I've gone back and watched all the video extras that were in the modules, because I'm pretty sure I missed a few the last 12 weeks as I was focused on reading the articles. Something struck me as I watched- there is a theme in many of the videos, and that theme is basically,' how we see education today is messed up'.
Not just that education is messed up. Which is almost a given, considering the times we live in. It's more than that- it's how we conceive of it; how we imagine it, how we define it in our heads when we think of, for example, "a good college education." We think of places where you are supposed to go to big lecture rooms. We think of professors who are going to walk in and lecture for an hour and then walk out. We think of all-nighters cramming for a final exam, which is one of two or three interactions each student will have with the content. The video links we watched made me question all of that. What is really good about that type of education, anyway? What do people learn in college? I think there is a prevalent attitude that college is set up in a certain way, and if that doesn't work for you, you might not be a good candidate to go to college. If you can't eek out the ability to learn to read critically, to write with a clear argument, and to "learn how to learn" while you happen to be in lecture classes, you don't get much out of your college degree. What this leads me to thinking is that nothing should be sacred in education. Everything can be and should be held up to a lens and considered. Even the most sacred constructs we have, like what a classroom LOOKS like, should be examined. What does it mean if a big lecture class has more drop-outs, more failures, and less learning, and less interaction than an online class? Are we brave enough to look at data and what really works? I'm not sure yet.
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I feel like there's a piece in the Otte article that I never want to forget- the right system in place in a Higher Ed distance education program can lead to centripetal force-- the wrong system or no system? And online learning can be driven by centrifugal force and "random innovation". I love that image, I can just imagine the university spinning inward........ or spinning outward. What a push and pull between so many different moving parts in a University. I think Academic freedom and shared governance and really just lack of transparency make many faculty members resistant to change and DEFINITELY resistant to the idea of other people getting their hands in someone's class. I do sympathize with that- if going from face-to-face to online teaching means losing some autonomy, why in the world would any faculty member want to do that? But the pull to innovate is so strong with faculty as well, that people are taking the risk and trying it anyway. No wonder faculty are always talking about the "politics" of a University! The push and pull of administration and faculty are no joke!
Here's what I'm getting from Downs: We can never experience direct reality. We can only experience our interpretation or reality, every single time. Nothing is actually a fact, there are just convergences of experiences that we interpret into meaning. So for example, "An apple is red" is not a fact, it's a convergence of a distribution of knowledge of what our experience of an apple, our experience of color, our interpretation of "red" in this exact light, our interpretation of the verb "is", etc etc. All of that of course is our interpretation based on our perception. We will make 'inferences' where we pick out perceptions that are the most useful for us to interpret and disregard the rest. But not only do we interpret things for our use, we are actually MAKING meaning by these interpretations. So if there were no people to 'perceive' the concept of 'hard' and recognize that diamonds have it, then diamonds would not be hard because there would be no 'hard'.
OK, I get it, but is this really new? Isn't he saying 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really fall?' If he had to answer that question, I think he would say no, it did not really fall. And that's where he's lost me, because yes, the tree DID fall. Just because we can never experience direct reality, why does that mean direct reality doesn't exist? This isn't a new topic to philosophers- it automatically brings to mind Plato's chair. I think Plato would argue that it's true, we can only interpret "chair" through our senses but none of the things we sense are the original 'essence' of chair. We can never perceive the 'essence' of chair but it definitely exists. And what about Descartes' evil demon? None of us can prove that we're not in the Matrix. There might actually be an evil demon controlling all of our perceptions and EVERYTHING we perceive may be false. Except that I can perceive myself thinking, which means that one thing is true and that I really do exist. I think I'm following what he's saying but why is it so important that there's no reality outside of interpretation? I just don't buy it. The Siemens article has discussion questions, so here we go! I'm Making it Stick. :)
1. Make a Venn diagram?! Hold that thought. Let's look at Question 2. 2. According to connectivism, how has the rapid increase of access to knowledge affected the way we should view knowledge? I've only read through Siemens once and it was the first time I've really understood Connectivism this semester. The rapid increase in access to knowledge has 1., decreased the "half-life" of knowledge by an incredible amount. Basically, what you know has an expiration date on it and it's sooner than you realize. So knowledge expires now, where as before, knowledge moved so slow that we didn't have to think about the expiration dates. The other thing that changes about our view to knowledge is, you may not actually have to know things for knowledge to exist. You may not know what percent the average global temperature has been rising, but you could google it. Googling it and knowing it might be more equivalent than we actually realize. 3. Think of the most recent job you have held. How did the principles of connectivism affect the way you learned in that job? Now that I'm thinking about it, I think connectivism is an easy metaphor for my job. In theory I've had the same job for 20 years- I'm a sign language interpreter. But in reality, I go to different places all the time and jump into people's lives at a certain point in their trajectory, and then I jump back out. Sometimes I never see them again, sometimes I might end up working with them (intermittently) for years. When I start my day, people start talking and I start interpreting, I in fact do not know exactly what they are talking about- I wasn't there yesterday, or the day before, or even in the meeting right before this meeting. What's important is that I can connect what one person is saying to what the other person is saying and make meaning out of it. Some interpreter's won't do this kind of work, and insist on only going places where they know exactly what is going on. I thrive on it. I work some days with a deaf doctor and some days with a deaf lawyer-- it's so impossible to keep up with what they are doing, since I don't go every day, that I've learned to be ok with not knowing. I've learned to do a good job by keeping up my networks. I read the paper, I watch the news, I keep up to date on what people are talking about, and I take what I know and make connections. 