Friday, September 30, 2011

Alec Couros: Teaching and learning in a networked world

Alec Couros's talk was quite interesting. He's a big advocate of getting online. Not only do students already network among themselves online, but teachers can also benefit greatly from online networking.

I agree that networks are important, both social and professional. But I'm not convinced that online networking should take up as much of my time as Mr. Couros would like. Twitter is especially suspect in my mind. To be fair, I haven't used Twitter much, but it seems like it would add more to my to-do list if I were to dedicate my time reading all those tweets. If I spend so much time on my digital identity, when do I have time to work on the real me, the one who actually teaches?

Mr. Couros's main point seems to be that, since so much information is available anytime the student wants it, learning is becoming more and more autonomous, and therefore, our role as teachers is fast changing into something other than a lecturer or, as I like to say, the classroom know-it-all.

Not only is the face of education changing due to the online community - other aspects of society are changing as well. Through social media platforms and crowd sourcing, we have formed our own personal learning networks, which we access often for information on everything from good restaurants in our neighborhood (Yelp) to the history of the Ottoman Empire (Wikipedia). We can find out anything in a very short span of time, so we no longer need the experts like we used to.

With the ever-growing phenomenon of participatory media, we can learn about world news events as they happen, instead of waiting for Brian Williams to tell us. Perhaps the news as we know it will also go by the wayside in favor of a more accurate crowd sourcing model.

It's quite exciting to be part of this emerging culture of sharing information and resources. It looks like we're moving ever closer to a real global community.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Changing education paradigms

This link has been floating around the POT blog roll: Sir Ken Robinson's talk titled Changing Education Paradigms.

I've thought for a long time that education should not be based on age, but rather on ability and interest. When I was in school, I had to wait (impatiently) for the rest of the class to finish their math problems. But in the next hour, I was hopelessly scrambling to catch up in my speed reading class. What if I were allowed to work at my own pace?

Although it's good to have deadlines, the deadline should by no means be the most important part of education. Instead, a freer system that removes the boundaries of grade levels would open up so many more possibilities for students. Those that excel in a subject would be freer to explore it in more depth. Those that need more time would be able to take it without the humiliation of being "held back".

The question is, if we allow for a more open educational system, how do we deal with the mixture of ages working together? How do we reconcile emotional maturity level with academic ability and artistic talent?

(See more from Sir Robinson here.)

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The case for non-native language teachers

Thanks to Lana for her Sept 8 blog post, Out with lecturing, in with problem-solving, and the link to a very interesting article, Rethinking the way college students are taught. Of particular interest was the following passage:

"Imagine two students sitting next to one another, Mary and John. Mary has the right answer because she understands it. John does not. Mary's more likely, on average, to convince John than the other way around because she has the right reasoning."

But here's the irony. "Mary is more likely to convince John than professor Mazur in front of the class," Mazur says.

"She's only recently learned it and still has some feeling for the conceptual difficulties that she has whereas professor Mazur learned [the idea] such a long time ago that he can no longer understand why somebody has difficulty grasping it."

That's the irony of becoming an expert in your field, Mazur says. "It becomes not easier to teach, it becomes harder to teach because you're unaware of the conceptual difficulties of a beginning learner."

I live in Shanghai, China, and am studying Mandarin Chinese. I'm still a beginner, but I have a good handle on some of the basic concepts of the language (grammar, tones, word order, etc.). One of my co-workers approached me last week and asked me to teach her Chinese. I admitted to her that I am only a beginning learner myself, and that she might do better studying with one of our Chinese colleagues. She said that she had tried studying with a native-speaker, but had problems understanding the tutor's explanations. The tutor just didn't understand what my co-worker didn't understand. Because I'm a student of Chinese myself, she feels that I will have much more empathy for her struggle to learn Chinese.

It reminds me of the discussion going around a couple of weeks ago: teachers are not necessarily experts in what we teach, but rather we are guides who are just further down the learning path than our students.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Finland: The legal right to broadband access

Even though it happened almost two years ago, I first heard about this from watching Alec Couros's talk "Open and Networked Learning". I had to look it up.

Sure enough, CNN, BBC, The Guardian and Huffinton Post all had articles declaring that Finland had passed a law naming broadband internet access as a basic legal right of every Finn. Incredible. I mean, wonderful - but wow. They've made the statement that everyone should have free access to information. Hurrah!

Week 2 Panic

I'm a little bit behind the rest of the class, but I'm diligently working through the assignments in an effort to catch up.

I found that I'm struggling to process all of the information that is suddenly available to us. Currently, I have 243 entries in my Goolge Reader feed for this class alone, including blog posts from other participants, Diigo posts, YouTube and Vimeo uploads, not to mention the conversation happening on Facebook.

With all these connections, I feel wildly without a sense of direction. Which link do I follow? Which conversation do I jump into? Which rabbit hole do I go down?

Thank goodness for Lisa's video, Week 2 Panic. I feel much better about it all. Instead of trying to read everything put out there, I feel more freedom to pick and choose which bits of information are most useful to me personally.

So to that end, I decided to focus on the assignments this week and not so much on the conversations.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Catching up

I just got back from a two-week vacation to Tibet, which I had planned before enrolling in this online course. Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do! I look forward to jumping back into the conversation.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Information overload

I'm really excited to see so much action on the POT blog roll today. I found myself scrambling to keep up with all the posts. And all the links posted on Diigo. And then there's the Facebook feed. Wow! So much information! And it's only the first day of class.

Any thoughts out there on how we can manage all this information in an efficient yet effective way?