Put it all together

I think the course have been intensive and challenging in many ways. For me it feels that I have running around in different landscapes and not for a minute take a break to breath ;).
To work more with open educational it´s a good idea to start with a course like ONL, to bring it all together.

It´s good to put us in smaller groups and let us discuss and reflect over the topic and the questions we try to find an answer for. From this we have to figure out what kind of digital tools we can use for this topic and share it with the other groups. I don´t say it´s easy. Many questions, how and were we can meet is important. The best time on the day for our group to meet have been in the evenings. The sound is also an important issue, so we can here each other when we talk. To see who is on the other side when you have a meeting also gives you a feeling of a person of flesh and blood. Sometime it has been hard for me to here all of the conversations depending on a sparkling sound, difficult for me to participate in natural way. This must be in some way the concept of community that Wenger talk about (Wenger, 2010). We are in different kind of relationship to people, to the world. This means we are human beings like social persons in a social word. The concept will than be constituted with each other, the social and the individual (Wenger, 2010).

It was interesting when we build up our course in ”Short Guide to Harvard Referencing”. We used the TedEd to put different kind of material. I have never used those kind of open tools before, it is very basic but you get an idea how you can design a course. With this we used a model called ADDIE-model. I think it is a good way to sometime use a model to go through what will happened in the course. How different outcomes and assignment take place in a learning situation will then be visible. Often we follow the traditional way and do not really think why we do like we do, like the hand over.

I think we have an idea about digital tools and how it could be to work in an open education minded context, learning in communities, design for open online and blended learning, digital literacy, open webinar, tweet chat, discussing and sharing etc.

One challenge for me in the course was also to talk and write in english, I hope I`ve attained a higher level both in the language and as an individual in a social context. I will end this blogg and give a quotation from Wenger (2010),
”Over time, a history of learning becomes an informal and dynamic social structure among the participants, and this is what a community of practice is.”

References

ONL162 PBL8 (2016, November 28) Lesson created by ONL162 PBL8 [link]. Retrieved from https://ed.ted.com/on/3yc48Uuy/edit

Overview and schedule ONL162 (2016) Open Networked Learning, ONL [link]. https://opennetworkedlearning.wordpress.com/topics-and-activities/overview-and-shedule-onl-162/

Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. Retrieved 2016 November 8 from http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179-198). Springer London

Picture: my furniture 2016, author: Pia Palm

Identify your practice

Before this topic I didn´t know so much about the different design models; ADDIE Model Instructional Strategies and The Five Stage Model. When I help teachers or is involved to design different kind of assignments and outcomes I can see that a lot of our teachers do the same. The teachers create the course based on traditional concepts. Sometimes when new teachers arrived to the institution and suddenly they have become course coordinator. What can they do? Hopefully they can copy last years course and see what the other course coordinator and teachers done. But I don´t think this is the best way to create a learning situation over time. We talk very little about the students learning and outcomes and how to build and design a course that will suit for a blended learning. From my point of view I have become more secure about how I can help teachers when they ask me about how to design a course. It will also confirm and improve my daily work as an educational technologist. I will have more solid knowledge to see how a course coordinator or a teacher can design a course for a deeper learning with different modes.

I have try to think and work multimodality when I help teachers to design their course room in the LMS (learning management system). The concept multimodality is something professor Günter Kress bring to the education. In Sweden we also have professor Staffan Selander how is educate teachers and he also talk about modal learning. He thinks that the didactic concept with modality learning is when your combine different kind of media like; text, images, videos, music  etc for an educational purpose. To prepare your course you can use and show the material on several kind of modes.

When I look at the youtube clip about the ADDIE Model Instructional Strategies they have a person that talk english and different kind of images that moving on. They also put an instrumental music in the background of the talking. This kind of music in the background don´t interact with the content. The music don´t add anything about the ADDIE Model. It don´t have any educational purpose. I think when we use different kind of modes (languages) we have to be aware of why we are use them and what we want to communicate. Sometimes we use it to make it more flashy but if we really want to look into it in a pedagogical point of view we should be aware of the fact.

