Essential question: What do you see as the promise of Open Learning as an emerging technology/pedagogy/philosophy?First lets start with what open learning is. "Open learning is described as learning that occurs in a shared and transparent manner in which others can reuse, revise, remix, and/or redistribute the evidence of learning with others. Open learning encourages collaboration, connections, networked learning, and interdependence between educators and learners" (Graham, LaBonte, Roberts, O'Byrne, 2014). So a huge benefit in open learning is the flexibility it provides. There a not many barriers with this type of learning. This means that students have access to anything they or the teacher can find. It really opens up a whole realm of possibility as far a learning goes. With this flexibility learning becomes more open to everyone. There is such diversity in a population it is hard to meet the needs of all learners. Higher education is starting to see a greater diversity of students than in the past and they must accommodate all. As Fraser & Deane (1997) state, "Institutes of higher education are also facing the challenges of large numbers of learners, each with differing educational, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and hence, foundations upon which the learning experience can be based." Even though this is an older article, I believe this is still true. Open learning allows for more differentiated learning as learners take charge of the learning they encounter. The video below shows a school designed around the open concept. I like how the teacher explains that it forces her to differentiate. Another huge benefit to the surge in open learning is Open Education Resources (OER). OER's "are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license permitting their free use or re-purposing by others" (Graham, LaBonte, Roberts, O'Byrne, 2014). According to the article titled Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup (2015), "High-quality OER can save teachers significant time and effort on resource development and advance student learning inside and outside the classroom. Further, open sharing of resources has the potential to fuel collaboration, encourage the improvement of available materials, and aid in the dissemination of best practices." So really this is a win for everyone. These resources save time and can be changed many times for the better. I just couldn't resist posting this video, so enjoy! It was in a playlist on the Edutopia article I read.
Graham, L., LaBonte, R., Roberts, V., & O'Byrne, I. (2014). Open Learning in K-12 Online and Blended Learning Environments. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://www.academia.edu/10311797
Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup. (2015, December 4). Retrieved May 26, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/open-educational-resources-guide
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I read Sarah K.’s blog and I found it interesting that she found the same info I did but from a different source. When I looked at her source I realized both sources referenced that the information was talked about at a conference on emerging technology. I think the information helps to show that emerging technology implies change. Change in the technology itself and a change in how operations occur using the technology. This was only mentioned briefly in the assigned reading.
I really liked how Laura talked about the communication aspect of ET. There is so much social media and information is so easy to get. You click it and it opens right away and then you can comment and interact with others. The hard part with social media is where it fits in education. There is so much research on this right now and I know from my own research that it is hard to make social media always educational. There is always a lot of off task time because it is impossible to monitor every student. Students are always on social media, so how can we make it more education becomes the question. Brian talked about ET coming out at different times. This is a great point to remember and shows that things are constantly evolving. He also cited the NMC Horizon report. I really liked how included this because I was not sure what to do with the information from it. This list shows that research is being done on ET. People are trying to find the correct use and place for all of the technology we are inundated with. There is just so much technology available it is hard to pick the pieces I want to focus on in the classroom. I think this class will be a great start to my own personal research for my classroom. I don't always have time to read the research. Sometimes I just try it myself and learn from trial and error. I feel like this class may save me some of that hassle. Essential Question: How do we define Emerging Technologies?It has been a busy last couple of days of school and now I am heading home. I am traveling today and unfortunately have not had time to fully read everything. But I will post what I have and try to update tomorrow when I get back to Indiana. I think this is tough to define. It is hard to define what is emerging until it is already the next new thing. Veletsianos (2016) describes emerging technology (ET) as "tools, innovations, and advancements utilized in diverse educational settings to serve a varied education-related purposes." He goes on the talk about the 5 characteristics of emerging technology:
After reading the article I wanted something more. I stumbled on this short video. I know it is just about robots but I think it is too the point on the definition of ET. Technology is changing all of the time and it is hard to know what the next new thing will be. Veletsianos (2016)I dug a little deeper trying to see what emerging technologies were being used in education. Briggs (2013) has a top 10 list, and the first one I can say is huge in my classroom. The first one is cloud computing. I find this to be invaluable. Now instead of a student having to have a certain computer they can access documents on any computer. Students can also work together and collaborate instead of one person doing all of the typing. This has really changed the way a student interacts in the classroom. I wish I would've had this growing up. Even in college, I graduated 4 years ago, I only really used dropbox and google docs was relatively new. I know there are many others, but these 2 stick out in my mind. UPDATE I was not comfortable with what I had posted. It just felt unfinished. I had an idea of what is emerging technology but wanted a clearer definition, if possible. So I did what anyone would do and searched "what is emerging technology." I found a great blog post by Hilary Sutcliffe (2014) titled Emerging Technology Definition Brainstorm!. Her definition is very similar to what I listed above. She lists 5 characteristics of ET just as Veletsianos (2016) did:
Sources
Briggs, S. (2013, July 16). 10 Emerging Educational Technologies and How They Are Being Used Across the Globe. Retrieved May 20, 2016, from http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-ten-emerging-technologies-in-education-and-how-they-are-being-used-across-the-globe/ Sutcliffe, H. (2014, May 13). Emerging Technology definition brainstorm! Retrieved May 21, 2016, from http://www.matterforall.org/emerging-technology-definition-brainstorm/ Veletsianos, G. (2016). A definition of Emerging Technologies for Education. Retrieved from http://www.veletsianos.com/2008/11/18/a-definition-of-emerging-technologies-for-education/ |
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