Ilearn

It is Tuesday evening, 8:00 pm, and I am writing under some ironic circumstances. The power on my entire block is out so here I am, “blogging” on a Word doc by candlelight.

We pretty much all established that learning took place in the presence of others last Thursday. While the Coopman and Kotkamp articles criticized the power and hierarchy of these CMS tools, I think that in the learning environment, hierarchy is good so long as intention is in good faith. I might have a pretentious teacher that garbles on and on but that garbling is what I am learning. It’s not good learning, by any means, and I think what these articles are trying to do is encourage the dynamic environment that is ideal learning – where both student and teacher learn and grow with strong interaction on all sides. One problem I had with these articles was that they seemed dated but then I saw that they’re quite recent, the Coopman being written just a few months ago. Thus, I agree with Professor Hanley in that these articles undermines the potential of CMS – for example, both articles criticize the fact that students cannot upload files because they do not have access unless the teacher allows it. This is simply a critique of the teacher that exercises such power rather than the CMS programs.

I frequently used Ilearn last semester. It was a good supplement to my classes for forums, posting articles and getting and turning in assignments. I would stress the word supplement. In order for Ilearn to come near an in-class learning experience there would have to be a lot more functions – chat, video capabilities, etc. On a side note, chat would even be limited to having students online at a coordinated time. I certainly did not feel like I was equally engaged as a student in Ilearn with the times I was in class.

I wished the minute we started sharing our learning experiences in class that I didn’t pick diaper changing – let me just get that off my chest. With regards to new media, I think videos are an excellent tool and would be great if incorporated in CMS’s. I learned how to play basic accordion over the summer just by using youtube, and accordion is no easy instrument! If most of our learning involved someone else, then a video would be the closest we could get to a typical education using just new media. Anyone can read and learn but in terms of that dynamic, interaction learning that we’re striving for, there CMS should branch out to video- be it clips or video chats. There will always be limitations to this interactive learning that would be sacrificed in place of in-class learning – facial and vocal expressions, the convenience and immediate response of Q & As and an overall social quality that engages people rather than people being engaged with their computers.

RSS, Function or Fashion?

To me, Real Simple Syndication, otherwise known as RSS, means user-friendly convenience- Convenience to those that have an abundance of websites that they want to keep track of. RSS feeds simply let you know when a particular site has had an update so you can check it out rather than going through your entire list of sites to see which ones have changed. Therefore this function seems only practical when one follows a plethora of sites with diligence.

I never used an RSS feed until now because I do not diligently follow very many sites. My internet time is normally used to pass time or for entertainment. But now that I'm thinking in terms of academia and new media, I can see some potential in RSS.

I can't imagine RSS working in a classroom environment unless it went hand in hand with student interaction involving giving one another comments and feedback. There should be some incentive for students to look at each other's blogs because the internet is one mighty distraction highway. That said, I think RSS would only work in a small group environment where one could keep track of updates without being overwhelmed by too many of them. I think I have a pessimistic mindset in terms of the attention spans of students, eegads. Having RSS work in a small group setting seems counterintuitive of the prolific way RSS offers to consume content on a large scale, but I think it would be more conducive in a learning environment and not a personal one, you know, keeping track of the next Woot items and such.

There's an interesting article on TechCrunchIT about the death of RSS with Twitter becoming it's replacement. It sort of relates to the idea of RSS being useful only for those that routinely follow certain sites. Well what about finding new sites? The post talks about how RSS was once very useful and important but is now dated by not just Twitter, for new content, but Facebook for upcoming events and social networking. Since I'm a novice at this reader thing, I'll question how big a role RSS played with social networking. I'm sure it did or does for some.

"OO," Oh?

The closest I could get to understanding object oriented programming or OOP (more like "OOPS" har har har) is that it's interactive - maybe something like Microsoft Paint. I wonder what non-OOP is then because at this point I can't imagine a non-interactive program except for programs with limited interactions like a media player. Am I way off? I am totally unqualified to speak competently in computer lingo.

Otherwise I thought the Kotkamp article was quite interesting. The question of what comprises a quality education as something that's dynamic and leaves the teacher-student somewhat unresolved and thirsting for more, followed by how online platforms could match that demand was a good setup. I've never really thought about the theory of pedagogy except in terms of, "This teacher good, this teacher bad."

Both articles addressed the problems of hierarchy in Blackboard and webCT. I wonder how far and open these writers imagine their online classrooms to be. I think there needs to be some kind of structure to a classroom based on some authority figure - the teacher. The articles criticized hierarchy as having a sort of power struggle but I saw it as more of a practical means to build an online classroom. Perhaps I'm overlooking the point, in fact, I probably am. My only experience with online classrooms have been with the DMV driving test to get rid of a point for speeding and what's a more hierarchical institution than the DMV?!