4. How would you summarize the main points of connectivism if you had to explain it to a friend with no background in this area? I would explain that before Connectivism, all theories of learning were designed before the internet hit us. The biggest take-away of Connectivism is that learning and knowledge are different than they were before the internet, or the internet age allows us to see learning and knowledge in a way we never could before. And what is that big difference? The biggest difference is "the pipe is more important than the content in the pipe." Because the actual content of knowledge changes so fast, knowing "things" is not as important anymore. Those "things" expire now, much faster than they ever did. What is important is a person's individual connections to a network of places to get information. Knowing that the Battle of Normandy happened in 1066 is not as important as knowing how and where to look up information about the Battle of Normandy when you need it. Then once you looked it up, knowing how to synthesize that information into the current Brexit discussion you're having. The ability to recognize patterns is more useful than knowing facts, so therefore it's more important than plain facts. This changes a couple of very long-standing beliefs: you actually can keep knowledge in a machine, and since you are creating meaning by making those connections, it means that your strongest "pipes" in your network are going to dominate what things mean. And your "pipes" will be different than other people's "pipes". My thoughts: I think saying that the internet has changed learning and knowledge is a bit of a cop out. If Connectivism works, isn't it possible that it's always been true, we just could never see it before? It might not have mattered much before when information moved slower. But isn't it possible that the pipe has ALWAYS mattered more than the contents of the pipe? I don't hate Connectivism- I think it's really interesting. But saying the internet has changed the basic fundamentals of knowledge and learning feels... weak. We might have never noticed it before, but I think it's possible that the pipe has always been more important than the contents. I'm going to use the Make it Stick philosophy again and do the questions at the end of Chapter 7.6.
1. Take one of your courses, and analyse how social media could be used in your course. In particular:
The course I'm going to pick is CLT Skills One, which is the first skills class in learning how to transliterate using Cued English, (which is similar to the first interpreting class in ASL.) I think the best way social media could be used in this class would be to let some of the lessons move from Instructor led to learner-led, in groups. For example, they could look at file sharing sites to find a source to transliterate slow English, or different accents in English, or clips of foreign language, background noises, etc. They could work on a piece to demonstrate to the group. Right now everyone watches videos of OTHER people demonstrating. Of course this is the intro class, so they wouldn't be able to demonstrate without knowing what to do. But I think there's a balance somewhere. Another way to use social media in class would be to connect to the Cueing community that already exists on Facebook, etc. I'm trying to think of a learning outcome.... maybe they do a survey or ask a question to the group. A big move in Interpreter Education lately is to make sure there is Deaf community involvement in the training right from the start. There have been some complaints that go viral in the last few years about interpreters and the (sometimes very embarrassing) mistakes or mis-steps they make while on the job, with an idea that Interpreter Education has lost sight of its main goals. So getting students involved with the community right away in a positive manner could be a good start. I think I would just add social media to the course, not re-design it around social media. First of all because my original content in there is good! :) But Skills One is very Instructor led. Not a lot of room for Constructivist or OCL learning in the class right now. I'm enjoying this question-- ultimately we've got 10 courses we would like to move to DL courses. There's so much to think about! 2. I have offered only a cursory list of the unique pedagogical characteristics of social media. Can you think of others that have not already been covered in other parts of this chapter? The first thing that comes to mind is how short-lived many Social Media sites are. In chapter 7.6 there is a wheel of different Social Media technologies, in 2010. The FIRST one I tried to look up was called WetPaint. It's now a Hollywood gossip site. I dug a little deeper and found out it used to be a way people could make their own Wiki's, but it was sold to an Entertainment company. So, fleeting? A characteristic Bates does not mention is that the very site you ask your students to use could be gone already. Another characteristic Bates doesn't really mention is the potential for danger. Asking students to use specific websites in Social Media could lead to the potential for bullying, harassment, doxing, identity theft, phishing, just some really nasty comments on a post, or accidentally giving money to a Nigerian Prince. I can imagine, if I taught minors, I might get some parents who don't want their students to use certain types of social media at all. Actually, I know adults who purposefully have no presence on Social Media and might refuse an assignment. Something else to think about. 3. How does this chapter influence your views on students bringing their own devices to class? Not really. I know instructors who limit their student's devices; I don't. And for DL classes, I wouldn't know it anyway! The thing that drives me crazy is how students see making videos as such an informal process now. I get so many video assignments where students are sitting on their bed in their pajamas!!! That drives me nuts. 4. Are you (still) skeptical about the value of social media in education? What do you see as its downsides? Well, yes. I mentioned them already- the fleeting nature of some websites, and the potential for danger. Third being students who can't do an assignment because they do not want a social media presence. But the first assignment I talked about in number 1, I could still do without most of those dangers. So saying no to ALL social media in 2019 is not necessary or practical- especially when students are already using the internet to take the class! Woah! How did a month go by? Still trying to get the timing of taking two courses down. Just when I can celebrate a win like getting good grade on a paper, another deadline whizzes by! Still trying though!
