Scott Wolla Blog

My colleague Scott Wolla has an excellent blog.

Check it out at:

http://wollablog.blogspot.com/

From David Warsh

But no outsider’s voice is more striking at the moment than that of Simon Johnson. And no site better demonstrates the power of the Web to restructure debate, by bringing deep and different thinking to the fore.

http://baselinescenario.com/

Blogs to check out

Tim Schelling and the Powell Center
http://valuingeconomics.blogspot.com/

William Easterly
http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/

Aplia presents current events with outstanding analysis and discussion questions for use in your class.
http://econblog.aplia.com/

Economic Principals by David Warsh
http://www.economicprincipals.com/


Development Blog
http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/

Your view of the economy in 2008

While this blog is primarily oriented toward a discussion of e learning, I am very interested in the intersection of learning theory, economics and my instruction of economics.

To that end, I am endeavoring to have a wide community of viewers so I have invited colleagues from a number of my learning communities to this blog to complete the one question poll to the left and to leave a comment at this site.

The poll question was prompted by my desire to see if James James Surowiecki's thesis in The Wisdom of Crowds can be easily tested. We will know the answer to these poll question within the next 15 months, so this seemed a reasonable way for me to test his argument.

Moreover, I am seriously giving consideration to the use of blog and wiki as delivery tools for the classes I teach online and to supplement my face to face instruction. Given the research available dealing with alternative assessment and the role of authenticity and constructivism in learning, I want to see how colleagues I have come to respect interact in this environment.

Thanks in advance for your vote on the poll and any comments you care to leave.

Your reply might include:

1. Your explanation/rationale for your vote on the direction of the US economy in 2008.

2. The consequence - social, cultural, political if your prediction is correct?

3. Your view of instructional technologies such as this and their efficacy in the classroom - either cyber or face to face.

4. Any other relevant issue or question you might wish to raise.

Greg

Public v private - how should a wiki be constructed

A great discussion has sprung up in EDUC 762 regarding private v public settings for an educational wiki.

How do you weight in?

While here, if you have not voted in the survey on wiki use, give it a whirl.

Do the current survey results on wiki inform your comments?

I'll kick off our discussion by responding to the following excellent question:

So I wondered why your group chose to only complete a wiki to submit to the instructor knowing that your wiki could be subjected to vandalizing even with the private access. Not suggesting our classmates but, others who might obtain access.

This is a great question and really reflects back on the philosophy of the internet, social networking and community building. My response is grounded in my personal philosophy, experience with this tool and constructivist view point of learning communities.

Personal Philosophy

I am grounded in the moral philosophy of Adam Smith. Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments presents a strong case that the link between individual liberty or natural liberty and society is personal responsibility expressed through virtue. The operative agent is an impartial spectator that aligns liberty with responsibility.

So my first response, is that I have tremendous confidence in my fellows.


Experience with wiki

If you think back to the survey (over on our left) one of the major advantages of a wiki is the archive functionality. Every page and page edit is saved in history. If a "vandal" were to attack any or all pages in a public wiki, the previous page would be restored and the vandal blocked from the site.

Our EDUC 762 group midterm project was a private one, a decision that I obviously find contrary to the essence of wiki, Adam Smith, Walt Whitman and inclusiveness. Having said that, the questioner accurately points out, the wiki could still be "vandalized".

But, the process of collaboration or the process of vandalizing is, I think, important to regard. Howl, was considered obscene (a form of poetic graffitti), Dali and Pollack are examples of those attacked by the cultural establishment as juvenile and "vandals" and early rap and hip hop were considered criminal. I am not saying that this wiki rises to high art, but a defining characteristic of wiki is collaboration and inclusivement (in my view).

So, I would welcome all collaboration which, at its heart could be viewed as subversive and ultimately vandalism.

A bit like the philosophy in The Leaves of Grass . . . . could Whitman have been anticipating the wiki (Me or I or our?):

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is Me.

or

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.

or

Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee!

Constructivist view of learning

It will not be surprising that my philosophy of constructivism is founded on notions of personal liberty and responsibility, inclusiveness and a sense that, as Whitman and Ginsberg declare - are democratic and universal. The notion of American exceptionalism that was early on described in Democracy in America by Tocqueville identified five values crucial to America's success as a democratic republic:

(1) liberty
(2) egalitarianism
(3) individualism
(4) populism and
(5) laissez-faire

Perhaps these are important not only to wiki, but to the broader discussion of community building.

Click over to Public Wiki to view the wiki under discussion. The question at the beginning of this post focused on the Owyang assessment of weaknesses of wiki. Immediately above this analysis of weakness you can see a summary of strengths/benefits/uses of wiki that might inform your analysis of this topic.

