Now that I’m two years into my graduate program, with the finish line (hopefully) within sight this fall, I figured it’s time to start ruffling feathers. Nobody reads this anyway, so why not pick fights, right?
OK, I’m not really picking fights. But I do want to point out some things that have driven me nuts over the last few years of online (or online-supported) courses I’ve taken–in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it will change some practices and standard thinking when it comes to online learning. Here’s the first: Posting assignments in Word format.
I’m sure this practice is perfectly transparent and un-noticable in the Windows/Internet Explorer paradigm, but for those of us working outside of said paradigm, it’s annoying. On my Macs, when I want to look at an assignment, I have to download a file and open it. Outside of my browser. Yeah, Leopard’s Quick Look feature makes this less of an issue, but it’s still an issue because I’ve got a file sitting on my hard drive that I don’t need.
Most, if not all, course/learning management systems afford instructors the ability to provide assignments and instructions to students in-system. I know Blackboard and Moodle do. Use them! There might come a day when the majority of your students don’t use a Microsoft product (I don’t), and running these files through a converter will be a nuisance at best and a reason to drop a class at worst.
I’m a week into my online Moodle course now. I’ve actually learned some things, and had a highly productive session involving the built-in chat and a wiki. It worked out really well–three of us worked together in the chat room, and plugged in content in a wiki-based rubric. It’s great because it gives me a real-world example of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used to solve a problem.
I just have one issue with the course: I’m pretty sure everyone else in the course has a K-12 focus, and being designed in a constructivist nature, I worry that this focus will drive what we learn over the remaining two weeks. Where are all the corporate training* people? I kind of figure it’s because K-12 people have more time to kill in June than the corporate-types, but it’d still be nice to not be the only one thinking about adult ed.
But it got me thinking about whether Moodle is really ready for professional development, or at least ready for professional development as I think of it. I don’t care about grades, or a top-down, instructor-oriented approach–I want to foster community and mentorship. My research at school is going to focus on this, probably using Ning, but I’m going to give Elgg a closer look shortly. Hell, I may even consider Facebook; everyone’s got an account there nowadays anyway.
* I consider myself closer to this group than the K-12 people in my program, primarily because I’m more interested in working with grownups than kids.
My Moodle course began yesterday. I’ve been using the software for a few years now, but it’s always been very seat-of-my-pants. My goal in taking this class was to get a better sense of the pedagogy behind it, but already I’ve picked up on a couple of modules I didn’t know about. They will be immediately useful in my own work.
I wish someone would write a slick, Web 2.0-style learning management system. Moodle’s nice and all, but that interface is horrid. I cleaned up what I could in my implementation, but there’s still much room for improvement. I also don’t like the fact that it’s in PHP, but I can get over that. The weirdest thing, though, is the development community. Moodle is the first open source project I’ve ever kept an eye on in which there was open flirting between members. This is probably an artifact of it being a touchy-feely constructivist application. All kidding aside, the downside of this educator-first approach to software development is, from my perspective, the occassional-yet-still-annoying dismissal-without-real-cause of interesting ideas–say, implementing OpenID instead of an archaic LDAP-based login system.
I’ve been a little cranky for the past couple of days about Palm. Love, hate. Love, hate. Hate.
The latest? This company called GoKnow Learning publishes a few apps I’m supposed to use for class–specifically, Sketchy and FlingIt!–but there are issues, wouldn’t you know.
Sketchy, prior to like version 1.9.5, doesn’t work on the T|X. The Mac installer includes version 1.9.3. And FlingIt! doesn’t fling anything, at least not on my computer.
I sent a support request on Friday. No response yet.
Seriously, GoKnow–I know Palm’s support for the Mac is minimal, but we do have a third party synching app (The Missing Sync) that blows anything Palm ever offered us out of the water. Well worth the 40 bucks.
I’m taking a course on handhelds in education this summer. It’s Palm-specific, for better or worse. I’ve learned so far that schools actually are using these things, mainly for economic reasons (a $200 Palm is much easier on the pocketbook than a computer costing five times that much).
The good news for me is the class has given me a reason to dust off the Palm T|X I bought last summer and never really put to good use. My favorite discovery so far is the implementation of Google Maps for the Palm OS. The maps are rendered beautifully, and all the core functions of the web-based version are right there. The only downside is you need connectivity to use it, and while I have no problems when on a local wi-fi network, the obvious place to use this tool is when stuck in construction or a general traffic jam.
