Week 15: Networks of Personalized Learning (e.g., language learning, tutoring, etc.)

One of the main characteristic of social-network sites is to link people, particularly those who share the same interest altogether into one community. Then many activities have taken place depending on their concerns. For example, MovieMobz, the Brazilian social-network site where gathers movie lovers into one place. Members can vote for the favorite movies to be projected on their own cinema.
Live Moch is also another business that employs the use of social-network features. The Live Mocha website offers users the chance to converse with native speakers online. Pictures, audio, and text lessons are also available to assist learners with language development.

I think this is an excellent idea. Long time ago I used to take an English course online. Although the program offers high interactivity, but Live Mocha may have more potential use and importantly, it is more natural. Since languages are part of social culture, leveraging social-network aspects seems to be the most appropriate means of learning. For instance, even though learners would already have a huge collection of vocabularies, they hardly carry out a conversation in foreign languages they are studying. Furthermore, in the formal education, oftentimes students can learn only the formal terms which are use in an academic realm, they miss an opportunity to study other informal or terms which are normally used in real life. One of my foreign friends asked me to teach him the rudest term in Thai. He gave a reason that because such word cannot be learnt in school. When traveling to my country, if he happened to hear that term, so he knows that person should be avoided.

In addition to providing real-world perspective on how a language is spoken by natives, the social-network aspect of the site will keep users motivated as they form friendships with native speakers. In this way, learners are motivated by his/her online friends; they can check each other login time or their scores and gain enthusiasm of their own. For example, I just tried to subscribe to the system. There is one feature that allows learners to take a TOEFL test and then be able to compare the scores with other test-takers. Moreover, these learners can also practice a foreign language in a way that gives cultural perspective. To put it differently, the social-network system help them practice conversational skills while learning about the world.

Currently, most available features are still of a free service. Nonetheless, this kind of business is a great source of income (esp. when “the world is open”, when we require to know more than one language!

Reference:

Erica Naone. “Learning Language in Context: Startup Live Mocha Leverages Social Networking to Teach Foreign Languages,” Technology Review (October 5, 2007), http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19484/?a=f

Week 14: Mobile, Wireless, and Ubiquitous Learning

Back to the last three decades, it was very difficult to communicate with someone. We primarily depended on letter, telegram, or the most recent technology available at that time might be a clunky telephone. Nowadays some of those communication tools can be seen only in the museum. Many new devices and technologies have replaced these out-dated equipments; the more they have been developed, the more they seem to be smaller and look efficient. The underlying reason of these innovations is to respond an infinite number of human’s needs.
Until recently, there are much research and development on the wireless and mobile technologies. Many products have been continuously launched into the market. We, as a consumer, would always have to follow and update our devices. (I used to ask myself what will happen, or what I will be if I just stop following these trends since almost everything around us seems to be coined by the advanced technologies). We might be familiar with “E” and “I” technologies, such as E-commerce, Iphone, and now we are starting to hear about “M” technologies like M-learning.

“m-learning” was abbreviated from “mobile learning” which means “Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies” (Wikipedia). This term has some relation with E-learning and distance education, however, M-learning is distinct in its focus on learning across contexts and learning with mobile devices.

In the field of education, M-learning is still in an early stage due to the limitation of the device. Cost of communication might be another reason that makes this device not as much popular as other learning tools. Nonetheless, many academic institutions have been working on research in order to make use of this mobile technology in learning such as the Norwegian Knowledge Institute (NKI (Distance Education (Rekkedal and Dye, 2007).
According to the research, even though M-learning provides a lot of benefit in education (e.g. Flexibility for students studying at a distance, quick access, portability, memory aid, etc), there are lots of challenges which need to be improved.

People who are responsible for the network should be knowledgeable and be up-to-date all the time. In addition, system designers must be able to modify the learning materials to be compatible with all kinds of devices. Next, the designs of certain types of mobile devices are not suitable for being input/output tools. For example, some models of mobile phones do not have a keyboard that allows users to conveniently type in.

Despite the fact, as mention earlier, this is just an early era of mobile technology as well as M-learning. I strongly believe that the mobile devices would be widely used in education (although it is not necessary that they will be the main learning device). The cost of communication and these devices would definitely be lowered and, hence, more access points or “hot spot” would be increased.