References

jclarkgardner (2011, June 11) ADDIE Model Instructional Strategies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL20E84CD77B301A20

Mode, institute of Education, University of London (IOE) (2012, Mars 15) ”What is multimodality?”- Gunther Kress  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt5wPIhhDDU

Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. Retrieved 2016 November 8 from http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

Sellander, S. (2012) Att arbeta multimodalt. Stockholms University. Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik. Retrieved from http://www.edu.su.se/om-oss/nyheter/m%C3%A5nadens-profil/att-arbeta-multimodalt-1.93422

UCL Institute of Education (IOE) (2011, Nov. 21) Making meaning: the role of semiotics and education | UCL Institute of Education [Video file]. Retrieved from
http://www.edu.su.se/om-oss/nyheter/m%C3%A5nadens-profil/att-arbeta-multimodalt-1.93422

Picture: Hide and Seek, fine art, by Maria Miesenberger, 2016, author: Pia Palm

Design for open communication and trust

I think Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes presentation gives an insight into how a community can work well. She is a teacher and researcher with a lot of experience in how to teach and educate. I was interested to listen to her webinar. She gives an idea about the seven principles of blended & online learning. I stuck into the first principle “Design for open communication and trust”. I meet most teachers in my daily work and still I see a traditional thinking in a LMS-platform. It´s a lot of materials and files that will be open in different programs, a lot of click. But how do you really design for an open communication and trust. How does it feels to enter the digital class room. Do I feel comfortable? Do I have someone to talk to or am I alone? How is the room furnished, can I take a seat and read, listen or converse?

For a couple of year now, I have been involved into a Wikipedia project within Faculty of Natural Sciences at Linnaeus University. Together with two teachers we developed a concept where the students should write about a parasite. The student can choose a parasite that have not been written about on Wikipedia or develop an existing Wikipedia article that have just a few sentences. It´s over six years since we started and until now the students have produced over 50 Wikipedia articles. The student has written articles in Swedish, English, German. Spanish and Chinese.

The goal with the Wikipedia project is to let the students exercise and train their abilities to search, digest and present scientific information regarding animal and human pathogens and diseases. Instead of writing a report that is only shared with your teacher and fellow students we wanted to effort the students to contribute to the combined shared knowledge in an open-access net-based encyclopedia – in this case Wikipedia.

One of the courses have both campus and distant students so it was a challenge for us to also get the distant students involved. We always take it for grant that they should fix it some way. When we started we saw that we had to offer them some software when they work together. The best to use during that time was Google docs. It also gave the opportunity to invite their tutor. Before they put their text in Wikipedia they had to be approved by the tutor. I think this Wikipedia project gave an opportunity to share what you have done at the University for a major audience.

We use Wikipedia as an educational tool, where students learning efforts would result in improved texts on pathogens and diseases.

I don´t say it was easy to let them be a part of Wikipedia, but when they saw their own articles and received direct respond from others they were proud. Some of the articles the students wrote also received a star for a new article or expanded article.

By CDC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

How open minded could we be

I have a confession to do! For me it´s no longer important to be open for everything you do on the Internet. I started with FaceBook i 2007 and it was fantastic to meet and see all friends from the old days (but it takes some years for some people to discovery it:). But on Facebook I still miss some friends, they haven´t become comfortable or they are not interested at all, to be a part of the Internet.

One thing that happend about three years ago when our University decided to have one  LMS (moodle)supported by the it-department. Why we choose Moodle was because it has an ”open source” and their should be low cost for this LMS. It is restricted that any one that will access to our LMS must have an account and also sign the written agreement as follows it. But it also have a back, From the beginning when moodle was released it was open in that meaning that you could search in google for our courses, programme, material etc.  It was a student that discovered that she could search and get information about what she was writing in a forum. When this was exposed by the system owner then it was decided to close all search for our LMS on the Internet. Some of our teacher was already in the ”open education area” and divided all their material e.g. recorded lessons to publish on the Internet. Suddenly I found my self in a situation where my ideas about open education have to be reconsidered. I think it´s a poor system that will limit your restriction, no one can search our courses in Google anymore and the teacher can´t in an easy way share their material and lesson like they did before. The teacher just fetch a deep sigh.

Interesting reading is also how Terry Anderson (Weller, M., & Anderson, T. 2013) describe how Athabasca University in Canada use and care about how they want to be a part of an open access publishing. They see it in two aspects:

1. Related to the use of open educational resources, how this could be a part of the courseware.
2. The scholarly publication should be open accessible for all.

