Sunday, November 17, 2013

#EDCMOOC Sal Khan - "sage on stage" or "guide on side"

E-Learning and Digital Culture
Today I am reflecting on Bonnie Stewart's article about massive courses and digital literacies/participation.  http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/stewart_bonnie_0613.htm.  She included these terms "sage on stage" and "guide on side" while discussing the evolving role of a teacher in online courses.  After reading this, I happened to see a promotional video referencing a past event on the Google+ "Technology and Education Community" page  for a conversation with Sal Khan. 


So what do you think?  Where does Mr. Khan fit in... sage or guide?  Where does Mr. Khan fit within the online learning community?   What does the Khan Academy represent? Is it just presentation from an expert, is it performance-tutoring, or is there a higher level of epistemic engagement ?  Can it be all three?  (Terms from Week 1 resources- Going the Distance with Online Education, Jorge Larreamendy-Joerns and Gaea Leinhardt).  Is the Khan Academy centralized expertise or open network?  Does it live up to the description of a global classroom with a global community- About Khan Academy.  I have read articles about the Khan Academy, I have watched some of the videos, but I haven't used the Khan Academy in a systematic way, or as a student.  What I have seen, I am very impressed with how engaging, informative, and open the materials are for anyone with Internet access.  It may truly change education through empowerment of students and teachers.

For that matter where does Google fit in with their Technology and Education Community- is this just a further extension of an "open and networked" class or is it something different, evidence of the sociocultural shift in digital literacies?  Or is it just a reincarnation of a Usenet newsgroup ?

Stewart defines and explains the history and examples of cMOOC and the xMOOC models.  Does the MOOC model and its success depend on the subject matter (mathematics and science  versus education and literature)?

 So many questions, is technology still the answer?...

image from openclipart
I also hope to write a separate blog soon about my experiences with AdaptedMind Math.  I think of this website as an example of adaptive online  learning/tutoring .   AdaptedMind Math is a website with a pay model (monthly subscription).  The site uses some of the Khan videos as well as their own for "lessons".  As a subscriber they did offer me a month free for blogging about the company, and I might take them up on that.  You can post a comment if you would be interested.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

#edcmooc Blogs the new Geocities?

So... I am blogging now...
Much to my chagrin, I have had some difficulty getting my blog up and running as part of the class feed (E-Learning and Digital Culture).  I am hoping I am all set now, after some help from Andy Mitchell, Coursera Community TA.  I remember trying "blogging" a few years back to see how it was being used for distance learning classes.  At the time I didn't see much difference between the blog and an online forum.  I follow a few blogs now and I realized they were much more evolved; mini web pages instead of text posts. I am looking forward to using more of the tools available in future posts.

As part of my class #edcmooc we are supposed to create a digital "artefact".  After seeing some fantastic blog posts, I decided this was the platform I wanted to use. 

I started teaching distance learning courses in 1998.  I set-up web pages, I had my own domain, the whole bit.  I started incorporating student projects into my classes and encouraged the students to use technology to present their projects.  There were plenty of powerpoints, burned to CD, but there were also a lot of wonderful web pages hosted most often on Geocities.

For all you youngsters out there, want to see a true digital artefact? Give this link a try.  An interesting online article/post by Jessica Roy
http://betabeat.com/2012/06/10-bizarre-geocities-pages-that-still-exist/

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Thoughts on Technology #edcmooc

This blog is about course material for E-Learning and Digital Culture- a Coursera MOOC #edcmooc

Technology has limitations.  Nature has limitations.  Adaptability helps to stretch the limitations of both towards your utopia.

Test message