Week 13: Podcasting, Webcasting, and Coursecasting

Podcasting is a new technology with an evolving definition. The term is generally considered to be derived from combining the words iPod and broadcasting. Podcasting involves making audio and video files available for download on a routine basis via subscription (Levinson, 2005).

Nowadays podcast has been increasingly brought into education. Just like other technologies (e.g. video conference, virtual life, etc), educational institutions have to ensure that such technology is worth funding, either in terms of human resources or infrastructure and equipments; and most importantly, it has to enhance the learning environment.

Also, the University of Michigan (U-M) School of Dentistry was thinking to integrate podcast into their teaching, and then chose to conduct the formative evaluation. Surprisingly, findings reveal that students preferred the mobility of the audio recordings rather than video. The reason for this might be the convenience of the audio files which can be access easily. In other words, it does not need high concentration when reviewing the content. For example, students can listen to their lectures while doing exercise, unlike the video media that they have to focus their attention only on the screen. Another possibility of such preference is that the video files are usually big and, therefore, takes time when downloading or transferring to their personal players.

Despite the fact, students did also choose to download video, particularly in certain subjects. This is because of the nature of lecture’s content as well as lecturers’ didactical approaches. To put it differently, some subjects have/use heavily visual presentation (e.g. charts, graphs, etc.) whereas some are only pure speech.

The results also indicate that the audio recording is easier and do not require lot of resources, and hence feasible for the classroom setting. Nevertheless, there must be more concrete plan for further implementation. In this stance, collaboration among all stakeholders is crucial. Moreover, this also yields for sustainability of the project.

References:

Brittain, Sarah, Glowacki, Pietrek Van Ittersum, Jared, & Johnson, Lynn (2006). Podcasting lectures: Formative evaluation strategies helped identify a solution to a learning dilemma, 29(3). Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0634.asp

Levinson, J. (2005). What is a Podcast. Retrieved 20 November, 2008, from http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/what-is-a-podcast.htm

Week 12: Alternate Reality Learning: Massive Gaming, Virtual Reality, and Simulations

Long time ago, I used to think that it would be nice if school lessons were as enjoyable as the video games. Now, I had to regret that I should not have been born so early because those dreams come through!

Virtual reality or virtual world has brought the new dimension of teaching/learning to the millennial or young generation. Multi User Virtual Worlds are becoming a valuable
Educational tool. Learning experiences within these worlds focus on discovery and active experiences that both engage students and motivate them to explore new concepts (Coffman and Klinger, 2007). In addition, the virtual world is considered as the most choices for conversation where allows a number of people to have simultaneous interaction (Bell, 2007). Nevertheless, this tool has to be used appropriately in order to get the full benefits; otherwise, it can be double-edged sword. Students might be too involved with the scene/game and finally learn nothing. They may be confused between the virtual and real world, and hence bring the unexpected results. Therefore, this is a responsibility of teachers/educators to make use of the virtual world up to its potential.

Since these technologies are very new and have just been integrated into education, practitioners and researchers still have a lot more areas to explore how to incorporate them into teaching and to increase learning ability of students such as the issue of social interaction in the virtual world such as Social skills and friendship development. It is vital to understand how activity is spawned and accelerates in these social spaces as well as what transpires cognitively, socially, and emotionally in order to better support group communication and performance (Bonk and Dennen, 2005).

Despite the requirements of new pedagogies and curriculum, attitudes of teachers and stakeholders are also crucial. They have to be open to these innovations and adjust themselves to this new phenomenon. If both human resources and equipments are ready to this alternative reality learning, the most benefit will eventually turn to learners.

References:

Bell, S. R. (2008). Higher Education as Virtual Conversation. EDUCAUSE Review, 43(5). Retrieved 15 November, 2008, from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/HigherEducationasVirtualC/47220?time=1227502170

Bonk, C. J., & Dennen, V. P. (2005). Massive multiplayer online gaming: A research framework for military education and training. (Technical Report # 2005-1). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense (DUSD/R): Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://mypage.iu.edu/~cjbonk/GameReport_Bonk_final.pdf

Teresa Coffman, Mary Beth Klinger (2007). Utilizing Virtual Worlds in Education: The Implications for Practice, International Journal of Social Sciences, Volume 2 Number 1. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.waset.org/ijss/v2/v2-1-5.pdf