There is a discontent that private companies will earn money when authors have to publish scholarly works in scientific magazines. It costs a lot of money for educational institutions to get this material and the company in principle get everything for free from the author, reviewers and editors. I think the scholarly works should be free for all our students and researchers. Even if we want to share our works it´s always a company that figure out how to earn money on our scholarly works.

Reference
Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 16(1), 53.

Picture: Cows, Öland-Sweden 2016, author: Pia Palm
My picture is also accessible on Wikimedia Commons with CC BY-SA 4.0

CC BY-SA 4.0File:Kossor på Öland, kows.jpg

 

 

The Digital me and filter bubbles

As a child my mother and father read fairy tales for me. Later on I began to read the stories by my own. I also had a record player where I could play my favourite tale of the Jungle Book over and over again… Listening to something over and over again is a technical opportunity. Since then a lot of things has happened and many things have changed both in the technical way as well as my own digital experience and knowledge.

For roughly 20 years ago I worked at Komvux (municipal adult education). There, I had the privilege to develop a course for teachers teaching at preschool. At that time, the focus of the work was put on the technical equipment, technical issues and how to ”move” around and be guided in different programmes. Unfortunately, this technical focus led to the lack of pedagogical perspectives and aspects in the learning. Later I started to work at the University where we all received our own devices: computers, e-mail and LMS (First Class). The purpose was to promote and encourage collaboration between teachers, colleagues and administrators. However, the technical issues that the equipment caused were once again prioritised rather than focusing on learning aspects. The article Coomey, M., & Stephenson, J. (2001) talks about four features of learning: dialogue, involvement, support and control. During my early years at the University, I can’t remember that we discussed or talked a

bout these elements of learning. To bring these features in focus, I remember that I created a digital course room for the teachers with the purpose to promote collaboration between students and teachers. Unfortunately, the course room was very little used and stood empty most of the time…

Suddenly you can see filter bubbles every were. With Sara Mörtsells introductions to the subject and Eli Pariser’s Ted talk and then, today in a Swedish Newspaper DN (Dagens Nyheter./Days News.) I think it’s a little bit scary. In the article “Åsiktsbubblorna får populismen att växa/ Opinion bubble gets populism to grow” av Maciej Zaremba, (only in Swedish).

photograph: Pia Palm

Depending on what your political statement is, or what you like or dislike in the private area the algorithm will control what you will see on the screen. The reason of this argument can also be read in an article in the Guardian, Tuesday 12 July 2016. It’s an interesting reading about “How technology disrupted the truth” and when one and each other have their own fact. It will not be controlled or filtered by the journalists view. The article also refereeing to Eli Pariser´s ”Filter bubbles” in 2011. One interesting point about the social media platforms is how our society can take different ways. What political statement your friend or family have may result in that you will block them in social media. The article confirmed what the filter bubble, Pariser talked about in 2011 but has now a days increased and much more extreme. So with that in mind don’t forget there will be an another side on the social media that we not will see, thanks to the algorithm.

Introduction

Pia Palm here, working as Educational Technologist at Linneaus Unviersity in the Faculty of Technology. I have been here once before 🙂 but the time lacked for me, so I´m back.

For a long time I have working with e-learning, introduce teacher to different kind of equipment and environments to help them in there own netbased educational with students. I like to work close to the teachers because it let me to more understand there own environments and I can be more specific when I help them in net-based-learning.

In this course I hope to practise some new equipment and meet some new friends, there we can discuss some issues in the net-based-area.

I´m working and live in Växjö, Sweden, we have in general four seasons here but this autum have been fantastic. Warm and sunny days in September we are not used to these sunny days.

Picture from my working-window.

 

Flexible and mobile learning

När jag såg Jonas Månssons (LTH) presentation, kom jag att tänka på våra lärare inom matematiken och matematikdidaktiken som också funderar på hur våra studenter kan ta till sig föreläsningar, dels genom färdigt inspelade föreläsningar som är kopplade till varje kapitel. Några lärare har använt en pen padlet direkt under föreläsning. Det finns också lärare som har kopplat en kamera på ett stativ och riktar kameran mot ett vitt papper på ett bord, inspelningen har gjorts på lärarens tjänsterum. Läraren visar hur de kan räkna ut matematiska lösningar till detta är givetvis en mikrofon kopplad. Dessa inspelningar kan numera läggas direkt på i lärplattformen då vi har en koppling till en mediaserver, LnuPlay. Det som är intressant med Jonas korta videoinspelningar är också det analysverktyg som finns inbyggt i YouTube Analytics, här kan han få ut data hur mycket studenterna ser video-klippen. Dessutom är dessa video-klipp öppna för alla.

