iterativelearning

Read a good article by Terry Anderson, Bruno Poelhuber, and Ross McKerlichon on using social software in distance education courses — Self-paced learners meet social software: An exploration of learners’ attitudes, expectations, and experience . The whole piece is well worth reading, but I was specifically interested in their discussion of a Connectivist pedagogy.

Connectivist learning happens through the building of networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems … Rather than formal and structured classes, connectivist learning is bursty (occurs in short, uneven spurts), driven by need and interest and is carried on beyond episodic classes, lectures and course

The part of this definition that interests me the most is bursty because of the way it envisions interaction and knowledge building outside the traditional boundaries of classes and lectures. When I think about tools like Facebook, Twitter, and the like, part of their appeal seems to be this episodic nature that perhaps presents interaction requirements as less burdensome and time-consuming, and therefore more likely to be engaged. From the research angle, the challenge is how to capture and analyze these episodic learning bursts. What about the interaction that students take outside the confines of the LMS? I can easily remember conversations I’ve had with students over the years who divulged how they created work spaces outside of the formal learning space (e.g., IM, Google Apps). A big part of this had to do with ease-of-use; these external tools were easier to use than those bundled with the LMS. Nevertheless, this still seems something worth following.

Spending most of the week at the annual AECT gathering and this morning saw a good session on mobile learning and game design. Chris Blakesley talked about the University of Wisconsin’s Aris project. As I understood it, it’s an open source authoring tool that taps the affordances of narrative – a universal tool for knowing as well as telling. The demo presents a case scenario of reporter covering a protest on the UW-Madison campus in the 60s. Beyond their demo, one other interesting deployment I liked was by some faculty at the University of New Mexico who use it to teach Spanish 101. Essentially students use it to explore the nearby Los Griegos neighborhood, and in doing that, hopefully move their understanding of the language beyond just memorizing verb tenses and vocabulary.

Caveat: I’m a big Zotero fan. I mean if you’re a serious, geeky academic researcher how could you not be?

But for those who had left Firefox for Chrome, or dedicated Mac users who love the aesthetics of Safari (and the engine power of Webkit), they were perhaps a little reluctant to venture outside the cozy confines of their browser homes.

But now today, Zotero announced that it will soon be releasing plugins for Chrome, Safari, and IE. So no more excuses. According to the post, this new version of Zotero will include a radically expanded API and mobile access. I’m very glad to see the addition of the mobile option, which is nearly a requirement for any new software rollout these days.

On the promotional end of things, they’re calling this Zotero Everywhere. I like it. Will there be a t-shirt?

When it comes to academic research, lots of improvement has happened in terms of making more journal articles available in electronic format. But what has lagged behind somewhat is making electronic copies of book chapters. How often have you been in a situation where you only need one chapter from an edited volume, but because that volume is in high demand, there’s a long line of hold requests? I’m not a librarian and so I’m not in the loop on all the developments regarding journal or database pricing, etc., but it would be nice if some kind of arrangement could be worked out so researchers could obtain select copies of chapters with the same ease they now retrieve copies of individual journal articles.

From the research corner … Weston & Bain have a good article in the Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment – The End of Techno-Critique: The Naked Truth about 1:1 Laptop Initiatives and Educational Change.

They agree with the Techno-Critics that there’s been a lot of exaggeration when it comes to describing the link between tech and learning improvement; they agree because of the conspicuous lack of empirical data. But rather than throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, as the Techno Critics are prone to do, they suggest six extensions of Jonassen, et al.’s notion of tech as cognitive tools. For example, one of the six recommends not only involving all members of the school community but positioning each as an active agent in assisting with defining … clearly articulated roles, responsibilities, and performance measures. This emphasis on specific roles for stakeholders is one way to keep the focus on concerns related to learning rather than technology.

Allan Collins and Richard Halvorson recently published Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. Today, Dr. Collins was at Penn State where he gave a great talk that related to some of the points outlined in his book.

One of the many thoughtful points I jotted down was: School will become less important as a venue for education Interesting in this is how it suggests a shift, … a shift, for example, that moves the student more to the center, and more as the one who assumes control over their learning. And as they assume more control, it becomes interesting to see what sorts of creative directions the student can then take it.

Zotero is a great research tool for students and academics. I find it immensely easier and more intuitive to use than EndNote, RefWorks, and other sorts of similar packages. If by chance you’ve been missing out on all the fun, you can get a quick overview here. Their latest and greatest effort is a standalone version that would work with browsers beyond the ever-extensible Firefox.

One thing Zotero makes easy to do is sharing. It’s drop-dead easy to create groups ( essentially, click the group folder icon and send email invitations). One thing I’ve noticed with Group libraries though is the lack of a search function within a specific group’s bibliographic library. This isn’t a big deal if the group doesn’t have a lot of cites that they’re sharing, but if there are a bunch of cites being stored there (e.g., more than 50), searching for them becomes a little unwieldy because you’re going to have manually click through multiple screens. I don’t know how widely the Groups feature is used among the Zotero community, but if it’s a feature under consideration, I’d vote for it in a heartbeat.

Looking for a list of qualitative research tools? Looking for a tool to collect data? Analyze data? Dynamic mapping? Transcribing? The Digital Research Tools wiki (DiRT) is definitely a good addition to the academic researcher’s toolbox. In my web perusals, I haven’t been able to find anything that comes close to its scope and comprehensiveness – kind of a research tool headquarters. Lisa Spiro of Rice University does an excellent job as the wiki’s editor, and true to the wiki spirit, it thrives on contributions from others. Check out the guidelines for the details.

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Rice University, Lisa Spiro

As a bit of an extension on the previous post, when I think about campus computer labs, one of the most common uses that I’ve seen them serve over the years is printing. My guess is that’s still one of the big functions they serve today. But with the big improvements in screen resolution, wide adoption of handhelds, and emphasis on Going Green I wonder why this trend persists? It seems to me that as ebooks continue to improve and become more mainstream (e.g., Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and the wild vortex of rumors circulating about Apple’s upcoming hardware), will this do anything to reduce the reliance on hard-copy? And is the preference for printouts coming more from students or faculty?

A quick follow-up on my previous post: I regularly read Doug Belshaw’s blog because he covers a variety of things related to educational technology and teaching. On top of that good stuff, he also shares some of what he’s doing in terms of his graduate thesis (dissertation). In many ways, I find the informal sharing of research through blog posts to be more valuable than what I’d get from a conventional academic conference. At the typical conference, I get the highlights, which can be valuable in certain situations, but with blogs, I get more insights into processes that led to the highlights.