EDT 5410 - Week 4 Reflection

From my perspective, Social bookmarking has great potential in education, more specific, in teaching and learning process. It can support really well in sharing information, resources and processing. For example, when the history teacher A want to share the sources which are many websites relating to historical events to his students, he can share his bookmark list with the tag history event, revolution or history changing. Conversely, when the students want to find resources of information, he or she can visit the professor's social bookmarking page to look for them with explicit tags. However, the teacher also can improve the list by consulting the bookmark list of his colleagues, maybe there are a lot of useful sources for him to add to his list. Therefore his students will be provided better information. Another example is the information sharing among students. When student X created a list of many pages about Asian cultures, student Y made another list about African cultures. Then, the professor requires students to find the details about the cultures all over the world. Both of student X and Y don't need to spend a lot of time to find the sources. Instead, they can look at each other's list and tag to get necessary information. Additionally, they can also find the information from other professor's list. For instance, the student Y knows student Z in the class of professor B, so he find for the resource that professor B gave student Z to complete the assignment. That is just between students and teacher. The social bookmarking also can improve the relationship between teacher and parents. The parents can follow the teacher's bookmark page to find the source of schedule, syllabus or their children's learning process.

 

            Back to the Trends & Issues reading, I can see the 1970 Definitions totally fit with my thinking before I read this book. It said "It (instructional technology) is a systematic way of designing, carrying out, and evaluating the whole process of learning and teaching in terms of specific objectives, based on research on human learning and communication, and employing a combination of human and nonhuman resources to bring about more effective instruction". First of all, it discussed about the process of teaching, includes designing, carrying out and evaluating. That is the process of every teaching method. The instructor needs to brainstorm the ideas for lecture and find the useful information for it (designing). Later, he or she needs to make it done in the class and transmit the knowledge to students (carrying out). Finally, they will require students to take a test or assignment to make sure that they have obtained enough necessary details (evaluating). Secondly, I focus on the word "nonhuman resources". In other words, those sources are from technology. The learners will not receive information directly from lecturer but from media such as television or the Internet instead. Lastly, the purpose of it is creating "more effective instruction”. It means that the students will get more chance to attain knowledge more easily and conveniently. I have always thought that in future career, I would apply new technologies into teaching and improve the result of learning process. I believe the more familiar technology to the students, the better result they can reach. So that I think we should utilize the social network and other communicating technologies in education. The new point in this chapter that I figure out is the word "ethical" in the latest AECT definition. It raises some questions inside me and I hope I can get the answer later from this book.

EDT 5410 - Link to my Delicious list

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Or follow the link: https://delicious.com/linhle90

EDT5410 - Link to my wiki page

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You can also click the link below:

http://linh90.pbworks.com/w/page/73227752/FrontPage

EDT5410 - Week 2 Response

        Last week, I created my own blog at this address: linhle90.blogspot.com, and also start to use RSS Reader (Feedly) this week. I have to say that the blog is not as amazing as I expected, but Feedly is extremely impressive to me. I will talk about Blog first. To me, it is like a "Notes" feature of Facebook, but has a little bit more options. Blog can help us to make a long note just like using Microsoft Word and after finishing it, we can publish that note on the Internet immediately. The greatest feature of Blog to me is I can manage all of my notes in a single page, see how many people have read that post, or how they commented on my notes. We can insert some photos or videos into the Blog also. Conversely, RSS Reader changed my habit surfing the Internet. I have never known about Feedly and its features before. Now I don't have to visit every single website to check the news or update that I need anymore. I only have to check my Feedly to see if one of these topics that I'm interested in has updated new information or article. For example, I don't have to visit some website to check if new manga chapter was released every week anymore. From now on, the new chapter will automatically appears on my Feedly list as soon as it is released.

            From my point of view, there is no level of Dane's Cone is appropriate with Blog and RSS because this scale was made from 1969, and Blog, RSS, or the Internet generally did not exist at that time. If we don't mention about the Internet connection, I would put Blog into Verbal Symbols level of Dane's Cone. Without Internet connection, I consider Blog as a list of notes and articles. It would be full of words explaining some concepts or analyzing other topics. However, Dane said the boundaries between these levels are not really clear at anytime, sometimes these levels overlap each other and it is hard to define them. Due to the feature inserting photos and videos, Blog also should be put in the levels of Visual Symbols and Motion Pictures, sometimes Educational Television. Second, it would be really hard to decide which level of Dane's Cone that I should put RSS in. The main purpose of using RSS Reader is to summary the news that the user is interested in, so that I would set it in the level of Exhibits. Just like attending an exhibition which has their favorite topics, the users can see many items or objects that they care about and then choose some (or all) of them to read and see.