Week 11: Educational Blogging

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is one forms of Web site that evolved for a last decade (Blockstar.com, 2002). The blog was originated from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Nowadays a blog is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. In the realm of education, blog has been gradually used as a tool to engage students in their learning activities. Additionally, it can enhance collaborative learning among their peers both in and outside classrooms. No need to think far beyond, here that I’m writing or what you are reading from, is the merit of the blog’s facilities. I can reflect my own thought (it is said that writing requires higher cognitive thinking than just talking and, hence, stimulate learning (Downes, 2004). Meanwhile I also get a feedback via comment post which helps me improve or correct my ideas. On the other hand, you, as a reader, may get some useful information, finding some friends who share similar interests, and develop your own thoughts as well. Here’s then we both gain a win-win solution!

Apart from benefits of blog in the formal education, blog has a lot of contemporary information which is useful in our life. One unique characteristic of blog’s content is that it is easy to understand unlike the textbook. Part of which is due to its simple way of writing. Those content are usually viewed through the lens of loggers, who try to break down all difficulties. another thing I like for the blog is that its content is usually up-to- date, also, some comments are interesting no lesser than the main content itself. There are many loggers become famous from writing their blogs and those blogs eventually got published.

There might be, however, an objection about the credibility and reliability of the content in the blog. I also used to think about this issue, especially when my friend sends me a blog for medication. Then later, I think this is not only a a concern for the blog itself, but this is a universal issue for the internet content. There is one study reported that blogs were judged as moderately credible, but as more credible than any mainstream media or online source (Johnson et al., 2007). Therefore, we, as an audience, should use our own judgment and if possible, find other reliable sources to help our consideration.

References:

Blockstar.com. (2002). Blog History in Timeline Formsuch as graphics or video. Entries are. Retrieved 20 November, 2008, from http://www.blockstar.com/blog/blog_timeline.html

Downes, Stephen (2004, September/October). Educational blogging, EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5), 14 –26. Retrieved August 27, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp?bhcp=1

Johnson, T. J., Kaye, B. K., Bichard, S. L., & Wong, w. J. (2007). Every blog has its day: Politically-interested Internet users’ perceptions of blog credibility. Journal of Computer -Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 6. Retrieved 13 November, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/johnson.html

Week 10: Interactive and Collaborative Learning

In the online or distance learning, learners’ engagement to the learning activities has been an issue that stills an on-going debate (Chen et al., 2008). Many studies try to compare the learning engagement between online learners and those who are on campus. Engagement of learners is essential to their learning outcomes including high grades, student satisfaction, and persistence. As a result, activities as student-faculty interaction, peer -to-peer collaboration, and active learning are thought to be important. It seems that the online environment provides students more opportunities to be involved in active learning as individuals, but limits students’ ability to collaborate with each other. However, this also depends on many factors, such as learners (e.g. age, responsibility, etc.), instructors (e.g. pedagogy, time availability, etc.), and so forth.

According to the research by Chen and colleagues (2008), it is not surprising to learn that the distance learners generally scored higher on the student engagement and outcomes measures than their campus-based counterparts, with the exception of engagement in active and collaborative learning activities. The collaborative work requires learners to be involved in activities that depend on interacting with others, such as working with other students on problems or assignments. For the online/distance learners, particularly those who are more than 25-years-old, hardly have time to interact with their peers or even get to know their classmates.

Another factor that influences online learners’ engagement in learning is their culture and ideological background as shown in Naxin and Duglas’ study (2008). It seems that some points of the findings in this study contrasted with the previous research. The result reveals that foreign students gain advantages from online learning and , hence, lead to engagement in learning activities as well as more participation (than in face-to-face courses). For example, Chinese students have confident with their language (most likely through reading and writing), so they collaborate more with their peers. Another example is that Chinese students preferred to work with native English-speaking students in online group work, because they could practice their English skills and could better attain multiple perspectives.

Nonetheless, the culture and diversity can be barrier to prevent their collaboration and engagement in any activities, such as unfamiliarity with the disciplinary culture, attitudes towards presenting opinions in public, instructor’s authoritative image, and so on.

These are only some factors that influence online learners to engage in their educational activities as well as to collaborate with their peers. Educators should be aware of these factors and modify their course for a better teaching and to achieve the learning goals.

