Collaborative Understandings

How Do You Provide Affordances to The Nomad (Language) Learner?

2011-12-31T23:54:00.000-08:00

From A is for Affordance « An A-Z of ELT. the following questions were presented:

How can you replicate [learning affordances] in a typical classroom? How can you turn the classroom into a hike through the snow, or a walk around the island? How can classroom talk achieve the degree of contingency that Crusoe and Friday achieved?

As a language teacher, I think in terms of how might I create cognitive, physical, and emotional affordances for each-as-every student. The short answer in how to replicate affordances in the language classroom is by engaging students in opening up the content, process, and products in ways that allow them to make informed decisions and take responsibility for their own learning. This requires constant feedback loops that stem not only from me (their teacher), but also the students themselves, their peers, and other experts that extend beyond the four walls of the classroom. One example might be teaching an academic writing class.

Using a public wiki allows the writer to openly choose a topic and produce an essay, report, thesis, etc. where feedback loops emerge from anyone at any given time. That is, public spaces used to complement face-to-face classes (i.e., blended learning) provide a key affordance: feedback loops that exist across time and space. As a web tool, a wiki provides an affordance for more engaging, effective, and efficient feedback loops. Since anyone can change the wiki, anyone can provide feedback. And since each revision of the wiki is saved, the writing process is preserved and made explicit as well.

In a learning ecology, the learner must adapt to the environment, and that adaptation is associating the potentialities that exist at any given moment. Helping the nomad learner recognize learning potentialities also means recognizing that outcomes will vary. In formal education, the challenge is reconciling the various outcomes to specific outcomes that are explicit or implicitly stated in the curriculum.

At the end of the day, I attempt to promote understandings (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2005) and language so that each becomes both a means and an end. Instead of following a task or problem-based approach, I guide the learner in helping to recognize personal adaptations made throughout the learning process and to problem-set along the way. Very little is fixed when it comes to learning about something or learning a particular skill set, as in learning an additional language.

As a teacher, how do you go about designing a learning ecosystem?

Teachers as Advocates for a Learning Ecosystem

2011-12-24T00:37:00.000-08:00

...we have to admit that a gap exists between what our students actually understand and are able to do, and what we actually end up reporting (via Come and sit beside me and I'll tell you what I think! | Canadian Education Association (CEA)).

I'm not sure I'd consider it a gap between student understanding and what a student can do because student understanding is in fact, what a student can do. When I assess a learner (i.e., student understandings), essentially, the entire process depends on what evidence the student is providing. I see formative assessment where there is less of a boundary between assessment and instruction as the avenue for providing the "learning ecosystem" needed in order for students to perform in a way that provides the evidence required to make reasonable inferences on student achievement. The following questions were posed:

What are the assessment strategies and tools that allow us to collect the most accurate picture of student understanding? Which methods of assessment actually widen the gap between student and teacher? Which come closest to allowing us to “sit beside” our students? Does any of this really matter when it comes to quality teaching and learning?

Formative assessment - as opposed to summative assessment - allows educators and students to "sit beside each other" as well as students themselves sitting beside each other in a more cooperative learning community. Specifically, formative assessment that is "baked in" to the following approaches are in order: questioning techniques (aka Socratic Method or instructional conversations), performance tasks, projects, and problem-based learning. These approaches, methods, whatever, provide higher-order thinking that is more likely linked to leading learners to think outside of the box and to be more creative in how they interact with people and materials (i.e., forming a socio-technical organization based on the principles of semiotics).

Having more formative assessment than summative (and we can have both) is the best way to provide the constant feedback loops necessary for all educational stakeholders to grow and learn from the educative experience that a classroom can provide. But I feel that teachers are in the best position to be advocates for working with all other educational stakeholders in making it all happen. This is only possible if teachers are free to take risks, make mistakes, and share their successes and failures through open and constructive discourse.

Your thoughts?

The Social Search experiment from Microsoft...

2011-12-19T09:30:00.002-08:00

The Social Search experiment from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs

Share your Search. Rediscover search through your friends and community on the all new social search experiment from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs.

One Big Tip To Help You Overcome Your Fear...

2011-12-19T09:30:00.001-08:00

One Big Tip To Help You Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking

Photo Credit: Will Winter, @WillWinterPhoto, www.willwinter.ca
You may be familiar with the cultural observation that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death, meaning that at a funeral most of us would prefer to be in the casket rather than delivering the eulogy.
While fear can be a life-saver in certain situations, listening to our fears and allowing them to dictate our actions often falls into the category of ‘stinking thinking’ (See The 3 Most Important Questions Socrate...

To tweet or not to tweet...http://theinnovativeeducator...

2011-12-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

To tweet or not to tweet...http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/12/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet.html

Sierra Fría, Bosques del Prado Norte, Aguascalientes Municipality, Aguascalientes

No Chinese Spoken Here

2011-12-19T09:29:00.004-08:00

No Chinese Spoken Here

I just heard a report on a Beijing radio station about a nearby town being turned into an English-only enclave. Not believing my ears, I looked it up online and found that, sure enough, there is such a plan afoot. This report from People's Daily Online (originally published In Shanghai Daily) (December 16, 2011) is succinct enough that I will quote the whole article:

Beijing's rural village recast as English town
Beijing's suburban Miyun County is going to build a large European-style town w...

International Teacher Development Institute_2

2011-12-19T09:29:00.003-08:00

International Teacher Development Institute_2

Can Online Socializing Replace In-Person...

2011-12-19T09:29:00.002-08:00

Can Online Socializing Replace In-Person Interaction? | Disrupt Education | Big Think

Big Think. Home; Special Series; Topics; Experts; Blogs; Ideafeed. Follow us. Like us on Facebook; Follow us on Twitter; LinkedIn; Subscribe. Don't fill in this field. Search. A forum where top ex...

Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From...

2011-12-19T09:29:00.001-08:00

Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From The Top Down ...

Editor's note: Guest contributor Patrick Gibbons is a Las Vegas-based writer and researcher focusing on education policy and reform. Computer technology has penetrated the classroom for thirty years with little impact. ...

VETO the SOPA bill and any other future...

2011-12-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information | The White HouseVETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free f...

"the more freely information flows; the stronger that society becomes" President Obama http://tiny.cc/rh5b1 By allowing free conversation it is so easy to drop a link http://i.imgur.com/TD4Kq.jpg I...

WordPress › WP Google Plus Connect «...

2011-12-19T09:28:00.001-08:00

WordPress › WP Google Plus Connect « WordPress Plugins

WP Google Plus Connect. Add Google+ Direct Connect Badge & allow your WordPress/BuddyPress users to register or login via their Google+ account & import their stream. Description; Installation...

Google+ Opera Extension...https://addons...

2011-12-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

Google+ Opera Extension...https://addons.opera.com/en/addons/extensions/details/goolge/1.0/?display=en

2011-12-16T03:38:00.000-08:00

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2011-12-15T02:53:00.000-08:00

I'm

Preparations for authentic learning #change11

2011-12-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Preparations for authentic learning #change11 and wondering how we recognize which of the theories in education are trustworthy and helpful. And I'm wondering if we need to "recognize the right theory" to begin with.

I'm wondering if recognizing how we plan, implement, and reflect on a class in terms of established or emerging theories (plural) is enough.

So the question is, do we try to find the right theory for our educational context, then speculate? Or do we interpret the actions that occur in the classroom in terms of the various theories that exist...a kind of theory eclectic?

2011-12-12T00:47:00.000-08:00

2011-12-12T00:32:00.000-08:00

Asking Why Instead of How (#Change11)

2011-11-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

How to balance soft and hard technology?

Soft technologies are flexible, supporting creativity and change, because the gaps inside them have to be filled with processes constructed by people. They are needy and incomplete until people fill the holes, while hard technologies contain within them the processes and methods to achieve the ends for which they were designed [emphasis added], bring efficiency, scalability, replicability, freedom from error and speed. Conclusion: "Most learning technology research concentrates on technology (including methods and pedagogies) not the talent and skill with which it is applied that is frequently more significant" (Dron, 2011).

I would approach the use of technology a bit differently, asking why instead of how.

I find it combersome drawing a distinction between soft and hard technologies. Defining hard technologies as particular processes and methods that inherently achieve certain ends confines the user to act or think in a certain way. This leads to linking technologies to individuals based on socio-cultural-historical assumptions. If one concludes that it's not the technology but how one uses it, does it matter which contained processes and methods lead to arbitrary (decontextualized) ends?

When reflecting on the different (hard) technologies that I use, I have yet to find one that does everything. I am constantly adding and pruning technologies as my teaching and learning context changes. The hard technologies that I use (in aggregate) are as fluid, flexible, and incomplete as some soft technologies. Individual web tools serve as nodes that make up part of my PLN; a change in one can influence a change in others, similar to how people interact.

Jumping on the ANT bandwagon, I find it helpful to view technology as designing an assemblage (i.e., PLN) which views the social as a "very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling" (Latour, 2005). I see a PLN as a movement that re-associates and reassembles reifying conceptualizations, people, and material.

Reifying conceptualizations is the process of making some abstract idea, notion, or problem more concrete through open and ongoing interaction. From a socio-technical perspective, people use artifacts to interact with each other around related conceptualizations. Interactions that connect conceptualizations, people, and material are contextually rich and provide the basis for one's teaching and learning rationale.

Consequently, my approach to technology would be to ask why someone chooses to interact within a PLN in ways that foster open and ongoing professional learning. Asking why, also requires asking what, how, when, and with whom (plus any other applicable question words), while embracing a perspectival sensitivity between subject (i.e., participants of the study) and object (i.e., researcher). In other words, it's about understanding how the individual's interpretation of becoming emerges from the recollection of the associations, assemblages, and dynamics of a PLN. It just so happens that my interest in such a topic has led me to a doctoral proposal.

Technologies I'm Thankful For

2011-11-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

I know it's a bit late, but still wanted to get my list in for this year. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'd like to submit my list of technologies that I'm thankful for. I'm thankful because all five technologies - that I use virtually every day - are compatible with Linux, and most are open source; that is, people self-organize and develope software so that others can freely modify and use it as they wish.

The first technology on my list has to be the Ubuntu Linux OS (Macbuntu 11.04 to be exact). I did away with Windows the first part of this year and have never looked back. Macbuntu (Linux) is more stable, faster, doesn't get viruses for the most part, and there's no need to defrag the harddrive. Ubuntu works right out of the box and is ideal for a non-tech person such as myself.

WordPress is next on my list. This entire website is built on Wordpress, in fact. With a load of plugins available, WordPress is ideal for adapting a website to one's needs.

Although Mendeley is not open source, it works great on Linux. Since I am involved with doing research, Mendeley allows me to not only keep track of references, but I can sync all my references to my work and home computers as well as sync to my mobile device (Galaxy Tab) instantly. I can also create groups and interact with others who are doing similar research. There's a premium account available but the free account allows for a lot of free space to include both the reference information and any attached PDF files as well. This is a must for researchers!

