Re: personaalsed õpikeskkonnad

I’m glad I took this course. It got me to look a little more closely at personal learning environment software and the issues which they raise. I am by nature a self-learner. I don’t mind reading and reflecting on my own – with a little direction and some framework within which to cast my thoughts. The course format was then more or less in tune with my own preferred learning style.

The hands-on part was also nice – having to create a blog and add posts … Though maybe we could have done a little more hands-on: some short activities involving using this or that software. I think it would have been good to have had a look at a few case studies (in an Estonian context) as well. We could have considered them in groups …

I don’t buy into the whole constructivist view of learning. I don’t like the idea of imposing this philosophical-pedagogical framework unquestioningly on all learning contexts. A more pragmatic approach is look at each learning context individually and then choose the tools (whether they be web2.0 tools or something else) which suit the learning context and help you achieve your teaching goals (whatever they might be). If you’re a more-than-methodical instructor and consider the learning process from all points of view (including that of individual students), I think you will find the optimal solution. If this happens to carry along with it some constructivist assumptions, then why not? But a thorough analysis of the learning context, it’s limits, givens, constraints, needs, etc. must come first.

Thanks for the course and the attention paid to my blog!

A proposed activity and tools to carry it out …

I have in mind a module to explore the writing process. The module would cover the following topics (among possible others): brainstorming (as a collaborative activity), information gathering (across the internet), collaborative writing, process description, peer review.

Proposed tools:

Brainstorming: mindmaps;

information gathering: google notebook;

process description: gliffy;

peer review: mahara (blogs or …).

collaborative writing: google docs; wikis;

My guess is that it’s probably best to tie everything together using mahara (though I haven’t used mahara yet, so I’m not so sure). And then I would integrate mahara with moodle, to be able to take advantage of moodle’s resources and LMS features.

That’s it, in short.

Open complementing closed …

The “open complementing closed – PLE and LMS – why, what for and how?” discussion made for interesting reading. I was surprised to hear they don’t use LMS’s much in Scotland. I think Brad Beach had the most credible, balanced opinions. But let’s see … Maybe I can put a few points into focus (out of focus?).

1) The comment about vocational students being more oriented to seeing and doing rather than reflecting and communicating is interesting. Of course, it depends on the vocational field. Social workers should be more interested in reflecting and communicating. On the other hand, machine building students, automotive engineering students … I know from experience that their approach to learning and the whole school thing is quite pragmatic (on the whole). There’s school and there’s real life. You take from school what you see as useful. The rest you exert the minimum effort on. This is a bit of a simplification. But it’s not far off. Ask them to reflect and you will get a look like your crazy.

2) First thing, you must know your audience. Is it a field of study which demands reflection? communication/discussion? Are the students in this field the kind of students predisposed to reflection and communication/discussion? Is it the kind of school which draws the kind of student predisposed to reflection and communication/discussion? Is it the kind of society which promotes a reflective/communicative approach to learning? Does this approach exist at lower levels of education?

3) You need to choose the tool according to your audience and the objectives of your course. It’s self-evident that a student will learn more the more deeply he or she takes a subject into his or her life. But there’s only so much you can do as a teacher to get a student to do so. Whether or not he or she does so has too much to do with factors outside of your control. What you can do is carefully select and organize your material and choose tools so the course material is interesting, clear, and well-organized in a way which expedites learning, and at least appears relevant (to the course of study, to the future ambitions of the students, to real life – particularly, in the case of vocational studies), thus inviting the student to delve more deeply into the material at hand.

4) In most cases, I think the goal is not to encourage students to stand on their individual differences and indiosyncrasies but to minimize these! The role of the teacher is best served when he or she can inspire students to see beyond themselves, opening the way to another way of thinking or another area of knowledge, getting them into the minds of the specialist, at least for a short time. And when all is over, they, the students can decide whether or not their interest has been truly caught and whether or not they want to delve further, joining this or that community of people with the same interests … This is where empowerment lies …

5) Learning is not as those riding the current bandwagon like to claim “communication and interaction and social aspects”. Do people really understand what they are saying when they spout this? It all sounds so nice and cozy and obvious. Who would want to deny it? But learning in itself is not social, learning does not demand a social component, and does not even demand social expression. You can exploit the social element, the communicative element, the reflective element that belongs to a particular subject or field. You can try to use it to pursue your agenda as a teacher. That’s it.

6) Are we in some interim period. Is it just the beginning? If PLEs don’t work in some particular educational setting, school, course, etc., does it simply mean we are still on the way? That students need to be made more aware of the possibilities? That the time will come with enough promotion? No, I don’t think so. It only means you’ve chosen the wrong tools, tools inappropriate for your subject and/or audience.

7) LMSs. There’s a lot you can say that isn’t quite right about LMSs. In the end, it all depends on the teacher, how he or she makes use of it. Again, it’s a matter of dealing appropriately with a given audience. Who is really failing if an LMS seems to fail, the LMS or the teacher? I think undoubtedly the teacher. When using an LMS, you still have a lot of tools at your disposal (including PLEs and tools resembling them). Again the question: have you made the best selection of tools, have you made the best use of the tools you have selected? Do you have realistic goals? Do you have appropriate goals? Do your students understand these goals? Have they bought in? Have you gotten them to accept your goals? Etc.

