The articles and video that were assigned for GEDI F18 Week 1, delivered the message that I should focus more time on building my digital presence via blogging. According to Seth Godin and Tom Peters (Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind), blogging is a free platform that can help an individual (or perhaps an organization) network and learn to effectively communicate with their audience. Agreed. However, I’m not sold on the idea of networking via The Internet. Is it really necessary that my peers know and follow my thoughts?
I’ve never been much of a blogger, or blog follower, for that matter. I was required to blog in PFP (GRAD 5104) and though my response was to fear and resist, I did feel a sense of satisfaction when I received positive feedback from my peers. That being said, outside of class I am still hesitant to post my thoughts to The Internet for public viewing. (I prefer reposting other people’s thoughts or educational content. That’s still a form of blogging, right?)
My level of blog knowledge is admittedly archaic. I am still under the impression that blogs are where people share stories about their lives (mainly their cats, see image below), or share details about their most-recent cooking/baking accomplishments… My wife just informed me that Twitter is a form of blogging. (She is all about her digital presence, thanks to GEDI.)
Image taken from Twitter to demonstrate a form of blogging. @iammoshow
I didn’t realize that the websites for some organizations can be considered professional blogs. A quick Google search of “Science blogs,” directed me to a list created by www.atascientific.com of the “14 Science Blogs Everyone Should Read.” From there I started reading to find out what I was missing. I found that many of the blogs were similar to news websites, i.e., different categories for different posts (e.g., read these 10,000 articles related to Health and Medicine that includes multiple articles per day). I could have spent hours clicking through one category. Where should I begin and where does it end? It was overwhelming (and not in the ‘this is awesome’ sort of way). Some were more traditional, one post per day on a particular topic. But then still, should I check the archives or do I start reading the post from today? If today is the only day that matters then what is the point? (This post is turning into an unending rant so I’m going to wrap it up.) I think I would be more willing to blog if I enjoyed following other people’s blogs. I enjoy reading stories when I happen upon them but I wouldn’t say I follow any particular blog.
In the end, the readings did give me a greater appreciation for blogs. I never considered blogs to be, as Tim Hitchcock explains, “a form of publication” or a means to improve a person’s writing into a form that is “more engaging, simply written, and to the point.” Writing a blog does require a significant amount of thought, planning, and time. For those who enjoy blogging, whether for the intent of networking or simply to write down your thoughts (or share pictures of your cats), kudos to you!
Quote that I found valuable from ATA Scientific Instruments on science related blogs:
“A quick search in Google, and you can generally find whatever information you need. But sometimes the mass and diversity of material on the Internet can be overwhelming. Blogs are a valuable resource that can give analytical insights into the people, inventions and discoveries driving scientific innovation. Macro or micro, the blogs in this list engage in discussions and topics that will continue to evolve and change throughout history. Up-to-date and topical science blogs are the future for scientific research, education and outreach, a future which is being built by the blogs mentioned above.”
Considering the education I had received up to high school, teachers taught me knowledge that has been proven for a long time and without much controversy. They confidently taught the students what they had learned and this activity is still ongoing.
The development of ICT(Information, communication and technology) has revolutionized all areas of politics, society, economy, sports, etc., but I do not think that education takes full advantage of new technologies. The representative product of the combination of ICT and education is distance learning (often called e-learning) Anyone can receive education without time and space limitations. But this is not an interactive communication. Teachers can conduct remote lectures to all students around the world, and there is no system for students to express their opinions to all teachers and colleagues. I understand Gardner Campbell’s “digitally mediated networked learning” in that context. In addition, Dough Belshaw’s “working openly on the web” is also understood as a world where two-way communication is possible.
However, networked learning is not simply interactive communication, but “invitation to a world full of raw materials”. It is a state in which the huge and false information, unethical things, etc. In fact, what we call knowledge is a real knowledge through a long process of purification, and we have not made much sense of the process itself. The new educational meaning of networked learning is to accept the whole thing, but to learn the process of discovering real knowledge by establishing and cleansing your own selection process through experience. At first, you might just feel that networked learning is awesome and it is beneficial to everyone when you listen to someone who has benefited from blogging like Seth Godin and Tom Peters. However, it is only one advantage, not all network activities are beneficial.
I sometimes drink beer with my 3 roommates and talk about various topics. The main topic is about movies, and their interpretation is different, which is very interesting because of the variety of blogs for which each person has obtained information. After watching the movie, you may have searched Google for “Avengers Ending Interpretation” for a scene that you don’t understand or miss. Sometimes, however, there are cases where there are interpretations that are opposed to interpretation from a variety of perspectives. Sometimes I see that there are not only diverse interpretations but also opposing interpretations. I think that people who have seen only one opinion can have highly biased opinions. Learning to acquire information should not be learning but learning to obtain balanced information.