Since I do a lot of screencasting, Tibesti is another absolute must. Even though you must install the software from the terminal, it's an easy process, just cut and paste. The great thing about Tibesti is that you can record your voice through the mic and also record audio coming through your sound card simultaneously. For example, I can record an online live session in Google+ Hangout and capture my voice and the participants' voices with no problems. If you are a tech. person, you can do the same from the terminal but you need to know what you are doing. I don't know what I'm doing, so two thumbs up for Tibesti!

Last but not least, I'm thankful for Ubuntu One! Cloud computing seems to be the thing these days, but Ubuntu One is great because it's "baked" into Macbuntu, so getting started is as easy as signing in with a username and password. They provide up to 5MB of free space (premium accounts are available) and it allows me to automatically sync my files with my work and home computers as well as my mobile device, all in an instance.

Well, there you have it, the software I depend on daily to get the job done. What software are you thankful for?

Learning Preferences Emerge

2011-11-27T00:28:00.000-08:00

Do we need to adapt our teaching to suit the learning style of learners?

Instead, I would say that learning preferences emerge throughout the teaching and learning process, a process that is both iterative and reciprocal.

Designing an engaging and effective learning experience requires establishing desired results, various forms of assessment, and instruction, whether the educative experience is formal or informal. These three interrelated aspects of the learning experience evolve around a learner's interaction with conceptualizations, material, and people (i.e., PLN). In my view, the notion of a PLN is based less on one's socio-cultural background yet still depends highly on the choices an individual makes at any particular moment; it avoids isolating the individual from the material and concepts, isolating the material from the individual and concepts, and so on. The PLN is a context-rich ontological frame that connects the desired results of the individual, feedback loops (i.e., assessment and instruction via human interaction), conceptualizations, and material through open and ongoing negotiation.

Students experience a dynamic shift in learning preferences depending on the PLN and more specifically the learning experience at hand. Working with learning preferences by giving learners some level of choice leads to adapting the teaching and learning process at any given moment and not simply presuming that learners are visual, kinesthetic, etc. a priori (e.g., via curriculum, standard teaching methods, lesson plan, etc.).

I'm back...

2011-11-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Well, after about a week, I finally made it back...sort of. This past week I had an unfortunate incident with my website host provider (WHP). I found out the hard way that I was not getting a service I was paying for. I realized that it was time to change WHPs and I decided to move to GoDaddy.

About two weeks ago, I began to make several structural changes to my website in preparation for a doctoral study that will begin in the coming months. The past year I've been using WordPress, Moodle, and Dokuwiki for most of my online work. Although my old WHP includes other applications as well, it wasn't until last week's incident that made me realize I could do most of what I need in WordPress alone. Although GoDaddy is a little more than my past WHP, I realized that you do get what you pay for. I decided it was worth scaling back the applications for better service and deliverability.

So, as I waited for my last domain to transfer to GoDaddy (which usually takes 5-7 days), I began to get impatience and decided that it was also time to get a new domain. Since info domains are much cheaper, I also decided to transfer my entire website from the old domain to the new. Within a day or so, I had most of my website up and running.

Some of the changes to this new site will be the inclusion of open courseware. Since I am no longer using Moodle for the most part, I've decided to put most of what I do in my face-to-face classes here. Even though most content will be open, some information will remain private, depending on the class I'm teaching. I've also decided to automatically assign new subscribers to this site as collaborators which will allow everyone to upload posts and to edit and add wikis as they choose. My goal is to make this site as open and transparent as possible. For now, Google+ hangouts will be used to conduct periodic online meetings as well.

If you are new or moving over from my old site, welcome! Expect many upcoming changes to this site and feel free to comment and contribute as you wish!

Improve Learning: The Socio-Material Dynamic versus Structure

2011-09-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

My response to The Virtuous Middle Way...

The efficiency of the learning process speaks nothing of the effectiveness of it. Might we say, "the machinery of education is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning process"? I doubt that many educators would argue against this as an espoused theory, but as a theory in use, perhaps it is a different story (as Jeremy eludes to). Comparing MOOCs to educational institutions (if I must), I find that some MOOCs are actually more structured than some institutional courses I've been involved with - at least in terms of laying out a content timeline and delivery. Regardless, to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of any learning process, one needs to analyze how the socio-material dynamic (i.e., how over time people interact with each other together with the necessary artifacts that allow such interaction to take place) emerges within a given structure.

Offering guidance in any structure could be seen as being helpful or a hindrance. What constitutes guidance? A newsletter? Syllabus? Freedom of choosing an ICT? Personal explanation/feedback? Graded exam? Lecture? These all could be seen in both a positive and negative light depending on the circumstances. But it's precisely the circumstances that we need to understand in order to have a better idea about the effectiveness and efficiency of the learning process at hand.

Busy...

2011-09-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's been awhile since my last post. I've been (and continue to be) extremely busy developing a concept paper for my dissertation, teaching, and doing separate research regarding peer/self reflection among English language learning writers. This week I plan to hang out, so if you are into Google+ and you are interested in knowing more about my research, let's connect! My Google+ profile link can be found by clicking the About tab above.

Teaching and Learning with ICTs

2011-08-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

Well, Monday starts a new semester. As I reflect on how I might create opportunities for my students to be more engaged in the learning experience, both in and outside of class, my current inclination is to use ICTs but in a slightly different way.

This semester I'll be teaching Microteaching I (third semester), Academic Writing (seventh semester), and Applied Linguistics (seventh semester) to pre-service English language teachers (i.e., eight-semester bachelor's degree program in English language teaching). The primary ICTs that I'll use for these blended classes will be wikis and Moodle.

Student-teachers (STs) taking Microteaching I meet four hours a week, teaching in 15-minute blocks with their classmates (i.e., "students"). At the time of this post, the wiki was still under development, but will be further developed in the coming days. The wiki will home STs' reflective wiki pages that will remain open for all to see and will also be integrated (i.e., embeded) to Moodle. Since this is my first time teaching this class, there will certainly be tweaks and turns as the class unfolds ultimately driving which ICTs to use and how they will be used to best engage students.

I've taught Academic Writing in the past using primarily Wikieducator, but this year I wanted to do something different. This year I will be using(Doku) wiki along with Moodle as I plan to do with Microteaching I. The main reason for using Dokuwiki over Wikieducator is that (a) Dokuwiki is more user-friendly and (b) it integrates well to my website hosting service (Fatcow). The wiki/Moodle integration will look something like the following:

Wikis are a great tool for academic writing as it makes the writing process more transparent.

The course in Applied Linguistics will also integrate a wiki with Moodle...are you seeing a pattern here? :) Students will apply their understanding of linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis to their own teaching practice through an action research project.

The objective this semester is to make the learning process of each course as open as possible so that students see the value in transparent learning. As their facilitator, making course designs open will provide other educators with ideas as well as opportunities to collaborate and cooperate in areas of curriculum, assessment, and instruction.

How will you use ICTs this semester or year?

2011-07-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

This post if addressed to those who

ICT Challenge (#edumooc)

2011-07-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

There was some talk this week during a recent Google+ hangout about how others were using technology to understand all the content related to edumooc 2011. I decided to share some ICTs that I'm currently using and thought I'd invite others to do the same. Perhaps this might help those who are still trying to find their way around the vast amount of information that's out there. Feel free to include the link to your video below.

My First Google+ Hangout! (#edumooc)

2011-07-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

Had my first Google+ hangout this week! I used no headset and we had several microphones active at the same time with no echo. Check it out for yourself.

Massive or Meaningful and Relevant? (#edumooc)

2011-07-14T02:02:00.000-07:00

As can be seen, it is often pointed out that [size] is a necessary characteristic, but I've been experimenting with what I call Miniscule Open Online Courses, which is where I think that the principles on which MOOCs are based apply to courses run on a much smaller scale e.g. http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com. - VANCE STEVENS

Adding to this point, I would be content simply calling a MOOC an OOC.

It's difficult enough interpreting the concept of openness given the different opinions on the most appropriate Creative Commons license to use for example, namely whether content should be under a commercial or noncommercial license. For some, openness is all or nothing, for others it's a matter of degree.

The notion of online delivery is another issue for (especially) those new to this type of learning environment. Which technologies should be used? How to engage yet not feel overwhelmed?

The idea of a “course” then leads to issues of start and end dates, identifying explicit or implicit desired results (intentional/unintentional learning), implementing different types and the distribution of assessment, taking the course for credit or no credit, etc.

Notions of openness, delivery, and course attributes are more important than how many participants there are in an OOC - subscribing to the notion that says, “more is better”. One might argue that having large amounts of participants will lead to continued discourse or peer-to-peer learning after the MOOC has completed; that learners will be more engaged if a MOOC has large numbers. But it has more to do with the type of communication that flows between each learner and their neighboring nodes (i.e., those individuals or communities that remain within one degree of separation and any artifacts the learner has direct contact with) than it does simply knowing how many neighboring nodes (NNs) exist in the first place. And who's to say it's better if those NNs are exclusively MOOC participants? And even if all NNs are exclusively MOOC participants, what's the ratio of NNs/MOOC participants, and does that even matter. A more engaging and effective learning experience is possible if we focus on what it means for this type of learning environment to be open, online, and how it's presented as a course.

I believe it's quite possible to have an engaging and effective learning experience when five OOC participants have 30 NNs that include the other four OOC participants and 26 individuals or communities that have nothing to do with the OOC itself. It's also possible that these same five OOC participants can have a fruitful learning experience being part of a 1000 other OOC participants but still choose to interact with the same NNs; that is, to remain on the peripheral of the (“M”)OOC. If we must stick to the acronym, I'd leave it as a Meaningful (and relevant), Open, Online, Course. Then have a discussion around what is meaningful and relevant around particular educational contexts.

What any OOC needs is sustainability - at least between the start and end dates, otherwise there is no course. Creating a discourse around openness, delivery, and the course in terms of curriculum, assessment, and instruction (in terms of meaningful and relevant learning given particular educational contexts) will go much further in bringing about OOC sustainability than talking how many numbers lead to “massiveness”.

My Favorite Things (#edumooc)

2011-07-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of My Favorite Things:

I use my Galaxy Tab to manage tweets, email, facebook, Google+, and other web-surfing tasks. And my favorite Galaxy app right now is live365!

I use my website and Moodle to organize my thoughts and my classes that I teach to pre-service English language teachers.

I also like VoiceThread, WizIQ as a virtual classroom, Internet Archive, YouTube, BlipTV, Google Docs, Google Reader, and NetVibes as I use all of these both as a teacher and learner.

Wikieducator is a great website. Producing OERs and OEPs is something I wish I could dedicate more time to.

Skype is great for language exchanges and communicating with colleagues.

Overall, I love Linux Mint 11 as it allows me to work more efficiently and effectively at the computer while feeling good that an OS of this caliber is possible as a result of people working together in an open and caring way (open source).