Last) You can’t beat an LMS for the ease with which you can track students and administer a course. Most students also like that reassurance of everything being in the same place with a certain amount of predictability, etc.

Educational uses of blogs, aggregators, social networks

The principal use of blogs in education seems to be as an online learning journal, a place for reflection and the evolution of a student’s thoughts on some concept, topic, problem, etc. The twist is that it’s public and open to comment. The idea is that someone else might have something to say to help you take your thinking a step further. The idea of a study journal isn’t new, but the idea of keeping one in dynamic form which others can also read and even comment on is …

If each member of class has a blog, then in fact, you’d have your own little community of bloggers, and the instructor could be placed at its head, as chief instigator, facilitator, intermediary, etc. In an ideal world, where all students valued learning and were capable of self-direction, then you probably wouldn’t even need the instructor. In real life the instructor is a necessity, if he or she wants to use blogs as a tool in a given course to further his or her own ends as an instructor (meaning, it should satisfy the educational aims he or she has in mind). In practice then, it’s more likely instructor-directed.

Even if it’s instructor directed, then the question still remains, does it really work? Are the results what you should hope or expect? The answers seem to be mixed. I suppose it depends on how well the instructor has organized everything and guided his or her students in the most effective and interesting use of the blogs. It very probably depends on the subject and field of study as well. Some subjects just lend themselves to independent thinking and self-expression, others don’t.

The article by Kieslinger and Pata made mention of a number of shortcomings encountered in practice: e.g., they noticed a tendency among students to copy and paste instead of reflecting and developing their own thinking. Their conclusion: the use of PLEs cannot be effective until students change their understanding of what it means to learn (particularly, in this type of social context) and facilitators learn how to provide more effective guidance.

On the technical side, the blogs could be pooled together using an aggregator, such as pageflakes. This makes it possible to keep track of all the blogs in one place. It makes it easier for both the instructor and students to learn of new postings, etc.

Social networking sites can be made use of as a group environment, where group work can be organized as well as carried out, using other social software like blogs. You can even create your very own social networking site using Ning. It’s a nice idea in theory. That same article by Kieslinger and Pata also mentioned a problem in this regard as well … The group work came into conflict with the work focused on individual development. If the activities were separate, students tended to leave the self-directing activites to the wayside. If they were combined, self-reflection activities tended to get in the way of collaborative activities … And so on … In sum, it’s quite a challenge to balance the two within given time constraints, so that both activities are carried out effectively.

What is a personal learning environment?

The concept of a personal learning environment arises out of constructivist learning theories. Putting all technology issues aside, you can think of an idealized personal learning environment as a place where an individual can organize and direct his own learning beyond the walls of any school or workplace. The concept embodies the basic assumptions of the constructivist approach to learning: an individual learns most effectively if the learning process is somehow grounded on his or her own unique personality, social background, cultural background, educational background, mental capacities, needs, desires, store of existing knowledge (however perfectly or imperfectly remembered). The implications are really far-reaching.

In some sense, from the perspective of teaching, it is an issue of audience. Do we really teach to “individuals”? Do current educational practices generally (or maybe better to say in some specific school), sufficiently take into account the will, needs, capacities, etc. of individual students? The constructivist approach says no. How do we teach to individuals? In an institutional context, this generally means an approach which encourages personal involvement in the subject at hand, through exploratory, constructive, and reflective activities, with opportunities for self-expression, collaboration, negotiation, sharing … and so on.

At the same time an institution needs to recognize that learning which takes into account the whole individual and has a lasting impact should naturally extend beyond the classroom, beyond the end of a particular course, including any number of formal or informal sources. Not only must an institution involve the individual more closely in its own institutional learning process, but it should also empower the student to take control of his or her own personal learning processes.

But are most students ready or willing to take charge of their own learning? Are they ready to be shown the way and provided with the means to take control of their own learning? Are they ready to be provided with their own personal learning space, again leaving the question of technology aside? I’m rather sceptical. First, learning has to be valued in and of itself, valued enough that someone would want to give it a prominent place in their own personal space – or even give it a space of its own. Maybe learning is in fact more effective when it involves the whole person, but I think only when the whole person is willing to be involved, when in effect, the subject is really of personal interest, say when someone has in interest in computer programming, photography, cats, magic tricks, or whatever. Try as you might, most subjects offered by institutions will fail to stoke any deep personal interest.

Does this make personal learning environment technology irrelevant? I don’t actually think so. I think it still has a place, particularly in certain subject areas (definitely not all), but I don’t think it will ever live up to the grand expectations imposed on it by the friends of constructivist theory.

What is a blog?

What it is … is clear enough, now that I’ve had to make one. At first glance, it looks more or less like a personal homepage. The difference? It’s optimized for the easy entering and display of new content (usually text), like diary entries – which others are free to comment on. Unlike a homepage, it’s a place of ongoing communication: the author or authors make a new posting, a (regular?) visitor (alerted to the new posting or simply dropping in) or collaborator reads it and can then elect to comment on it. In short it’s like a meeting place, where ideas or views are presented and mulled over by some fixed or open community of readers. Ideas change, ideas develop … and in the end you’ve got some kind of “discourse” going. This assumes you’ve got something of interest to say, something that others would be interested in commenting on, and that you’ve somehow in fact found this audience of “others” ready to visit your blog site.