Dear Team 3 members,
Please know that your assigned team member for this week did not send in the post as yet. Therefore, for this week, you will read and comment on the post titled “Netiquette: Rules of Behavior on the Internet”. Read this post here and then come back to this very page to record your comments.
– Muhammad Adil Arshad
Dear Team 3 members,
Please know that your assigned team member for this week did not send in the post as yet. Therefore, for this week, you will read and comment on the post titled “An 80-Year-Old Graduate With an Online Marketing Degree Kept His Promise”. Read this post here and then come back to this very page to record your comments.
– Muhammad Adil Arshad
Since the PC (personal computer) was first introduced in the 1970s, processing power of technology and processing power has progressed by leaps and bounds. Multimedia has become effective tool of learning. Multimedia can stimulate more than one sense at a time, and in doing so, may be more attention getting and attention holding. With multimedia, the communication of the information can be done in a more effective manner and it can be an effective instructional medium for delivering information. With this advancement, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT), particularly the multimedia technology, has rapidly permeated and increasingly altered the landscape in the educational arena. The use of media to enhance teaching and learning complements traditional approaches to learning. Effective instruction builds bridges between students’ knowledge and the learning objectives of the course. Using media engages students, aids student retention of knowledge, motivates interest in the subject matter, and illustrates the relevance of many concepts. Students can also create their own media. For example, student video projects can be a powerful learning experience, as EDUC 240 class did.
Video is an excellent medium for education, especially for undergraduate and research students. Teachers, who use instructional video report that their students retain more information, understand concepts more rapidly and are more enthusiastic about what they are learning. With video as one component in a thoughtful lesson plan, students often make new connections between curriculum topics, and discover links between these topics and the world outside the classroom.
Related with video, YouTube holds a rich trove of videos that could be used in the classroom, but it’s challenging to transform videos into a truly interactive part of a lesson. YouTube has emerged as one of the largest sources of freely accessible content. It is intent to provide a preliminary discussion of the growing role of videos in education, sources of this video content, and the format of learning video content on YouTube. Simultaneously, public should be aware of uses and misuses when viewing online video content.
The changing role of education is currently being reinforced with the integration of multimedia technologies. This has led to a new paradigm in education and the evolution of new concepts in content development and a number of innovative methods in which information can be communicated to the learners. This new learning environment will undoubtedly influence the way teachers teach and students learn.
In the article entitled ‘Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age’, Davidson is focusing on very important thing which mostly lacks in our institutions especially in K-12 teaching which is collaborative learning for the digital age like in our institutions teachers mostly promotes direct instructional model no one focus towards these type of interactive learning approach for the digital age so Davidson says that that a group of individuals can accomplish more than what any one individual (even an expert) can do because of the diversity of perspectives they collectively hold.
While the benefits of collaborative learning (such as developing oral communication skills, thinking skills, working as a team and addressing learning style differences between each other) have been apparent for some time, the advantages that the digital age has on the learning experience are only just starting to be recognized. Here are some of the ways in which collaborative learning is changing for the better… like regain control, Interaction, and enhanced group works.
I felt that Professor Davidson’s ‘iPod Experiment’ of 2006 was courageous and incredibly forward thinking. Her main purpose of ‘interconnection’, that students who had grown up connected digitally gravitated to ways that the iPod could be used for collective learning, makes so much sense now but I imagine at the time it was quite controversial and radical.
The author goes on to describe, ‘participatory learning’ a term used to describe how we can learn together from one another’s skills. These ideas resonate well with me, and how we work in our setting. Although we are not making use of the digital world for collaborative thinking, (so maybe I am missing the point of the article!) our four-year-old children are working in a collaborative, democratic way. Our curriculum is structured to be child-led, with child interest and child research driving the design in collaboration with the adults. So, what do you guys think?
Your parents might remember that whenever they had something to research on or to understand some topic they would have to go to a library and open up, old huge textbooks, or more likely an encyclopedia to obtain all the facts they needed. Nowadays that is definitely not the case! Why open a textbook when you can easily use the internet and find out whatever you need in just a few minutes by using the specific terminology in the search engine? Usually the first website with the information you’re looking for that pops up on your search result is Wikipedia.
Wikipedia can be considered your own online encyclopedia, but the beauty of this encyclopedia is that anyone on the net can edit it; information is edited by the people, for the people until it is deemed to be mostly accurate. Though when this project was initiated by Ward Cunningham in 1995 no one thought that this project would become so well known. When Wikipedia was initiated the creators wanted to create a place where different writers would be able to contribute and share without any hurdles. Wikipedia’s reliability and style has drawn a lot of attention from the academics. Students now a day’s prefer the use of Wikibooks or other technological resources for learning instead of opening up their textbooks. Persichite, Caffarella & Tharp (1999) discussed the effective modeling of technology, their point of view was that for technology addition in learning to be flourishing for the teachers it is important that they provide students with basic effective modeling.
In some researches it was seen that students learn better online compared to textbooks that are provided in the classroom, it has also been seen the use of technological resources in introductory classes have helped in enhancing students performance in later higher level professional courses and has facilitated them. In the western educational sector the majority of students indicated that Wikibook did a better job compared to traditional textbooks.
In our educational sector the usage of technological resources such as Wikibooks should be more commonly used. This will help save time of the students, and help students here keep up with the rest of the world. Learning will be a fun and much more inspiring using the net which in turn will play a role in our retaining knowledge.
Have you ever logged in to Facebook or any other social site just to play online games? Have you ever noticed how you connect to the people around the globe by just connecting to any online game such as the Sims, poker or 8-pool? This is all because people are addictive to such games and these games are not only for fun, but these games also affect their cognitive thinking.
Games are not only for the purpose of fun but they are also a good source of learning. You know when you are playing counterstrike or tekken you are continuously using your cognitive skills to think critically for the next move.
