Sunday, September 21, 2008

Week 4 II. Digital Literacy Skills

Reviewing the “Learning for the 21st Century (A Report and MILE Guide for 21st Century Skills),” I think that to be a successful learners for 21 century there are two features: independent learners and cooperation work. Though independent and cooperation sounds contradict to each other but I will explain them in detail.

For the independent learners, I mean here, is the ability to learn by themselves. They have to develop the ability to search the sources among tons of exploring information everyday; they have to develop the ability to decode different types of resources, such as multimedia, digital resources, printed content, etc. The main point is that, they must know what’s there, and how can they manipulate these resources even when there’s no instructors. For cooperation work, I mean here, is the ability to communicate with others. Though online community didn’t have a strict regulation compared to the real world, online community have their rules. Like citing people’s work in printed paper, online users have to tag or provide hyperlinks when using others’ works. The knowledge is also constructed by communication process. For example, people write a paragraph of Wikipedia, and other people add more paragraphs. Some people have other opinions to the existing paragraph so that they edit them. A complete piece of Wikipedia is then constructed by the communication process.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Week4. What we know & What you don't know about on-line games?

On July 7, 2008, Business Weekly published two articles related to the influence of on-line games toward learning.

In the first article, Break up four major myths- playing with your kids and building competitive. The authors pointed out the four major myths of online games which pervasively believed by most of the people.


Myth 1: Online games can be addictive
According to Guo, F. Y, professor of informatics department, National Sun Yat-sen University, adolescent is easily addictive to everything, such as novels, sports. Therefore, the point is not preventing your kids playing online games but how can we teach them interact with an appropriate way and avoiding addictive.


Myth 2: Online games make kids become stupid
Though some researches do approve that playing online games hampering mental development, still, other researches provide more positive affect than negative one. For example, students’ problem-solving skills, and deductive skills are improved. The author also pointed out that this myth was based on the assumption that online games are easy, but eventually they require multiple skills at the same time.


Myth 3: Online games make kids become more irritate
Most of the parents blame children’s antisocial behavior for playing online games. However, in 1999, FBI gathered a group of psychologists, psychiatrist and school administers and found out that social and family effects were far more then online games. When encounter problems in reality, children easily escape to the virtual world.


Myth 4: Online games isolate kids from the society
Most of the parents worried about that children sitting in front of the computer screen without communicate with others will hamper their communication skills. However, while playing on-line games, they could probably talk much more than in real life.
The above are the four major myths and the author’s augment. Later, the author of The Gamer Disposition even provides more evidence about how can people learn from playing online games, and how can these skills cooperate in real life tasks.

I believe that online game could be a fun and effective tool for learning. However, as instructors and parents, we need to have a positive attitude and carefully instruct our students’ or children how to use this tool properly.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Week3. Web 2.0 - boosting cooperation

Two are better than one

When a crab gets caught into a bucket, it can easily escape, but if there are more than one crab inside the bucket, they will fight against each other rather than cooperate. Finally no one can escape. This is well known as “Crab bucket syndrome,” which will not be a distant phrase for people working on industrial management but it is also commonly used to describe social situation as well as other situations. Under this notion, among the education system especially in Asian countries, we are taught that you are your only friend. We compete with our classmates, other examines, and we work individually. I will not aware of the influence if not being USA.

In western countries, people work cooperatively, and prefer interact with others. Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate school of Education, discovered that students’ success relies on their ability to form or participate in small study groups. (Brown, J. S., & Adler, R. P., 2008) Web 2.0 definitely has certain impact on current status; it changed the role of web users, the information process in our brain, and learning style.

Differentiate from the web in the early age, Web 2.0 provides more free access (ex. Open Educational Resources, OER), more flexibility (ex. Wikis) and ownership (ex, blogs), which shift users’ role from merely consumers to contributors. As Crossman L. (2006) noted in his article “Time’s Person of the Year: You,” there are people who sacrifice their spare time, sitting in front of the screens and create those microcontent to make these small pieces matter. There are more and more students in Taiwan, who post their specialties on-line and seeks for others to exchange their specifies for free. For example, an English major student might exchange with a chemistry major student so that they can learn from each other without even spent a cent.

Everything is changing and there is no way for us to say “No.” Everyone is taking the use of the benefits created by web 2.0. It will be too slow to learn by your own. It’s time for us to contribute, and consume those exploding information.

Resources:
• Brown, J. S., & Adler, R. P. (2008, January/February). Minds on fire: Open education, the long tail, and learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review, 43(1), 16-32. Retrieved February 23, 2008, from
• Time Magazine. (2006/2007). Time Magazine Person of the Year, 168(26), December 25, 2006/January 1, 2007.
• Nicholas Carr (2008, July/August). Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Week2. Course Management 1.0 in a Web 2.0 World

This week we discuss the current trend of integrating technology into education. I start to get a little sense about the differences between web 1.0 and Web 2.0. So far, I understand that web 1.0 is technology which designed to make life easier, such as internet, computer, and Microsoft word process; but, web 2.0 are technologies, which focus on social network, user-centered.

By reviewing articles, I found that though technology progress really fast, integrate them into education is still far behind. It is true that we have online course, and distance education, but many users complained that instructors simply moved traditional course design into online which will not make online learning or distance education success. When learning environment changed, from physical classroom to on-line interface, we will ask online learners to think in different way, and the tasks also required them to have different problem-solving skills. Therefore, online course is definitely not merely transferring everything digital and teach the content in the same way. Also, students’ performance or learning outcome should have different assessment tool to evaluate their online learning performance.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Week1. Technology Newbie

R685 "The Web 2.0 and Participatory e-Learning," is my first IST department. Though I have been participated in Dr. Bonk’s class for three semesters, I still feel nervous, because I know little about technology. To be honest, till I enter the class, I still don’t know what’s “web 2.0” & what’s “E-learning.” However, I am super exciting to explore more technology use in education and hoping to bring these new applications back my country, and boosting learning outcomes.

Regarding this weblog, I will use this space as my learning reflection. Each week we will read at least three articles, and I will share what I learn or my opinion to the articles. Sometimes, I will also share some of my learning experiences toward technology application in the learning environment. I think, by reviewing this blog in the end of the semester, you will see how I construct my knowledge by building these technology application step by step each week.