You say "Ground Rules", I say "Netiquette Rules" (#edumooc)

2011-07-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

I appreciate Michelle Pacansky-Brock from Mt. San Jacinto College for sharing her Community Ground Rules - direct link - (under a CC-BY license) for a still photography history class she's involved with. The document will certainly be of some use as is while others may tweak it to their liking. But upon reading it, I immediately felt compelled to share my thoughts on how the term network is being used within a formal educational context. A notion that all stakeholders should consider when participating in a MOOC or any blended course.

At the top, left-hand corner of the document is a picture of Alexander Rodchenko who claimed,

One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.

The first eight points of the community ground rules document are what I would consider basic netiquette terms or simply ways in which individuals should act when interacting with others. The list is fairly straightforward and I certainly think is applicable regardless to whether we are discussing groups or networks.

However, there are two other sections of the document that made me question whether the objective was to create a group or network. For example, it reads "...to ensure we maintain a safe, trustworthy discussion environment", students must be enrolled in the course in order to be an eligible community member. This sounds more like a group than a network to me. And I would argue that in some educational contexts, learners would benefit from discourse that is less than safe, or more diverse than what they are accustomed to since this is what they will likely face as members of a global society.

In another instance the term network was used in reference to more group-like behavior: What happens to this network after our class is over? The question is in relation to content and how all the content is to be deleted once the course has be completed. This seems to indicate almost a pruning of one's network back to what it was at the beginning of the course, perhaps shifting back the spaces as they once were.

Growing a network among learners within a class requires taking several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round. Forming a group among learners within a class means looking through the same key-hole again and again. As educators, I think it is to our advantage to take an honest look at how our students are learning collectively (as in a group) and connectively (as in a network) in order to find the right mix based on particular educational contexts. We can meet course objectives while still forming long-lasting networks that will continue transforming well after the course has been completed.

Theoretical Threshold for MOOCs (#edumooc)

2011-07-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

What is the theoretical minimum for a successful MOOC learning experience -- 100, 500, 1000, or 2000 registered participants?

Source:

OERu-EduMOOC mailing list
OERu-EduMOOC@lists.wikieducator.org
http://lists.wikieducator.org/mailman/listinfo/oeru-edumooc

---------

One answer: If 10 registered participants actively participated in a open online course, it might not be massive, but it still could be a meaningful and relevant learning experience under the right context. Let's assume that only 4% of the registered learners finish the MOOC, we would need 250 registered learners (if my figures are correct). But there are so many variables to this scenario that it raises more uncertainty than anything else.

In my view, MOOCs need sustainable discourse to survive - I agree that those on the peripheral "need something to read." But I would consider the following questions in determining whether a MOOC will offer a meaningful and relevant learning experience:

1. How will registered participants who are actively participating in the MOOC present different perspectives around each topic, theme, or subtheme?
2. How many turns (i.e., back-and-forth discussions) around different topics, themes, or subthemes will registered participants who are actively participating in the MOOC produce?
3. How are topics, themes, and sub-themes being applied to different contexts or disciplines?

I feel that the operationalization of a MOOC will ultimately depend on the university or context of each learner. It will depend on the types of assessments and the particular goals of the MOOC, the university, and/or the learner. A MOOC becomes operationalized by the particular educational context that evolves around the MOOC experience, and that could vary from MOOC to MOOC, university to university, and learner to learner. And as we get more universities giving credit to students who are taking a MOOC, I think threshold numbers will become less of an issue. Currently, few universities are offering credit (to my knowledge), but the individuals and universities who are offering MOOCs have the following to sustain continued discourse.

So I would say that what drives a MOOC to be operational is for the most part dependent on how the individuals interact within a given educational context and not the number of registered participants. If we need a threshold number that leads to the likelihood that lurkers will have something to read, then I would refer to it as leaving evidence that a MOOC existed or audit trail with no assumption that it has anything to do with learning.

Projects Slated for the Rest of 2011

2011-07-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_2179" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License"][/caption]

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. -George Santayana

This next semester is a busy one.

Dissertation

The last few days I have been working feverishly on my dissertation proposal, trying to get it cleaned up and approved before I start my research. I'm conducting a study on how EFL educators working in Mexico interact within a personal learning network and how that interaction influences a change in behavior and beliefs (i.e., teaching practice and reflection). It's a hermeneutic, qualitative case study involving three teachers who will be using various ICTs in which to interact with other individuals, communities, and/or groups. The Moodle course that we will be using can be found here and many of the activities are open to anyone interested in teaching English to students of other languages.

University Classes

Classes begin the second week of August and I'm scheduled to teach the following: (a) Applied linguistics, 7th semester, (b) academic writing, 7th semester, and (c) teaching practicum, 5th semester. The applied linguistics and academic writing classes will have some online content made available to anyone who might be interested. The idea I have for applied linguistics is to get my students to interact in online communities so they can address current issues related to teaching and learning English as a foreign language. And the students taking the academic writing course will work largely in Wikieducator as they improve their writing skills and knowledge about formal writing discourse. Finally, I will also be facilitating 5th semester students who will be teaching for the first time English in front of a group of peers. They'll work in groups and students will be ask to plan, implement, and reflect on their English classes in terms of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. All the students from the three classes are pre-service English language teachers studying a BA in ELT at the UAA.

I will be sharing more about these classes throughout the semester either in the form of a blog post or in my TESOL Talk program.

University research

Since February of this year, I have been involved with a research line with two other colleagues investigating the noticing hypothesis among EFL learners practicing their writing skills. This next semester we are slated to begin the data analysis and will begin writing up our findings for peer-reviewed publications. This semester we are scheduled to present talks at RECALE (in September), MEXTESOL (October), and ANUPI (October). More information will be provided as our research unfolds.

Edukwest writer

I am happy to announce that as of this month, I will be joining a group of writers for Edukwest: On the search for better education. Edukwest (originated by Kirsten Winkler) covers a wide variety of topics and formats all dedicated to improving education. I look forward to joining in on the discussion and if you have any interest in anything related to education, I recommend that you check out the website!

Well, that's about it. The latter part of 2011 will certainly prove to be the busiest semester yet, but am happy to be involved in so many worthwhile projects. If there is anything in particular that interests you and you would like to know more, feel free to contact me by clicking on the email icon below.

Getting geared up for the latter half of 2011

2011-07-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

The rest of 2011 is turning about to be quite busy...

MOOCs and Credit-Seeking Students (#edumooc)

2011-07-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

I do make most all of my content openly available, but to get credit at least at my university, they have to take the class. - Ray Schroeder

Credit-seeking students taking a MOOC fascinates me. Being on the outside of the administrative aspects of a MOOC, it's hard to know how well university students respond to such a format and to the degree that a course syllabus is publicly shared with others. I'll share a few questions I have.

Are universities willing to publish a syllabus online under a Creative Commons (CC) license? And if so, which CC license is most common: CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, etc.?

Are credit-seeking students open-authoring content (under CC or public domain) and if so, what type of preparation, if any, if needed? For example, do they understand CC and how to respect the license? Are they given a choice of licenses? Etc.

How do (tenured) teachers feel about open-authoring? Are universities giving credit to non-refereed, online, and open publications? Should universities give credit to open authoring?

My assumption is that those credit-seeking students taking #edumooc 2011 were instructed to blend in with the rest of the participants and interact in a way that meets the objectives of the course (whatever they are). But it would be interesting to know who the students are and/or what their objectives are for the class as well. In fact, I don't see anything wrong with explicitly stating expressive objectives for the course (i.e., throughlines, understandings, etc.) and still having each participant chart out their own learning sequence and goals for the course.

I know perhaps this is new for many universities, but if I were to design a MOOC, I would be pushing for open educational processes (OEPs), that is, openly publish every (or nearly every) administrative and academic function (say on a wiki) and just see what kind of response gets generated among other participants. So far, there seems to be just as much talk about the MOOC itself as there is about the course content.

Expressive objectives for #edumooc 2011

2011-06-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

The objectives I have for #edumooc 2011 include the following:

connect with others that ultimately go beyond #edumooc 2011

find the right mix of technologies that enable me to pull information to me (i.e., RSS feeds, GR, twitter hashtags, etc.) in such a way that enables me to interact with content that is most meaningful and relevant to me

interact with other participants by posting to Twitter, blogs, and study groups.

avoid any participation in Google Groups, forums, and other group-like technologies

not to have any behavioral objectives set a priori, but to reflect on what I learned (or didn't) based on my prior experience; mold objectives as I progress through the experience

What objectives have you set for edumooc and what technologies help you set or achieve those objectives? Do study groups influence the way in which you set and achieve your objectives?

One way to participate in #eduMOOC

2011-06-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

The "prepared" learner... (#eduMOOC)

2011-06-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

By “well prepared,” I mean someone who has had the necessary prerequisite learning experiences and who has succeeded in those experiences. A person who is well prepared is ready for the current learning experience in terms of prerequisite knowledge and skills.

This may be true in formal educational settings (to a degree), but I think it doesn't apply as much to MOOCs. Depending on the content of the course, an open, online course provides all participants to share ideas in the manner they choose. Learning can occur not only through question and answer, but simply through a process of sharing diverse opinions. Sharing diverse opinions can occur regardless if one is a novice or expert as terms such as "novice" and "expert" can be misleading representations, even in formal circles. That's why ZPD falls short in adequately explaining how people learn in real life; that is, that we learn when we teach others regardless of the expert or novice labels. When there is open interaction, invariably individuals are teaching and learning through an iterative and reciprocal process. Teaching others can occur at many levels and this is what ultimately happens in a MOOC - Instruction occurs most often through the participants themselves.

Depending on the subject matter, it is quite possible to enter a MOOC unprepared and leave prepared (the act of becoming prepared is a learning process). The point really is whether a person knows more after (and because of) having taken the MOOC or not?

eduMOOC

2011-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

The official start of eduMOOC is June 27. Please carefully read this page for important information about MOOCs in general. Thanks to all who have made suggestions and have contributed to the effort! A special long-distance thanks to Wayne Mackintosh, director of the OER Foundatio n for help, encouragement and support of eduMOOC!

Many new resources will be added as we approach the beginning of the MOOC on Monday! There will be a new space to post your network connections (email, blogs, twitter, etc. addresses). We are working on details of streaming our weekly live panels to serve many hundreds of simultaneous viewers via both flash fixed and mobile configured streams. The Twitter back channel (hashtag #eduMOOC) will certainly be especially active during those Thursday (US Central Time/Day) panel discussions.

So, how do you plan to participate: primarily in forums (e.g., Google Groups, Moodle, etc.) or via Twitter and blogs?

Bridging the Gap between ELT Theory and Practice

2011-06-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

My response to Bridging the Gap between ELT Theory and Practice...

I draw a parallel between closing the gap between theory and practice with closing the gap between what teachers know and what they actually do. But beyond that, do teachers understand theory when it applies to an actual classroom experience? That is, how do teachers interpret (or reframe) a theory - which is a generalization - to a particular educational situation? And what does that process look like?

