Apr 08

Instant WordPress, A WordPress Development Server To Go

Instant WordPress was designed for developers to build Plugins and Themes for WordPress. I ask, “What might creative 21st century classrooms do with it, say for a project?”

  • You can do all kinds of things with the blog itself that aren’t even directly computer-related, e.g., social networking, submitting homework, cooperative work, projects… what if you ran the classroom as an internet news publishing organization, with roles and competing organizations maybe?
  • can be used to deploy develop and deploy full-fledged web presence if so desired;
  • as Project Based Learning platform offers some advantages
    • access can be limited to 1 computer, a classroom network, a school, etc.
    • on the internet can lead to powerful collaborations
  • thoroughly private when used in self-contained network;

Your ideas welcome! Please leave a comment!


I’m using my Instant WordPress to develop a WordPress plugin to help teacher plan and deliver projects. Wanna help? Here‘s some more about the idea, and I’m revealing more each day until the tent comes down.

Mar 31

Project TinCan, the next stage in assessment and evaluation?

If you need to keep track of who does what, when, within a web-based project or experience TinCan might be just the thing.
—moi

The metaphor that gave name to Project Tin Can is the tin can and string telephone. Project Tin Can is the next phase of SCORM. The project itself has entered its own “Phase 3 — the future of e-learning is now,” which includes prototypes you can use, that in turn can issue data and reports, and web objects to be consumed in ways limited only by the imagination. Continue reading

Mar 20

Just an idea I’ve been getting

UPDATED 2012-03-27: What’s with all the icons and rollover pop-ups? They’re based on Compendium, which I’ve written about before. While they may not be appropriate for every everyday blog post, I’m asking you to have a look and leave a comment. Do you see a role for them within other web-based contexts you may be familiar with? If so, which? Leave a comment!

I’m trying to get experience design into my thinking about online learning, using the simple technologies I know and love: computers and various digital mobile devices, web browsers, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. For some time I’ve been headed towards the position  that documents are becoming obsolete. While I was thinking about that a teacher who is part of my Twitter PLN was putting together a wonderful Project-Based Learning experience with her grade 6 class, their parents and many others from the PLN. This led me to have an idea .

Continue reading

Mar 12

Taming wicked problems, planning projects, designing learning—try Compendium

UPDATED: Have a look at some more advanced Compendium maps.

Compendium, its stewards at The Compendium Institute say, “is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas.” Wicked problems, as I’ve written recently, contain social complexity, so solving them is a fundamentally social process requiring many people. Compendium software allows a person working alone, or people in a group, to bring together visually the diverse ideas, assertions, arguments, and resources that might contribute to the “taming” of a wicked problem. Continue reading

Mar 04

Wicked Problems

Horst Willhelm Jakob Rittel taught design and architecture for over 30 years but never designed a building. Horst Rittel matters because he saw a connection between science and design and was able to articulate it to designers. He recognized that the definition of a problem is subjective and comes with a point of view. When you think this through it reminds us all “stake-holders” hold a stake in any problem’s outcome. The more diverse the stakes, the more fluid definitions become, and ultimately the harder it becomes to define the problem. It’s a problem of moving goal posts and answers that lead to further questions. Rittel named such problems wicked problems, problems that are not so much “solved” as they are “tamed” (Rith & Dubberly, 2006). Continue reading

Feb 16

For Best of Both: Blend it

This post was prompted by a tweet from @rkiker that linked to an ongoing debate between Justin Marquis Ph.D. (pro) and Donald R. Eastman (con) on whether or not online learning is “the real thing.” I would prefer, for the most part, to ignore this debate: of course many individuals will learn via “distance education” (which, as people my age recall, long predates electronic means). Any either/or framing does little justice to either argument. The issue should be how to maximize learning for the greatest number of learners. I assert that an approach which blends face-to-face (F2F) instruction with the types of asynchronous? access both authors are talking about is a superior pedagogical model.

