This session was by Tony Karrer (CEO, TechEmpower, Inc.; Ph.D. computer science)
elearning 1.0 - courseware, authoring tools (types of stuff we are already doing or planning on doing in the EO)
elearning 1.3 - rapid 1.0 activities, ie: learning as above but in 15 minute bites; more informative than interactive
elearning 2.0 - the future. We have only a glimpse into its power at the moment. Includes use of wikis, social networking/blogs, social bookmarking, etc. Bottom-up learning, can take as little as a minute for the learner.
This session inspired me to begin this blog to share my notes with you. The blog may be useful because you all can respond and post comments as well. This is an experiment to see if we like this tool. Sure, it may take me a bit of time to enter in these summaries but hopefully it is more useful than if I provided a 15 minute summary at our group meeting on everything at once. And maybe the real value is to me in taking the time to collect what I have learned and write it down. Also, with a blog you can take as much or little time as necessary to process and respond. It also gives an easy way to share links etc (although social bookmarking is better, see below).
Amara's law: we tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short term and underestimate the effect in the long term.
We have yet to see the power of all these modes in action.
Wikis were discussed. Freely available wiki at PBWiki.com can be password protected against editing. Perhaps we can use this for something EO related to get a sense of the specific value. I think we know they are useful but we should start using them to really know. He suggested (and I think I agree) that we need to test these technologies out with small groups in order to see the value. Very useful for group projects so that all can particpate very easily and also see the ongoing results.
Social Bookmarking - I had not heard of this really before. http://del.icio.us is the major player in this area, as is http://myweb.yahoo.com although yahoo recently bought delicious so any differences will likely be eliminated soon. You can save bookmarks here and also see how many others on the service are also bookmarking the same things. The real value that I saw is that you can tag you bookmarks. eg: we could tag things as NVS EO. Then any of us could monitor for that tag (automated service) and keep track of each others suggested links easier. I thought of how we email each other links to elearning that we have found on the web or other interesting things. If we used social bookmarking, it would allow for easier communication of links but probably more importantly for us it would keep all the links saved for us. (alternativley we could use a wiki for this I suppose).
He demostrated delicious at the class - seemed extremely simple to use.
There is also a personal value here - share bookmarks with family members etc. Probably would have been useful to have this when I was looking for houses.
One take home message was: email is a not an effective way to share information among workgroups. If we started using these other tools it would help us more.
The presenter really encouraged the use of blogs. Reading stuff is one things but composing those thoughts back down again is very valuable for personal learning as well ("why do you think your teachers in grade school made you write so much!") The second value is that in general it will be the people who are interested in the topics in your blog that engage you further, it is a useful social tool in this manner as well and helps bring minds together. His blog on elearning is at http://eLearningTech.blogspot.com
He also discussed RSS (really simple syndication) reader. See http://bloglines.com or ask me for more info. Basically a way to keep track of when webpages are updated. Useful Tool.
Action: get familiarity with these tools in the EO by using them for ourselves. We already have a sense they are valuable since we have been discussing them in our meetings but using them will really show us how they are useful. Then start with targeted intervention for small groups (perhaps for a course), then we may see value in a larger roll-out effort. "You will not see the power and value in these technologies until you use them".
3 comments:
Nice blog, Kleem. There are many Wikis and most of them can be downloaded for free. The trick is how to set them up. I suggest we don't experiment with them ourselves and rather go with what NITAS comes up with as the preferred Wiki.
Bjorn - I don't think that the format or platform of wiki is that important. The point is just that we should try them out - because only then will we see where the value is and we can identify where best to use them.
I just saw the email that Rajesh forwarded about wikis. I think media wiki is the same format as wikipedia. My opinion again is that it really doesn't matter what the format is, just that we use it. For instance, a wiki would have been a good way for us to work on the mission and vision for the Education Office rather than emailing is around to everyone.
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