Det som jag reflekterar över är också den mångfald som faktiskt finns inom utbildning, lärare traderar ofta sin undervisning och visst finns det kanske en poäng med det. När fokus läggs på lärandet i sig, lärare börjar funderar på hur studenter lär sig och har ett intresse för att studenterna faktiskt lär sig då börjar det bli intressant.

När jag möter lärare har de oftast lite tid för att kompetensutveckla sig inom olika digitala verktyg för att passa ett nätbaserat lärande. Vi kan föreslå olika verktyg och så kan vi ge korta introduktioner till våra lärare men vi vet inte hur flexibla och användbara de egentligen är.

I artikeln Flexible Pedagogies: new pedagogical ideas av Ryan, A., & Tilbury, D. (2013), skriver de om olika rekommendationer men också att flexible learning har bedrivits av tekniska utvecklare. Det som skrivs fram är, Flexible learning and flexible pedagogy.
“To explore this relationship between flexibility and pedagogy more deeply involves critical questions about the direction of educational travel in the present HE (higher education) landscape and attention to flexibility as educational outcome. Rethinking pedagogy in terms of flexibility in this sense means understanding how pedagogical approaches can enable people to develop flexibility of thinking and action, to influence the scenarios they encounter in their life and work beyond HE.”

Det här att tänka kring flexibel pedagogik, låter intressant om det är pedagoger som tar sig an begreppet, då kommer fokus att läggas på en dimension till.

Collaborative learning and communities

Under ett antal år har jag varit delaktig i ett Wikipediaprojekt inom de naturvetenskapliga ämnena på Linneuniversitetet. Det har varit kurser som ges både på campus och distans. Under det första året tänkte jag inte alls på hur distansstudenterna skulle samarbeta, de skulle skriva en gemensam text som först skulle skickas till handledaren och först därefter publiceras på det digitala uppslagsverket Wikipedia. Så småningom blev det uppenbart för mig att vi lämnar ofta distansstudenter i sticket vi förväntar oss att de själva ska leta upp lämpliga digitala verktyg, de valde väl distansutbildning för att de var duktiga på att använda datorer och programvaror, det är väl inte så svårt, eller?
– Jo, precis så svårt tror jag att det är, vi förväntar oss så mycket men talar inte om hur eller ger inte verktygen för det i alla sammanhang. Vi måste ge förutsättningar för våra studenter att kunna samarbeta, interagera och kollaborera med varandra. De digitala verktygen borde byggas in bättre i kursdesignen och att de kopplas till kursplan och lärandemål.

Terry Anderson vid Athabasca University har tillsammans med tre andra forskare i Kanada skrivit en artikel “Distance students’ readiness for and interest in collaboration and social media”. Den bygger på en undersökning men i korta drag så är inte alla positiva till att samarbeta vid en distanskurs. Intresset för att samarbeta växer dock med åldern. Något som också efterfrågas av studenterna är lätta former för att kunna delta i distans lärandet, så som “…video  sharing  sites,  photo  sharing  sites  and  social networking. De menar att de sociala programvaror som används bör vara enkla att använda och att de som ska använda dessa får tillräcklig med support eller utbildning. De sociala mjukvaroprogram som används inom kursen bör också få tillräcklig uppmärksamhet i själva kursdesignen som är kopplade till lärandemålen.

Det jag lärde mig av vårt projekt var att erbjuda och föreslå studenterna ett digitalt verktyg som de kunde samarbeta i och det som låg närmast till hands var Googledocs, vilket de flesta använder sig av oavsett om de läser på distans eller campus.