Canada’s Collaboration for Online Higher Education and Research (COHERE ) is “a collaboration of universities focusing on the research and practice of blended and online learning within higher education.” In their 2011 Report on Blended Learning they report findings from a survey of the current use of “blended learning” in Canadian universities. Listed are the many benefits they see emerging, including “improved teaching and learning, greater flexibility for learners, greater student satisfaction, improved student performance, a confluence of literacies for the knowledge economy, and optimization of resources,” and some barriers to adoption, for example, “faculty resistance, student reluctance to move from a passive to an active student role, insufficient pedagogical and technical support, and absence of a clear institutional policy and strategic plan and appropriate leadership to support and sustain blended learning initiatives.” As the report puts it, “Despite these barriers blended learning at Canadian universities continues to grow.” Certainly none of these factors, nor the phenomenon of growth, are limited to Canada.

On page 5 the report describes a graduate course in education offered at York University entitled “Issues in Digital Technology in Education,” and describes its innovative blending with the undergraduate course “Teaching and Learning with Digital Technology.” I took this course in 2011 as a Master’s candidate and participated in the “mentoring” of undergraduates. The report’s summary about the structure of the courses and mutual satisfaction of participants is absolutely accurate. This remains perhaps the most rewarding course I’ve taken as a graduate student. Page 5 also refers to a Provostial White Paper (PDF). The class read the paper in depth and debated both sides—should York expand on this model or not?

Among the course assignments was a collaborative presentation on an issue in digital technology in education, and I was in the group that presented on blended learning; I’m familiar with the topic. I agree with Donald R. Eastman on nearly every point he makes, but most emphatically with the statement, “[Students] benefit most from participating in learning communities, in which they live, study and socialize with other learners.” See for example, Wenger (2006), Smith (1999) and Cousin (2006) in order to better appreciate the importance of this point. Justin Marquis is correct that online environments can be as supportive as any other, but the overall slant of his argument seems to be the reduced cost and added convenience, and I find the entire section “Growing Up is Hard to Do” utterly condescending. His piece, employing as it does the language of disruptive innovation that has its roots in Harvard Business School (Fouchaux, 2009), comes off as a sales pitch, and his call for a truce sounds more like a declaration of victory.

What is blended learning?

The task of defining “blended learning” has been undertaken by many, but we’re still having some trouble with consensus (Osguthorpe & Graham, 2003). The York White Paper qualifies blended as follows: “Typically a course is considered to be blended if the online component varies between 30% and 80% of the total course time.” (e-Learning working group, 2010, p.8).

Diagrams can be helpful… here you can see dozens. For our class presentation I created this one, which is more metaphorical: students and instructors can blend many different ingredients of learning and teaching, and play with the recipe until they get the mix that tastes best.

Picture of a blender in the background, containing words from pedagogy, and a glass in the foreground containing the words "meaning, critical thinking" and others.

Blend ingredients, sweeten to taste

First, some people would learn regardless of whether they ever went anywhere near a course. Indeed it has been argued in some quarters that old‐fashioned models of ʺtime‐servingʺ on‐the‐job apprenticeships represent the best way of learning skills (and the knowledge which underpins them).

Second, disciplines and subjects are very different. There is no single curriculum design which will suit all of them, even in terms of their values. I want a fine artist to be creative; I donʹt want my pharmacist to be at all creative; whether or not I want my accountant to be creative is a matter for debate!

Third, trying to create a course on the basis of all these competences leads to what is vividly called a ʺstuffed curriculumʺ. Not everything it contains is of equal value, but nothing gets thrown out.

—James Atherton (2007)

I’m not calling for a truce, I’m suggesting a marriage.

References

Atherton, James (2007) How do people “get” it? Web, UK [http://www.doceo.co.uk/tools/On_getting.pdf] retrieved October 3, 2011.