I just finished the Harasim chapter on OCL. I was very curious to read about why the internet needs completely new theories of learning. I'll have to do some more reading on it and I'm wondering what Constructivists have to say about OCL. It seems to me that Harasim has drawn a line in the sand between these theories that I'm not sure all Constructivists would draw. I'm not going to do a book report on the whole theory as I imagine there are a lot of those. I want to focus on some of my questions. My first question is, in trying to imagine how this would apply at different levels, it seems to me like this fits education at a very advanced level. Learners building knowledge as a group seems like a pretty advanced skill. Harasim compares this type of knowledge to scientists who build on each other's knowledge as a group and create and guide new knowledge built on what already exists. I totally agree with this as I have experienced this in person- I interpret with a Deaf doctor at a research hospital and he's putting together research on pancreatic cancer. And building knowledge is exactly what he's doing. Also not by himself. He works with a physicist, a radiologist, a statistician, two other doctors, etc. I watch them build knowledge once a week in their meetings. But it's VERY advanced work and the scientists already know what the "canon" of knowledge is in pancreatic cancer. Because they are so advanced is why this kind of learning works. Would this work with first year med students who don't know anything? I see that as an open question. My second question is, it seems like Harasim is saying that a discussion board is a pretty good OCL technology. It just doesn't seem like that to me. Through the whole build-up of what OCL is, I kept thinking, "a discussion board can't do this." Harasim mentions 2 technologies I've never heard of, VirtualU and V groups, as well as Knowledge Forum. They seem to have been invented in the 90's and I've never heard of them so I wonder what happened to them. KF used scaffolding in a group discussion setting that seemed to be able to bring discussion from just individual posts into those IO and IC pieces of OCL that discussion boards don't do. I think in theory people could organize information and create information in discussion boards, but it never happens in reality. Everyone makes an individual post and other people reply and basically say "nice job" or don't reply at all. I know I'm guilty of it. And that way there is no organization- no way to bring people's posts together in any structural way. It seems like the discussion board technology could use a refresh and a boost. I do have one more question. I'm wondering on the heavy reliance on English text. There's a lot of talk about OCL being open and accessible to such a wide group of people, but here's a statisic from the Clear Language Group: Knowing the reading level of your text can give you a general idea how many people may be able to read it. The most recent national assessment of adult literacy showed that 43% of adults living in the U.S., some 93 million people, have Basic or Below Basic literacy skills. -retrieved from http://www.clearlanguagegroup.com/readability/ on July 2nd, 2019 I feel like this heavy reliance on English text is another aspect of what makes this kind of learning pretty advanced. It's definitely not for everyone, especially if almost half the adults in this country have only basic or below basic reading skills. It doesn't seem to me that this kind of learning is REQUIRED to be done through writing. It describes this kind of learning, yes, because that's what most people do. But couldn't there be a more inclusive way? I just read the excerpt from Brown, Roediger and McDaniel's "Make it Stick" and I'm inspired to try it myself. I read Bates chapter 2 last week, and I remember there were some pre- and post-questions. Here we go.