Digital literacy – Digitala färdigheter

I think the concept digital literacy deals with practical attainments rather than competences. Practical attainments involve the process to use digital tools in the digital landscape. I agree with Douglas Belshaw when he describes the digital literacy. He suggests that it depends on which context you are placed in and that digital literacy tends to take different ways and have various of purposes. I have meet teachers who have good experience to walk around in different programs and applications in the digital arena when they teach. This can compares with practical attainments as a digital literacies. I think this is a good experience for the students. They can see when their teachers use the digital platform in an educational purpose. In this case I don´t mean powerpoint or a classic lecture, In education there is a lot of traditional learning. I found a book “Teens, technology, and literacy; or , why bad grammar isn´t always bad” by Linda W Braun from 2007. Interesting book from an educational point of view. One chapter was title “Technology + Literacy = Social Networking. It is interesting that we still have a lot of focus on the technology but now we have change the word to digital. Douglas also writes about that the significance of “digital literacy” will change over time. I agree with that, it depends on culture and your social network your in. It will change over time, we cant stop it, it just happens.

The Digital me – sv/eng

När jag var liten läste mamma och pappa sagor för mig. När jag blev äldre tog det egna läsandet över. Jag fortsatte att ta del av sagorna genom radion och grammofonspelaren. Min favorit LP-skiva var Djungelboken, vars saga jag kunde lyssna på om och om igen samtidigt som jag betraktade bilderna på LP-skivans omslag. Att kunna lyssna om samma saga och titta på skivomslagets bilder gjorde det möjligt att förflytta tanken till en fiktiv och fantasifull värld. Sen dess har det hänt en hel del både inom den tekniska utvecklingen och möjligheterna som de digitala verktygen erbjuder.

För ca 20 år sen arbetade jag på Komvux och fick där utveckla en kurs för förskolellärare, vi jobbade mycket med officepaketet, det var både ordbehandling som det hette på den tiden (word), excel, access (databas) och publisher som var ett layout program. Det skulle läras ut att starta en dator, klicka rätt med musen, skriva en text och spara sitt dokument på en server. När jag senare började på universitet hade alla tillgång till en epostadress och en lärplattform som hette FirstClass. Det skulle börjas samarbetas men det var fortfarande tekniken som var i fokus inte lärandet. Det är intressant att läsa artikeln av Coomey, M., & Stephenson, J. (2001), de funktioner de identifierade var dialog, delaktighet, stöd och kontroll, det här att hitta sin egen praktik och få verktyg för att hantera online-lärande saknades i början på 2000-talet. Jag minns fortfarande kursrum jag satte upp för lärare där jag visade studenter hur de skulle samarbeta men de användes aldrig, de gapade tomma. Idag vet vi lite mer…

Vid en tidpunkt arbetade jag på naturvetenskapliga fakulteten då en lärare kom fram till mig och ville börja använda Wikipedia i undervisningen. Vi funderade igenom upplägg, lärare och handledare står för ämnesinnehåll och jag som itk-pedagog visade på möjligheten att skriva på Wikipedia för studenterna, ni kanske undrar hur resultat blev, mycket positivt men det är en helt annan historia…

The Digital me – eng
As a child my mother and father read fairy tales for me. Later on I began to read the stories by my own. I also had a record player where I could play my favourite tale of the Jungle Book over and over again… Listening to something over and over again is a technical opportunity. Since then a lot of things has happened and many things have changed both in the technical way as well as my own digital experience and knowledge.

For roughly 20 years ago I worked at Komvux (municipal adult education). There, I had the privilege to develop a course for teachers teaching at preschool. At that time, the focus of the work was put on the technical equipment, technical issues and how to ”move” around and be guided in different programmes. Unfortunately, this technical focus led to the lack of pedagogical perspectives and aspects in the learning. Later I started to work at the University where we all received our own devices: computers, e-mail and LMS (First Class). The purpose was to promote and encourage collaboration between teachers, colleagues and administrators. However, the technical issues that the equipment caused were once again prioritised rather than focusing on learning aspects. The article Coomey, M., & Stephenson, J. (2001) talks about four features of learning: dialogue, involvement, support and control. During my early years at the University, I can’t remember that we discussed or talked about these elements of learning. To bring these features in focus, I remember that I created a digital course room for the teachers with the purpose to promote collaboration between students and teachers. Unfortunately, the course room was very little used and stood empty most of the time…

At one point, I had began working at the natural science department, when a teacher came to me and asked if we could use and incorporate the web-based encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a part of the course in Health Science the teacher held. Together we developed what we began to call the “Wikipedia project” which gave students the opportunity to write articles on Wikipedia. The outcome and result of the project were mainly positive and successful, that is however another story…