Networked learning should include a way of learning to avoid being unintentionally biased. In a world full of raw materials, I think studying the process of looking into the virtual world and discovering the gemstone through your own standards is a real learning.
References:
Gardner Campbell, “Networked Learning as Experiential Learning” (2016)
Doug Belshaw “Working Openly On the Web” (2014)
Tim Hitchcock “Twitter and Blogs are Not Just Add-ons To Academic Research” (2014)
As I watch my 8-month-old son learn to crawl, the notion that learning is about persistent, self-love, failure, and triumph resonates with me. Michael Wesch, provided a perspective that embraces the idea that learning doesn’t happen in one moment nor does it end once you succeed. Everyday, my son tries to get on all fours, unsuccessfully. One leg keeps getting stuck, just like Wesch’s son George kept falling on the last stair step. This failure doesn’t stop them from trying though. So why is it in academia we become so paralyzed by the fear of failure vs. celebrating the process of learning?
I have thought about this many times in my academic career. I think the consequences of not succeeding on the first try and being stuck with a bad grade are partly to blame. So while an “A” may mean mastery, it doesn’t mean that the learning experience sparked passion, curiosity, or deepened the exploration.
This notion that learning is based on a grade has lessened as I have continued into my graduate education, and especially now as a PhD student. My success has become about the development of my ideas and research, not a letter grade. As I progress through academic milestones, it drives me to learn more, not stop and find something new to study. My success is no longer based solely on a grade, but on scholarly contributions. In the article, “Twitter and Blogs are Not Just Add-ons to Academic Research” Tim Hitchcock said, “The best and most successful academics are the ones who are so caught up in the importance of their work, so caught up in their simple passion for a subject, that they publicize it with every breadth.” That passion for learning and sharing seems to get overshadowed by grades in many academic settings. And while grades aren’t going anywhere, we could benefit from incorporating the fearless learning style of children and the passion of researchers into more facets of academic learning.
The third suggestion presented by Doug Belshaw in “Working Openly on the Web” is to ensure data is readable by both humans and machines. This statement reminded me of a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago. The workshop attendees were advised to make sure any file we upload is also readable by machines. However, this was addressed in the context of how graduate teaching assistants may further accommodate students with disabilities.
Seth Godin argues that blogging is a means to force oneself to become part of the conversation.
Reflecting on all of these points, I have come to conclude that making data readable by machines does not just allow for “network effects”, as suggested by Doug Belshaw, and blogging is not just a platform to participate in the conversation if one so chooses. Rather the idea of “networked learning” allows for any- and every- one to be an active participant in one’s education. It includes those students whose learning needs may otherwise be overlooked by traditional pedagogy.
I was most inspired by Michael Welsh’s presentation of a “scaffolded” final project that makes the process “worth it” for each individual student. I have been in a few classes, both graduate and undergraduate, that have included checkpoints by which my instructors could give feedback for the next phase and the final submission. I’ve found this helpful due to the instructor feedback and that this does not allow for leaving a final project until the last moment. I’ve even experienced not submitting one deadline to my expectations, and it was reassuring to know that I would be able to recover as I progressed.
I am interested to learn ways to incorporate networked learning, “scaffolded” assignments, and ultimately inclusion in my own teaching practices.
Nowadays, the networked learning is everywhere. MOOC is an example, people can learn a new knowledge from Coursera, eDX, and Linux Academy or earn an online degree from Stanford or MIT. If people want to learn something, there are plenty of online resources for them to learn. As long as you eager to learn, learning materials always out there.Blogging and twittering is already part of our life and everyone can post anything using different tools. Twitter is not just a social tool, many researchers do research using Twitter data. For example, there is a research using Twitter mood predicts the stock market in 2011. There are researches used Twitter data to predict the presidential elections. Data scientist uses social data to build models and create many different applications in the various area every year. Everything you post online could already be indexed and analyzed by these data scientist. Moreover, there are many kinds of research related to Twitter conducted in VT CS for years.Regards to working openly on the Web, VT library hosted Open education and open access events every year. All these events aim to create and provide an open knowledge environment for everyone to receive information for free. With the rapid growth of the techniques nowadays, networked learning is already part of our daily life.
Often at family gatherings, social events, and dinner parties, when asked to define “pedagogy,” I usually offer something generic, like, “um, well, it refers to both the art and the practice of teaching.” I am excited for the opportunity to further develop my working definition of pedagogy as a GEDI in Contemporary Pedagogy as a doctoral student at Virginia Tech.
