producer of new learning and digital media that links to a peer environment. The learning, outside the classroom, matters tremendously for the learning inside the classroom. Informal learning and formal learning need to work together in a much more coordinated way.

  • 21st century ‘informal learning’ skills cannot be reduced to simply ‘skills for the workplace involving technology’. Instead, these new skills will involve using tools for creativity, civic engagement, a full-range of experiences.
  • Classroom-based, formal learning will be leveraged to provide learners access to a baseline set of standards, literacies, and expectations about what they need to participate in contemporary society, be reflective, and take opportunity of a safe, shared-space to explore and grow.

The Past

Connected learning transforms classroom spaces and shifts expectations of expertise and content delivery. Instead of following traditional, “banking” models of education, teachers, too, are learners in connected learning environments. I want to underscore that in this context then, the principles of connected learning (e.g., it is interest-driven and collaborative) apply to teachers, as well as their students. Connected learning principles can provide a vocabulary for teachers to reclaim agency over what and how we best meet the individual needs of students in our classrooms. With learners as the focus, teachers can rely on connected learning as a way to pull back the curtain on how learning happens. Considering these possibilities, teachers today are environmental designers: We craft the educational ecosystems in which we mutually learn and build with students. These principles look to structure and support moving educators on their journey to rethink, iterate, and assess how we can make education more relevant to today’s culture and needs of 21st century learners.

3. What do you see as challenges to implementing this view of the learner in formal and informal contexts?

Games and Education Scholar James Paul Gee writes on “Video Games, Learning, and Literacy“. He is writing about the use of video games as an immersive, focused learning vehicle. The challenges to implementing this model are:

  • monetary (cost)
  • creative (the design of these systems)
  • risk (novel), and
  • one of will (boldness) and the will to make a mistake (to learn)

For example, it would take all of these qualities to build a video game-like learning environment. James Paul Gee is an expert on how video games fit within an overall theory of learning and literacy. Video games are a set of problems you have to solve and are there is a theory of learning and design behind video games, like Halo ‘on hard’, describing how people learn, with hundreds of complex variables. Situated and embodied learning is being able to solve problems not just know a body of inert facts.

Cultural Anthropologist Mimi Ito writes on “Connected Learning, Children, and Digital Media“Can social media be used to foster the intellectual engagement, civic engagement, and the personal development of users? Ideally, yes. Ito emphasizes the need to put aside prejudices against new media in order to harness their potential as learning tools: “I think there’s a more general perception in the culture around new media [interest-driven activity should not be conflated with friendship-driven] that it is inherently a space that is hostile to learning. And that’s a perception that I think we really need to work against.”

Further, Learners can build their own connected learning environment by tying together their interests, peer networks, and school accomplishments. With a bit more support, invitations, and infrastructure for connection, the learning possibilities are endless and inspiring to consider. Social, economic, technological, and cultural changes are driving the need for new teaching approaches and new learning designs. Connected learning, in this context, centers on an equity agenda of deploying new media to reach and tries to enable youth who otherwise lack access to opportunity. It is not simply a “technique” for improving individual educational outcomes, but rather seeks to build communities and ‘evolve’ and ‘accelerate’ new, collective capacities for learning and opportunity.

4-Especially, how do you see the role of teacher as learner and what challenges and opportunities are possible?

In Cantril’s TEACHING IN THE CONNECTED LEARNING CLASSROOM, in ‘TEACHER AGENCY AND CONNECTED LEARNING’, Garcia describes connected learning as learning that is engaging, richly productive, and collaborative. Media products/tools can now function as building blocks for unique and personalized productions, which develop expertise that can be networked, amplified, and deployed globally.

Connected learning transforms classroom spaces and shifts expectations of expertise and content delivery. Instead of following traditional, “banking” models of education, teachers, too, are learners in connected learning environments. I want to underscore that in this context then, the principles of connected learning (e.g., it is interest-driven and collaborative) apply to teachers, as well as their students. Connected learning principles can provide a vocabulary for teachers to reclaim agency over what and how we best meet the individual needs of students in our classrooms. With learners as the focus, teachers can rely on connected learning as a way to pull back the curtain on how learning happens.

