Week 13: Educational Blogging

Choi (2006) talks about “Cyworld” which is the most popular personal blog sites in Korea. I have read a Korean news article a few days ago and it was about a survey conducted in Korea regarding the use of SNS among Korean Internet users. The results of the survey reveled that 75 % of Internet users are using Cyworld and 31.9 % use Twitter and 31.8 % use Facebook. 76 % of respondents said that the main reason why they use SNS is to socialize with others and 39.8 % said that they use SNS to gain and share information.

Choi (2006) states that participants of the study indicated some advantages and disadvantages of Cyworld. Below is a summary of it.

Positives:
   • To enrich users’ existing social networks.
   • To provide an opportunity users for better understanding of their friends by seeing their self-expression occurring within a Cyworld.
   • To offer a ““therapeutic” experience by expressing their feeling, thoughts, personality, or opinions.

Negatives:
   • Constant sign-in to upload content such as video or audio. It would be time-consuming.
   • Cyworld is mainly used to maintain and enhance of existing social networks rather than to build new social ties. Thus, users tend to jus focus on a limited number of friends.
   • Superficiality of representation of users themselves.

I agree with Choi (2006)’s argument that Cyworld is facilitating sustaining and improving existing social networks rather than creating new social networks. This was my concern when I was using Cyworld in Korea; I always went to blogs of my best friends not visiting strangers’ blogs. And, I did not want to open my blog to anyone, only my friends who I invited could see my blog. I think it may be related to the nature of Korean people; usually, they are too shy to express their feeling or opinion in public place that anyone can see and hear their thoughts. However, I think, as many young people are using Facebook or Twitter recently, they has become more comfortable to express themselves. I think if Cyworld add more social networking aspect in it that allows users can establish a new social tie, it will make Cyworkd even more popular among young Korean people.

Reference

Jaz Hee-jeong Choi. (2006). “Living in Cyworld: Contextualising Cy-ties in South Korea,” in Uses of Blogs, eds. Axel Bruns & Joanne Jacobs (New York: Peter Lang. 2006), 173-186, http://www.nicemustard.com/files/jaz_c_cyworld_ch.pdf

Week 12: Mobile, Wireless, and Ubiquitous Learning

The ‘Pocket School’: http://pocketschool.stanford.edu is the project that involves

designing, implementing and evaluating mobile learning technology to provide underserved indigenous children in Latin America with equal opportunity to learn basic literacy skills.  In their report, Kim et al. (2008) emphasized eight factors that should be taken into account for designing a mobile learning device. They are:

situation specificity and cultural sensitivity, practical usability, theoretical applicability, phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, reading fluency,  economic scalability, viable sustainability.

According to the article, learning should be enjoyable, meaningful and rewarding and those elements should be incorporated into the learning environments and culture of students in the right balance. In relation to ‘practical usability’, the article says that because there are not enough qualified teachers or literate parents in many rural regions who can direct students to learn using a mobile learning device, it is very important to make simple, easy-to-use and user-friendly interface letting students can learn themselves with a device, especially at the early stage of literacy development. Even if, mobile learning devices are given to indigenous students, if they can operate it, it will be meaningless. In addition, the content of mobile learning should meet needs and academic curiosity of indigenous students.

There still are so many indigenous children who cannot have an opportunity to have formal education in a formal school with qualified teachers; a mobile learning can be a good substitute of formal education in those regions. However, careful and deep consideration of content, students’ abilities, and contextual/cultural conditions should be given when designing a mobile learning program to maximize the effectiveness of mobile learning.

Reference 

Kim, P., Miranda, T., & Olaciregui, C. (2007). Pocket school: Exploring mobile technology as a sustainable literacy education option for underserved children in Latin America. International Journal of Educational Development. 28(4), pp. 435-445.

Week 11: Alternate Reality Learning: Massive Gaming, Virtual Reality, and Simulations

According to Coffman, T. and Klinger, M. B. (2007), Multi User Virtual Worlds (MUVW) such as Second Life is beginning to gain more attention as an educational tool. With in Second Life, users keep creating new objects, investigate new places, or interacting with others, by doing so, users can construct their own knowledge and build a meaningful relationship between them and the environments. Through those experiences, users can utilize their creativity in the learning process and have opportunities to apply newly gained knowledge into their real lives. Therefore, it is very important to provide authentic problems and settings within Second Life in order to help student make a meaningful connection between virtual life and real life.

As other Web 2.0 tools, MUVW such as Second Life provide a learner-centered learning environments. Users can experience, understand, and resolve real-world problems by interacting with their peers in the virtual worlds. Within these kinds of Multi User Virtual Worlds, instructors/teachers play a role as a facilitator to assist students to build new knowledge and skills. As Coffman T. and Klinger, M. B. (2007) mentioned, however, it is very important to provide a clear goal and objectives for students to understand what they should achieve by experiencing a virtual world.  

I think Second Life can be used as a valuable educational tool in some subjects. For example, Second Life would be a useful tool in geography. Students can visit other centuries without actually flying to there, and experience other centuries’ unique geographical features or famous places. In addition, Second Life can teach students economic concepts: students can make money or buy lands or island within the virtual world with relatively few physical limitations compared to the real world.

We need to study more about the impact of Multi User Virtual Worlds as an educational tool to find out the best way to effectively use MUVW in education.