I think most would agree that applying a theory (or creating a theory) is contextually-laden with numerous confounding variables which teachers can't always control. Certainly, planning is an essential part of learning, but it's the reflection-in-action and the resulting outcomes that matter as well. I'm not sure if success in the classroom can be planned for, but it can be one (of many) factors that can promote a more educative learning experience for each student (and teacher).

You say, ELT theories do help in beefing up our predictability in the field of teaching...

I would argue that theories are most useful when grounded in actual classroom experiences. That is, how can I explain what just happened in my classroom from a theoretical perspective (assuming that it's always possible). This is in contrast to a theoretical inclination (prediction) of how students are likely to behave a priori. For me, this is the difference between applied linguistics and linguistics applied respectively.

How do you view theory and practice in ELT?

Using Twitter in the Classroom

2011-06-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

In response to Using Twitter in the Classroom...

I've never used Twitter in my classes because many of my students still do not have Internet access on their mobiles. But since I teach and tweet, I do have a couple of suggestions.

1. Twitter inside the classroom: Conduct a "normal" class but have students tweeting at the same time. Setup a projector and computer (with access to the Internet) and project the backchannel on the wall using a decided-upon hashtag. Incorporate the backchannel into the class itself. This technique can also provide instant feedback when determining whether students are getting what you are talking about in class or not.

2. Twitter outside of class: Conduct a backchannel (again using hashtags) that students contribute to outside of class. Incorporate the backchannel in the f2f class as needed. This can also help to see if students are getting it and can contribute to collaborative learning (or colearning) since students can ask questions or complete assignments using Twitter both individually and in groups.

How have you used Twitter in the classroom?

Action research in education

2011-05-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

This presentation covers basic approach on educational action research and basic technique on this research.
Detail Description:

Topics:

1. What is educational action research?

2. Approach on educational action research.

3. The importance of educational action research.

4. How to do an action research in education and report the result.

Cultivating Personal Learning Networks through Participatory Action Research in ELT

2011-05-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I'm presenting a talk on PLNs and action research at UPTC 2011 and wanted to include a link here for those who were interested. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions below!

Cultivating Personal Learning Networks through Participatory Action Research in ELT on Prezi

Ethical Leadership

2011-05-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

As part of an overall educational philosophy, ethical considerations, along with aesthetics, provide an axiological framework of what makes a good school. The perception of what makes a school good has been associated with the notion of accountability which has given rise to high-stakes testing (e.g., No Child Left Behind Law) in ways that fundamentally limit how common assessments measure a wider range of student learning (Conley, 2011, p. 20). Reaching a point in today’s schools where “students...find [ethical reasoning] as important in their lives as content knowledge (Sternberg, 2011, p. 39) will place equal importance on how the curriculum, assessment, and instruction subsume issues of reality (i.e., metaphysics), knowledge (i.e., epistemology), and values (axiology). In turn, students become better prepared for college and a career when an educational and life-long philosophy mirror each other.

Ethics in schools, based on moral principals, embodies various dimensions of schooling:

community involvement, school buildings and grounds, classroom spaces, organization of knowledge, uses of learning materials, philosophy of education, teaching strategies, staffing patterns, organization of students, rules and regulations, disciplinary measures, reporting of student progress, administrative attitudes, teacher roles, and student roles (Wiles & Bondi, 2007, p. 46).

Within each of these dimensions, a variety of moral principles can be applied, especially notions of compassion, wholeness, connectedness, inclusion, justice, peace, freedom, trust, empowerment, and community (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2007). Indeed, given the 10 different moral principles to be applied to the variety of dimensions possible, prioritizing becomes foremost. Academic leaders (i.e., instructional leaders) therefore play a central role in how ethical behavior emerges at the school, faculty, and classroom levels such that a holistic approach to curriculum, assessment, and instruction afford learners the greatest probability of succeeding in a global society where many future jobs have yet to be created.

Areas where ethics play a central role

Ethics play a key role in schools; among faculty where professional development is the result of a democratic, iterative, and reciprocal communicative process; and within the classroom according to how student achievement excels through a democratic, iterative, and reciprocal communicative process among students as well. The three areas - school, professional development, and classroom - are not meant to be viewed as existing in isolation, but rather adapting to each other (i.e., as an overall complex system) temporally and spatially according to network principals, namely in terms of connection and contagion (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). A moral imperative thus becomes the skillful utility of a network that incorporates moral principals within the different dimensions that reside in each of the three aforementioned areas.

School ethics. Of the four major philosophies (i.e., idealism, realism, experimentalism, and existentialism), idealism and existentialism render a juxtaposition worth considering since both are considered at either ends of the philosophical continuum (Ornstein & Hunkins, 2009); ethics or values are seen as being “absolute and eternal” at the conservative end, while existentialists view values as being “freely chosen” and “based on individuals’ perception” (p. 37). To resolve this juxtaposition, philosophies and their respective reasonings must adhere to the “four pillars of a professional learning community: mission, vision, values [or collective commitments], and goals” (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, p. 166). Particularly, moral judgments are best viewed in terms of overall mission and vision statements that set out to achieve goals by establishing collective commitments.

Rooting school-wide goals in collective commitments comprises of equitably input from all educational stakeholders (i.e., board members, administrators, teachers, parents, & community leaders). For example, Adlai Stevenson High School, one of the most successful schools in the United States (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008), creates collective commitments that ultimately drive what the faculty do on a daily basis. The following provides some detail:

Every candidate for a teaching or administrative position is asked to review them before applying, and the statements are referenced repeatedly as part of the interview process. The commitments are studied and discussed during new staff orientation as veteran representatives of the group review each commitment and stress its significance. Experienced teachers tell net staff members, ‘this is what it means to join this faculty. These are the promises we make to each other and to our students. These are the promises that have made us who we are, and we ask you to honor them.’ Upperclassmen mentors review the student commitments with incoming freshmen during the first week of school and stress, ‘these are the commitments the students who have gone before you have made to make Stevenson the school it is today. If you honor these commitments, you can be assured you will be successful here, and you will make an important contribution ot our school’s tradition of excellence’ (Wiles & Bondi, 2007, p. 150).

Action-based, collective commitments communicate not only express expectations in terms of what needs to be done at the individual level but are developed and adapted in such a way that groups of people are not marginalized. “Consensus decision-making” (n.d.) leads to a more professional learning community by virtue of taking one a collective and connective responsibility.

Ethics and professional development. Ethics and establishing a moral imperative is key to addressing the problems the field of education faces with regard to professional development. The problem with professional development is that it

(a) frames accountability in terms of summative assessments that assumes academic outcomes through simplistic relationships of causes and effects,

(b) adheres to a singular approach to differentiated instruction that focuses more on the program than on people and practices,

(d) ignores that much of learning is unintentional and is emergent,

(e) recognizes that interaction is more important that simply the content or topics being discussed (Reeves, 2010).

To address these issues, a sense of right and wrong consequently drives the change process both in teacher behavior as well as individual perspective. Implementing change in how professional development is planned and implemented stems from a moral imperative towards a common good (both for the individual and the professional learning community) and not a top-down directive expressed in terms of an obligation imposed by those outside the school (e.g., state legislation, standards, etc.) (Reeves, 2009). Hence effective professional development remains ethical as long as professional learning, as opposed to professional development, endures through an ongoing, situated learning cycle that considers the learner, context, and the learning itself that emerges through the experience (Webster-Wright, 2009).

Professional learning and ethical behavior become apparent through an explicit moral code. Typically, a moral code is stated in terms of what a teacher can do (i.e., beneficence) and what a teacher cannot do (i.e., non-maleficence) (Ozturk, 2010) while other principles include justice, fidelity, and autonomy (Cook & Houser, 2009). If principals, for example, are fair and just, respectful of established rules and principles, and are mindful of individual freedoms and diversity, then so too will the faculty (Karakose, 2007). Essentially, modeling a code of ethics and professional learning transitions an individual from a novice to becoming an expert learner through ethical decision making; that is, doing “the right thing for the right reasons at the right time” (McDonald, Walker Ebelhar, Orehavec, & Sanderson, 2006, p. 162).

Classroom ethics. Classroom ethics builds a democratic, learning community. A democratic learning community involves “creating the kinds of ties that bond students together and students and teachers together and that bind them to share ideas and ideals” (Sergiovanni, 1999, pp. 120-121). Ties between students and teachers provide the basis for understandings the sociocultural complexities that influence academic progress. For example, pedagogy can serve “as a bridge between...home culture and the classroom” (Cammarota & Romero, 2011, p. 492) in ways that can benefit the community, referred to as “social justice youth development” (p. 490). As a matter of ethics, understanding what goes on at the homes of students can offer insight into a pedagogical perspective that both adheres to the curriculum as well as making learning experiences that are more relevant and meaningful for each student.

A classroom with international students can bring about ethic complexity. A common goal among parents from collectivistic societies (e.g., Kenyan, Mexican, Japanese, etc.) is that students should be moral and should maintain a strong bond with family; a goal that can be more different for those accustomed to a more individualistic society that places individual success as a top priority (Rothstein-Fisch & Trumbull, 2008). Moreover, a paradigm of sameness, or tendency to presume that international students, each with their own ideology, will assimilate to the dominate culture, is likely to continue especially among poor, urban schools where little parental involvement is commonplace (Caruthers, 2006). Even in terms of becoming bilingual, a non-equivocal notion, investigating how some students take on an additional language (e.g., English as a second language) and respective cultural underpinnings while others find it a challenge will lead to a shift from “‘colorblind’ philosophies” (Fitts, 2006, p. 356) to one that is pluralistic and more accepting in the way diversity is celebrated within a school.

Ethics play a role in how schools adapt values or collective commitments throughout the system, how academic leaders guide teachers in their own professional development, and how teachers promote a more equitable education within the classroom. Ethics and moral reasoning that align with the mission, vision, and goals of the school provide the direction and justification by which all educational stakeholders are to follow. Similarly, academic leaders guide novice and expert teachers alike via a moral code based on beneficence and non-maleficence. Finally, ethical behavior within the classroom leads to a more equitable learning experience based on the backgrounds and sociocultural upbringings that is specific to each learner. As a result, the academic leader (i.e., instructional leader) must mediate between collective commitments (i.e., values, moral code, moral reason, and moral judgment), professional development - more accurately termed as professional learning, and current teaching practices to avoid treating each discipline as separate and independent endeavors. In doing so, curriculum, assessment, and insturction is not seen as solely a specific issue related to the teaching practice, but more of connective and collective responsibility that is more likely to lead to greater academic achievement.

Ethical concerns relating to curriculum, assessment, and instruction

As ethical considerations regarding schools, professional development, and the classroom are not handled in isolation, nor are issues concerning curriculum, assessment, and instruction. The job of the academic leader is to find meaning and relevance to school goals and state and national standards in terms of the written, taught, and tested curriculum; student assessment; and differentiated instruction. The ethical academic leader (EAL) is the primary mediator through which all educator stakeholders voice an opinion and are given the freedom to act in ways that are beneficial and are consensual to all learners.