Although I have a general explanation for how I conceive of my own pedagogy, within my discipline, Rhetoric and Writing, and particularly in terms of teaching first-year writing courses, my outlook on teaching is largely guided by the WPA outcomes. The WPA outcomes, adopted in 2000 by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and amended in 2008, contains an entire section of learning outcomes pertaining to networked learning, or learning and writing in the highly-connected age of the internet. In terms of “Composing in Electronic Environments,” the council writes, “As has become clear over the last twenty years, writing in the 21st century involves the use of digital technologies for several purposes, from drafting to peer reviewing to editing.” In light of the prevalence of digital devices and the internet, the WPA outcomes contain the following outcomes that after the first-year composition class students should be able to complete including:
-“Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts”
-“Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases; and informal electronic networks and internet sources”
-“Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts”
In light of these outcomes, as faculty and instructors, we are encouraged to help students learn:
-“How to engage in the electronic research and composing processes common in their fields”
And . . .
-“How to disseminate texts in both print and electronic forms in their fields”
These outcomes and faculty guidelines are nothing short of a very, very tall order. As a new educator, they often feel overwhelming. However, my own tactics to address the outcome of writing in digital environments as well as being cognizant of networked learning have in past courses revolved around two techniques: encouraging students to use peer review via google drive and to compose their own reflections and to write publicly within the digital sphere in their own blogs. In reading for GEDI this week, I was excited to see scholars praise blogs as an effective way to engage students in the networked environment. For example, Tim Hitchcock, in “Twitter and blogs are not just add-ons to academic research, but a simple reflection of the passion underpinning it,” writes the following passage:
“One of my favorite blogging experiences involves embedding blogs in undergraduate assessment. By forcing students to write ‘publicly,’ their writing rapidly improves. From being characterized by the worst kind of bad academic prose – all passive voice pomposity – undergraduate writing in blogs is frequently transformed in to something more engaging, simply written, and to the point. From writing for the eyes of an academic or two, students are forced to imagine (or actually confront) a real audience. Blogging has the same effect on more professional academic writers – many of whom assume that if the content is good, the writing somehow doesn’t matter.”
While I was intrigued about the potential of blogs, I am by no means complacent about my own abilities to train students to think about networked learning and to write in digital environments. I am most excited about furthering my pedagogy in terms of helping students think critically about the internet, especially after reading Gardner Campbell’s piece entitled, “Networked Learning as Experiential Learning.” From Campbell’s work, I was particularly interested in the discussion of how little, in general, students understand about their own web-based presence, and how issues of privacy, surveillance, and intellectual ownership play out on internet platforms. This reading, combined with our class discussion on the parasitic nature of Learning Management Systems already has my head reeling, thinking about how I can integrate “internet intelligence” as a topic / course theme into my first-year writing classes.
Further, Campbell suggests that networked learning can even be a form of experiential learning, a form which admittedly, I traditionally associate with my own interdisciplinary background, which often included kayaking, soil sampling, and well-digging, as well as recording ballads, interviewing musicians, and other highly-experiential forms of learning. Thanks to Campbell, I know think of experiential learning in terms of networked learning and computing, particularly in the following passage:
“Offering students the possibility of experiential learning in personal, interactive, networked computing — in all its gloriously messy varieties — provides the richest opportunity yet for integrative thinking within and beyond ‘schooling.’ If higher education can embrace the complexity of networked learning and can value the condition of emergence that networked learning empowers, there may still be time to encourage networked learning as a structure and a disposition, a design and a habit of being” (Gardner Campbell, “Networked Learning as Experiential Learning” Jan. 2016)
Through this week’s exploration of pedagogy and networked learning, I am both encouraged by some of my early efforts to engage with the networked world, and inspired to extend this pedagogy into new dimensions.
This week we are talking about networked learning. The first thing I thought when I began going over the readings for this week was “what in the world is networked learning?” It has the sound of one of those education buzz words that everyone talks about, even though no one actually does it, or even really understands what it is. As I got into the readings I discovered that it was actually a lot simpler than I expected. As far as I can tell, ‘networked learning’ basically refers to creating learning situations where students interact in creative ways, both with each other and with a broader community. Now this is something I can apply to my own teaching methods and teaching philosophy.