Considering these possibilities, teachers today are environmental designers: We craft the educational ecosystems in which we mutually learn and build with students. These principles look to structure and support moving educators on their journey to rethink, iterate, and assess how we can make education more relevant to today’s culture and needs of 21st century learners.

Week 2 – Wordle & Philosophy

Week 2 – Personal Learning Philosophy v1

learning-wordle

Directions

Respond to these questions in a blog post that you should title Personal learning philosophy v1. Identify 3-5 key words that represent your post and attach those to your blog. After you have posted your blog, go to www.wordle.net.

Reflect on your philosophy of learning.

*Please remember that this is a philosophy of learning–not teaching or design, so the focus should be on learning.

1-What is your view about learning and how it occurs?

I view learning as a process where learners build knowledge as they explore the world around them, observe and interact with phenomena, and the physical world, converse and engage with others, and make connections between new ideas and prior understandings.

  • Learning is active – process of engaging and manipulating objects, experiences, and conversations in order to build mental models of the world
  • Learning builds on prior knowledge – and involves enriching, building on, and changing existing understanding, where “one’s knowledge base is a scaffold that supports the construction of all future learning”
  • Learning occurs in a complex social environment – and thus should not be limited to being examined or perceived as something that happens on an individual level. Instead, it is necessary to think of learning as a social activity involving people, the things they use, the words they speak, the cultural context they’re in, and the actions they take, and that knowledge is built by members in the activity.
  • Learning is situated in an authentic context- provides learners with the opportunity to engage with specific ideas and concepts on a need-to-know or want-to-know basis.
  • Learning requires learners’ motivation and cognitive engagementto be sustained when learning complex ideas, because considerable mental effort and persistence are necessary.

 2-If you are aware of any philosophies/theories of learning, which would you subscribe to?

 There are many learning theories – see http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/.

Regardless of the specific theory, a quick review of established learning theory reveals “4 pillars” of effective learning.

  • We learn best when we are motivated, have a want or desire..
  • We learn best by doing. Doing leads us to find the right approaches, practice makes us consistent in their application..
  • We learn through feedback. Positive or negative feedback shapes behavior..
  • We learn though digestion or reflection. This is the process by which we sort out ideas, build new ones and discard others.

 Which learning philosophies do you personally subscribe to?

I believe that people have cognitive limits and that skilled instructional design is necessary. Since people cannot process everything they experience at once, if it is not processed it cannot be learned. I belie that we can maximize learning by:

  • Manipulating factors that you can influence to increase attention. There are four documented factors that impact how a learner pays attention: arousal, interest, fluency, and enjoyment. Identify ways to generate and facilitate these (mostly) intrinsic motivators, and student attention during class should increase accordingly.
  • Breaking up the learning to help learners re-focus. Not only does a change of pace allow learners to re-start their attention clock which is on a 15-20-minute attention curve, but attention can increase somewhat dramatically by utilizing other pedagogies in addition to lecture in balanced ways.

What is the role of the learner and the teacher in a learning environment?

 The instructor functions to:

  • Provide opportunity to identify needs and wants in relation to the courses objectives
  • Provide learning-by-doing opportunities that lead to collaboration
  • Provide ongoing formative feedback including that those in virtual social and collaboration networks
  • Provide time for reflection/digesting time, help learners analyze what they’ve learned, and seek more though collaboration.

 The learning functions to:

  • Steadfastly apply themselves to learn the material
  • Ask questions, integrate and synthesize new information with that they know
  • Build new connections
  • Cultivate their own learning literacy, know-how to learn in a Learning 2.0 sense
  • Keep an open mind
  • Have incredible persistence or grit to overcome obstacles to learning

How do you know if learning is occurring and what are visible indicators or signs of learning?

Signs of learning are visible when people change their behavior or learning a new skill or both.

Training for trainings-sake is no longer an option.

 

What is the role of technology in learning?

Training is a transformative catalyst that can shape, structure, and accelerate learning when employed skillfully to craft, distribute learning, and create engaging environments for learners. The design of the learning is mediated-by and inseparable-from the technology. The tremendous number of tools Instructional Designers have access to is humbling. The skill is to know what technology to use to meet what need and to link the science behind the design to the design you recommend.