The EAL and the curriculum. An academic leader uncovers standards that can be incorporated within the curriculum in terms of big ideas and deeper understandings (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007). An EAL can tie standards and the curriculum to the learner’s perspective. For example, 51 states and territories within the United States have adapted the Common Core State Standards Initiative (National Governors Association, 2009), which is a state-led effort, involving many teacher leaders in determining what students should learn. Many more academic leaders will be required to continue adding and adapting standards, sharing common assessment practices, and determining at a local level how the standards will be met. Determining how the standards will be achieved will take careful and critical pedagogical mindsets to assure that the student’s perspective and identity are not lost as they pertain to the curriculum.

“Ethics, values, and culture play an important role towards the influence of individual perspective” (Hiriyappa, 2009, p. 85). Indeed, cultivating a learner’s identity can contradict educational ideologies that mitigate race as a factor in advancing the educative experience. For example, colorblindness, as an ideology, “is particularly persuasive because it seems to advocate for an equal and just society. However, in a just society skin color would not be associated with degrees of power or privilege” (Patterson, Gordon, & Groves Price, 2008, p. 97). One solution is by implementing a “critical language pedagogy” that aligns a learners identity through language that instead of ostracizing one’s ethic, value system, and culture, creates a curriculum that provides “opportunities for students to compare multiple perspectives on language variety and dialects, including sociolinguistic perspectives, widespread language ideologies, and students’ own preexisting viewpoints” (Godley & Minnici, 2008, p. 338). The role of the academic leader is to mediate between state standards, the curriculum, and those educational stakeholders that are involved in the teaching the curriculum (i.e., students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community leaders) by allowing for open, iterative, and reciprocal discourse that is tolerant of diversity.

The EAL and assessment and instruction. The EAL champions formative assessment in schools. “Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics” (Popham, 2008b, p. 6). Since formative assessment entails both instructional adjustments on the part of the teacher and modifications to current learning tactics, the EAL’s role is to provide opportunities for sharing contextual circumstances by which such student-and-teacher adjustments and modifications take place. From an ethical standpoint, the benefit of sharing assessment practices throughout the learning community is to avoid assessment bias, or the “qualities of an assessment instrument [or technique] that offend or unfairly penalize a group of students because of students’ gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, or other such group-defining characteristics” (Popham, 2008a, p. 73). So not only must honest and deliberate discourse among students, teachers, and administrators cover student and teacher adjustments, but it should also be sensitive to students’ identity in the way in which they are being assessed.

Ethical instruction connects the building of cognitive structures with the affectiveness of teaching and learning. EALs who promote through assessment and instruction “metability” (Garner, 2007) or “ongoing, dynamic, interactive cycle of learning, creating, and changing” (p. xv) among learners and at the same time encourage a spiritual dimension to learning that include elements of “acceptance, curiosity, enjoyment, flexibility, patience, and perseverance” (p. 133), among others are creating opportunities for learners to not only gain knowledge and skills, but also to become more driven to act on that knowledge and skills through a “social emotional learning” (Hoffman, 2009, p. 533) or even an “existential intelligence” (Armstrong, 2009, p. 182). Students and teachers alike need to feel like they belong, that their contributions to a particular community has some form of impact, and that mistakes are celebrated as opportunities for improvement. It is the EAL’s job to assure that such an environment exist so that knowledge and abilities can be put to use in ways that benefit the individual as well as the group (i.e., school or network).

EALs are most effective then consistently taking part in ethical decision making. An EAL typically chooses between one of three different ethical decision criteria when choosing to take action: utilitarianism, rights, and justice (Robbins, 2001). A utilitarian approach to decision making seeks to take action in ways that benefit the higher number of educational stakeholders. Respecting the rights of students, teachers, etc. is another factor when making a decision that impacts the quality of learning in schools. And third, decisions are made by being fair or just to those who will be affected by the change. Of the three criteria, the utilitarian approach is least favorable because it ignores individual rights and personal equity (Robbins, 2001). EALs directly or indirectly answer to all stakeholders through the ethical decisions they make on a day-to-day basis. Some decisions will require consultations with other teachers, the EAL ultimately making the final decision, at times the team alone will make the decision, the EAL may make the decision alone, or the decision may be made between the team of teachers and the EAL (Alvy & Robbins, 2010). Thus, ethical decision making is a highly situational act that if done consistently well, can lead to sustainable professional learning and high-impact improvements to student achievement.

Ethical decision making occurs at various levels. Schools establish mission statements, vision statements, values (e.g., collective commitments and moral codes of ethics), and goals that not only must align with each other but also impact each other based on the major philosophy a school happens to adapt, typically choosing among one or more of the following: idealism, realism, experimentalism, and existentialism. The role of an EAL is to contribute to the development of these four pillars that make up a professional learning community (DuFour, DuFour Eaker, 2008) so that teachers begin respecting certain collective commitments through a certain moral code. Beneficence and non-maleficence, along with justice, fidelity, and autonomy, hence guide the novice teacher to becoming an expert in terms of knowledge base, skill set, and disposition. Finally, ethical behavior in the classroom lends itself well to building a democratic learning community among students. Many notions applicable to professional development and ethics also apply to the classroom with the central theme of recognition of sociocultural factors that negate the paradigm of sameness assumption based on “colorblind” philosophies. The EAL’s responsibility is to create an open discourse whereby teachers are able to share how ethics within their respective classrooms celebrate diversity and learner identity in ways that promote a more educative experience. School ethics, ethical professional development practices, and classroom ethics then link to how the curriculum is written, taught, and tested.

Academic leaders have a moral obligation to contribute to standards (e.g., the Common Core State Standards Initiative) then find innovative ways to develop a curriculum that is relevant and meaning to the students at a local level. The curriculum should promote big ideas and understandings (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007) in ways that promote critical thinking skills. In turn, the EAL serves as a mediator in bringing together state standards, or what students should be learning, to a local level in determining how students are to meet or exceed said standards. Assessment and instruction, commonly viewed less as being separate distinctions and more as an iteration between informally assessing the students and making subsequent adaptations to instruction and students modifying future study tactics, is to unite cognitive development (i.e., metability) with a spiritual dimension of acceptance, curiosity, enjoyment, flexibility, patience, and perseverance (Garner, 2007). Therefore, the successful EAL will have the ability and wherewithal to know when to make key decisions, who to involve in the decision-making process, and will have the foresight to anticipate how the decision will impact each of the educational stakeholders in ways that both preserve individual rights and retain overall justice.

References

Alvy, H. & Robbins, P. (2010). Learning from Lincoln: Leadership practices for school success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Armstrong, T. (2009). Multiple intelligences in the classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Cammarota, J. & Romero, A. (2011). Participatory action research for high school students: Transforming policy, practice, and the personal with social justice education. Educational Policy 25(3), 488-506. doi: 10.1177/0895904810361722.

Caruthers, L. (2006). Using storytelling to break the silence that binds us to sameness in our schools.The Journal of Negro Education, 75(4), 661-675. Retrieved fromhttp ://search .proquest .com /docview /222067743?accountid =28180

Christakis, N. & Fowler, J. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Conley, D. (2011, March). Building on the common core. Educational Leadership, 68(6), 16-20.

Consensus decision-making: A virtual learning center for people interested in making decisions by consensus (n.d.). Retrieved from http ://www .consensusdecisionmaking .org /

Cook, A. & Houser, R. (2009). ASCA ethical standards and the relevance of eastern ethical theories. Journal of School Counseling, 7(28), 1-24.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Fitts, S. (2006). Reconstructing the status quo: Linguistic interaction in a dual-language school. Bilingual Research Journal, 30(2), 337-365. Retrieved fromhttp ://search .proquest .com /docview /222026601?accountid =28180

Glickman, C., Gordon, S., & Ross-Gordon, J. (2007). Supervision and instructional leadership: A developmental approach. New York: Pearson.

Godley, A., & Minnici, A. (2008). Critical language pedagogy in an urban high school English class. Urban Education, 43(3), 319-346. doi:10.1177/0042085907311801

Hiriyappa, B. (2009). Organization behavior. New Delhi: New Age International (P) Limited, Publishers.

Hoffman, D. M. (2009). Reflecting on social emotional learning: A critical perspective on trends in the united states. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 533-556. doi:10.3102/0034654308325184

Karakose, T. (2007). High school teachers’ perceptions regarding principals’ ethical leadership in Turkey. Asia Pacific Education Review, 8(3), 464-477.

McDonald, W., Walker Ebelhar, M., Orehovec, E., & Sanderson, R. (2006). Ethical decision making: A teaching an dlearning model for graduate students and new professionals. The College Student Affairs Journal 25(2), 152-163.

National Governors Association. (2009). Fifty-one states and territories join common core state standards initiative: NGA center, CCSSO convene state-led process to develop common English-language arts and mathematics standards [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.6c9a8a9ebc6ae07eee28aca9501010a0/?vgnextoid=1716f7e861ed3210VgnVCM1000005e00100aRCRD&vgnextchannel=759b8f2005361010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD

Ornstein, A. & Hunkins, F. (2009). Curriculum: Foundations, principles, and issues. New York: Pearson.

Ozturk, S. (2010). The opinions of preschool teachers about ethical principles. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice 10(1), 393-418.

Patterson, J., Gordon, J., & Groves Price, P. (2008). The color of caring: Race and the implementation of educational reform. Educational Foundations, 22(3-4), 97-116. Retrieved from http ://www .eric .ed .gov /ERICWebPortal /detail ?accno =EJ 857641

Popham, W. (2008a). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. New York: Pearson.

Popham, W. (2008b). Transformative assessment. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Reeves, D. (2009). Leading change in your school: How to conquer myths, build commitment, and get results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Reeves, D. (2010). Transforming professional development into student results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Robbins, S. (2001). Organizational Behavior: Custom edition for University of Phoenix. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Rothstein-Fisch, C. & Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing diverse classrooms: How to build on students’ cultural strengths. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sergiovanni, T. (1999). Building community in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sternberg, R. (2011, March). Building on the common core. Educational Leadership, 68(6), 34-39.

Webster-Wright, A. (2009). Reframing professional development through understanding authentic professional learning. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 79(2), 702-739, doi: 10.3102/0034654308330970

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2007). Schooling by design: Mission, action, and achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Wiles, J. & Bondi, J. (2007). Curriculum development: A guide to practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

TESOL Talk (3)

2011-05-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

TESOL talk is for anyone interested in teaching English to students of other languages. Participants are encouraged to bring their own perspective and experience to the open discussion so that we might find new and innovative ways to improve how English is learned.

(Open) Agenda: (1) introductions, (2) attendees will bring up theories, experiences, and/or opinions as talking points, and if time permits (3) presenter will bring up theories, experiences, and/or opinions as talking points.

CU Sessions

Description: Next week's session will take attendees through the process of designing a performance task for the EFL/ESL classroom.