As a historian, I think that networked learning could be especially useful in helping students to understand the nature of the historical discipline. At one point in his article, “Networked Learning as Experiential Learning,” Gardner Campbell describes books as a pre-internet form of networked learning, referring to a walk through the stacks as “tracing nodes and connections.” (Campbell) This reminded me of a lot of the discussions in my graduate seminars, where professors have encouraged me to see history books not as individual works, but as pieces of an ongoing historical conversation and to see my own research not as a task to be completed, but as another piece in this network of ideas. Tim Hitchcock’s article, “Twitter and blogs are not just add-ons to academic research, but a simple reflection of the passion underpinning it.” also helped me to see the connection between networked learning and the concept of the historical conversation. Hitchcock argued that humanist scholars should see platforms like blogs and Twitter as a logical extension of more traditional forms of publication. Furthermore, he argued that engaging in these platforms can help scholars to maintain a focus on the communal aspect of their work, as posting on these platforms forces scholars to remain reader-focused through various stages of their work. (Hitchcock)
Working as a graduate editor for my department’s undergraduate research journal, I can definitely see that undergraduates struggle with the concept of a “community of scholars.” (Hitchcock) The most consistent advice that I have to give to undergraduates submitting their work is that they need to help the reader understand how their research contributes to the broader historical conversation in a novel way. I believe that by using internet-driven methods of networked-learning, teachers of history can help their students begin to see their work as a piece in a broader conversation rather than an individual assignment.
Blogging is a good example of this method in action. Last semester, I participated in an environmental history seminar where each student blogged about the weekly readings. Over the course of the semester, I found that each student approached the material based on their own area of focus. As a result, every week we would all see the same reading analyzed and discussed in a number of different ways, leading to a multifaceted understanding of the reading and its place in the field. This collaborative approach to learning took place via classroom discussions as well, but reading the blogs and comments really drove home the collaborative nature of our class. I believe this approach can be especially beneficial for undergraduates. Helping students understand historical conversations is difficult, especially since an undergraduate workload does not allow for the amount of reading that is required to begin to see conversations unfold. However, by creating a mini-conversation via a class blog, students can begin to see how each other’s work relates and to think about how this process plays out on a larger scale.
Blogging might be the most obvious instance of networked learning, but I think that there are several technologies and approaches that lend themselves to this process. Something as simple as collaborating on a google doc for a class project forces students to think about their individual tasks in light of a broader context and it also gives students experience with trying to integrate different perspectives and approaches. In addition, this sort of project also has the potential to force students to learn to have a robust but civil conversation about the merits of conflicting perspectives and methodologies.
I began this week questioning the relevance of ‘networked learning’ but after reading this week’s articles and thinking about how this concept could apply to my field, I find myself seeing networked learning as not only useful, but ultimately essential to training young scholars. I have a feeling that this will be a common theme throughout the semester.
The Internet has made a huge impact in our lives during the last years. Specially, it has increased our social interaction zone to connect with people we don’t know at all. With all its positive and negative aspects, it can impact our learning process as well. Now, looking at the past, I feel like my learning process in many courses could have been way different using newly developed platforms in the internet, compared to the traditional leaning settings in our classrooms.
The topic of this session was about networked learning. As someone with engineering background who has started exploring completely new interdisciplinary topics for research recently, networked learning is a huge benefit! There are many online platforms being developed where users contribute to solve problems. So, instead of restricting the learning by solely relying on the instructor and reference books, networked learning is providing an interactive environment through global contribution.
One interesting example in my filed is the Stackexchange. During the last year, this amazing platform helped me a lot for finding solutions. Basically, the whole idea is provide Q/A forums for solving problems related to statistics and data science. To make it efficient, the platform has created a lot of interactive features so the specific question reaches the right audience ASAP. For example, the user with a question creates a number of relevant tags to a topic, so the interested and informed people that have subscribed those tags will be informed for responding. What’s more, interesting questions will be voted up by others so they will appear upper by the search engines as others search for related problems in the future.
In addition, research-based platforms are being introduced to connect the scholars. I recently came across a website called Polyplexus , a platform about summarizing research findings in less than 300 words. The idea is very similar to Twitter, but it’s research-oriented. As the inventor of the website describes, its objective is motivate understanding and learning for advertising research to others. Through adding features like research interest or expertise, it’s possible to quickly find collaborators around the world, follow their work, and be up-to-date as they publish new findings.
I believe it’s just the beginning of networked learning. With the growing interest in online courses and open science movement, universities will get more and more connected in the future!
I believe that experiential learning is vitally important in providing students with skills that will prepare them for the real world. Experiential learning involves learning through doing an action. While we can interpret this idea purely as giving students experience in the course topic(s), I would argue that experiential learning should also consist of using the class to give students experiences to build basic communication skills.
