Jess’ E-Learning Blog

I just put a post up replying to a  comment that Suemin made on my blog, but I was stuck with a problem. I know that on other blogging tools, like LiveJournal, that the author can respond to comments left and they appear as indented text after the comment being replied to. A similar thing occurs at Elfwood, a fantasy and sci-fi art website, where people comment on artwork posted by users. In this case though, the text occurs in the same box as the original comment with the words ‘Comment from the artist’ preceeding his/her text. But I haven’t ever seen anything here which could be similar to this. Does it exist?

So, this is Suemin’s comment to one of my previous posts on the advantages and disadvantages of E-Learning for the NGO Training Program. 

“Love the table. It really outlines the harsh reality of what some learners are facing. It is an interesting thing to note that many of our assumptions are graded by our backgrounds. The majority of us have broadband internet at home and regularly use technology. Whether it is a generational thing or a socialisation thing, I think we are lucky as learners.

NGOs definately have a tough time trying to make their up-skilling a priority over clients and I think that e-learning will definately be able to assist them.”

And, because I have forgotten whether I can reply properly to her post and if she can see that response (HELP PLEASE, ANNE), I’ll just put my response here instead and she can see it on her aggregator

Yes, I did this after our presentation with DoCS; I really needed to do something to solidify what was happening their context and create some boundaries and paramaters for my research with the group assignment. I did notice that when I was writing this, that I would type something, and then realise that I was making an assumption, and that it was incorrect. That my position, understanding, ability and access were different from what is the norm for them.

And then, I was just thinking the other day that Instant Messaging technology would really be great for the NGO’s in its social aspects, before I realised that not only was there the whole ‘technology’ and ‘download’ thing, but something far more basic… each NGO has only one email address. How do you form a relationship with someone, when everytime you contact their NGO, you talk to someone else???

Yesterday, our E-Learning Design class was compromised of a ‘presentation’ in Second Life. I found it really interesting to go through Second Life again after not touching it since last year’s E-Learning Experiences assignment. Some of the class were provided with avatars to move around in Second Life with our presenter, who goes by the screen name of Jokay Wollongong. I thought that this was a really good idea, as the class didn’t have to sign up and go through all the islands in order to participate.

Through the presentation, I discovered something about myself; the main factor stopping me from using Second Life on a regular basis is that my internet connection can’t really support it. Otherwirse, I think that I could really enjoy being in and around Second Life, whether I was learning or not.  

Actually, I just found my password (yet again) and logged on to fix my avatar appearence. I’m hoping that if I only log on every now and then, that I won’t go over my download limit

Our class for E-Learning Design is working for DoCS this semester to provide some suggestions on how they can use e-learning technologies in their NGO Training Program. In this week’s lecture, we had some of the people form DoCS come in and explain the context of the learning, some issues and problems with implementing e-learning as well as general information about what DoCS does and how the NGO Training program works.

After the lecture, I was thinking about the context for e-learning and came up withthe following thoughts on the context, benefits and issues of using e-learning technologies, which are tabled below:

For E-Learning Design, we were given homework to find out where our local neighbourhood centre is. I have no idea where mine is. I’d never even heard of them existing, or what they look like. I think the closest I’ve ever come to one is scout halls. But they’re not really the same thing, right?

So, because I’m in both Baulkham Hills and Parramatta councils, I’m not really sure where I should be looking. So I searched the net and found something in Toongabbie, Wentworthville, Dundas and Harris Park … none of which are in my ‘neighbourhood’. I looked in the DoCS website for a list of neighbourhood centres, but couldnt find anything.

I think I’ll look later, when I think of some other way of searching for info.

It’s kind of ironic; social software is as much about disseminating information as it is about consolidating it. An individual site can act as both spreader and combiner, such as del.icio.us. For the individual user, delicious acts as a consolidation tool to organize and have in one place all the websites which the user may need now or in the future. However, at the same time, the user is broadcasting their pages to other users and thus is spreading information around. Users can subscribe to other users’ pages and therefore be privy to their listings. In the same way, Netvibes acts both as a consolidator and a disseminator with it’s new feature “netvibes ginger”. While the old version of Netvibes acted as an aggregator which only the user could  see (unless they allowed another user to see it) Netvibes Ginger gives each user both a private and a public page. So while the aggregator is, by nature, a consolidator of information from several websites, it is now also a disseminator in that other users can access your information as well and use it on their own aggregators.

While reading ‘Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation and Teaching and Learning?’ (Alexander, 2006), I realised one really prominent aspect of social software which has never really occurred to me. When I was first introduced to concepts such as aggregators, social bookmarking, educational blogs and wikis, I was overwhelmed by the multitude and sharing of information, the interaction between people and the presence of identity broadcasting. But I completely overlooked one thing: How time plays a part in social software.

 One thing this reading has pointed out to me is that social software is different from other internet applications not only because it is highly user-generated, interactive and largely informal, but also because it is created over time and as such, the passage of time is evident in the end products of social software (not that there is technically any end product, as it is continually being built, but you know what I mean ^_^). For instance, blogging is highly time oriented in that each post is dated and ordered according to when it was made. Wiki’s evolve over time and often include a function whereby users can access the history of changes made to the wiki.

