Moving from the Physical Information World to the Virtual

One of my group members, Chen, recently posted in our discussion area about Carr's article on Google. (Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains. Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/). She discussed the difference between electronic and paper versions of information.


This made me think of my own journey from print to electronic format. I used to print everything out, highlight, take notes, spread it out to see connections, etc. However, there is so much material in this class that printing out and looking at it that way becomes an obstacle.  I have had to learn to join the digital natives in note taking and forming ideas. 


I currently have a MacBook on which I do most of my work for this class. I have become more acclimated to keeping tabs open on the internet, leaving PDFs open to my last "place" and taking notes on one side of the screen in Word while reading on the right side. I don't know that I would use the features if the electronic version of text has a good tool for taking notes. To keep it all organized, it's easier if I can grab text and put it into a document, because I never know when I will be able to get back to that particular tool. Because many of the articles that I find or are shared in discussions and on the D2L are in PDF, I stick to the standard of taking notes/screenshots in Word.  I still tend to print those notes out so that I can cut apart and manipulate the information when I want.


All this virtual practice is a good skill to develop, I think. The more I move away from printing, highlighting and writing notes on paper, the more my brain has to work to remember what and where the "virtual" information is. I think this may even be prompting my brain cells to work in different ways that make me create connections in my head rather than on paper. 


At the very least, this kind of activity makes me feel smarter.  This gets back to the point that Carr was making about what kinds of information we seek out and how it can either pull us forward in intelligent thought (reading original sources or scholarly articles) or set us back to the basics (reading snippets of information culled from other sources and "cleaned up" for the masses) .

Collaboration

I find the aspect of collaboration in education interesting. I remember when distance learning was done individually, usually through the mail. I also remember that in my education, the teacher would instruct and then we students would be expected to quietly work at our desks on our individual work. Sometimes, we would work in a group or in partners, but that was the exception to the rule. Now, collaboration is expected and encouraged in “transformative” classrooms and in distance learning. Moving online has created many more opportunities for communicating between learners and instructors. Today’s classrooms take more advantage of the social nature of learners and hopefully accommodate John Dewey’s idea of “productive inquiry”. Learners still need guidance, though, and instructors willing to support them in the new learning structures.

The previous part of this post was in response to an article Chen had summarized. I wanted to put it on my blog because I wanted to possibly share the thoughts with a wider audience. 

In reading this again, I found myself thinking of ways that students these days "collaborate". For instance, my son who is in 10th grade, takes Honors and AP classes. He is in a cohort of students who take similar level classes and they have created their own Facebook page in order to ask and answer questions, remind each other of various assignments and generally support each other. I found this to be very beneficial to the students. 

Also, I just started a new job. It is very different than my previous 20 years of experience because when I was in the classroom or managed a library, I was very autonomous. I built relationships with others, but my performance came down to how well I developed my skills and related to my students. In my new job, I work on a team to deliver services across our district. We work out of central office. In this job, as in many, especially business, collaboration is key to being effective. We are all highly motivated to do the best we can to support each other and do our jobs well. 

Why do I bring this up? This reminds me of the shift in education from "teacher teaches individual in group setting" learning to "teacher teaches groups" to "teacher guides groups and individuals" that I have seen from my own early education to present day. In my own job I realize that the ability to collaborate is essential and we need to give learners the chances to do so.

At the Brink of Discovery - Models and the quest to create and define the discipline

I find it fascinating that this field is in its infancy... reading about how the researchers in the field are developing models to explain distance learning, understand the components and how they work together since the 1980s shows how young the field is. When studying education in general, we can go back to studies and writings from long ago. But, in online learning, we only go back a couple of decades. It is a younger field than most of us.

Reading some of the first articles makes me feel like we are close to the "big bang" of beginnings and watching it unfurl. We could actually be in the midst of those defining the field-- or, we could be one of those that define and refine.

Technology's Evolutionary Role: from program incentive to district support

By now, everyone I know knows that I just started a new job at our district office. And this masters class. When I started teaching in an English classroom 20 years ago, I was on a team with a bank of computers dedicated to us- just us. We were the Math and Science Technology Team for Franklin Middle School-- a magnet that was supposed to attract students from around the city to our north side, predominantly African-American school. And, as I recall, the program did attract students of all backgrounds. We used technology as a carrot back then, and, as the English teacher, I used it often to encourage students to write and rewrite papers. Oh, how the times have changed!

Now, the technology piece is in place across the district; no longer the carrot that drives students to a particular destination. Computer labs are in every school. Now, it is the programs that attract students looking for certain learning experiences. CAD Design, Multimedia  Graphic Design classes, the Radio Program at North High School, the Arts programs around the city; the content is primarily what attracts the students to different programs and the technology has evolved into a "helping and supporting" role.

I have/had my apprehensions about how technology can transform the classroom. But they are being assuaged by research I am doing on the subject. Opportunities exist with technology that can help level the playing field of education, enhance teaching and learning and create environments where students are able to truly explore subject matter in many different ways.

Turning the Tide from Google in Student Research

I wasn't surprised by the findings that using Google may be making us different readers than we have been in the past. (Carr, N. Is google making us stupid?  Atlantic Magazine. July 2008. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/).  That the company is systematizing the information it shares and how they deliver it is natural considering the enormous amounts of data they store and deliver.  And, considering this relatively newer medium and its pervasiveness in our society, it is no wonder that its contents have changed the way we read and access information.

What concerns me is that students and anyone, for that matter, often work under the premise that Google will deliver it all so they restrict their inquiry to that "source'-- sometimes they don't even realize that Google isn't "source" material in the original sense. Google collects the information available; the students need to discern among the thousands of entries they are likely to find to determine the best ones for their own research. Google only cares about the keywords a student uses; not about the nuances of the research question. In this way, and this is true for all research I think, the search is only as smart as the searcher.

Add the fact that Google only returns that information that is found in the "visible" web, and you have an incomplete recipe for research. The rich primary source materials found in academic databases are often overlooked because students often think Google "has it all".

I have spent years trying to turn the tide of this thinking in students' research. One of the most effective means I have used is an xtranormal video. Social media that teaches about this issue is more effective than my talking to a group of students ever was.  I believe that it allows the students to see and hear the expectations from the second person point of view, a less intimidating approach. Explaining that they would have to answer 10 questions (from the ELM databases) about each link on a Google search to determine the reliability of the information seemed to help students seek out the already scholarly reviewed material found in "invisible" databases, also.