Online Classes Aren’t Self Sufficient (Kim, Hong, Bonk & Lim, 2011)

My biggest take away from this article was that online classes cannot run themselves. Though I appreciate professors that are engaged in their online classes, I think that many will create the original course, set reminders for announcements and then let the course flow. As I said in my earlier blog post, I often give my students guidelines for an assignment then turn it over to them. Though the medium of the teaching in this article was for online classes, I could see the parallels in group work in the classroom. If you do not give the students within the group specific assignments, some would end up doing the work for all. The authors’ suggestion that group work should be graded by individual effort one that I go back and forth on. I tell my students that in the workplace that often times when a multi-staff project is required, the supervisor is looking for a completed project, at whatever costs it takes. An employee can take their complaints against a coworker to their supervisor, but often times nothing will happen. There are always employees that have to pick up the slack of others. I also do not want to promote this behavior but I also want students to have experience in these situations. I still believe that students should take the responsibility of delegating how the work should be divided. I think a good medium is for teachers to provide the tasks, then students should meet to decide who will do what task and then provide a document back to the instructor. This can also be implemented in their workplace in the future. This way the supervisor (instructor) will know who is responsible for what and if in the end the work is not completed, one specific person can be held accountable. I do not think that the instructor should be responsible for assigning specific step by step task in an undergraduate or higher course. The instructor can have regular check ins with the group to make sure they are on track and to smooth out any issues along the way.

Teachers Teaching Teachers (Goodyear, Casey & Kirk, 2014)

I was very intrigued by this article upon reading the abstract. Though I think it provided some very interesting findings and suggestions for the use of social media for physical educators, I thought that there were some gaps in the research. As a former physical education teacher, in order for me to change my practice was not an option. I was given a strict timeline that I had to follow that told me what pages to use in the textbook. We did have access to a discussion board and a website of approved lessons and games, but for me to incorporate other topics and activities, I had to just do it on my own. There is no way I could have gotten away with having it written down on a social media site as this could be used against me if I was found to have been “straying” from the curriculum. I do think the idea of using social media for continuing education/in-service and training. As a non-traditional teacher, I would have appreciated consistent and continuous access to a community of other non-traditional teachers for support and knowledge. If the school districts are comfortable with students fulfilling their physical and health education requirements online, I do not see why they do not think this type of education is adequate for the instructors (unless of course they just don’t care about the students’ education and don’t truly believe it is adequate). I did also like the suggestion of teachers having a connection to experts, but I do not think that this was adequately explored. I do not know who the expert would be in a real school setting. At the end the department becomes the facilitator, but I’m not sure who the department is. I gleaned that some of the facilitating happened organically, there was clearly someone specific running it. Would this be a department head? Whoever it was, it would add another responsibility to their job description and we all know that teachers are likely not getting pay raises anytime soon (but more work, yes). I think that there are benefits associated with teachers learning from each other, but this CoP could be an opportunity for those in academia to connect with practitioners. I am very discouraged when I think about all of the research that is being conducted and all of the amazing findings coming out of it that no one is reading or that are not being put into use. This would be a great opportunity to bridge this gap.  I was also confused by the author’s differentiation between social media and Web 2.0 tools. They said that social media would “become a thing of the past” but I do not understand how it is different than Web 2.0 tools. The article did point out a very important function of this CoP; support. The use of retweets or the sharing of tweets as a reinforcement for the original poster is a positive outcome of social media groups. The concept of social competence is very important when someone is trying something new. As a current PhD student, I sometimes experience imposter’s syndrome but then when I go to conferences and present my research to other scholars in the field, I get some of that confidence back and am reminded that I do know what I’m talking about. It is also very encouraging to have an idea and to see that it is working for someone else and that your work is helping others. People need that pat on the back, even it is just through a simple retweet or comment. Of course, another issue that may arise with sharing ideas and materials in this type of online community is that some may be carrying the weight of the whole group or some people may not be prosuming and instead just consuming. People have to give and take, not just take as this may cause conflict and become discouraging to those teachers that are always providing knowledge but never receiving any.

