Dr Curt Bonk, guest speaker on Web 2.0 in ITEC 830

Dr. Curt Bonk from Indiana University was our guest speaker during the last week’s class. I had prior experience with teleconferencing, and I have seen lectures over the web, but this was the first time I was present at the two-way distance class (where the guest speaker could see the audience). It is amazing, but this was no different than a normal lecture, except it is harder to stay focused for a long time for some reason (90+ minutes).

Dr. Bonk echoed the key points that were already addressed by George Siemens and John Seeley Brown, but he took it further by trying to make a projection for the future of Web 2.0 technologies and the effects it will have on the world of higher education. But it also raises a few questions.
Today, one the great powers of the Web is that it allows participants from all over the world listen to the whole courses from Stanford or MIT. You could even download the podcast and listen to it while driving or jogging. Does it mean the degrees from those institutions be less of a commodity in the future?
Another great aspect of the Web 2.0 is that (as Tim O’Reilly put it) “it embraces the power of the web to harness collective intelligence”. Some argue, however, that by allowing non-experts to generate content via blogs, etc. it lowers its quality (e.g. journalism, research, encyclopedia, etc). According to this point of view, the algorithms that are used by the search engines like Google, are only making things worse. Essentially, Web 2.0 promotes the law of the crowd. On top of that, because we are free to choose our sources, people are risking to end up locked in a bubble of information that is low quality. These issues are already being addressed by the major mass media companies, news sites and magazines. Those same issues are relevant when Dr Bonk is asking about digital scholarships. I believe that this is an area where a lot needs to be done. We already see how the rating system, for example, changed the world of e-commerce. You could also check the instructor’s evaluations from your living room before signing up for the traditional class today. I am certain, that this is going to be even more valuable for the digital learning. In fact, if distance learning allows larger number of students from all over the word to take a class at the same time, sophisticated data mining could be used to find courses that suit your learning style, desired depth, prior level of knowledge. These ratings might be a lot more useful than those used for college rankings in US News and World Report.

Flat World Classroom Project

The Flat World Classroom project is a brilliant way to introduce children to the concepts of The World is Flat book by Tomas Friedman’s by using the collaborative power of the Web 2.0 technologies.

One set of the instructional objectives is based on ideas from the book and as represented by project topics or scenarios:

- How the www changed the world
- Globalization and Outsourcing
- How digital technology enhances productivity
- Freedom of information sharing
- wireless connectivity, etc.

The other set allows students to learn Web technologies that made those new world developments possible. These technologies are

- Wiki
- Digital Storytelling
- Social Networking (Ning)
- Workflow Software
- Search engines
and more

Adults working in the field that has been affected by the globalization might be able to relate to the revolutionary ideas of this book based on their experience.
Participation in this global project gives students a unique learning experience that doesn’t just illustrate the ideas presented in the book, but actually brings these ideas to life for them.

By allowing the students around the world to collaborate on ideas, create content, upload and share it, discuss and learn this project breaks the stereotypes of the “classroom learning”. No wonder this project became famous and made it back into the new edition of the Thomas Friedman's book!

Value of Community Discussion Forums

This week reading is the Emerging Technologies in E-Learning (part 1 of the ebook called Education for a Digital World). This chapter reiterated for me the transformations brought about by the Web 2.0 that we are witnessing today:

content recipient –> content creator
commerce –> people
instructor -> facilitator

I agree that the term e-learning will go away with time, just like the term e-commerce. E-learning and emerging technologies of today will become main stream and will be naturally used as learning tools when appropriate.

I have taken several classes at SFSU that incorporated different web technologies: blogs, wikis, ilearn, illuminate. From this experience, I feel that we do not use the discussion forums enough. We get a comment here and there but never a full discussion. I am not sure if ilean is a good platform for that, individual blogs are not either. I actively participate in several communities and posts on a hot topic bring very interesting multi-threaded discussions collecting hundreds of posts within a day. I really enjoy reading the comments; they bring a lot of interesting points and facilitate re-thinking.

Got Style?

I really enjoyed Common Craft video tutorials, and went to their company website to research more. It is a two people, husband and wife company working out of their home in Seattle. Neither one of them has a ID background. I think they found a unique presentation style that works great with this media and audience. It got me thinking, do I have what it takes to develop my own teaching style? Do you have one? Did it come with experience or just happened right away?

Connectivism - am I connected to the pipe?

I hope that our collective connectivism pipe (or network with your collective wisdom) will help me process (cognitively, as individual :) all that I have heard and read from George Siemens during the week.

I can relate and agree with his key ideas, such as that the rapid growth of knowledge and changes in technology revolutionize the ways we acquire the information. The connections to networks that continuously acquire new knowledge and our capacity to learn more become very important aspect of the learning process in the digital age.

However, I am still not sure about “more important than our current state of knowing”. Doesn’t one’s ability to process the new information (content of the pipe) depend on the individual’s prior knowledge? Being connected to a network seems valuable for me only when I am able to understand what they are talking about and yes, interested, motivated and able to acquire that new knowledge as an individual. At that point my individual learning would occur.
Otherwise, at best I would just be basing my action on somebody else’s knowledge or combined knowledge of the community without learning much myself.

Let me illustrate:
Let’s assume I need to buy a new digital camera. I have little or no prior knowledge of how digital camera works and what characteristics make it a better camera. But I am connected to the network where experienced digital photographers review all new models and forum participants are rated by their peers. I would probably skip all the details and read some quick summary recommendations, look at the ratings and choose a particular camera. I completed the action, but did not learn much. All learning about the new models happened outside of me, so I will have to go back the next time to read more reviews. What do you think?

Connected AND Focused?

Since our class last week I tried several different tools that we’ve talked about. I was already familiar with iLearn/Moodle. I have my personal blog on livejournal and now I have one for this class on Blogger. I joined myITEC on Ning( I was familiar with Ning, because I host a network for my high school class there), I added my blog to our ITEC 830 Netvibes page and also created my iGoogle.

Now I am so well connected, that at times it seems that I am not very productive because of it. Has anyone figured this out yet? Any good tips and habits that allow you to stay tuned, but focused?