TESOL Talk (3) by Benjamin Stewart

Get your own Virtual Classroom

Performance task teacher interviews

Leading Professional Practice

2011-05-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

"Think photo album, not snapshot...thinking like an assessor...means considering an array of evidence that will show that our efforts have succeeded” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2007, p. 230). Linking evidence to success implies connecting effect data with cause data through leadership and learning that can be represented in the following four ways:

“Lucky: good results with no understanding of the reasons; replication of success not probable

Losing: poor results with no understanding of the reasons; replication neither probable nor desirable

Learning: poor results with clear understanding of the reasons; replication of mistakes not probable

Leading: good results with clear understanding of the reasons; replication very probable” (Reeves, 2010, 17).

Thus, assessing the development of teachers and determining the “relational support and social capital” Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 69) needed emerge through the collection of ongoing evidential learning as it becomes an overall learning ecology. Formal learning, experience, mentoring, performance support, self-learning, community-based learning, and informal learning act as types of learning in a learning ecology (Siemens, 2006) that each hold special support requirements needed in order for teachers to be successful. That is, being successful occurs both at the level of each individual teacher as well as at the level of professional learning community, both of which are ongoing and have an iterative and reciprocal effect on each other as they relate to improving student achievement.

Currently, the teaching profession experiences enormous gaps between what teachers expect and what they receive when it comes to professional development (Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009, as cited in Reeves, 2010) . Professional development is defined as “that which results in improvements in teacher’s knowledge and instructional practice, as well as improved student learning outcomes” (Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009, p. 3). Indeed, measuring student learning stems from indicators that transcend those that focus only on professional development (i.e., what a teacher knows and can do); that is, measuring what a teacher knows and can do serve as a subset to more global measurements that relate indirectly to effects and causes linking to improvements to student achievement. In order for professional development to have relevance and meaning for educators, a purposeful, professional learning community is created “where members have developed a community of mind that bonds them together in special ways and binds them to a shared ideology” (Sergiovanni, 1999). A shared ideology is a conglomerate of opinions and perspectives that amass student achievement indicators to individual teacher goals through open and diverse discourse among local stakeholders and educators outside the school system.

The bedrock of improving teachers’ knowledge base, instructional practice, and student achievement culminates from the ongoing pursuit for a network of personal learning communities. A professional learning community (PLC), for example, is defined as educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006, as cited in DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, p. 14).

Collective inquiry occurs at a variety of levels, from the least to most important: congeniality, collegiality, and community of practice – the last being the most important in terms of fostering value-added leadership (Sergiovanni, 2005). But instead of viewing a community of practice as a single unit of analysis, or viewing one’s identity in terms of one particular community (Wenger, 1998), a more connectivist view places the learner (i.e., educator) at the center of one’s personal learning network whereby one’s identity is cultivated through the various interactions among the different communities that may exist, whether face-to-face or online. Hence, a “common purpose or domain of knowledge” which has in the past been referred to as being a tenet of a community of practice (Hanson-Smith, 2006, p. 302) now becomes a tenet of ongoing personal inquiry in terms of how an educator (i.e., learner) expects to influence the various communities of interest and how these communities might influence the educator.

In order to understand how to assess the development of teachers, academic leaders (i.e., principals, material designers, etc.) recognize the different responsibilities that teachers have. Since the implementation of the Paideia program in 1982, teachers have been known to assume one of three roles in leading learners to higher achievement: (a) didactic, (b) coaching, and (c) seminars (State University.com, 2011). More recently, these three roles have been characterized as “didactic instruction, facilitation of understanding and related habits of mind, and coaching of performance (skill and transfer)” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2007, p. 129). When not teaching, teachers assume yet more responsibilities by “contributing to the curriculum, analyzing results based on sound indicators, and being live-long learners” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2007, pp. 155-166). Undeniably, assessing teachers is complex given that much depends on how the academic leader creates the environment for interactive, diverse, and open discourse to occur. The academic leader, therefore, accepts a special role and responsibilities when integrating communal expectations with the personal needs and interests of the teachers as well as the students.

An academic leader holds responsibilities that are distinct from those typically found among teachers. The following strategies, for example, are actions one should take followed by others that one should not take:

Do...

“Use humor.

Include all teachers and content areas.

Explain strategies briefly and then give participants a chance to practice or observe them.

Explain strategies briefly and then give participants a chance to practice or observe them.

Build from teachers' existing work.

Present yourself as a continual learner.

Include samples of student work.

Do not...

Talk too much.

Talk and then ask, ‘Any questions?’

Present too many strategies.

Focus solely on the leader's own classroom” (Margolis, 2009).

Moreover, academic leaders conduct a gap analysis (i.e., the different between the ideal or vision and reality) then set professional development efforts that are devoted to closing this gap (Wiggins and McTighe, 2007). The knowing-doing gap alludes many school organizations, enough to claim that most educators know how to improve schools but lack the resolve to carry it through (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008).

Assessing the development of teachers takes into account the different types of learning within a learning ecology. “Formal learning, experience, mentoring, performance support, self-learning, community-based learning and informal learning” that collectively make up a learning ecology (Siemens, 2006) are the pathways for educators to increase their knowledge and pedagogical skill set. Academic leaders channel these pathways such that teachers can continue to become more effective and efficient curriculum experts, analysis to school results, and life-long learners. As an example, teachers may need training on entering various online communities such as Classroom 2.0 (2011) where they may begin connecting with other teachers from similar educational contexts. Teachers may also contribute to WikiEducator by developing professional development projects around certain subject areas such as teaching English to students of other languages (Stewart, 2010). Contributing to wikis can serve as a mentoring program that promotes cooperative and collaborative interaction between the mentor and mentee. Finally, online Moodle classes (Stewart, 2011) can help academic leaders to support experienced-based collaboration and support for those teachers who are offering a blended or distance-learning course to students.

Academic leaders can assess development needs by promoting teacher leaders. The following are five primary ways that teachers can function as leaders in a school:

“Train and provide staff development for other teachers

Coach and mentor other teachers

Develop and write curriculum

Be decision makers and leaders of school-making teams

Serve as members of teams, committees, task forces, or quality circles” (McEwan, 2003, p. 104).

Distributed leadership then shifts responsibilities to those who have the “will, expertness, temperament, and skills” (Sergiovanni, 2005) and is not bound to one’s position, rank, or status. Moving teachers from being dependent to independent to interdependent educators centers on building formative assessment measures that arise from frequent contact and open communication throughout the learning community (i.e., learning network). The three-minute walk-through (Downey, Steffy, Poston, & English, 2009) allows for frequent dialogs between supervisor and teacher as a means for reflection on action. Instead of traditional observations that judge a teacher’s performance at a single point in time, observing and giving feedback that leads to some future change in behavior or perspective is at the heart of what formative assessment sets out to achieve. Ideally, open collaboration between teachers and academic leaders permits the learning progression to flourish as teachers are encouraged to take risks and share personal experiences related to current teaching practices.

Networking leadership entails a shift in rationality. A clockwork I theory of management holds that leadership requires a top-down directive as to what and how people should work (i.e.,ends-ways-means approach); whereas a clockwork II theory of management asserts that people are rational only when working cooperatively and collaboratively through open communication (i.e., means-ways-ends approach) (Sergiovanni, 2005). Rational people strategic plan through a linear process that might include the following nine steps: (a) “identify common beliefs, (b) identify the organization's vision, (c) identify the organization’s mission, (d) formulate policies, (e) conduct external analysis, (f) conduct internal analysis, (g) state objectives, (h) develop and analyze alternative strategies, and (i) design action plans” (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2007, pp. 234-235). Similarly, as in the case of technical rationality, there would be an a priori agreement exists regarding ends (Schon, 1983) such that a consensus (and possibility conformance) would be established and stated in terms of being “shared” (e.g., shared mission, shared vision, etc.). An alternative is a networked approach that better accounts for the unpredictability of human behavior. Properties such as connections and contagion that establish the structure and function of social networks (Christakis & Fowler, 2009), reflecting-in-action (Schon, 1983), and other divergent notions subscribe to a leadership rationality that is both top down and bottom up.

Professional development that is emergent evolves through an ongoing pursuit of action research. In order for teacher development to emerge, academic leaders establish a learning environment such that “human flourishing, practical issues, knowledge-in-action, and participation and democracy” (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 5) influence each other. The goals of action research are generally two fold: (a) “improving practice or developing individuals” and (b) “transforming practice and participants” (Herr & Anderson, 2005, p. 9). Through a cyclical process that involves problem setting (i.e., establishing research questions), a review of the literature as it pertains to problem setting and solving, taking action, and reflecting on both past and future actions (Jaipala & Figga, 2011), a praxis approach to teaching is much like what the field of applied linguistics seeks to do with teaching language learners. A praxis approach in the area of applied linguistics can be viewed by reflecting on the following question: “How can theory, no matter how global its claims, be interpreted so as to be relevant to local circumstances?” (Widdowson, 2010, p. 10). It is precisely the merging of theory and practice that drives professional development improvements which can only be achieved through ongoing, open discourse that celebrates diverse and perspectival discussions of actions taken as well as changes in personal beliefs and opinions.

Supervision in Practice

Hiring new teachers at a new school permits academic leaders to get to know the teacher candidates' personal beliefs about teaching and learning, their personal accounts of past experiences in the classroom and as a life-long learner, and their overall attitude or habits of mind as they pertain to what they know and what they can (or cannot) do. The hiring process would include a written exam, a mock class, and would end with an interview. The final interview gives teacher candidates the opportunity to explain further their perspective based on what they shared in the written exam as well as during the mock class, along with other topics related to them as a learner. The grade levels include teachers who wanted to teach high school band (levels 10, 11, and 12 grade learners) and the objective is to hire a music director and an assistant music director.

The hiring process begins by administering a written exam. The written exam tests for levels of understanding related to music theory, musical instruments, and what-if scenarios that would require candidates to express opinions on typical instances they might face in the classroom. The what-if scenarios would be based on the art and science of teaching (Marzano, 2007) which might include questions like the following:

What would you do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate the successful interpretation of a musical piece?

What would you do to help students effectively interact with a musical piece, the composer, and the learners themselves?

All questions in the written exam would also relate to the various myths (Zmuda, 2010) that lead to misunderstandings about teaching and learning. And finally, the written exam would cover the candidate’s understanding of the common core state standards (2011) and how common assessments in music might “potentially use the novice-expert continuum to chart student progress toward the higher levels of cognitive functioning...” (Conley, 2011). Once the written exam is completed and has been graded, a mock class would be scheduled.

Various techniques would be used to evaluate the mock class. Candidates would be required to submit a lesson plan beforehand to explain the objective of the class, to anticipate problems that learners might face, and to present a rationale for implementing chosen activities. A rubric would be used to measure a variety of criteria such as teacher presence, student engagement, and general flow of the class. The class would also be videotaped so that further reflection and analysis could be made. Possible interview questions would be generated based on the results of the written exam and what was observed during the mock class in order to better understand the candidate’s perspective and understanding.