Doing More Than Making Lists (Dennen – Networked Knowledge Activities Draft)

Considering our topic of ownership from Week 3, I wondered what the risks of blogging about this article and others that are drafts, in press or not published. That aside, I really connected with Dennen’s comment that students struggle with taking control over their learning. I know this was not the main focus of the article, but to me, it was what I kept thinking about while reading it. I have always tried to implement activities that encourage students to learn from each other. My go to activity is to split the class into groups and have them research a topic and then present it to the class and I act as the mediator, keep the class on track, add things they may have missed and clarify/correct anything they may have not gotten quite right. I figure that this is just as good as me teaching and if nothing else, at least each group has learned at least one thing (the item they researched) that class period. I often hear complaints the first few times when they are asked to do this, but then they get the hang of it. I hear them say comments like “you are the teacher, not us” or “I don’t know this stuff, that’s why I’m taking the class”. I attribute it to them being used to the structure of most of their education prior to this. They are used to just being fed information. I purposely give them vague instructions and tell them that in the “real world” their boss is not going to give them step by step detailed instructions and part of working (learning) is figuring things out along the way. It’s almost as if they are scared to be creative and to think outside the box. As Dennen says, they want to provide the “right answer” as if it is as simple as 2+2 and that there is only one correct response. I try to give them examples from my own work experience that show that my employer valued my creativity and critical thinking and preferred it over cut and dry projects. With the internet providing us with an answer to just about everything, it is important for them to bring something to the table that someone can’t simply look up. Of the six core networked knowledge activities, I most identified with being a collector and curator. I’m really great at finding articles and organizing them, but I rarely read them. I know that my collecting comes out in my teaching as I am always giving my students links to sites and articles to read, but I want to challenge their sharing, brokering and negotiating skills more. I have seen a lot of projects go awry because of no or lack of communication.  I have also noticed that when I give my students list of information, they are often not successful at synthesizing it or responding to it. I have never been one to implement discussion boards in my class because as a student myself, I do not enjoy them. I find them to be tedious and often do not put the effort I should into them. I understand that in an online class, this is the most common way to achieve communication, but I have tried to think of other ways to encourage this interaction. For group projects, I have the students create a living document on Google Drive. There they keep their notes and track the updates and changes they make to their final document. I tell them that if they are going to make a major change on the document, they need to include a comment as to why they thought this should happen. They also have to summarize the minor changes they made. I am not sure if Canvas allows videos to be uploaded in discussion boards, but I think this would also be a more attractive way to implement them into my class. This is what I plan to do with Snapchat in the fall. I would like students to respond to each other online, but as if they are having a face-to-face conversation with one another. I do want to include an activity that requires them to share information with one another, similar to how we shared an article of our own during week 4. Seeing the table of the six core activities and their associated actions really made it clear as to how I can achieve some of the learning objectives in my class and how some of the things I assumed were reaching these objectives were actually not.

Faculty Buy-In for Web 2.0 Learning

As I read Seechaliao’s (2014) article, I was excited to get to the end to read through the list of tips for integrating social media into the classroom. I was disappointed when I got to the end to see that no concrete tips were given. I usually think academic articles are too long, but in this case, I wish the author had elaborated on points as opposed to repeating two or three points. I don’t think that their research findings offered anything new to the field, however, they did provide further support for earlier findings from other scholars. I have met instructors that have both supported the use of social media in the classroom and those that have not. As the article said, even those that do support this integration often do not actually act upon it. I think that both groups share similar concerns of the amount of time it takes to think about the integration and then its initial integration. Seechaliao (2014) mentioned the instructors’ belief that Web 2.0 tools will save time and money, but this is often not the case up front due to the learning curve and as mentioned by the author, the issues that will only arise during implementation. So, though they may have opposing viewpoints, both groups share similar concerns. This article made me wonder what the instructors might have said the barriers are to implementation had they been interviewed/asked this question. I also think that lack of training is an issue as many instructors are not familiar with the tools or they have not considered some of the topics we have learned about in this class such as privacy and the understanding that personal use of a platform does not inherently transfer to educational use. Also, with the implementation of programs like Canvas, an article that considers Facebook use in the classroom must point out the differentiating benefit of collaboration with other students outside of the current course. I did appreciate the use of Facebook as a sort of testing tool for the creation of a Canvas-like program. Since this is a free tool that can be used, I believe that many countries can use Facebook to work out some of the issues and to get a handle on how they will implement the program without wasting valuable financial resources.

An Example of C2C

To continue the theme of my last post, below is a screenshot from one of my past classes. I created discussion forums for students to post comments and questions in each module. Though this is a basic example, it shows how students can take charge of their learning and help each other throughout the course. I was really excited when I saw this post because I think it empowered the student who posted and also showed that students are ok and trusting to learn from each other. After the student answered the question, the other student that asked the question (nor any of the other students) asked me to “verify” or brought the question up in class. This also freed me from answering the question or spending time going over “housekeeping” items in class.