Thanks to my classmates over in EDUC 762 for prompting this excellent discussion.

Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Tomorrow's Professor Blog is a joint project between MIT and Stanford and appears to archive messages and comments from a similarly named mailing list.

Thanks to Naomi Story, director of the MCC Center for Teaching and Learning for pointing out the mailing list and blog.

The Feb. 6 e mail (will appear on the blob Feb. 20) directly related to a discussion over in EDUC 761 Collaborating Communities and in part reads

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

The Rules of Engagement: Socializing College Students for the New Century

By Neil F. Williams

Introductory comments by James Rhem, publisher, NT&LF.

Professor Williams had contributed a nice piece on "shared quizzes" earlier and so his name on an article was encouraging, but requiring students to exchange greetings with him at the door and creating a formal rule about covering one's mouth if one yawned? These, among others, seemed beyond the pale of college teaching.

Did students really need this level of coaching in manners?

And if they did, was it a college professor's job to continue raising these children?

What do you think?

Second life, social networks and online learning

If you completed the survey to the left, I would love your comments and elaboration here.

I learned about Second Life from, of all people my spin teacher. Now Biray is an amazing teacher and very, very adept at staying current with instructional technology so I thought I should find out about this social network. So I rushed out and 6 months later, here are my thoughts and questions. I would love to hear what you all have to say.

In addition to the recommendation by Biray, I learned about social networking in the Graduate Certificate Program in E Learning and Online Teaching. Den, Susan, Datta Kaur, Kay and Lisa are accomplished facilitators and online mentors and, in one form or another, they have all pointed out the possibilities of social networks in the evolution of learning communities.

So, as an economics instructor, I became intrigued by the costs and benefits of these social networks and the impact that they may have on teaching and learning. Below find a representative sample of what my indepth use of google revealed.

I would say that, in order to build effective learning communities educators need to be aware of the boundaries of their discipline, some learning theory, some instructional design, a bit of assessment and some awareness of how their students interact and in what environments their students interact. All of these will inform how we develop and delivery instruction and what approach we use to facilitate our classes.

Further, if we see any value in constructivism, we need to be aware of, to quote Biray, "where our students are". If they are in social networks - Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, then perhaps we need to know a bit about these networks.

After all, our learning communities are not about us, they are not about our disciplines, they should be about how learners access and integrate content in an authentic and relevant manner. We should remember that authenticity and relevance are jointly defined.

So, here they are, a few sources about Second Life.

My next post may be about teaching economics on youTube.

University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community (UCSLLC)

The University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community will evaluate the feasibility of using Second Life, a 3D multi-user virtual online platform (3DMUVE), in online instruction for the purpose of distance learning and to enhance traditional face-to-face courses. Our major goals are to share and develop resources as we examine the use of the Second Life virtual environment for instruction, pool our talents to build reusable learning objects and spaces in Second Life, and ultimately create a web-based resource for other educators that describes our process, the results of our experience, and our recommendations for its future use as an instructional tool.

At colleges, real learning in a virtual world

They may be college teachers and students, but they're also pioneers — exploring strange new worlds that exist nowhere on Earth. That's because their classes and field trips take place only on computers, using an online digital world called Second Life.

Some 60 schools and universities have set up shop inside Second Life — most in the past year. They join a population that includes real-world business people, politicians, entertainers, and more than 800,000 other "residents" of the virtual world.



Getting an Academic Life in Second Life from the Chronicle of Higher Education

Colleges around the world are opening virtual campuses in Second Life, a three-dimensional, colorful environment that can be accessed via a computer. One of those campuses is New Orleans Island, which was built by Merrill L. Johnson, an administrator at the University of New Orleans. What is the appeal of Second Life, and what kind of classes does the university hold there? Is Second Life a useful distance-education platform or just frivolous entertainment? Mr. Johnson will answer those and other questions.

Unintended Consequences

Doug Simpson's weblog of research on the collision of law, networks and disruptive technologies.

Virtual worlds are increasingly becoming subjects of serious research by law and economics scholars as well entrepreneurs. Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a virtual world called Second Life, with the help of several embedded "avatars" living there, and comparing their reports with the thoughts of leading scholars in this emerging field.


Academic research on Second Life

Although you may not realise it, Second Life has a huge group of educators active within it, many of whom have been active for some time. The process of writing academic papers however, is long and sometimes painful. We are starting to see these papers appearing dotted around the place:

Images and Readings Worth Noting

Images descriptive of the topics analyzed by participants in the spring semester, 2008.

Module 3




Module 2



Module 1

Excellent readings on wiki - my midterm topic.

