Thank you

-
This is it! Tonight is my last official post for EME6414, Summer 2023. What to write about? If you had asked me a few hours earlier, my honest answer would have been "no idea". It's not I don't have anything on my mind (I may have too much actually), but I was not sure how to approach this last post. So, I've decided I'll do just as usual and draw a few personal reflections. To help me tackle this last challenge, I went back to Canvas and get an overview of our Modules Main Page. Gosh, what a journey it has been! The first image that comes to my mind is the iceberg metaphor. You know, this impression that for years, you had been exploring the World Wide Web with confidence, as if you were in your own neighborhood, with your own habits, hanging out with the same people, getting what you were looking for, not less, not more. And one day, you realize that you were just scratching the surface and that a whole world was lying underneath, inviting you to a whole new...
1 comment

The reflective post (week 4)

-

 I learn a ton this week (I don't use the past as I feel the last 3 days will be on the same mode), mostly that:

- tags are not just a #pleaselikemypost behavior

- people engaging in badge quests don't only wanna have fun

- crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are not the same things, for god sake!

Ask people about tags, badges or crowdsourcing. It's very likely most of them are familiar with those features as they are common components of social platforms. One way or another, individuals rely on these functionalities to give credibility to their posts online and to showcase their expertise, to respond to others and enrich the debate, or organize their ideas into topics and collections that reflect various perspectives and illustrate the diversity of mindsets, experiences, values or opinions.

Now ask those people if those same tools help them to learn. Not sure you'll get a solid "yes, of course!" to this question. Which does not mean that they don't learn on Web 2.0. Rather, it might suggest that online spaces are not perceived (at least at first) as potential learning environments.

This hypothesis emerged from combining my recent knowledge from our readings and discussions with my personal experience. For instance, in my higher ed institution, students draw a (more or less conscious) line between their use of our LMS and professional emails for achieving academic activities and their personal life on Web 2.0. Personally, I still feel some online environments orient social interactions without promoting the opportunities to learn and grow through interactions with other members.

I am a firm believer that Web 2.0 is a great opportunity to enhance constructivist and situated-based learning experiences, and some of the academic studies from this week's readings definitely support this thought. That being said, as I mentioned in a previous post somewhere in my PLN, I (and maybe other folks like me), would love some guidance on how to engage a learning audience to integrate Web 2.0 in their learning process. I would need some previous successful experiences from other learning specialists reporting how they had their learning audience on board and engaged in using Web 2.0 and its almost endless potential. I would like to understand what arguments are seen as relevant and impactful for learners of all ages to explain that social media is a tool among others in an instructional strategy, with the special value that they are already used by most of us on a daily basis for personal purposes.

I think more research should be conducted and more experiences should be shared online to identify strategies to increase awareness about the usefulness of Web 2.0 in our personal and professional development. How can we implement social media in education? How can we empower our learners so they use social media to further their careers and challenge their thinking to improve themselves and improve the world around them?

Here are my current reflections. And hopefully, this week's topics make me think we are about to dig more into that potential during the following weeks. 



 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The egocentric playlist

-
Dr. Dennen, you read my mind! Here is my Spotify playlist: be selfish ;-)! Celebrate yourself with self-centered songs, others don't count here!   Add your own songs, guys! (and yes, there's a Taylor Swift song, so no hesitation here ;-) ). Important info: the collaborative feature of Spotify is not working great. Some online users suggest accessing Spotify on the desktop app to add songs to a collaborative playlist. It seems that the web player or a mobile app won't work. Give it a try, it might have been solved!
Read more

Social Media-Based Learning: are students really up for it?

-
Education is no more restricted to institutions. We learn in multiple ways, either from traditional settings at school, group discussions on Facebook, or How-To's videos on YouTube. Thus, why not mix both and take advantage of the affordances of Web 2.0? That sounds like a natural evolution in the educational landscape, and many teachers have already implemented social learning activities (SMLA) successfully in their teaching strategies. Some of our readings this week and other studies published in the literature showcase the benefits of SMLA to developing, practicing, and mastering higher-order thinking skills, as well as engaging students in collaborating works and supporting them in learning in formal and informal ways. That being said, the successful implementation of SLMA in instructional strategies needs to be anticipated and thoughtfully prepared. As mentioned by Gülbahar et al. (2017), some common barriers regarding technology integration refer to issues internal and extern...
Read more

The Hive Mind: Who's in Charge?

-
Image
Source:  Gloria Celeste Pérez Last week, as I started walking in the corridors of social media, I reflected on the power of analogies to describe those digital spaces, their rules, and the emotions human beings could feel when interacting with other human beings and hosted content. One analogy that came back frequently was the Hive Mind. At first, I thought this metaphor was essentially comparing Web 2.0 to a physical space hosting a group of people bringing their knowledge, ideas, and opinions and sharing them with others to bring new concepts and ideas. Yet, some of this week's readings helped to understand that the Hive Mind could actually refer to the "negative effect of an over populated Collective Intelligence, also known as Artificial Intelligence"( Living in a Connected World/The Hive Mind and Collective Intelligence ). In other terms, the Hive Mind appears when the flow of ideas and opinions brought in a given environment reaches a saturation point, overwhelming ...
Read more