Knowledge for the People, By the People

• Going off of my last blog, I like the idea of having an open forum that allows the free exchange of education. I dream of hosting lectures that are open to the public like Stuart Hall did in Birmingham in the 1960’s. My roommate asked me yesterday if I enjoyed teaching college students and why. I told her I did because I enjoyed teaching but also learning from others. With younger children, teachers are often feeding information to the classroom and the return of that information is limited because of their cognitive abilities. I think that open/discussion forums allow for different perspectives and often unheard points of view. Though in-person forums allow for people with access to transportation to attend, social media allows for those with access to technology to “attend”. The Konsti-Laakso (2017) article reminded of the Dennen, Rutledge, Bagdy, Rowlett, Burnick & Joyce (2017) article from last week. There is so much potential for people to learn from each other through social media platforms, even if they do not consider it or are not aware that they are learning. In my opinion, the C2C relationship is the most important of the three described by Konsti-Laakso (2017) as I think people learn best when they have an active role in their education. I find it interesting that the G2C was talked about without mention of the impact of social media at the hands of our current administration. From what I observe, without looking for support in research, this administration has been the most active on social media platforms, namely Twitter.

Putting Policies into Action: The Costs of Open Education

• I think that the Caswell, Henson, Jensen & Wiley (2008) abstract was misleading. Aside from it being one-sided by only focusing on the positive effects of distance education, there was just one mention of OpenCourseWares, which was the focus of the article. It was really just a reiteration of the introduction paragraph which also does not properly situate the article around OpenCourseWares. This aside, I really like the OpenCourseWares models. I think that technologies like this are actual, tangible initiatives that promote UN’s Article 26. “For the first time, we can now begin to convert a 60-year old-declaration into a reality” (p 10). I do not think that education should be a commodified and sold. However, I do understand that, as mentioned in the VoiceThread, there is a concern for intellectual property. That being said, I do not expect that everyone would want to just freely post their research that they put long hours and hard work into. I’m not sure exactly how this could be addressed, but I do wonder why it’s such a big deal if people are cited. If the production of articles leads to copy right royalties as the production of songs did, I could understand (but it would not change my stance) why people would be more concerned about making sure their research was not available in an open forum. To further compare to the music industry, I believe that often times research is not cited and people do not get credit for their ideas and contributions to the field. 

Diigo Isn't Too Bad

Though I commented in my PLE that I did not like the layout of Diigo, I do like the purpose. I am all about collaborative research and learning (Greenhow, 2009) as mentioned in the Im & Dennen (2013) article. I think that a tool like this would be very helpful for PhD students. A group could be created by students with similar research interests or in a specific class or within a cohort. I have both asked and been asked "Do you remember that article?" or "Do you remember that website" countless times. My cohort and I pass around a lot of the same information over and over because we do not all have it in a central place. Diigo could accomplish that. I think this could also cut down on the amount of email traffic seen on listservs and the emails that being with "for those interested". People could choose to receive notifications or regularly access the group as their schedule permits After reading the article and checking out the site, I best understood it as a tool similar to Google Docs (like a Google Links maybe) that allows for collaboration and consumption. This would have been really helpful for a two week course I attended in Amsterdam earlier this month. The lecturers and students were always throwing out authors, articles, websites, and books to check out for further information. If we had set up a Diigo page, all of this information could be stored here. The course would have also benefitted from having the ability to create tags to better organize information and making it easier to search. Instead we used a Google Doc and it became more of a listing of materials. This worked, but as the list became longer, it was hard to keep up with what topics certain links were connected to. A tagging system would have eliminated this confusion and made it easier for us to find what we were looking for.

Snapchat in the Classroom

There were a few items stood out to me from the Dennen, Rutledge,

Bagdy, Rowlett, Burnick and Joyce (2017). I was pleased to read that

Snapchat was the most used app. I really enjoy this app and I have been

trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into my classroom lessons. I

would like to create a channel for my class. I have not done formal

research, but in what I have read and observed, students of this generation

like to read headlines and see quick clips to get their information. I operate

in a similar manner in that I rely on Snapchat and CNN alerts to keep me

informed. I also found the point about social media serving as an informal

background check before students pursued other students. I think this

offers support for the online dating community and presents a benefit of

meeting someone online before you meet them in person. I was most

fascinated by the concept of context collapse. I never considered this

before, but it was so relatable after reading about it. It also affects the way I

conduct myself on social media. As a student and teacher, I hear and

preach the importance of keeping public social media accounts

appropriate as potential employers may check them out when you are

interviewing for a job. I can’t remember once talking about the presence

of multiple of my circles in one “place”. This definitely is something I

consider when choosing pictures and captions to post on Facebook.