Ward Cummingham's book

Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not

Wikis

In the space of 24 months I have moved from ground zero (only knowing about wiki through Wikipedia) to an informed novice in the area of wiki use in instructional settings.

Per the module 2 requirements the link for the wiki used in EDUC 762 can be found at

http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/uofw_assessment_course/uofw_assessment_course?t&usermessage=&CFID=3621561&CFTOKEN=91691100&jsessionid=c2302632751164473998329

As a part of the requirements for EDUC 760 E Learning For Educators, the first class in the Graduate Certificate Program in Online Learning and Teaching I began a wiki - E Learning for Educators. My experience with this wiki reflected the following:

1. The dynamic nature of a wiki
2. The initial period of a wiki - great solitude. This is similar to blogging
3. The tremendous flexibility of wiki
4. Specific application as a documentation for a portfolio
5. An entry point for access to other relevant sites

Beyond these uses I do see potential applications for my students:

1. Authentic writing opportunities
2. Bring both authenticity, connectiveness (see paper below) and continuity to learning
3. Collaboration
4. Increased activity and ownership of learning (Scroll down on this link to see a list of courses using wiki)


"Where I’d like to see connectivism go is in the direction of personalized learning environments, or perhaps what Siemens calls “learning ecologies”. However, I’d like to take that idea in the K-12 realm to be a PLE that would follow the student through school, and then beyond. I think we can take existing technologies that build social relationships and harness these for learning AND instruction….

This is a great little paper on some of the changes organizations who need deal with training or education are facing due to the explosion of connectivism in society. George Siemens presented this “white paper” recently at the Google Developers Conference."

The full white paper

Greg@Az

YouTube short views on wiki

This short video makes a great reference to Mob Intelligence. I immediately thought of a book I highly recommend - The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Contrast the above YouTube view of wiki with the one below.

Reflective Journal 5

This post is a reflection of my work in both EDUC 762 - Online Assessment and EDUC 761 - Collaborative Communities.

A great week. The two applied activities in EDUC 762 Online Assessment were outstanding and I will certainly incorporate both into my online instruction. Our small group module 2 over in collaborating communities was also a wonderful way to experience a technique that might well facilitate online community building. In a wonderful way, these two classes are complimentary and are synergistic. (I hope that this syntax and structure is appropriate. As this is an open blob, if you are a Noam Chomsky fan [I am not] feel free to correct or clarify)

My EDUC 762 activity involved a participant/student evaluation and revision of the final project rubric. This was fantastic. I was very interested in the reaction of my classmates to both the post I made over in the class course site. I suspect that, as the semester winds down, they are feeling pressure and stress.

I find that, acting as a student in a class like this, I am able to more identify with the pressures and confusion that my students may experience.

The analysis of Bloom's taxonomy informed my thinking about the topics I was reading about in both classes. In particular, the notion that level of taxonomy can affect both authenticity and act as a cost to "cheating" and a benefit to "not cheating" is one I will need to continue to reflect on. In fact, the complexity of the connections between Bloom, "cheating", online community building and authenticity are compel me to follow my classmate Bill Demory in remaining humble and seeking further development.

I continue to be amazed at the discussions in my two classes and the way that they are intersecting.

For example, a classmate over in EDUC 761 wrote this week

I certainly feel at a disadvantage in the beginning of an online course. I usually refer back to the Introductions frequently at first and I try to interact with two to three people a day. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm sure open to them

I responded

I find myself in the same position you describe . . . for the first week or so. Then I can associate the tone and texture of the discussion postings with my classmates. If you think about our class, classmate A's postings are distinctive and unique and very different from, say classmate Bs postings. Instructor X's approach to posting is much different from Instructor Y, at least to my ear in terms of tone and approach.

Having said that, I have found that in wiki discussion threads or in other platforms such as moodle or VoiceThread, the poster's picture appears next to the post or reply.

This is very, very helpful - although it raises other issues, which are currently being discussed by a number of us offline now. Further information about this issue or a platform for you to post your own thoughts is over on the public blog
E Learning for Educators

(note the shameless effort to promote public discussion over here)

I think that the exchange above (another shameless act - imitation of the format of two books on online learning by Pratt/Palloff and Lehmann) is significant as we all consider the issues of authenticity, diversity, our own teaching style and online community building.

Reflective Journal 3

Week three in EDUC 763 and we are rocking and rolling. I continue to be amazed and inspired by the quantity and quality of engagement by my colleagues. The discussion is varied, provocative, stimulating and reflects the diversity of educational philosophy, orientation toward learning and use of instructional technology.

