Jess’ E-Learning Blog

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.