Reference

Teresa Coffman, Mary Beth Klinger (2007). Utilizing Virtual Worlds in Education: The Implications for Practice, International Journal of Social Sciences, Volume 2 Number 1. Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from http://www.waset.org/journals/ijss/v2/v2-1-5.pdf

Week 10: Interactive and Collaborative Learning

When I read the article written by Zhao, N. and McDougall, D (2008), I felt like Chinese students’ perceptions toward online courses in the study were very much similar to mine when I took online courses at IU.

I have taken three online courses at IU until now. When I first attended an online course I thought it was very strange type of class. I was not familiar with asynchronous online discussions or interaction with peer in the online environment. However, as time went by, I felt online courses were very beneficial for me. First, I liked online courses because I felt less language barrier than face-to-face classes. I could have more time to think, reflect, and read others’ postings before I post my threads. However, sometimes it was difficult to understand the meaning of others’ postings when they talked about the details of North American culture and use colloquial language. Second, I liked that I could have more chance to talk in online environments while I barely talked in traditional face-to-face classes. Third, I enjoyed online discussion because I could hear others’ ideas. I could have ‘real’ interaction with other students by giving and receiving each other’s feedback every week. And, I felt that students in online classes showed more thoughtful and reflective ideas than who were in face-to-face classes. Finally, online learning was very attractive to me because it was very convenient and flexible. I could attend classes whenever and wherever I want to, if I am with my laptop. Also, I could manage my study schedule by studying at my own pace.

Reference

Naxin Zhao & Douglas McDougall (2008). Cultural influences on Chinese students’ asynchronous online learning in a Canadian university. Journal of Distance Learning, 22(2). 59-80.
Retrieved on Apr 5, 2011 from http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/37  

Week 9: YouTube, TeacherTube, and the Future of Shared Online Video

One of this articles this week, ‘Video Use in Higher Education: Options for the Futuer’ gave me a general idea of using videos in lectures sucha as why instructors use video resources, what kinds of videos are used, how the instructors get the resources, what are challenges using videos in classes, etc.

While I was reading this article, I was thinking about my personal experiences. I have remembered that often instructors was using video (especially movie) in the class to help students understand a course-realted concept or an idea. Based on my personal experiences, I found that a related movie helped me a lot comprehend an ambiguous concept, see how a movie dealt with an issue that I learned through a class or draw some issues that students can discuss about in the class. In addition, vidoe could be very useful to introduce content of a course at the first day of the course instead of explaining it verbally.

For example, one of the courses that I am taking this semester is about research methods. One of the topics for one day was objectivity and subjectivity of a resercher. One week before the class, the instructor asked students to watch a Japanese movie called “Rashomon”. The movie indicated that a truth can be vary from person to person and every fact can be affected by different perspectievs and each person’s subjectivity. This movie was very related to the course content, which was the role of objectivity and subjectivity in research. The movie gave me an oppurtunity to think about the topic before the class and the theme of the movie helped students have a great discussion in the class. I think this was a very good example of using video as a educational tool. However, movie can be useful only when they are closely connected to the course contnet. Otherwise, it would be just a waste of time.

Week 8: Wikis, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Collaborative Writing

In their study, ‘How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research, Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg revealed that 30 % of the participants said that they always use Wikipedia and 22 % of them said that they frequently use Wikipedia during the course-related research process. I found that this finding was very interesting but expected results. For me, if I have a topic to write about, I usually start with searching for it in Wikipedia to have a general understanding of the topic and get an idea about a direction. As Alison and Michael stated, Wikipedia can be a very useful tool to preview a topic in the beginning stage of a research process. While I was reading articles and tidbits this week, I was wondering if Wikipedia could be an academic or a primary resource for a course-related research or paper. I think Wikipedia could be a good starting point but students should not solely rely on information from Wikipeida. Because Wikipedia is a free-open-online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, there can be a misleading or subjective information especially in a controversial issue such as history. Thus, it is very important for students to verify information from Wikipedia by reading other articles, books, or journals. This is the teachers’job to educate students how to effectively use Wikipedia as a supplement tool to their classroom activities and course-related research projects.

In addition, I have been fascinated by the fundamental concept of Wikipedia that anyone can contribute and anyone can share their knowledge so they eventually help others. I think this could be connected with the stream of OER or OCW in education. Increasing number of people are participating in the movement of knowledge sharing and at the same time increasing number of people are benefiting from it beyond the the borders.  

Week 7: Connectivism, Social Knowledge, and Participatory Learning

‘Future Learning Landscapes: Transforming Pedagogy through Social Software’ was one of the articles that I have read this week. This article pointed out that current society and education has been affected by the attributes of Web 2.0 such as its connectivity, the function of knowledge sharing, or interactivity: As McLoughlin, C. and Lee, M. stated, many colleges and universities are developing new teaching and learning models to keep pace with this trend. Many higher education institutions are providing students more opportunities than before to employ their autonomy or be engaged in social networks in learning processes within the context of Web 2.0.

I cannot agree more with the argument in this article that teachers should embrace Web 2.0 into their classrooms to meet students’ needs in these days. Teachers should study how they can integrate Web 2.0 into their teaching process in a way that they can satisfy students’ desire to create content themselves, share the content, utilize their creativity, learn from others’ views, socialize with their peers, interact with them, work collaboratively, learn from an authentic task, etc. Students’ needs’ have become changed. They no longer want to be just consumers of knowledge but they want to be producer of new content as well. Also, they want to be connected with others to share their unique views and learn from others’ different perspectives. Teachers should be aware of new needs of students and try to meet them by integrating Web 2.0 in their teaching.