The continuing discussion and response of my colleagues is in some contrast to one of my UofW certification classes last semester. In that fall class, evidently one of the participants off line contacted the instructor expressing frustration at the quantity of posting and replying in that class which, as an aside, was about 50 per cent of our class. The instructor made a remarkable decision and implemented a private e mail to a number of the more active posters (obviously I was one) asking that we reduce or even stop posting after a minimum of engagement.

I was stunned, as an teacher (online or face to face) it seems that of the number of approaches one might take to engagement, asking to reduce or stop is an odd choice.

Contrast that with this class, in which participants openly share their own reflection about the level of discussion, find reassurance with classmates and the instructor, and the engagement and discussion is allowed to continue.

I suspect that the emerging learning community in our class has more trust and those classmates who may feel frustrated or insecure have the confidence to express these feelings and the instructor is both strong and flexible enough to support diversity in the use of discussion online and still promote the organic level of discussion and engagement that the community and its members seek.

I was a tad disappointed with feedback from the instructor. I began our class early and invested considerable time and energy in my completion of module 1 activities. When the feedback was posted for module 1 near the end of our second module, one of my four "assignments" received a 0. I had completed a wiki activity, but in completing it so early in the class it had been overlooked by the instructor. The feedback sent was very kind and she did indicate I would earn credit for the assignment if I could point her to it (which I did do) or if I would go to the wiki and complete (which I also did do).

This was actually a another teaching moment - it reinforced to me my need to model my online teaching on that of the current teacher in terms of thoughtfulness and kindness, on Den O Connor in terms of quick turn around time in communication and finally on Susan Manning, in terms of organization and use of functionality of the CMS under use. My current instructor does not make use of the CMS gradebook for feedback and I think that the continuum of instructional approaches here in the Graduate Certificate program is a strength of the program - allowing participants to experience a wide array of approaches.

I must say, my feeling was a bit down after receiving my module 1 feedback (6/8) and I am certain I will earn credit for the wiki assignment, my reaction was surprising to me. I have considered myself intrinsically motivated, my reaction to module 1 feedback seems to suggest otherwise. Oh, well.

Midterm


Our midterm is a collaborative activity and I have been paired with 4 talented colleagues in class. I am so pleased to have avoided 2 participants who I encountered in the fall, 2007 classes. One of these participants starts late, has a bunch of excuses, and adds little in the way of value. But on the positive note, my group members are outstanding. I know one from the fall, 2007 classes and the other two, who I have come to know in this class, are truly committed professionals. The midterm should be a positive experience, it is a jigsaw activity and I am researching wiki and assessment.

I indicate my comments about my 4 teammates in my team evaluation. Pat and Kris are a delight to work with. Kris and I shared 2 classes in the fall, 2007 semester so when she was inadvertently left off a team for the midterm I immediately jumped in a and indicated that Group 3 (my team) would love to have her as a colleage. Marsha has been very busy, I expect she will quietly and efficiently be a major contributor. Deb is the ying to my yang. We have already encountered some constructive disagreement, indicating that this group activity is authentic. I will say, she is a tad of a control freak, making the wiki (she set it up as the sole administrator, leaving the rest of her team without admin privileges) private, a decision I still question, given the power of wiki.

Having said that, I appreciate Deb's work pace and initiative, she and I are on the same page. It did take Deb a while to get Kris added as a full member to our wiki, but once that happened we were good to go.

Ok, having said that, I will comment on the concept mapping and the effort involved in learning a new tool. Inspiration has wonderful functionality - I included audio in my map which my classmates can choose to listen to over in the EDUC 763 course site. The map for the module 3 assignment is uploaded as a comment or reply to this posting and as a unique post as well. Honestly, not worth the effort. I could do the same think in word using the drawing tool in 3 minutes, the 2 hours I invested (and it is worth the investment, the functionality in Inspiration is cool) will never be used my me in any setting.



The 4 storms outlined in The Perfect E Storm reading - while dated - are worth reflection. In particular the convergence of emerging technology(see the Horizon Report - 2008) with enormous demand by learners in the context of limited resources suggests that we may face a crisis of significant proportions down the road.

Of note, the above article listed 30 emerging technologies and number 3 was blogs, number 8 was digital portfolios (read wiki anyone?) and number 21 Peer to Peer collaboration (again read wiki) suggests that as a profession, we need to first be more alert to this emerging technology and two think how we react to them.

Page 12 of The Perfect Storm began to talk about Online Communities of Learning (which is what we have formed) and Communities of Practice. This is both exciting and challenging as our profession will need to change the way we look at the physical and intellectual boundaries of teaching and learning.

OK, another reflection that is too long and incomplete.

Greg@Az