The impact of blogs on students. The self organizing aspects.

This reflection is on the effective self organizing going on in the course blogs. It is impressive that the first years have posted such a lot of things but also organized such a lot with each other .

Wiley 2003 "on line self organizing social systems" . Updated in 2007 (he did a book chapter to follow it up.)  stated basically that  a group of people interacting with each other can  do self organizing without one person giving out orders.

 I see that  just by giving students a tool ,the blog, they go onto co-ordinate their own e mail and face book and trips. No central person telling them to attend additional lectures and buy useful books  from third years or see vital web sites to construct homework .

I see evidence that the learning objects they make are much better than the tutor made moodle and list of papers to read in module handbooks.

 One tutor cannot serve so many complex learners easily .

A good tutor needs to find out  what they know , don’t know and intelligently choose learning objects and then teach by putting them into order… then they judge the usefulness for each student by evaluating the effects for each student. 

So the work for me is to design Intelligent tutoring systems or  support a tool for a group  of students so they can spend time solving these problems. the work is carried out  not on behalf of the group but by the group themselves .  

Just like an ants nest students just get on with work, support , filter and help each other  for each other’s success in learning.

 Now the question is what is the difference of blogs and facebook for student conversations and learning?

free books -what do you think?

How do academics feel about free books?

David Wiley has written  about some excellent stuff on “flat world knowledge”. Text book problems such as high prices and new editions are being tackled by this project.

 Affordability and accesability is important to students so our librarian has used government money to buy e books. Open content is published by flat world. If we have open content how could publishers charge so much? "Flat World Knowledge: an open-source textbook revolution?" http://bit.ly/o4blFM

Makes me think do you see push-back from professors, who are the authors of the books their students are buying? Also I am

not sure how we sustain a pool of authors without being able to compensate them financially here's an academic press that similarly goes open: http://www.aupress.ca/

Accademics may get increased reputation from giving their academic text for free or supported by the university.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/960/1860 this looks interesting.

I have ensured my book on Lulu Dyslexia in the college is totally free to download or you can buy it!

Lastly gigapedia gives free books. 

Educational Technology - Insights: Apple predicting the future - early 1990s video

Educational Technology - Insights: Apple predicting the future - early 1990s video: Vision. What vision Apple had. This example comes not from Steve Jobs but from John Scully, Apple CEO at the time, early in the 1990s. The c...

wayfinding is difficult when there is so much net to choose from.

I have invited all students or newbies to blog so they can find relevant items that they enjoy reading or seeing. the hub is the classroom VLE virtual learning environment " moodle ". Without a hub or somewhere to look for what have we done in terms of themes for the module work many would loose their way in the various networks. Overload of information for the course is created by their own blogs and soon as the students want to just read relevant stuff to get a piece of work done the blogs posts may drop off. The value of them at the start of projects is to share in a space that can hold and remember their finds . The context of the course such as finding a way to claim council tax back or finding how to get e services is vital at the beginning to settle students.So blogs will change both in content and number of posts as the course goes on. This means it is against good course design to expect a post a week on a topic chosen by the teacher. Or maybe you disagree?
Darken split the tasks set for way finding into 3;

Wayfinding Tasks
Wayfinding tasks are classified into three primary categories:
1. Naïve search: Any searching task in which the navigator has no a priori knowledge of the whereabouts of the target in question. A naïve search implies that an exhaustive search is to be performed.

2. Primed search: Any searching task in which the navigator knows the location of the target. The search is non- exhaustive.
3. Exploration: Any wayfinding task in which there is no target. 

 The papers that research  if a well designed learning experience always has a map to follow  is

1. Darken, R.P., Wayfinding in Large-Scale Virtual Worlds., Doctoral dissertation, 1996, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
2. Darken, R.P. and J.L. Sibert, A Toolset for Navigation in Virtual Environments., 1993: p. 157-165.