Cousin, G. (2006) An introduction to threshold concepts http://www.gees.ac.uk/planet/p17/gc.pdf, retrieved January 27, 2012.

e-Learning working group (2010), E-Learning Business Case For York University, http://irlt.yorku.ca/reports/E-learningcasefinalversion.pdf, retrieved June 23, 2011.

Fouchaux, Richard C. (2009) Disrupting disruption: how the language of disruptive innovation theory and the “tools of cooperation and change” can change the way educators respond to the neoliberal marketization of education (unpublished essay) http://www.rcfouchaux.ca/pdf/Fouchaux_(2009)_Disrupting_Disruption.pdf

Osguthorpe, Russell T.; Graham, Charles R. (2003), Blended Learning Environments: Definitions and Directions, Quarterly Review of Distance Education, v4 n3 p227-33 Fall 2003.

Smith, M. K. (1999) ‘The social/situational orientation to learning’, the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-social.htm, Last update: December 01, 2011.

Wenger, E. (2006) Communities of practice, a brief introduction, http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/06-Brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf, retrieved October 12, 2011.

Further reading/Viewing

Alonso, F., López, G., Manrique, D. & Viñes, J. (2005). An instructional model for
web-based e-learning education with a blended learning process
approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(2), 217-235.

Butler, J. (2010). 24/7 Online Learning: Lessons Learned. Techniques: Connecting Education
and Careers, 85(6), 32-35.

Chicago Virtual Charter School. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.k12.com/cvcs/home

e-Learning Fundamentals: Didactical models retrieved from
http://www.leerbeleving.nl/wbts/1/didactical_models.html 2011-05-31

Kolb D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning experience as a source of learning and
development. New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Professional Advisory: Electronic Communication, Social Media from Ontario College of Teachers Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iMLjqIptBc

McCarthy, J. (2010). Blended Learning Environments: Using Social Networking Sites to
Enhance the First Year Experience. Australasian Journal of Educational
Technology, 26(6), 729-740.
Pape, L. (2010). Blended Teaching and Learning. Education Digest, 76(2), 22-27.

Thor, L. (2010). The Right Mix. Community College Journal, 81(1), 38-43.

Feb 11

Rethinking PowerPoint: the Assertion/Evidence model

I’m very interested in taking elearning to new places. Elearning is not a noun, it is “to learn” using tools and environments enhanced by electronic technologies. The mere use of technology, electronic or otherwise, does not assure learning takes place — far from it. Too much of what we call elearning can be all too thoroughly described as automated PowerPoint. Now, I have ideas and long range goals for elearning design that may preclude PowerPoint entirely, but if the previous sentence is true, or even if you use PowerPoint only occasionally, or in some small phase of storyboard development, then anything you do to improve what you do with PowerPoint should improve your final product, right? Understanding when to employ an assertion-evidence model in any lesson or presentation is a step towards creating better learning experiences.

Continue reading

Feb 05

Twitter and the Personal Learning Network

What are personal learning networks?The value of networks of people sharing common interests, and the idea of “networking” as a set of techniques to build and benefit from such networks, are not news. The term “social networking” was apparently coined by an anthropologist, J. A. Barnes, in 1954, and he defined the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to 150 people1. Continue reading

Jan 08

Learn to play more, play to learn more (and may your learning be serendipitous)

On my other secret blog I barely mentioned attending a talk back in November on Planned Serendipity, but in terms of impact the session has turned out to be a bit of a “creeper.” At the time it reminded me how big a role serendipity, albeit usually of the unplanned variety, has played in my own life. Now, the more I notice it, well.., the more I notice it happening all the time. This past week—still reeling perhaps from the realization I’m descended from webmasters and plugin monkeys, even as I plan how to design a “Web 2.0” project involving things computer scientists inevitably do much better—three different sources contributed three new resources to the rebuilding of my self esteem by reinforcing my complete belief in the importance of play to learning*. Continue reading