So, that said, I’m probably going to go with a Palm-based Treo when I finally make the move to a smart phone. I can’t justify an iPhone (specifically, I can’t justify switching carriers for it) and everyone I know using a Windows Mobile-based device says it’s horrible. So I guess I’ll be sticking with Palm a little while longer.
The more I read about informal learning, the more I realize why I never cared for school, and still don’t, really. I won’t rail on how our schools’ structure is based on antiquated, industrial era needs–that’s been covered ad nauseum elsewhere–but I will say that the system does everything it can to perpetuate itself. My girlfriend took her exams to be recertified in secondary education last weekend. Based on the questions she shared with me, these exams do nothing to determine whether or not you’re an effective teacher. Rather, they measure how much useless trivia you’ve managed to cram into your brain. Trivia is not a skill. How important is it to have publication dates of great works of literature memorized? When will information literacy–the ability to find reliable, accurate information on demand–become the measure of a good educator?
Sadly, between the companies making pretty good bank by charging teachers to take their tests, and the old guard who call the shots in schools, districts, and legislatures, and the unrealistic joke that is No Child Left Behind, I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. In the meantime, I can keep pushing for small changes in my little corner of the world. I know I’m not as well-versed on the subject as others, but I’m doing my best to learn. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading:
It’s a bit unsettling to read that the degree I’m putting a lot of time and money into could be obsolete in a few years. On the other hand, I think if I worked at it I could be at the forefront of a new way of thinking within the field of Instructional Design, as the instructional designer as we currently know him/her shifts focus into more of a facilitator, helping bring subject matter experts and learners together to engage in more meaningful learning.
At my work we’ve begun a little informal, Friday lunch hour meeting called TechTank (or maybe Tech Tank? I need to ask Frank), during which people are encouraged to have lunch with us and chat about educational applications of technology. Participants tend to range from faculty comfortable with Blackboard and e-mail to people like me who do the under-the-hood setup. This week Frank sent out a note that we’d be talking about Moodle and we got our biggest turnout yet (disenchantment with Blackboard appears to be growing). I gave a glossy overview of how we use Moodle in my shop, its features, and its limitations (seriously, that’s some ugly code, even for PHP’s standards). It’s not perfect, but for what I need to do right now it’s working pretty well. I think it’s here to stay.
Anyway, I think the fact that we had a feature toward the end people made suggestions about future topics. A definition of Web 2.0 was a hot one. I responded with my favorite quick explanation (”the read/write web”) and someone else said she’s used the term web gadgets to encapsulate the likes of Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us, wikis, and the like. That’s a pretty good starting point, especially for the crowd we work with (even if it may cause confusion down the road with Vista’s like-named functionality in Windows, which is just another rehash of widgets already available in OS X, Yahoo!, and elsewhere). The question, now, is how to get our audience to become active users of these sites, or at least understand that they need at least a conversational understanding of what social networking means if they want to continue to seem relevant to students.
Speaking of Web 2.0, here’s a rather compelling why-this-is-a-big-deal video via YouTube. It’s already made the rounds, but I’ll share it as well–even if it came from a guy at K-State, of all places.
Lately I’ve been digging into blogs, books and wiki entries about informal learning and communities of practice. This clip by Jay Cross makes everything click for me.
It seems, though, that the ideas presented by Mr. Cross fly smack in the face of the beliefs of 90 percent of the people with whom I interact in both my professional and academic lives. They need to see this video, though–not only to begin thinking about what Mr. Cross has to say (I love the “training” vs. “learning” part), but also to show that you don’t need fancy equipment, expensive production crews, or complicated distribution networks–you just need compelling content. We can’t use technology or economics as excuses any longer.I know none of this is new–but it is new to the majority of people I deal with daily. How do I introduce them to these concepts without coming off as threatening? I mean, this is pretty paradigm-shifting stuff, for lack of a better buzz phrase–
Now that I’m two years into my graduate program, with the finish line (hopefully) within sight this fall, I figured it’s time to start ruffling feathers. Nobody reads this anyway, so why not pick fights, right?