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Month: July 2020
After reading the thoughtful discussion in TwitterChat, I believe that the openness and sharing within K-12 educational context shall be practiced because it has various advantages. Some of its advantages are the following: (1) it amplifies the voice of the learners, (2) it promotes collaboration, and lastly (3) it encourages inclusivity.
When teachers practice openness and sharing, the students no longer become a passive receiver of knowledge. This is for the reason that, in this educational context, the teachers no longer spoon feed information to their students. But rather, the learners are taken as independent learners so they are given the freedom to research the information they think they need. In addition to this, when teachers practice openness and sharing, the students will be encouraged to collaborate. After researching information, learners need to share their ideas with others and hear the perspective of other learners. This way, the learners will be able to verify and synthesize the information that they have gathered. Lastly, with openness and sharing, educators will be able to accommodate various types of learners. This is because openness and sharing makes learning accessible. In other words, for as long as the learners are interested to join in the discussion, he/she can share his/her comments or opinions.
To conclude, educators should practice openness and sharing in K-12 context because it amplifies the voice of the learners, it promotes collaboration, and it encourages inclusivity. Currently, educators have various means to make openness and sharing possible. This means that educators cannot find an excuse as to why they should not practice openness and sharing in K-12 educational context.
Open Pedagogy has always been closely associated with the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources or OERs (Wiley and Hilton, 2018). It is for this reason that when it comes to Open Pedagogy, educators should be knowledgeable enough when it comes to various tools that they can utilize to promote student-centered learning. These tools, according to Hodgkinson-Williams and Gray (2009) are enabled by Web 2.0 technologies (cited in Wiley and Hilton, 2018). Educators do not necessarily have to look hard to search for tools that can enable the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources (OERs). In fact, educators can actually use sites that most students are already familiar with like Twitter. Twitter can support Open Education through allowing students to co-create artifacts with their teachers and enabling peer-to-peer learning.
Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ service where users are only allowed to post 280 characters (Madland, 2020). Twitter’s ‘micro-blogging’ service could be used to enable students to co-create artifacts with their teachers. For instance, one can host the discussion and ask various questions. In response, the students could either reblog the question to invite other learners or they could reply to the thread. With this kind of set-up, the learners’ voices are amplified because they take control of what content to share. Even if Twitter is only limited to 280 characters, learners can share resources of various formats. Learners can share videos, podcasts, forum, and articles by just posting the link of their desired content. In sharing the link, the learners just have to make sure to provide a context or label to give other users an idea on what the link is about. By sharing the link, the learners help other learners discover other resources which can they find valuable for future use. In the discussion between the students and the teachers, both the students and the teachers actively contributed. This shows that the discussion between the students and learners is an example of an artifact co-created by students and learners.
In addition to enabling students and learners to co-create artifacts, twitter can also be used to enable peer-to-peer learning. According to Schoder and Fischbach (2003), peer-to-peer pertains to a network of equals (peers) where one or two individuals spontaneously collaborate without a need for central coordination (cited in Schmidt et al., 2009). Open platforms like Twitter help learners and educators create a community of people who shares the passion for learning. With this kind of community, the members will be able to interact, learn together, and develop a shared repertoire of resources (Schmidt et al., 2009). Hence, with peer-to-peer learning, everyone would be able to teach and learn from each other and life-long learning would be a reality.
Even if the incorporation of social media is relatively new in the field of Open Pedagogy, there has been various institutions that tried utilizing social media to enable Open Pedagogy. For instance, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is using a platform that comes with student registration management system, a full-pledged forum for multiple threads, a module to receive audio via phone, a learning analytic module, a document repository for reading materials, and a module to produce a variety of tests. What makes this platform interesting is that it is integrated in Facebook and Twitter. This means that students access the discussions via Twitter or Facebook. Additionally, students can also post their comments and questions directly from their social media accounts (McGreal, Anderson, and Conrad, 2015). Thus, it is possible for open education to incorporate social media in Open Pedagogy.
In conclusion, common sites like Twitter can enable Open Education for as long as it support the creation, sharing, and use of Open Education Resources (OERs). More so, a good tool for open education should also allow students and teachers to co-create artifacts and enable peer-to-peer learning. The tools used to support Open Education does not necessarily have to be complicated to be considered effective. In line with this, educators should also explore other social media sites to use for Open Pedagogy in order to cater more learners. Currently, institutions like Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has attempted to incorporate the use of social media like facebook and twitter in their platforms. This only means that it is really a possibility that social media can be used for learning as well.