These sections of the Web break away from the page metaphor. Rather than following the notion of the Web as book, they are predicated on microcontent. Blogs are about posts, not pages. Wikis are streams of conversation, revision, amendment, and truncation. Podcasts are shuttled between Web sites, RSS feeds, and diverse players. These content blocks can be saved, summarized, addressed, copied, quoted, and built into new projects.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/Web20ANewWaveofInnovation/40615

The liaison for the company we’re working for was in class in our last E-Learning Design lesson. We were discussing the differences between Brown and Adler’s (2008) descriptions of Cartesian and Social Learning. When we were discussing the use of  social learning in e-learning, Brett asked us the following question:

How do you convince clients, who are competing for funding from you, to share their knowledge with each other and you, or to admit their knowledge deficiencies?

This, of course, really stumped me. So I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days, and this is what I’ve come up with:

1. Why do you need them to share information? That’s a really big problem which would need a really time consuming, expensive and complex solution. Is it worth the effort to do this?
2. You could define the problem as a culture problem. If you said that the problem is that there is no learning culture, then the solution is to develop a learning culture. A learning culture may be of benefit because if it is successful, the clients actually want to share info, instead of feeling that they are being forced to share the info. However, the problems with this are multiple. Firstly, a culture is intangible and therefore cannot be easily measured or put into a business case. Secondly, how do you plan a project to change a culture,  which is intangible?
3. Possibly, you could alter the funding policy to make participating in knowledge sharing activities a proviso of recieving funding. This would ensure that the clients participate. However, it may also breed resentment between clients and the company. This could result in a lower quality, less useful or perhaps actually less knowledge being shared than if the culture supported knowledge sharing.
4. I also thought that maybe an incentive could be attached to using the e-learning technology. Because funding is limited, this incentive could come from funding money. I’ve recently had my incentive program changed at work; instead of recieving a $10 gift voucher if we make our target for the week, one person from the five-person team will recieve a $50 gift voucher once a month for being a ’star performer’. Our whole team had a really negative reaction to this and a similar reaction could occur among the clients if money was taken from one area to another.

Overall, I don’t think that there is a really good solution to this problem. Anything which is implemented will have negative and positive elements, and considering that costing is an issue, it is important to ensure that the solution actually solves the problem and solves it well. 

This has taken me so long to write -_- I’ve been so busy that I’ve only been able to get five minutes writing time every couple of days.  Anyway, here it is

The following are some of my responses and some of my reflections on activvity 1.1. I don’t want to put it all up here, because I’d have a really long post instead of a normal long post These questions and reflections are in response to the 2008 and 2007 Horizon Report, which predicts what is going to happen in the world of online education in business and educational institutes over the next five or so years.

Regarding the 2008 report, which of these technologies in what context have you heard or used them? How do the trends outlined compare with your experience of technoology in a learning context?

I’ve come into a lot of contact with ‘grassroots videos’ in university and personal educational contexts as well as a entertainment purposes. I believe, though, that this technology is not an emerging technology, but rather an already emerged technology. I have made use of sites such as Youtube and DailyMotion for both entertainment and educational purposes. My brother watches amv’s, I use Google Video regularly to learn from tutorials posted on the net (like this one) or research personal interests (like Wing Chun). I often see user-generated videos embedded into websites which I visit. I think that grassroots videos are already mainstream, not that they will become mainstream.

However, I think that my opinion is due mainly to my age and generation. My mum knows what Youtube is, but only because it sends our downloads over our limit My dad works somewhere in the complicated world of computer systems, but he doesn’t make much use of any type of video technology.  So. I think I would say that grassroots are a technology which is emerging at different rates in different age and work groups.

One of the significant trends mentioned is the way in which social networking, collective intelligence and mass amateurisation has altered the means by which educational institutes teach. I would agree that these three factors have been an important part of my uni course from my first year here. This is mainly because I have been exposed to social networking, collective intelligence and ‘do-it-yourself’ web tools in my e-learning subjects in this course. Educational blogging tools (edublogs.org), e-portfolio sites (like this), wikis (wikispaces.com, wikipedia.com) and many other technologies have the ability to provide a platform upon which educational institutes can support student learning. Aligning learning with technologies already in use by students (even social networking sites like FaceBook) can make learning more accessible and more attractive to teen and early-twenties learners.

In regards to the 2007 report, review your familiarity with the key emerging technologies and your current technology experiences.

I think that user created content has been in use earlier than 2007/2008, particularly in regards to use for non-educational purposes. I have encountered a lot of tutorials, hints and helpers who have published their materials on sites such as wikipedia, youtube, personal or professional blogs, etc. While I did not interact with much user created content in my first year of uni study (2006), I did come in contact with a vast amount of content for uni educational purposes in 2007 and have continued to do so in 2008. However, I am biased, as much of this content has been encountered in regards to e-learning subjects.

I experimented and researched virtual worlds at the end of last year, which was interesting and educational. I think that this technology is not being used very much at all in educational institutes, and is more widespread in business itself than universities such as ING, IBM and HP.