Unlike the students, I do experience context collapse on this platform,

which may be indicative of my age. However, on my Snapchat, I do not

have such a mix of “friends” and similar to the students in the study, I

post content to Snapchat that I want to share with a small group of my

friends and my network does not include family or co

workers/employers. I found it funny that students did not want their

family to follow them on social media because they were worried about

them posting embarrassing things. In my case, I’m more worried about

my family seeing something I do not want them to. I also found the

comment by the one student who wished her family followed her to get

to know her better very interesting. As I mentioned in my last blog post,

I do think that people may share more of their true selves (as well as

their imaginary/perfect selves) online than they always do in person. I

also found that comment sad that she felt more comfortable expressing

herself through the internet than in person, though I do think many

people feel that way, especially when it comes to controversial topics

like politics. 

Physical Environments for Digital Worlds?

To continue off of the Bagdy et al. (2018) article, I was very intrigued by the authors’ comment that the two seniors would become more involved with their social network communities as they became “physically situated” within those environments. I hear people talking about how we are creating these artificial or digital communities and that soon people will not interact with each other face to face. However, I think this finding proves against that. I am not convinced that an online community can survive without a physical manifestation at some point and in some capacity. For example, Crystal was a part of military social media groups, but until she actually joined the military and was around soldiers, she would not achieve that sense of belonging to the military community or at least the same level of belonging. Another example would be relationships that start on social media. There are different opinions of how long is too long to talk to someone and not meet them, but at some point, I think that in order for the relationship to go to the next step or become deeper, the two people have to meet.

Social Media as a Tool for Good

     This entry is two-fold, but together they draw on the Badgy, Dennen, Rutledge, Rowlett & Brunick (2018) article. Warning: It’s a long one.

      As a teacher, I’ve always tried to incorporate social media or technology into my lessons. Not only do I think it’s more captivating for my students, I also think it helps them relate to the material better and keeps me from having to police the room all period. I have seen how portable technology like cell phones have changed the classroom, so I figured rather than fight it, I would try to incorporate it. Though many of my students wanted to be “friends” on social media, I told them I could not add them until after I left for FSU. I kept my promise and now I still follow many of them. I first noticed that many of them had bitmojis that did not “match” what they looked like, though this was the case with my friends of all different ages. I started thinking more about this and wondered if in some cases, it might be an indication of body confidence issues. Some bitmojis have larger breasts, smaller waists, lighter skin, darker skin, etc than their real-life counterpart. I also noticed a lot of the things that my former students posted were rather bleak for their age. Many of them were posting memes about not finding love, how everyone around them were less than decent people, how much “life sucks” and even going as far as to say they wanted to die. Whether they meant it or not, I found it very alarming. I myself went through some things that affected my mental health and I found myself following a lot of social media accounts that lamented about the negative side of life. However, I was very surprised that such young kids and that so many of them were sharing these memes. It wasn’t just teenagers, but almost everyone! I couldn’t understand why this culture was so popular, why everyone was so miserable and why everyone could relate. 

     Until recently, I was never around anyone that was affected by suicide. However, about one month ago, a college roommate of mine, Jeanne, from my undergraduate university did take her life. Before this, my only experience with suicide was through media, high school health class, my mother and the textbook I used as a high school physical education and health teacher. My mother never actually used the term suicide, but she reminded me that when life got hard, I could always call her and that there was another way out. I kept that message with me and though I’ve reached some low points in my life, I always go back to her words of wisdom and remember that whatever I’m going through is not worth my life. I have always felt confusion and anger, but mostly sadness when I would hear of someone taking their life. When Jeanne passed away, some of my college friends and I exchanged messages. We all shared how sad we felt knowing that Jeanne felt that there was no way out, but also that we all saw many signs of her deep sadness when we lived with her 10 years ago. My teaching experience coupled with the suicide rate increase to 25% since 1999 (CDC, 2018) has always had me thinking about mental health. 

      

     To tie back into the article, I have always thought that social media had positive effects. Not only was it successful in the learning environment for me, I also thought it gave me some insight to my students’ personal lives, which in my opinion helped me understand them better as students. I enjoyed reading the perspective of the students and how the authors presented the benefits of social media from their direct point of view. I think that social media can also be a positive tool for teachers and parents. I understand it is hard to monitor teenagers’ internet usage, but if it was incorporated into the classroom lessons, maybe teachers would pick up on some of the signs through their social media posts and to offer support to students before it’s too late. If parents were trained in some of the warning signs of depression and other mental health disorders, they might be able to recognize them in their own children through the memes, videos and posts they like, post and comment on. This could be a way to sort of monitor students without them knowing, with the goal of understanding their true emotional state, not the one they tell you when asked, “How are you?” I don’t mean to say teachers should secretly spy on their students. One finding offered in the article is that students do not even realize they “were using social media to support self-directed learning” (Bagdy et al., 2018). I think the same may be apply to what they post on social media. They may be sharing items on their social media without the purposeful intention of reaching out for help, but trained teachers and parents may notice these subconscious requests.