References
Madland, C. (2020). Topic 4 (July 22-28). opened.ca. https://teaching.madland.ca/edci339-july20/home/topic-04
McGreal, R., Anderson, T., & Conrad, D. (2015). Open educational resources in Canada 2015. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v16i5.2404
Schmidt, J. P., Geith, C., Håklev, S., & Thierstein, J. (2009). Peer-to-peer recognition of learning in open education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v10i5.641
Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601
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Original Post 4
Twitter as a Tool for Open Education
Open Pedagogy has always been closely associated with the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources or OERs (Wiley and Hilton, 2018). It is for this reason that when it comes to Open Education, educators should be knowledgeable enough when it comes to various tools that they can utilize to promote student-centered learning. These tools, according to Hodgkinson-Williams and Gray (2009) are enabled by Web 2.0 technologies (cited in Wiley and Hilton, 2018). Educators do not necessarily have to look hard to search for tools that can enable the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources (OERs). In fact, educators can actually use sites that most students are already familiar with like Twitter.
Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ service where users are only allowed to post 280 characters (Madland, 2020). Twitter’s ‘micro-blogging’ service is perfect for discussions. For instance, one can host the discussion and ask various questions. In response, the students could either reblog the question to invite other learners or they could reply to the thread. With this kind of set-up, the learners’ voices are amplified because they take control of what content to share. Even if Twitter is only limited to 280 characters, learners can share resources of various formats. Learners can share videos, podcasts, forum, and articles by just posting the link of their desired content. In sharing the link, the learners just have to make sure to provide a context or label to give other users an idea on what the link is about. By sharing the link, the learners help other learners discover other resources which can they find valuable for future use. Unlike WordPress, Twitter is less complicated and it is user-friendly. Furthermore, since Twitter is a popular social media platform, many are already familiar with how it works. Open platforms like Twitter help learners and educators create a community of people who shares the passion for learning. Twitter also enables communication between learners and educators. For instance, a learner would like to hear an expert opinion on a certain topic; depending on the situation, he/she can just easily Tweet questions for the expert or send a private message.
In conclusion, common sites like Twitter can enable Open Education. This means that Open Education does not necessarily have to be complicated to be considered effective. In line with this, educators should also explore other social media sites to use for Open Education in order to cater more learners.
References
Madland, C. (2020). Topic 4 (July 22-28). opened.ca. https://teaching.madland.ca/edci339-july20/home/topic-04
Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601
The advantage of online courses is that they can exercise our ability of independent learning. What students lack most now is the curiosity to learn actively, a typical “slave-like learning”. Students will only learn if they are asked to, or if a task is given to them. In the physical class, the teacher will urge the students to speak actively and use their brains by means of roll call, sign in, class practice and so on. Online learning, on the other hand, is to cultivate our learning habit of seeking knowledge, constantly develop our potential, and train our ability to overcome external environmental factors. In my opinion, learning can only be more motivated if one’s desire to learn becomes strong. Make learning an interest, not a burden.
Online classes can improve our study efficiency. With the development of science and technology, it is more convenient for us to study webcast and replay of recorded classes. In addition, if there is any doubt, I can watch the replay, think independently and solve the problem, and verify whether I really did not understand the knowledge point or whether I simply did not listen carefully to the details, which led to the problem, which also relieved the teacher of a lot of burden. What’s more, students can speed up their learning progress by playing the video at twice the speed, which greatly improves their learning efficiency. While speaking at a higher speed, it also exercises our brain’s memory and ability to capture key knowledge.
With the rapid development of technology, we have to accept the changes of The Times. It is hard for us to guarantee that the future campus life will always be classrooms, teachers and students. We cannot predict the future direction, but one thing is certain that our future will be technological, digital and networked. Therefore, we need to accept this way of teaching. After all, in addition to the epidemic factor, there will be many situations that make teachers and students unable to appear at the same time. For example, teachers go on business trips and students are absent from class. In the future, teachers’ lessons will be recorded so that students will not miss a lesson.
