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.
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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? |
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