The interview would bring all prior information about the candidate together so that the hiring committee would be in a better position to ask more appropriate questions related to what the teacher knows, can do, and beliefs pertaining to overall disposition. The recorded class would provide context to questions related to teaching practice, and the results from the written exam would serve to inquire about possible gaps in understanding. Knowing how the candidate feels about learning in the 21st century would also help communicate to the hiring committee the importance of life-long learning given the ubiquity of web tools available (e.g., wikis, blogs, websites, learning management systems, etc.). For example, candidates who know how to cultivate their own personal learning networks demonstrate how a on-demand support can lead to becoming a better learner. Videlicet, how a musical director interacts with other musical directors through musical contests, online communities, and workshops can help promote better understandings and teaching practices that ultimately lead to higher student achievement.

Part of implementing a written test, mock class, and follow-up interview is to measure the developmental needs of the individuals to be hired. Once the musical director and assistant director have been hired, further supervision will be needed so that mission and vision statements, values, and school goals are communicated and followed through. Simply, it should be understood between musical director and academic leader (e.g., principal, curriculum designer, etc.) what should be taught, how it should be taught, and what authentic literacy is present (Schmoker, 2011). This might include a discussion about what musical pieces are being prepared, how students are preparing for the pieces, and how many public concerts will be performed. More generally, an understanding as to the role of arts in a students overall development would help assure that students are getting a well-rounded education and that students are given the opportunity to excel in a variety of ways.

Goal and problem-setting for the musical director and the assistant director orientates professional development efforts that not only adheres to the mission and vision of the school but also helps motivate teachers to reach personal achievements as well. A mentoring program includes both inhouse faculty and outside faculty and provides the means for reflective practice to germinate through participatory action research (PAR). PAR thus becomes the standard process by which all professional development endeavors originate, heeding to an open discourse that is acceptable to diversity, interaction, and autonomy. Goal and problem-setting is a manifestation of open discourse within a learning ecosystem. And as a person (e.g., musical director) adapts to the environment, so too might a teacher adapt a goal or problem. Therefore, teacher supervision becomes a reflective journey between administrators and teachers ascribed more to how and why a goal or problem exist than simply what the goal is in and of itself. The role of the supervisor is to direct, facilitate, and coach each teacher so that reflective practice leads to becoming a better teacher and not simply associating certain traits concerning being a successful teacher.

As a supervisor guides teachers from dependency to independency on to interdependency, the tendency is to think in terms of professional development as a means to being a good teacher. But in a dynamic system such as one found in a school district, it is the act of becoming that is vital. Depending on the situation, most teachers may be the expert or novice at any given time, to the degree that even labeling teachers as dependent may not be helpful from a supervisory standpoint. Academic leaders are at their best when they can recognize the circumstances that result in teachers being dependent, independent, or interdependent and then to create a discourse that either leads them to becoming more interdependent or finds ways to take advantage of a teachers interdependency in new and innovative ways relating to leadership. As Hillary Rodham Clinton boast that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to raise a becoming and capable teacher.

References

Classroom 2.0. (2011). Retrieved from http ://www .classroom 20.com /

Christakis, N. & Fowler, J. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Common core state standards initiative: Preparing America’s students for college and career. (2011). Retrieved from http ://www .corestandards .org /

Conley, D. (2011, March). Building on the common core. Educational Leadership, 68(6), 16-20.

Downey, C., Steffy, B., Poston, W., & English, F. (2009). Advancing the three minute walkthrough: Mastering reflective practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Glickman, C., Gordon, S., & Ross-Gordon, J. (2007). Supervision and instructional leadership: A developmental approach. New York: Pearson.

Margolis, J. (2009). How teachers lead teachers: When teachers lead instructional change, these seven strategies help them engage their colleagues and get everyone on board. Educational Leadership, 66(5), Retrieved from http ://www .ascd .org /publications /educational -leadership /feb 09/vol 66/How -Teachers -Lead -Teachers .aspx

Hanson-Smith, E. (2006). Communities of practice for pre- and in-service teacher education. In P. Hubbard & M. Levy (Eds.), Teacher education in call (language learning & language teaching) (p. 302). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publication.

Herr, K. & Anderson, G. (2005). The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

McEwan, E. (2003). 7 Steps to effective instructional leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.

Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (2008). The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. London: SAGE Publications.

Reeves, D. (2010). Transforming professional development into student results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Schmoker, M. (2011). Focus: Elevating the essentials to radically improve student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sergiovanni, T. (2005). Strengthening the heartbeat: Leading and learning together in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing knowledge. Retrieved from http ://www .elearnspace .org /KnowingKnowledge _LowRes .pdf

State University.com. (2011). Paideia program - implementing the paideia program. Retrieved from http ://education .stateuniversity .com /pages /2307/Paideia -Program .html

Stewart, B. (2010). Collaborative Understandings. Retrieved from http ://wikieducator .org /index .php ?oldid =635039

Stewart, B. (2011). Collaborative Understandings. Retrieved from http ://bnleez .com /moodle /

Wei, R., Darling-Hammond, L., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the U.S. and abroad. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2007). Schooling by design: Mission, action, and achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Widdowson, H. (2010). The theory of practice. In G. Cook & S. North, Applied linguistics in action (pp. 8-18). London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Zmuda, A. (2010). Breaking free from myths about teaching and learning: Innovation as an engine for student success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Research Methods and Critique

2011-05-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that “rules are not necessarily sacred; principles are” (as cited in Wiggins and McTighe, 2007, p. 111). One notion is to believe that teaching has become too personalized and has lead to criticism of teaching practices that make most educators “defensive and resistant to the message” (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2007, p. 111), while others may feel that a “principled eclecticism” is more appropriate that allows each teacher to take on a personal methodology that teachers “work out for themselves what is effective in their own classrooms” (Scrivener, 2005, p. 40). Consequently, reaching an interpretable consensus as to what makes a good teacher and learner depends on the particular ontological stance one takes within a critical constructivist worldview.

How one becomes a good teacher depends in part on how subjectivity is engulfed through the notion of critical constructivism. The term constructivism itself can be viewed as the absence of objectivity whereby “nothing exists before consciousness shapes it into something we can perceive” (Tobin & Kincheloe, 2006, p. 8). Indeed, “how humans learn by building knowledge cooperatively through social interaction and the application of prior knowledge (as tools) in a continual interpretation of ongoing experiences” (Bentley, Fleury, & Garrison), 2006, p. 7) becomes the basis of a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Critical constructivism derives from constructivism and critical theory forwards how power imbalances that exist in schools and knowledge relationships mature or dissipate within particular contexts (Love, 2008). In terms of becoming a better teacher, negotiating interpretations links what one does in the classroom to a personal identity within a community. Since social interactions develop and recede through an iterative and reciprocal process, social connections become expressed also in terms of being intersubjective versus being dichotomized in terms of objective and subjective opposites.

Critical constructivism and its focus on relationships leads to an entitled approach to leadership. “Entitlement seeks to place those who have the ability to act in the forefront of decision making (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 43). Empowering individuals to act can be influenced by self-perception. Zmuda (2010) put forth the notion that “the way I see myself and the contributions I hope to make affects the way I conduct myself as a learner” should replace the myth “the way I want to be seen by [others] affects the way I conduct myself as a learner” (p. 171). Hence, as members of a community are empowered and who have the will and ability to act (i.e., to change), the idea of meaning becomes “assigned” instead of being “inherent in external phenomena” (Bently, Fleury, and Garrison, 2006, p. 16). Accordingly, the act of decision-making becomes an ever-important 21 century skill (Dodge, 2008) for all learners as negotiation of meaning becomes distributed throughout a network.

A variant albeit supportive view of critical constructivism is accepting the process of learning via a network as a metaphor. The epistemology of connectivism is the assertion that learning occurs through the formation of networks that are formed by the individual; that is, knowing rests in the individual and resides in the collection (Siemens, 2006). As with critical constructivism, interactions with others form the (strong and weak) ties that make one’s reality personal. But reality in and of itself consists of not only subjective objects and facts - as is the case in constructivism - but also objective objects and facts as well (Boghossian, 2006). Therefore, connectivism (as a learning theory) rejects the assumption that knowledge is propositional and instead assumes that knowledge (i.e., knowing, truth, etc.) is emergent, nonreductivist, and contextual. How one views knowledge impacts the way research is conducted.

Researchers choose designs based on a particular worldview. Creswell (2009) mentioned that the type of design one chooses (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods) will depend on the particular worldview one subscribes to: “postpositivism, constructivism, advocacy/participatory, or pragmatism” (p. 6). The researcher who adheres to a critical constructivist approach incorporates to various degrees critical theory, pedagogy, and thinking as well. Critical theory in particular can be defined as being “normative: ...to delineate a more just and free future. The term critical refers not only to a critique of social conditions, but also to Kant’s idea of self-reflective examination of the limits and validity of our own knowledge and understandings (McLean, 2006, p. 9). Moreover, researchers who subscribe to participatory action research (PAR) grounds human interactions as “participative, interdependent ecology of life” (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 17), a framework which underpins a critical constructivist approach.

Critical constructivism unites social constructivism theory with critical theory in a way that begins to blur the distinct differences researchers once had when classifying data strictly in terms of being quantitative or qualitative. The interactions themselves are central to entitling members of a network to take on leadership roles that are based on will and ability and not solely on title, position, or pay grade. By distributing leadership throughout the network, participants begin to have a voice as power laws begin to shift in favor of those who were once marginalized or on the peripheral. By establishing the “relational trust and social capital” (Sergiovanni, 2005, p. 21) that teachers need to achieve personal goals, the whole network (i.e., all stakeholders) begins to flourish as interdependent teachers begin forming a Gemeinschaft; that is, a community that considers more the “we” as opposed to solely the “I” (Sergiovanni, 1999). When assessing teacher capacities in terms of what makes a good teacher, social capital, community, and relational trust viewed through a critical constructivist lens become an integral part of an individual’s perception, perspective, and social constructions.

Article Review

Huang (2010) conducted a case study (i.e., qualitative research design) of an English language teacher at the Nanjing University in order to see what makes a successful English-as-a-foreign (EFL) teacher in China. The EFL teacher who was the target of the research was Miss H (pseudonym) who taught general English courses to undergraduate students studying Chinese Medicine - English courses are a requirement in order to graduate. Other participants included “24 English-major students who were in their second year of university and who had a teacher-student relationship with Miss H; and eight English teachers who were in the same staff room as Miss H.” (p. 22). The purpose of the study was to investigate the following three research questions:

“What are the unique qualities of Miss H (including her personal traits, professional achievements and teaching style) that make others perceive her as a successful EFL teacher in China?

How does Miss H teach English effectively in the classroom?

What other roles does Miss H undertake in her teaching position” (p. 20)?

The results of these questions are not meant to be inferential to other populations, but rather generalizable to a particular group outside the given context.