References:

Chen, P., R. Gonyea, and G. Kuh (2008). Learning at a distance: Engaged or not?. Innovate 4 (3). Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php? view=article&id=438
view=article&id=438

Nixing Zhao & Douglas McDougall (2008). Cultural influences on Chinese students’ asynchronous online learning in a Canadian university. Journal of Distance Learning, 22(2). 59-80. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/37

Week 9: Wikis, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Collaborative writing.

The Wiki technology was first launched in 1995 by Ward Cunningham and had been developed to various versions. The most original and well-known is the “Wikipedia”. The highlight of this tool seems to be its feature of group collaboration and ease of access. Nowadays, Wikis has been widely used in many fields including education.

As mentioned above, the Wikis’ feature that allows group members to collaboratively manage and easily share their ideas and tasks enhances feasibility of workflows. I have used Wiki as a tool for group work in many courses and was appreciated in its capability. It is true that we regularly use Email to communicate; especially for me, it automatically becomes part of my life that I have to check my mailbox everyday. However, the main feature of Email is to communicate, not to collaborate particularly with an iterative task. For example, in the research methodology course, we, five people, were asked to share our survey result and wrote up one complete paper. At that time, we primarily used Email to communicate and exchange our files. We had to upload and download each other results and kept on editing our main document. There was so much confusion particularly when five people were trying to fix and modify the very same document. Sometimes we got lost, not knowing which was the most recent document that we had to proceed. In addition, it is hard to keep track from the previous editing points and to identify who did those changes. If we had decided to use Wiki, those problems would have not occurred.

At the present time, there are many service providers for the wiki tools, but my favorite is Wetpain.com.
There are many useful features for the collaborative group project, such as privacy rules, 24/7 availability, history page, and so on. Moreover, there are various templates to choose, including the class project.

Despite of many advantages, Wikis also have disadvantages that prevent the use of this tool. The most criticizing aspect is its usability and its functionalities, especially when comparing with other web 2.0technologies. For instance, most Wikis features have been primarily designed to work with the text-based information while other types of information are increasingly used in the cyber world. Another example is the ease of use; in order to perform the text editing, authors at least should have some knowledge of coding on the Wiki unlike other tools, such as discussion forum or blog which allow users to directly type on with the easy formatting.

Nonetheless, I believe that the Wikis technology will be continuously improved, particularly, when it has been widely adopted and its purpose has been extent such as Wikibooks!

Week 8: YouTube, TeacherTube, and the Future of Shared Online Video

Online video has been increasingly used and integrated into the classroom due to its high potentiality to facilitate learning. For example, it can reflect the real life situations much more than the things describe in the textbooks. In addition, online video is not only used for an academmic purpose, it can be used for socialization. Like this morning, my close friend just sent me her video clip sharing her lifestyle in the UK.

One of my concern about utilising these technology as one of the mandatory tools in education is the students with special needs. Since the content is rendered through the audio and visual presentation rather than the text-based display, those students with visual and hearing disordered would certainly be affected and could not fully participate in learning.

On the other day, there was a Webinar held by Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) UNDER THE TOPIC OF THE MoPix, Motion Picture Access. This system is an initiative of the Media Access Group at WGBH. This production unit is mainly comprised of two provisions: The Caption and Descriptive Video Services. for the former, it is called “The Rear Window Captioning System”. It is an innovative technology that makes it possible for exhibitors to provide closed captions for those who need or desire them without displaying them to the entire theater’s audience. The patron needing captions will see them in a reflector which is mounted in front of them. For the visual service, DVS Theatrical makes it possible for exhibitors to provide descriptive narration for their blind and visually impaired patrons through special headsets. Narrated descriptions provide information about key visual elements such as actions, settings, facial expressions, costumes, and scene changes. The descriptions are inserted into pauses in the soundtrack and do not interfere with the dialogue. For more information about these systems and services please see:

http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/
And for the presentation archive (available for a few weeks):
http://www.easi.cc/archive/mopix/recording/index.htm

Currently, the services are mainly provided for the movie theatres and entertainment. However, some movies are recorded into VHS or DVD and commercially available. Even though these systems are still costly, but it is a good initiative and would be beneficial for further research under the non-profit organizations and implemented by those who are dealing with the national education.

Week 7: Open Educational Resources.