There are different types of games which are being played and practiced in professional fields also. Such games are called “serious games” specially designed for learning purposes. Fields such as military, medicine, corporate education and other departments have made serious games a part of their training because it helps them to learn more effectively about natural and virtual environment. These serious games, due to their graphics and 2D/3D effects help to learn better and effectively. Nintendo Wii can be taken as the best example of serious game as it not only helps the player to think critically but it also allows him to move and play physically as it works with senses.
Different sites such as EVE online, America’s army, habbo.com etc offer these serious games. As the trend of these games is getting more, the need of such game designers is taking hype. As making a game requires a team of different people specializing in graphics, designing, layouts, paper and documentation work, so it is very important to have train learners in such field of technology.
In UK, England’ North West Learning grid has launched DIDA diploma which offers 4000 learning objects and 300 serious games. They train their students about skilled programs like adobe suites so that not only professionally but people with lesser compatibility can also be able to use these programs.
The way how the trend of serious games is coming in, and the way serious games are becoming a part of people’s life, it is very important to have students to get admission in these fields and to study JavaScript, C programming, arts, animations, story-telling and other designing software’s so that more and more serious games should be launched and more and more techniques of learning should be introduced.
Ok, I understand the fact that without fancy gadgets we cannot survive at least in this century. This is growing obsession among people now a days . They would much rather interact with their smartphones than with other human beings. While Smartphones have made life easier, according to study conducted, the love for technology has become an addiction. We miss out so many gorgeous things around us just because we are too busy checking out our notifications and replying tweets.
Many people think ‘ oh so what if we are dependent on this little thingy like smartphone or other technological devices, they make our work easy, and also they let us stay connected to the world’ . Alright then what is that little thingy stuffed inside your head for ? Which is called “brain”. Now the scientist tell us that the technology is changing the microcellular structure of our brain, because we compute mails and texts minute by minute. Brain is that technical machine which has been hidden under dust for so long and we hardly make use of it. How many of us actually remember what they had for lunch yesterday ? how many of us actually remember the lecture which was taught in last class? The human brain is under the threat of modern technology.
Just imagine this, we have become so dependent on technology that we cannot think of spending ‘a’ day without our oh-so-smart Smartphones? Well going a day without cell phone can also be a challenge for some .
Wake up and pay attention to the world around you, why are we making a transition from human beings to mindless beings. Beauty of the world around us cannot be seen or felt through these devices we have to have our eyes open and look around us.
Why students don’t speak in class? It is observed that sometimes students are simply shy or bored or unprepared. But it is also been noticed that racism, genders, and classism often work to silence some voices, and no doubt, sometimes students are quiet because they have a bad or uncooperative teacher. The vast majority of the students understand speaking in class to be a testing situation in which they are expected to provide a right answer.
The more pressure a professor creates through grading class participation, the more complicated it becomes for students to speak. By observing an instructor how he or she interacts with the class, the kinds of questions he/she asks, and how he/she responds to their voices. They determine whether they are expected to perform on an oral quiz. The students in the study also consider their self images, their knowledge, and their comfort levels with criticism and argument in the classroom setting when deciding whether to speak or to be silent. They understand that their classmates’ opinions of them will be affected, if not formed, by the opinions they offer in class.
Students who feel shy or uncomfortable to step forward in class discussions are shown as much potentiated on some social media discussion like Facebook, twitter or Google plus. It may be the reason that there they feel free to comment or speak as they are not being noticed by the class of 30, 40 students, and they know that even if they give the wrong point they will not have to face the criticism on face and later it encourages them and build confidence and undoubtedly enhances their knowledge.
Social networking has increased the rate and quality of collaboration for students. They are better able to communicate meeting times or share information quickly, which can increase productivity and help them learn how to work well in groups.
In 21st century we have access to technology so advanced that we even don’t need pen and paper to do our homework, assignments and even for our exams, we can use the over budding technology. While the trend of paper pen education is dissolving into mist, the eBook, tablet PC’s trend is coming with full force. Some countries, like Portugal has distributed tablet PC’s among all its elementary students, so to make education completely digital, the countries like Korea has the same type of project in the pipeline.
Not even our assignments are getting digital, but the ways we connect to our teachers (emails) is also getting advanced. And now with all the big digital companies introducing their more and more advanced devices, eBook readers is a new trend, it helps you to access any book from any where on very cheap rates and even there are many free ones too. Even the publishing name like Barnes and Nobles has developed their own digital devices from which you can reach books; you can even make your own digital library with as many books as you want. These advanced digital devices not only help to buy and read books, but they have taken education to another level, because now students don’t need to carry overweighing bags on their shoulders, because with just one device in their hand and they can perform their all types of education related tasks. There is a little doubt that in a time frame of some 10-15 years education over the world will have a touch of these digital devices virtually everywhere.
Which Road to Travel? ‘Technology’ or ‘No Technology’
By Aleena Hameed
Just as the Darwin’s Theory of Evolution suggests that every organism has undergone through the process of evolution in order to adapt well into their existing environment, same as the present world of technology has evolved different domains so as to make us adjust with the changing world.
On one hand, people like Clay Shirky who teaches Interactive Telecommunication Program at New York University has developed an online education system, in an interview with The Chronicle Review stressed about implementing the culture of getting all information through a medium of Internet. While on other hand, people like Nicholas Carr advocates in his article, ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ that, internet is distracting and new technology can only change our natural intelligence into artificial intelligence.
For me although, it’s way hard to detach yourself from technology these days, still I think that we are neither robots nor we have a weak immunity to easily get detach from the physical world. What would you people think, is it possible to stop yourself from being too much absorbed into this world of technology?
Think, Analyze & Share 