Many undergraduates are 18-21 year olds are constantly engaging with technology and information, just as they do with reading and writing. However, many of them will have had little formal training in how to use technology or the information readily available on the internet, or they may not understand the context of the training. The modern undergraduate does not need to be taught to blog- they need to be taught how to identify technological tools and the critical thinking skills to use these tools. An 18 year old may not believe determining sources’ reliability is important until their told how they could be sued for liable for printing incorrect information in a newspaper or how basing a manufacturing decision on a study from an opinion website may result in being fired.
Part of experiential learning should include teaching students how to navigate through the wilds of the internet, teaching them to recognize when they’re on the well-trodden paths of peer-reviewed science and objective reporting; see biases which are hidden in the fact fronds, and teach them to be aware of the breadcrumbs of personal information that they’re leaving behind every time they click on a search engine link, accept cookies from friendly-looking sites; or post, like, or re-tweet.
Colleges and universities should develop curriculum permeated with assignments intended to develop core life skills, even after the students have forgotten all the definitions required. We should develop courses which where the base assumption is that we are improving students’ abilities even as we’re testing them on chemical bonds and the War of 1812. Instructors should ask the question of their course: do the assignments teach more than just the assigned topic, and can I put my course topic in real-life contexts? Teaching students how to craft a professional email doesn’t require them to have assignments where that action is the requirement. These skills develop when course after course requires writing to be coherent, capitalized, and spelled correctly. The same idea applies to teaching technological navigation. The ability to investigate a website for credibility is a skill that will only develop with use, and the ability to read a credible resource (such as a peer-reviewed article) and be able to identify flaws or gaps through critical thinking and not expert knowledge can only come with experience.
For the course content to be interrupted as experiential learning to the students, they must be told that it is. We should provide context to not only the course and course content, but the course structure and rubric choices. Explaining our objectives and how the skills developed in the course will be relevant to them later in life. Teach the students to see how course work is experiential learning.
We once had two weird classes in one semester.
The first class was about poetry.
“Good morning everyone, in this semester we will be learning about poems. We will learn to interpret what the authors convey from their poems. I believe using the social media will be a perfect way for us to discuss with each other even after classes.”
So the class went pretty well and the online discussion was quite interactive. Although sometimes the mandatory social media discussion seems awkward, I believe most of us had the passion to express our thoughts at least once or twice for the semester.
However the class become weird at the final. Instead of trying to explain what we see from the poems, what the metaphors could be, half of the test requires us to recite the poems and fill out the blanks. The other half of the exam went as usual, but everything just felt ridiculous at the end.
The second class was Chemistry.
” I would like everyone to memorize the chemical equations, periodic table and properties of groups in the periodic table.”
Not surprisingly, the class had a lot of contents but pretty dry to listen. I fell asleep several times during the semester, probably so did my classmates. To make sure we could get good grades on this class, we tried our best to memorize everything in the class. We were even reviewing after midnight the day before the final.
The final required us to predict a super complicate reaction with the permission of using our notes and even the internet. The teacher did mention about how to use scientific searching engines to find references, however we never did it ourselves. Half of the exam we were trying to figure out what we should be searching. We were also allowed to discuss with each other during the exam, this did make us less miserable, but I did not feel very effective when discussing with others. I screwed up this one as well.
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I’m the poetry teacher.
At the very beginning, I was trying to have my students engaged in the discussion about poems, let them feel about the scene the authors depicted. I require the class share thoughts with each other, so that they could learn from different perspectives. I thought feelings and how to express them, is one of the most important thing we can learn by reading poems. However, one day, I got worried. I was worried that thoughts generated on thoughts are so overwhelming that the origin poem were left behind and forgotten. I was worried that other beauties lie in the form of poems were neglected. So I decided to make the final closer related to poems themselves. I didn’t expect they could do well on the exam, but I will explain my thoughts to them. Surprisingly, some students can still finish out the poems (or some of the poems) pretty well.
I’m the chemistry teacher.
I start my class with emphasizing the importance of memorizing everything and of deducting one from the other. But students seemed not attracted to them. Some students even fell asleep. I started to wonder what was wrong. By retrospecting my way of accomplishing tasks, I memorize the basic but always look up about things I may need but do not know. Right, that’s right. I should not let my students to memorize everything, once they graduate from school, they will need more than knowing the knowledge to adapt. I should let them know the importance of the tools. I picked up a reaction for them to predict in the final, and I encourage them using the tools they know. It should not be hard for them. Well, it turned out that they actually are not that familiar with the tools. Even for this generation that grows up with the internet, gaps exist between blocks of the flat world.