learning is socially constructed

Sometimes new teaching and learning tools need new theory. In one view the knowledge is an item to be passed on to others, their head is to be filled by tutor's input. Cartesian knowledge. In another view knowledge is created by the individual by discussing and sharing in social learning.Today's post is from Seeley Brown's work.I have referenced in text, referenced a web page and plagiarised.
“The most profound impact of the Internet… is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning”. “Attention has moved from access to information towards access to other people”. “Web2.0 blurs the boundaries between the producers and consumers of content”. (Seely Brown, 2008)
John Seeley Brown ,amongst many ,commented on the use of students connecting  in his paper Minds on Fire (http://www.johnseelybrown.com/mindsonfire.pdf), saying in the future of colleges and Higher education is not to continue filling up courses with set papers and readings.That is why i have encouraged the  students to blog ,so that the individuals will be able to belong to an eco system that enable equal opportunities because they can find whatever makes sense to them.A  variety of perspectives can be shown on individual blogs that are joined together inside a see "wall" and the tools on the web will allow learners freedom to source or find , use and reinterpret knowledge in ways that make sense to them. "Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/ university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education— more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own.6"
I like this piece of how group work theory research has been built up so i have copied it all so i don't loose it . I know its not proper referencing but plagiarism  ..Richard J. Light, Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). For a summary of Light’s research, see Richard Light, “The College Experience: A Blue- print for Success,” <http://athome.harvard.edu/ programs/light/index.html>. An earlier, though more focused, contribution to our appreciation of the power of group study was provided by Uri Tre- isman more than twenty years ago. As a graduate student at UC-Berkeley in the late 1970s, Treisman worked on the poor performance of African- Americans and Latinos in undergraduate calculus classes. He discovered the problem was not these students’ lack of motivation or inadequate prepa- ration but rather their approach to studying. In contrast to Asian students, who, Treisman found, naturally formed “academic communities” in which they studied and learned together, African- Americans tended to separate their academic and social lives and studied completely on their own. Treisman developed a program that engaged these students in workshop-style study groups in which they collaborated on solving particularly challeng- ing calculus problems. The program was so suc- cessful that it was adopted by many other colleges. See Uri Treisman, “Studying Students Studying Calculus: A Look at the Lives of Minority Math- ematics Students in College,” College Mathematics Journal, vol. 23, no. 5 (November 1992), pp. 362–72, <http://math.sfsu.edu/hsu/workshops/treisman .html>.

adapting, creating,contributing and connecting

NEWS FLASH Collaborative learning is different to collective learning. I am working in a blended fashion with degree students helping them to create blogs  to solve problems and share informal links to complete formal education tasks . The first year child studies are excellent at keeping them going so far.They are using their collections to discuss and comment on an authentic task (the module) and social problems (getting finances and enrolments sorted).The work they do  is a good example of when openness helps students to create knowledge .In the groups the blogs are only available within the institution not truly open on the whole net. The good stuff cannot be added to by communities across the world so this limits the debate. The trouble with setting the blogs in an open world would add to concerns from students about being public ,on show.Not every student wants to connect. not every student wants to consume so much knowledge ,so much reading ,so much contributing and so many actions towards collective learning . It is considered by some so much easier to read a book and create their own project. Finding , consuming and creating takes so much time so some have to be convinced to blog and some will never accept blogging as a tool.Having said that all visit and read other's blogs not wishing to be left in the dark about the conversations.
Tutors have to browse through blog posts and to encourage this there needs to be encouragement and incentives. Tutors are also busy people and i find i am not joined by other staff.some students wonder why write them if the tutor does not read them but i suggest tutors do not have to be the audience .In the blogs there is always recognition for a prolific blogger as other students like to follow them and they get a "readership" a good following.

#change11 what binds a group and makes them blog?

This week i started a new group of learners on the foundation degree for young people and the community.They had never blogged and were rightly worried and concerned about their privacy . Once settled the group members started attaching articles and posting them to offer knowledge to the network . The relationship between the individual and the group has to be developed so they can complete their projects. This led me to reflect on the notion we interact around the social objects we stick onto blogs. The forces that makes people blog are to provide relevant "stuff" for the learning goals.(the project).

Further reading:

Knorr-Cetina, K (2001) Objectual Practice. In Schatzki, T. R., Knorr-Cetina, K., & Savigny, E. V. (Eds). The practice turn in contemporary theory. p175-188  Routledge. Retrieved from Retreived from: http://kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-opus-81918/kcobjectualpractice.pdf?sequence=1

Paavola, S., Lipponen, L., & Hakkarainen, K. (2004). Models of Innovative Knowledge Communities and Three Metaphors of Learning. Review of Educational Research, 74(4), 557-576. AERA. Retrieved fromhttp://rer.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.3102/00346543074004557

Lin Armstrong: Newbies

Lin Armstrong: #change 11 it is really noticiable that the networks on a new course are built rapidly at first. there is always a leader , one who will get the connections and post useful tips to get going. on the new 2+2 course the growth is tremendous already every single class member have joined a blog and a facebook group they initiated by themselves. The anxiety of finding a way to start the course  has been lessened by asking about enrolments ,library tickets,car parks and even some content. The majority of blogs so far have been to show things. like finding pieces of a large puzzel .Each learner  sticks on something new for the others to see.I realise blogs are sold as collaborative ,knowledge making tools but the knowledge and content designed by the course maker (me ) is not always the knowledge newbies need first.Context is much more important than content for many.I have to say this cohort have already blogged up to 3 posts each and the course doesn't start untill Monday. There is no mark or grade on the blog work but it is attended to in order  to survive and become social in a new situation.
Each student has followed up to 12 others and all have at least 5 people following them. It will be very interesting to see the growth of this network.