The materials and resources of today’s topic are one of other very interesting classes that are opening eyes for me. There are lots and lots of educational resources available online either from the local and international collaborations. Is this the thing that we call “the knowledge-based society and the true learning environment?

Open Course Ware (OCW) “initiated by MIT is one admirably distinct example of the projects under the premise of learning opportunities on the basis of equality.
“We are going to make our educational material available to students, faculty, and other learners, anywhere in the world, at any time, for free.” (Atkins et al., 2007). The site was officially launched in September 2003 with 500 courses online. In 2004, the site received almost 120 million hits from visitors in more than 210 countries, territories, and city-states around the globe. Part of the project’s achievement is because English is the international language. However, the course materials have been translated into many languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese (Lee et al., 2007).

Regarding Chinese translation, the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS), is the all-volunteer organization headquartered in Taiwan. The main mission of the OOPS is to translate open source materials from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site into Chinese. Since the work has been run voluntarily from the Chinese-speaking people from various regions around the world, this community is specially fascinating for me.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the OOPS is their project management. I wonder what ties these volunteer members together for such a long period and still, with the high quality of work. It is true that they may have a strong mutual commitment with the same goals like other community of practice such as open source software projects, nonetheless, a teamwork of thousands of people from all around the world is incredibly “mission impossible” for me!

By January 1, 2007 the translation of nearly half of the 1,100 courses had been completed by a network of over 2,200 volunteer translators from more than 22 countries (Chu, 2008). I believe the project will continue to grow up successfully and I hope the OOPS would be a model for other language communities to follow according to the concept of “global learning”.

References:

Atkins, Dan, Brown, John Seely, & Hammond, Allen (2007, February). A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, new opportunities. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (84 pages). Retrieved July 5, 2007, from http://www.oerderves.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/a-review-of-the-open-educational-resources-oer-movement_final.pdf

Chu, Lucifer. Personal communication, July 18, 2007.

Lee, M., Lin, M.-F., & Bonk, C. J. (2007, November). OOPS, turning MIT OpenCourseWare into Chinese: An analysis of a community of practice of global translators. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 8(3). Retrieved March 23, 2008, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/463/980

Week6: Free and open source software.

We have often heard about “open source” in the cyber world, but how many people know its actual meaning. The common misunderstanding and confusion about open source software is mostly from its minimal cost of acquisition, and most of the time, it is even available for the free distribution. Open source software, in fact, incurs many of the same categories of cost as that of developing in-house or implementing commercial products, this may still include the costs of technical support/development staff, licensing and maintenance although these will usually be lower than their commercial counterparts. I have never been directly involved in any open source software development project, however, I used to provide some recommendations and the logistic support. It was the project of software localization and my participation was the linguistic related per se. Even though it is just a small contribution, at least, I feel good that I am able to share something.

For me, the charm and benefits of open source software projects are not only the outcome of the group (software application) and other associated elements such as relative lower cost, it is also the way that people with the same interest gather together and help each other without necessary obligations or any financial condition. This can be called “community of practice”. It can be true that people in the community also invest for the social capital (kapor, 2005); nevertheless, one of the core concepts of open source is to help other people as a basis of the society (Stallman, 1983). The community of open source software development is somehow similar to the blog community or the online forum in terms of social norms and practice. Persons with the same interests will find their own space to share and exchange their thoughts in various versions, such as text, photos, and codes, just to name three. In addition, it is noticeable that the popular topics/bloggers/appliccations would gain more interest from the public, and hence receive more comments/contributions. Meanwhile, there is also lots of deserted blogs/forum or discontinued projects. This is one of the major drawbacks of the open source software.

Another concern about the open source I want to address here is the copyright issues. Once the source is publicly available or accessed, it is easy to be pirated. As stated earlier, even though the open source software is freely distributed, there is a formal license derived from the mutual agreements of community.

Many pros and cons of the open source software still exist, depending on each perspective you will take. Although there is no clear-cut conclusion about the good and bad of the open source software, I believe that this is a superb mechanism to balance between the capitalism and socialism.

References.

Kapor, M. (2005). How is open source special? EDUCAUSE Review, 40(2), 72-73. Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/er/erm05/erm05210.asp
Stallman, R. (1983). Initial announcement. Retrieved March 2, 2006, from http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html