1. Which theory of learning do you like best, and why? State what main subject you are teaching. I'd have to go Constructionist. The subject I teach is interpreting for deaf people (two different kinds, one is ASL-English and the other is called Cued Speech), which I equate to sort of like teaching applied linguistics. There are some academic theories and principles but it is also a skill. So there's no passive learning, students must start with what they already know and build their own knowledge, because in the end they can't cheat. In the end it will be them up on the platform, with one person talking and a deaf person waiting to find out what they're saying. 2. Does your preferred way of teaching match any of these theoretical approaches? Write down some of the activities you do when teaching that ‘fit’ with this theory. Can you think of other possible activities you now could use within this theoretical framework for teaching? Yes, I actually think a LOT of my teaching is behaviorist, especially for teaching Cued Speech classes. Cueing is a combination of handshapes that, instead of forming words, form syllables. So a person puts them together to make visual English syllables and then puts more together to make English words, then English phrases, etc. The point of that is to have visual access to English itself, whereas signing is visual access to a separate language- ASL. So when I'm teaching people how to cue, I start with the first handshape, cue a word, and everyone copies me. I say "yes, you got it!" and move on to the next word. After a while I add a new handshape, and it's like learning a new letter on the keyboard- now you can make more words. I cue a word and when they do it too, we move on to the next. Because I'm relying on them presenting a visual, measurable response to me, that seems very Behaviorist. 3. Does your teaching generally combine different theories – sometimes behaviourist, sometimes cognitive, etc.? If so, what are the reasons or contexts for taking one specific approach rather than another? The first two I can think of that I do are behaviorist and constructionist. The behaviorist is what I talked about in the last question, and the constructionist part is when I have them in pairs or groups and give them words, sentences, and phrases to practice cueing. I started doing that because everybody was staring at me too much and I felt like we were doing the same thing over and over, and I needed to change it up. BUT the outcomes that I found reinforced why it worked: the students could own the practice by moving at their own pace, not waiting for me to cue something. Also they had to cue to each other, which means they are seeing someone do what they are trying to do, so a lot of mistakes get corrected without me being involved. 4. How useful are these theories in terms of teaching practice? In your view, are they just jargon or useless theorising, or ‘labelling’ of commonly understood practice, or do they provide strong guidelines for how you should teach? Well I think they ARE useful, because I just taught myself something- my class is VERY behaviorist. I think I need to think about mixing it up! Wow, Saba was a hefty climb! It's like asking for a beer and getting a stout. :) I ended up loving it. I'm taking 601 also this semester, so I just finished reading a lot about how Distance Education was industrial learning, designed for the masses. And I kept thinking.... huh? Still? No one has come up with something better? So now I LOVE systems theory. It works! I think it can really define what's going on! I also love how it can encompass everything, and continue to change and add new ideas, so basically by definition, it can never be considered limited or outdated. Nice work there, philosophers! I also love that Saba explained that the guy who defined DE as 'industrial education' eventually went back and allowed for DE to NOT be so industrial. I do think it's smart to study the origins of DE but I was really struggling with 'industrial education' as the primary theory of DE.
I feel like it took me a long time to get my Saba discussion post up for this module. I wrestled with Saba for quite a while and while I did come to really like it, it took me a long time to get my ideas out on paper. I made Helen (my wife) talk it out with me a few times, which I'm sure she did not love! I'm hoping to find a groove for grad school where I am working on things and keeping up with things so I don't have to stress out too much. I probably need to give myself some more time before I'm good at grad school again. It has been a while! The first thing that struck me about chapter one, is I can't figure out what date this was written. I've never used a book-that's-really-a-website before and it has no title page! The reason I'm wondering is because he writes a lot about how college classes are getting bigger, faculty workload is getting bigger, more adjuncts are being used, etc which is causing college classes to move toward the all-lecture format. I'm having cognitive dissonance about this because I went to college 25 years ago and ALL college classes were lecture format. That's what college was. That's what a professor did, was lecture. It was their job. Now, I went to a smaller university that was known for its focus on undergrad teaching, so I did have small classes where I got to know my classmates and my professors, but still, it was their JOB to lecture. There were two formats for college classes- lecture and seminar. If that wasn't a good fit for you, that meant you weren't cut out for college.
I have a weird job where I have actually continued to go to college every year since I graduated myself. I'm a sign language interpreter, and I've interpreted college classes at almost every university in the DC area. I've actually seen classes move away from the all-lecture format recently. I've seen a lot more group discussions, group projects, different types of assignments, adaptive learning formats with stations and computer programs used in class, and all kinds of creative teaching methods that did not exist when I was in undergrad. So that's why I can't figure out when this chapter was written that he's worried that classes are moving TOWARD the all-lecture format. Maybe he has a completely different experience than I do, but I've seen a lot less lecture in the past few years. Even powerpoint has had an effect on college lectures- instructors can add visuals, graphics, videos, and all kinds of things to their multi-media lectures. That's a completely different job than my professors had, where they stood in front of us and talked, and wrote on a chalkboard. :) |
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