Week 3 – New Ecology of Learning

Week 3 – The New Ecology of Learning

 This week we’ll be reading about two texts that focus on the new culture of learning and new ways of thinking about learning as a result of the Web 2.0 suite of tools and practices.

Readings

Questions

As always, please react to any aspect of the two main texts that you found interesting/thought provoking. In addition, consider these 3 questions:

  • What are the basic tenets or requirements of new learning environments re: a new framework or ecology of learning?
  • What aspects of the theories and perspectives put forward by the authors most resonates with your own view of learning?
  • Which aspects do you find more challenging in reconciling with your view?

1-What are the basic tenets or requirements of new learning environments re: a new framework or ecology of learning?

Tenet 1 – Learning theories often used by learning professionals, developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology, are now obsolete.

  • Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by technology. Consequently, know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
  • In an era when the “half-life of knowledge”, the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it become obsolete, is now measured in months and years rather than decades, learning needs to be defined as a fluid, adaptive ‘way of being’. As an ongoing set of attitudes and actions individuals employ to try to keep abreast of the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events, learning empowers us to cope with a world where learning and work related activities are no longer separate but, in many situations, the same.

Tenet 2 – Since most (now painfully obsolete) learning theories believe learning occurs inside a person, they do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). As such, they tend to underestimate the significance of

  • Our need to leverage informal learning
  • Our need for continual learning, lasting for a lifetime
  • Our need to cultivate the skill of the rapidly evaluating knowledge in a society where knowledge is so (ridiculously) abundant

Tenet 3 – To move learning theories into a digital age, we need to recognize that we can no longer personally experience and acquire the learning that we need. Instead, we derive our competence from forming connections (I store my knowledge in my friends, I collect knowledge through collecting people).

  • The learner’s greatest challenge, in a digital age, is to adapt to this ‘digital chaos’ by recognizing the patterns which appear to be hidden. Since this ability is inherently beyond the scope of the individual acting alone, we must act strategically to collectively make-meaning out the world by forming connections between specialized communities we enroll-in, subscribe to, or lead.
  • Consequently, the capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our ‘frenzied-crazy-chaotic’ knowledge economy.
  • Our ability to cultivate and shape our own personal learning networks is critical. In fact, to be most strategic, we will value people differentially based on their ability to act as a ‘high-profile node’. It will likely become a competitive endeavor to successfully acquire new connections, seen as more successful and ‘evolved’, since acquiring them will enable interactions with them as a skilled learning resource you can tactfully leverage.
  • A successful learning network will likely be made-up-of diverse, expert nodes that specialize and gain recognition for their expertise and benefit from greater chance of recognition, inclusion in many learning commodities, and the cross-pollination that results.
  • It is only through this ‘competitive, ever-expanding, never-ending, brutal’ cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization mediated through the connections they have formed) that learning professionals can remain current in their field

2-What aspects of the theories and perspectives put forward by the authors most resonates with your own view of learning?

I am currently living by this code and, consequently, all aspects of it resonate. I have personally gone through the process of ‘becoming obsolete’, professionally, and re-built myself with cutting edge skills. This was a humbling experience. It is expensive to re-skill yourself. But the combination of market-ready skills and experience is in great demand and I personally have no regrets.

As I have grown older, and wiser :), I have become much more focused and can make deeper connections between ideas, and then act on creative ideas with the confidence and experience to take-on ‘big’ challenges and successfully execute them. Again, this takes a long time to do, it has been a great journey, and I don’t recommend trying to skip steps or ‘jump’ to levels of responsibility you are unprepared for. Crash-and-burn. But ‘learn aggressively’ and take educated risks. We learn more from our failures than from our successes.

3-Which aspects do you find more challenging in reconciling with your view?

To be honest, this is a challenging, often exhausting pace to move at. My mental strengths (ability to concentrate, ‘know where’ to find information, and quickly search for and screen information) has grown exponentially – although there is still plenty of room for improvement. In the last 20 years, I have cultivated this ability very seriously and have had some successes and some failures. I have benefitted from this by becoming a creative, out-of-the-box critical thinker. But it hasn’t been easy and, to be fair, luck was involved in getting this far.