In my opinion, Kenry’s ideal learning environment is an open learning environment, and he is more suitable for the open learning environment. Open learning refers to the planned learning that faces all kinds of objects in the society and is not subject to the restrictions of various entrance conditions of traditional educational institutions. His main characteristics such as: teaching is not in the classroom on campus, students in working and living place in situ study at any time, without being limited by the geographical space, tuition costs low, on remote will not increase a lot of cost, use a variety of media technology organization teaching, various classes students at home self-study materials is the foundation of the whole teaching. Due to different national conditions, different countries have different characteristics of open learning.
Follow Claire (2015) found that students tend to subconsciously pay attention to their own psychological order while ignoring the logical order of the subject in the process of learning under the network background due to increased autonomy, which is not conducive to the emotional communication between teachers and students. At the same time, online learning will lead to the interruption of students’ thinking. Moreover, teachers are not at ease and are not used to students’ independent learning, so they often use traditional ideas to get involved in students’ learning. Some online courses often have no teachers and rely 100 percent on students’ self-study. Without proper guidance from teachers, students are more likely to fail or learn inefficiently. However, some people believe that online learning may produce proportionate effects or even better than traditional teaching.
In my opinion, the authors have neglected the most basic requirements of online classes. Online courses are more of a form of self-study, less restrictive; In addition, the lack of timely feedback and communication on knowledge points between teachers and students and the lack of face-to-face practical skills are not conducive to the development of interpersonal relations.
Most of the contents of online courses are not systematic and detailed, and it is not easy to master the knowledge points and study in depth because of the fragmented learning.
As many senior teachers are old, they do not know how to properly use computers and other software (Jordan & Weller, 2017), which will result in the content and quality of online teaching far inferior to face-to-face teaching. Students will be able to learn less knowledge due to equipment than in face-to-face classes. It seems that traditional teaching is much more mature than online teaching, but we should also change our mind and accept new things.
The times are progressing. Although there are still many shortcomings in online classes, I think in the future, online classes will become the mainstream of the times and a mature way of attending classes, which will be liked and accepted by more people.
Reference
Claire Howell Major. (2015). Teaching Online – A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874 (pp. 88-105)
Jordan, K., & Weller, M. (2017). Jordan, K. & Weller, M. (2017) Openness and Education: A beginners’ guide. Global OER Graduate Network.
In my opinion, it is a very good point to clarify everything from the teacher’s point of view through the first article. Nowadays, many college professors only talk coldly about what they need to teach students in class, but they lack the most basic interaction with students. A lot of people just sit in the classroom and don’t have much communication with other students. I think it loses the meaning of learning. Similarly, I do not agree with Stommel. If the professor plays a good role in teaching, students will change from passive learning to active learning. It is very important to choose a good education style, and both online and face-to-face classes have their own advantages. If it were me, I would still choose face-to-face teaching, which can shorten the relationship between students and teachers and make students feel more fun of learning.
The concept of hybrid learning is very interesting. “The nature and pace of social changes associated with emerging information and communication technologies represent a significant challenge to educational adaptation. This may be the biggest challenge facing higher education. In particular, the challenge is to adopt appropriate information and communication technologies in the classroom. Emerging social media technologies are catalysts to rethink what we do in higher education classes.” (Vaughan,2013). With the advent of COVID-19, all courses have moved online. I think it’s a good attempt, but it’s a last resort. Although online learning brings us convenience, it also loses the pleasure of face-to-face learning. Besides, as a student, I have to say that online learning has many “benefits” : we can communicate with our classmates and even go to Google when we have exams. It does seem to help students to get a satisfactory result, but in fact we lose more opportunities to learn and acquire knowledge. I hope that students can have self-control and refuse this kind of behavior. Face-to-face teaching can enable us to learn knowledge better, but it has to be said that online learning is no lack of a new attempt.
For the last article, the Jesse wants to educate students through their background, hobbies and lifestyle. However, the source from which to obtain such information is a problem. May be school or teacher through some ways side got some information about the students, but this belongs to or does not belong to steal, we don’t know how to define, although the idea is good, but because the student groups, and because the personal privacy problem, this method also had to give up.
References
Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2
Stommel, J. (2018). An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy.
Hybrid Pedagogy. Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press. [Chapter 1]