Archive for category research

A new iPad 2 in the house!

Posted by kmcg2375 in online tools, research, technology, university on July 13, 2011

I was so excited yesterday to pick up my brand new iPad 2 from the school office:

…very rarely am I alone when I get to open exciting packages like this…

…I was surprised that it was white (should I have been?). It’s so Mac-like!

…I have no idea how to work it…

…so I take it home and work it out there 🙂

And the verdict, so far…

What is great about the iPad:

I can make it work by touching the screen; like my phone, but the screen is BIG! It makes such a difference.
I’ve got wireless and 3G but so far it has just been running on wireless through my home connection. At lightning speed. So awesome.
Checking my Tumblr stream…the pictures are massive and it looks so good.
Using Muro on Deviantart.com to draw. Wow! Tablets ROCK!
The iView app (recent ABC shows anytime)
(oh. my. god. I can’t believe I haven’t tried making a collage in polyvore yet!!!)

What is weird about the iPad:

Where is Word?
Where do I save my files?
Why can’t I upload the pictures I take with it?
Why doesn’t Facebook have an official app?

iPad, outofthebox

7 Comments

The medium is the message

Posted by kmcg2375 in books, digital storytelling, education, english, Lit_Review, research, technology on June 30, 2011

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. (from Wikipedia)

The more I think about this issue of medium, the more unsatisfied I am with the way that medium of production is dealt with in the English curriculum.

While English teachers continue to be led by debate over the definition and role of Literature in English, and over the best way to teach language, questions of medium have been significantly sidelined.

It also seems clearer to me now why subjects like Drama and Media (content areas that technically sit under the umbrella of English, if you accept that English is a study of how meaning is made through language and texts) go off and take up their own space in many curriculum. It’s not just because those fields have their own traditions and pedagogies that need space, or because they have industries that create an economic drive for the subjects to continue. It’s also because those field require keen attention to production elements, including issues of medium.

Little wonder that Drama, which often deals with live performance of language, dies a slow death in English classrooms where the curriculum is still dominated by print literacy.

Little wonder that we still can reconcile the gulf between ‘literary’ and ‘digital/electronic’ texts in the Australian curriculum (medium is not a genre!)

To move anywhere with this line of thinking will require some careful thought about the overlap between the words:

media as-in-the-artisitic-means-of-production and
Media as-in-the-field-of-media-studies.

Thanks to carolyn for stimulating my thinking on this. Connecting the concept of medium back to the concept of narrative helped the penny drop today!

australian_curriculum, curriculum, media, narrative

3 Comments

Challenges to developing a blended learning course

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, Lit_Review, online tools, research, social media, technology, university on June 17, 2011

This extract is from the article Development and Implementation of a “Blended” Teaching Course Environment in the most recent issue of JOLT:

Roadblocks/challenges to Developing a Blended Course

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to developing a blended course is the student fear factor. Many individuals in my class had never crafted a PowerPoint presentation, much less navigated in an online
discussion. Despite their familiarity with Web 2.0 tools like Facebook, MySpace, and instant messaging, the thought of being graded for online participation was somewhat threatening and intimidating. It was also difficult initially for students to understand the rationale for some assignments (such as Second Life). In future classes, more emphasis on business necessity, future usage, and SL current applications will be incorporated into the course pedagogy. Because there were many different types of assignments in this course (including group work, both on and off line), some students also expressed dissatisfaction with having to rely on team members. Use of the Team Agreement did however help to coalesce groups, and to give members a framework for expected behavior. Instructor feedback on the Team Agreement is essential in providing guidance regarding conflict resolution, assignment schedule, and interpersonal interaction among members.

The blended model is a student-centered approach that allows the instructor to behave as a coach, a facilitator, and a cheerleader for his/her students. It is a way to let students lead in an environment in which they’re guided to success. In the words of Singh (2002, p. 476), “To be successful, blended [teaching]… needs to focus on combining the right delivery technologies to match the individual learning
objectives and transfer the appropriate knowledge and skills to the learner at the right time.”

by Jacqueline Gilbert and Ricardo Flores-Zambada

Development and Implementation of a “Blended” Teaching Course Environment
Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2011 pp. 244-260

This interests me because I have been considering including an assessment of online PLN participation in my unit next semester.

Given that this study found that “the thought of being graded for online participation was somewhat threatening and intimidating” for students, I’m going to avoid actually grading their participation per se. Rather, I’ve decided that students must show (in an assignment appendix) participation in their online PLN for the unit to achieve a Distinction (Grade ‘6’) or High Distinction (Grade ‘7’). That way, they either do it, or they don’t. They don’t have to feel anxious about quality.

Has anyone else done something similar to this? Making students demonstrate their PLN building? How can I do it – get them to attach a screen shot of three blog comments and five tweets? Would that suffice? Hmm…

assessment, CLB_018

Building the game layer

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, research, university, video games on May 11, 2011

Thanks Andrew Jessup for showing me the work of Seth Priebatsch, who as it turns out has a lot of material covering the exact topic that has been bugging me.

How do I integrate Games Based Learning, or GBL, into my pedagogy without disrupting or contradicting my current approach to learning and teaching?

I think the idea of ‘the game layer’ is the answer. I think it’s also a great concept for me to use in thinking further about the role of motivation and learning theory in explaining the success of teachers who ‘gamify’ their teaching.

Seth is the Cheif Ninja at SCVNGR and the use of the popular game meme here did make me chuckle. Playful right down to the business card eh? I like it! Especially as I’ve been characterising myself in class as the ‘Cheif Pirate’. I wonder who that is in Seth’s camp, and what they do?

I highly recommend a watch. He has quite a few talks online now but this TED talk (above) gave a great overview of four key elements that build a successful game.

Watch the video and your reward will be to find out what they are 😉

GBL, meme, TEDtalks

The FOUR C’s

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, reflections, research, technology, university on March 30, 2011

We edu-tweeters often use the catchphrase ‘connect, collaborate, create’ to signal our pedagogical perspective.

But…what about this really important fourth C:

CRITICAL?

Surely this must become another essential C-word?

critical_literacy, potentially_very_important

Motivation and Participation in Asynchronous Online Discussions

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, online tools, research, social media, technology, university on March 24, 2011

I was very interested to read the findings of Xie, Durrington and Yen (2011) published in the recently released issue of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Given my current use of Twitter in my own university unit for preservice teachers, I was glad to read that others were also observing a relationship between participation in online asynchronous discussions and students’ level of motivation. I have reproduced their abstract here:

This study investigated the relationship between students’ motivation and their participation in asynchronous online discussions during a 16-week online course. Fifty-six students participated in
online discussion activities as a normal part of their classes. Their motivation for participating in online discussions was self-reported three times throughout the semester. The findings continue to
indicate that students’ motivation has a significant relationship with their participation in online discussion activities at time two and time three. Students’ perceived value, autonomy, competence,
and relatedness have different levels of impact on their online discussion behavior. This study also found that students’ intrinsic motivation and their perceived value of online discussions remained at a moderate-high level over time, although the perceived value had a significant drop from the midpoint to the end of the semester.

Keywords: Asynchronous Online Discussion, Motivation, Distance Learning, Collaborative
Learning, Learning Community

Reading this article has motivated me to collect my own data in the next week of classes, to gather some initial responses from my own students. I look forward to hearing their views!

CLB_018, JOLT, twitter

2 Comments