Prue Salter’s Blog: Exploring the Power of Technology as a Learning Tool

What prompted these musings? An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday 30th March 2008. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/catholic-church-launches-virtual-parish-on-the-web/2008/03/29/1206207489791.html

Let me say upfront I come from a Catholic background. There are things I like about the Catholic church and things I don’t. One of the things I do not like is that the Catholic church seems so backward in things like the concept of women or married priests (in fact I sent the Pope a Christmas card this year, all the way to the Vatican, explaining that due to priest shortages my mother’s parish can only have mass every second week and asking if they could explain why we can’t have married and women priests - I just don’t get it. No reply yet but it is only 3 months, I am hopeful).

Anyway, this article astounded me. Despite being so behind the times in so many areas, the Catholic church has realised that if they can’t beat them, they have to join them.

So what has happened? Well a new social networking site for Catholics was launched yesterday: http://www.faithtrip.net/

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 What prompted these musings? An interesting video my current lecturer brought to our attention. 

One of the biggest concerns I see from parents and teachers is students’ use of technology like chat programs and social networking sites at home when they are also trying to do their schoolwork. One of the biggest problems students complain about is how to deal with the multitude of distractions when they are trying to make themselves do their schoolwork.

This video from Prof Michael Wesch’s Digital Anthropology class at Kansas State University is a powerful depiction of the issues students today face in their technology driven world and in a world where our students have changed and our systems are struggling to keep up.

If you haven’t done it yet, watch the video now before continuing to read this post.

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 My main challenges with this task were:

• Deciding from the mass of resources available on this topic which I would reference in this assignment.
• The actual referencing, I loathe it as the best of times as it is so fiddly but even more complicated when web resources are involved.
• Reducing the assignment from the huge amount I originally wrote to the more concise 750 word limit. I was ruthless in cutting it down to the limit.
• Forcing myself to stop playing, stop improving and just post the damn thing. Because I knew I really had till Saturday morning, I could have kept changing a word here or there, tweaking, improving so it took lots of willpower to just stop!

Another thing I found interesting:

I have never had a task where your work is posted publicly available for all to view. I was wondering, despite the fact that we are mature-aged students, if there would be any ‘borrowing’ or ‘adapting’ of other people’s work. But when I had a look at a few blogs, it was interesting to see how completely different all the postings were - they are so totally individual there is no way anyone would even consider using anyone else’s materials (although I saw a few interesting references I’d like to read up myself).

Although I was annoyed : ) to see Deborah had a voki in her post (although I haven’t clicked on it to see what it says yet) as I had just done one thinking what a clever original idea to lead Anne to my assignment but when I saw Deb had clearly posted hers prior to mine I went back and changed it to the above signpost image instead.

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What prompted these musings? Well this is actually an excerpt from a uni assigment. While the assignments might disappear from this site eventually, the blog will remain so I would like to share my thoughts on the topic of coming to a definition for a learning community.

My view:

A learning community is a group with a shared interest who have acted upon a desire to learn more and help others learn more. They interact collaboratively through different learning activities to share information, resources and ideas around their topic in order to facilitate group and individual learning.

A true learning community is representative of unselfish, collective learning as opposed to individual, secretive learning. There is no single ‘teacher’ but instead the members contribute to the learning of the community. The knowledge is not hidden, but shared, creating a knowledge base for the community to build upon.

This supportive environment, combined with the group’s social interaction, creates a strong sense of ownership and commitment to learning in the community.

How I came to this viewpoint:

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What prompted these musings? Well each month on my site http://www.studyskillshandbook.com.auI add new videos, new content and new features to the site. I have come across so many new things this month in my elearning explorations that I thought I would detail here the tools I have come across that I will be taking advantage of for April.

1. del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)
I think students (those that aren’t already using it) will find this a really valuable tool, particularly senior students doing research for assignments or those doing subjects like Extension English where they need to reseach an area or the IB where they choose a research topic.

2. Vokis (http://www.voki.com/)
Vokis are just cool. I am going to use them to give a study skills message to students that they may not necessarily have read but are more likely to listen to from a voki.

3. 250 Cool generators (http://www.techroam.com/250-cool-generators/)
I stumbled onto this through an edublog and wow I love it - a great way to generate really interesting images.

4. Commoncraft (http://www.commoncraft.com/)
This is a really interesting way to communicate - I definitely want to spend more time exploring these (and maybe making my own?)

5. Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/)
Sharing powerpoints, not sure if I can use this but definitely worth exploring.

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Chapter 4: Social Learning - Cornford (1999) What are the significant aspects of social learning theories that relate to learning communities / networks? Again - aspects of the works in this chapter can be useful frameworks for analysing your community. You may like to select a framework or focus for analysis - even before you select your community! This will also provide you with some focus when researching further for articles in journals.

I found Cornford’s discussion on social learning theories particularly interesting in relation to two specific communities I am currently exploring.

Impact of Social Comparison Theory on the search for an online community.

In my search for an online community to be examined as the subject of our first assignment, I directly experienced many of the phenomenon discussed by Cornford around social comparison theory.

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SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 4, Social Learning - Cornford

PREVELANCE OF SOCIAL LEARNING

• large amount of our learning occurs through interactions: observe others and model
• realization that this is important, but few satisfactory theories to explain social learning

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What prompted these musings? The fact that since starting del.icio.us I just can’t leave it alone!

This is a simply fabulous tool to help in the information management problem we face online. I can’t believe I had not embraced it earlier. It took me some time to add and sort all my personal bookmarks as at first I put masses of tags with each link. Then when I looked at my enormous cloudtag I had to stop and really think about how I planned to use this tool. Did I really need a tag on ’students’ for example? Some of the generic terms were not really going to be of much use to me. So I stopped and really thought about how I would use del.icio.us (should have done this at the start I guess but the problem was that I until I had used the tool I didn’t really understand how it worked or its potential). I then went back and rationalised my tags, thinking carefully for each link as to what purpose or categories I would like to access this link from. This took some time as often a new thought would occur and I would have to go back and add that tag to a number of the links. I think with use I will be more effective in my initial selection of tags but I would love to hear any tips from experienced del.icio.us users as to the best way to make use of this amazing tool. I’d also be interested to hear if there are any users who became disillusioned with it - after all, as the photo shows, we all have different ideas on what is delicious!

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Chapter 3: Social Psychology of Adult Learning - Saunders (1999) Reviewing the chapter with our focus of learning communities as a framework - how will the various different theories and perspectives apply to our context? Already we have some experience with self-disclosure (look at our Profiles on Ning!) Review some of our discussion forums for learning conversations…. just for starters.

There was so much in this article that was relevant to our focus of learning communities as a framework that I am going to focus just on the top 5 areas that I found most interesting.

1. ADULTS AND GROUPS

There was much discussion and research presented in this chapter about the concept that adults will learn more effectively through interaction with others and participation in groups. Yet my observation has been that many adults prefer a lecture-style presentation than having to participate in a group activity.

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SUMMARY NOTES of the key concepts in: Chapter 3, Social Psychology of Adult Learning - Saunders

THIS ARTICLE COVERS:

Themes relevant for learning in group contexts

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