            Considering Siegel’s concept of “computer imagination”, I believe that Blog and RSS have great potential in education. To begin with, Blog allows the students to read and learn from far distance. They can read the lecture from the teacher or the responses from other learners at home. In traditional class, we have to go to school, buy a book and meet other people to share the papers. Furthermore, if we need to find the document that we wrote a long time ago, it would not be easy if it is a hard copy. However, Blog can list all of your papers with their title in chronicle order and the user can select the one that he or she needs. It also can help the professor to check how many students have read their articles also. Secondly, using RSS Reader can bring even more advantages than Blog. This application allows people to check the news or articles from the sources that they subscribed. It is like an online library which can update itself almost immediately. The learners can follow their teachers and classmates to see if they post something new. The main purposes of RSS are saving time finding new articles in a bunch of websites and receiving the information that is important and necessary. If we don't use RSS Reader, maybe we still have to come to the library and check every single book to see if they have some paragraphs that contain the information we need.

EDT 5410 - Week 1 Refection

          Like the professor said, the Reigeluth & Joseph essay is pretty more optimistic than the second one. In the Table 1 of Reigeluth essay, I can see the differences between Industrial Age and Information Age. For example, in Industrial Age, the boss was considered as "King"; in contrast, the customer is the one that have the power. It means that everything would be best for the customer's sake. To demonstrate this point, I will make it clear by connect with education situation. In Industrial Age, the teacher is the center, the students must learn everything that their lecturer requires. However, the students can orientate by themselves in Information Age; they can research more than they can receive  from the school, and the teacher will play a role of an adviser. This advantage will let the learners to be more independent and critical thinking. In fact, back to my home country, they still use the manner of Industrial Age in education, the teacher is the King of the class and the students will only know and learn the amount of information that the professor gives them. Then, they take a test at the end of the semester to put an end for the knowledge they have obtained through the semester. The learners almost have no chance to research by themselves because the teacher did not give any request. This is one of the reasons that make me nervous when I come here and now I'm getting used to it.

          Moreover, the essay said about shifting from the time-base to attainment-base system. It is true to say that we cannot focus only on the technology but the role of the teacher. They will be facilitator to help the learners acquire the knowledge, not "the agent of most of the learning". The main point here is how the teachers deal with it, how they take the advantages of technology and apply into their teaching; and, especially, how technology changes the relationship between teacher and student. I believe with the diversity of technology and device now, we can figure out more and more methods to support education.

          The Postman essay is quite skeptical, but I can understand because this essay was written more than 20 years ago. The author set out many questions of "what is the problem" and deny that new technology can resolve problems. However, he still accepts it anyway. For instance, he bought the new car without realizing that the electronic window can help him to save time and not be distracted from driving. In education, I think that new technology will give us more chances to receive information. The learners don't need to leave their home to attend a class. The question is how can we do that without technology (the Internet connection and communicating devices in specific)?

          Nevertheless, I totally agree with this essay about the functions of school. Teaching children how to behave in groups plays a great role in social life. For example, the author mentioned the book  All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It talks about "Share everything, play fair, don't hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your own mess, wash your hands before you eat, and, of course, flush". In fact, the education in Vietnam, my home country, fails at this important point. Almost all of the kids in Vietnam will not give back something they found, they have a notion that everything they found belongs to them. The result of this is the irresponsible attitude of people with others' or public properties; they do not care or be regret if they see a pickpocket or accidently ruin a sculpture in the park. I would give you an unbelievable example about this. Last month, a driver delivering a great amount of beer and liquor got an accident. As a result, his truck was overturned and the goods were fallen out on the street. A lot of people who behold that accident did not help the driver, they stole the beer and liquor instead. Finally, the driver has to offset to the owner of the properties about 15.000$, which is huge value in Vietnam. Conversely, if you drop your phone or wallet on the subway in Japan, you have 90% of chance to get it back from Lost & Found Service. That is because the Japanese was taught right from they were young that they need to be respectfully with others' property. From these examples, I believe that with the support of technology, the role of school and teacher will be more useful and cannot be denied.