The theoretical framework for what makes a good teacher, in principle, was summarized into three categories: (a) “professional knowledge or achievements”, (b) “personal traits”, and (c) “teaching style” (p. 21). In order to determine how Miss H was classified within these three categories, data collection involved interviews, surveys, and focus groups with the participants previously mentioned. The first step was to interview Miss H in order to get personal data about her education and experiences. The second step was to apply a survey to Miss H’s eight colleagues so to obtain an outside perspective of Miss H. And the final step was to interview and conduct focus groups with a sample of Miss H’s students, getting yet a third perspective of Miss H’s knowledge, skills, and disposition as an EFL educator.

The findings of the study included a variety of perspectives. Miss H believed that motivation was crucial to becoming a successful EFL teacher in China and went on to mention that “learners play the central role in teaching” (p. 23). Some of Miss H’s colleagues described her as enthusiastic, responsible, having rich knowledge, cross-cultural awareness, and communicative competency among many other descriptors. Students mentioned that “practising as much as possible, interest in the language, and perseverance” (p. 24) were the three main aspects of Miss H’s teaching that they enjoyed the most. Additional roles Miss H takes on involves working with parents and students with life problems and working with faculty in exchanging teaching methods and techniques. The authors overall purpose was to expose what a successful EFL teacher is and does in China with the hopes that others will reflect on their own practice in finding ways to improve.

Article Critique

At first glance, Huang’s (2010) qualitative study into what makes a successful EFL teacher in China appears to place perspective on that of the participants and not on the researcher. For example, a triangulation approach was taken that included interviews, surveys, and focus groups and included collecting data from not only Miss H (i.e., the target of the study) but also from her students and colleagues. Opinions from Miss H, students, and colleagues were then categorized and represented using a vast number of descriptors: “responsible attitude, easy-going, good command of the language” etc. (p. 24). Thus, one could infer that the researcher was sharing only the values and the assumptions of the participants by simply reporting what participants said. But this positive description of Miss H was mainly presented with little contextual background. What is left out of Miss H’s profile is whether she has tenure, the number of her colleagues that have tenure, the profiles of her colleagues who participated in the study (e.g., professional achievements, educational background, professional experience, etc.), the relationships the colleagues have with Miss H, the number of hours in front of a group Miss H has in comparison with her colleagues, and the criteria used to select the students and colleagues who were to participate in the study. As a result, there is the possibility that the lack of contextual description with regard to how Miss H works and the hidden assumptions that exist as it pertains to the research methodology used to conduct the study might blur the objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity of the constructions.

The notions of objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity as cognitive and social constructions emerge through a network. Huang (2010) failed to demonstrate the two key components required of any type of personal network: “connection” and “contagion” (Christakis & Fowler, 2009, p. 16). The authors added that networks adhere to the following rules: (a) “we shape our networks”, (b) “our networks shapes us”, (c) “our friends affects us”, (d) “our friends’ friends’ friends affect us, and (e) “the network has a life of its own” (pp. 17-24). Therefore, instead of applying a research methodology that limits perspectives (i.e., reality) on the individual, decontextualized accounts of reality (i.e., subjectivity), constructions should emerge by investigating who Miss H interacts with (i.e., the connection) and the type of tie (i.e., the contagion) that exists with each person or node that makes up her personal learning network. A “macro” view of human interactions, indeed subscribes to Freire’s unabashedly appeal “to an ‘objective’ reality that we all can come to know through careful, critical analysis” (Olson, 2006).

The way in which constructions are formed are also representative of how the world is shaped. Huang (2010) seems to view the world primarily in terms of personal accounts of reality, absent of the actual interactions that actually are required in order for an individual to form a perception in the first place. As there are a variety of key principles at play - “communication, transparency, knowledge, innovation, regulation, accountability, ownership, citizenship, and power” (McCarthy, Miller, & Skidmore, 2004, pp. 11-21) - communication, knowledge, and power will be considered in ways of offering addition insight into the subject of what makes a successful EFL teacher. A change in focus as to how the world is shaped would imply a different set of research questions that would shift the direction of the research as well (see Table 1).

Table 1

Current research questions

New set of research questions

What are the unique qualities of Miss H (including her personal traits, professional achievements and teaching style) that make others perceive her as a successful EFL teacher in China?

How does Miss H teach English effectively in the classroom?

What other roles does Miss H undertake in her teaching position

How does Miss H cultivate a personal learning network in a way that makes others perceive her as a successful EFL teacher in China?

What type of ties exist within Miss H’s personal learning network that have the most impact on her current teaching practice?

How influence does Miss H have on her personal learning network that extends her role beyond her teaching position?

Clearly, changing the focus of the study in this fashion changes the scope of the investigation as well. Researching constructive processes requires a more narrow and in depth look at a particular phenomenon, and in the case of Miss H, perhaps the need to limit the study to one or two research questions. But in doing so, a more descriptive account of what is takes to be a good teacher would result.

Continuing the network metaphor, psychosocial dispositions also impact how adult learners are influenced by and how they guide others through ongoing social interaction. “Psychosocial dispositions act as mediating pathways between the students’ demographic characteristics (e.g., parental education, age, and gender), academic programs (e.g., arts or sciences), and their academic achievement in college” (Clifton, Perry, Roberts, and Peter, 2008, p. 687). Those adult learners about to enter the education profession also have doubts about their chosen career and the control they have over what they can teach (Daniels, Clifton, Perry, Mandzuk, and Hall, 2006). The issue of control and career anxiety among those participants in Huang’s (2010) study was not addressed but might influence perspective and the manner in which both students and colleagues expressed opinions. However slight, a diversity of opinion (e.g., psychosocial dispositions of the teachers) can provide additional context when interpreting the attributes needed to be a successful teacher. From a critical constructivist approach, the act of allowing Miss H. to express her opinions on career anxiety and control over what she does in the classroom and the control she has with regard to her personal learning network would provide a more informative description of her perceived success. In other words, instead of presenting current attributes that she possesses, a look at her becoming a successful teacher would provide more insight into the process of formulating personal psychosocial dispositions.

Having control over one’s teaching practice and how one views the role within the profession is a complex and emergence phenomenon. As mentioned earlier, three general interactive types are constantly in motion: (a) how an educator affects others (either directly or indirectly), (b) how others affect the educator, and (c) how the network itself emerges as a whole (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). As a complex adaptive system (Fryer, n.d.), an educator recognizes how one adapts or co-adapts to a “learning ecology: formal learning, experience/game, mentor, performance support, self-learning, community-based learning, and informal learning” (Siemens, 2006, pp. 39-40). Power relations, sustainability, and decision-making are but a few examples of how different contexts can influence and be influenced by the type of interactions that take place between individuals and artifacts. Huang’s (2010) research ignored how Miss H arose from the determinants of her ever-changing environment or what affect her socio-cultural background had on her success. Specifically, what effect did Miss H have on her environment, what effect did her environment have on her, and what transformative change of events emerged on their own. Knowing when and how she made decisions over time would better explain how she became a successful EFL teacher.

The decision-making process as part of a three-part harmony also includes andragogy and critical thinking skills (Moore, 2010), and links cognitive and social constructions via personal perception. When teachers are entitled to make decisions, an increase in the following domains exist: affective aspects, job satisfaction, job commitment, and perception of workload (Chi Keung, 2008). Each of these domains create personal constructions that are both cognitive and social in nature. Researching the relationships that exist between the participants of the study allows personal reflection and learning and the critical skills required to make decisions under particular contexts. It is precisely these type of analysis where behavioral and perspectival patterns begin to emerge. By analyzing the conditions by which constructions arise, researchers explain phenomena in terms of individual impact on others (i.e., the network), as well as the impact others have on the individual. Moreover, researchers who investigate the process of construction through relationship building may also see self-organisational tendencies as the network itself grows and develops on its own. Understanding what makes a good EFL teacher lends itself to an analysis based on critical constructivism that ultimately empowers not only the successful teacher but those who are in contact with the successful teacher to improve as well. Thus, learning that is meaningful and relevant to personal goals emerges through both independent and interdependent experiences (Moore, 2010).

Understanding the purpose of a critical constructivist approach helps researchers to decipher meaning through context. Individual perspective that stems from the participants themselves allows for a more descriptive and explanatory account of a particular phenomenon in terms of time and space. Temporal and spatial relations that are shared through multiple interpretations not only provide the constructions but also the conditions by which the constructions emerged. For example, if we understand the context by which an EFL teacher made a particular decision or a self-reflection that demonstrates a particular habit of mind, the reader has a better understanding of an intersubjective reality. A critical constructivist approach to research is not only epistemological but is also ontological as well. Knowing how one becomes a good EFL teacher is equally important (perhaps more so) as knowing what a good EFL teacher is as a final conclusion. As a result, the reader gains a better understanding of the learning ecology (i.e., environment, socio-cultural context, etc.) by experiencing the interactions (i.e., connections and contagions) that determine (a) the affects the EFL teacher has on others, (b) the affects others have on the EFL teacher, and (c) the self-sustaining attributes of the learning network itself. Having said experiences underpins the notion that actionable understandings are better positioned when they lead to a more suitable praxis.

References

Bently, M., Fleury, S., & Garrison, J. (2006). Critical constructivism for teaching and learning in a democratic society. Retrieved from http ://web .utk .edu /~mbentle 1/CritConstruct _JOT _07.pdf

Boghossian, P. (2006). Fear of knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chi Keung, C. (2008). The effect of shared decision-making on the improvement in teachers’ job development. New Horizons in Education, Vol 56, No. 3, pp. 31-46.

Christakis, N. & Fowler, J. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Clifton, R. A., Perry, R. P., Roberts, L. W., & Peter, T. (2008). Gender, psychosocial dispositions, and the academic achievement of college students. Research in Higher Education, 49(8), 684. Retrieved from http ://search .proquest .com /docview /205928998?accountid =28180

Creswell, J. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Daniels, L., Clifton, R., Perry, R., Mandzuk, D., & Hall, N. (2006). Student teachers’ competence and career certainy: The effects of career anziety and perceived control. Social Psychology of Education, 9, 405-423, doi: 10.1007/s11218-006-9000-0.

Dodge, B. (2008). Decision-making: A neglected skill for 21st century learning. Retrieved from http ://www .slideshare .net /bdodge /decisionmaking -a -neglected -skill -for -21 st -century -learners

Fryer, P. (n.d.). What are complex adaptive systems. Retrieved from http ://www .trojanmice .com /articles /complexadaptivesystems .htm

Huang, Z. (2010). What makes a successful EFL teacher in China? A case study of an English language teacher at Nanjing university of Chinese medicine. English Language Teaching, 3(3), 20. Retrieved from http ://search .proquest .com /docview /839109638?accountid =28180

Love, K. (2008). Transformative pedagogies. Retrieved from http ://www .slideshare .net /drloveccsu /transformative -pedagogies -critical -constructivism -presentation -806580

McCarthy, H., Miller, P., & Skidmore, P. (2004). Network logic: Who governs in an interconnected world? Retrieved from http ://www .demos .co .uk /files /networklogic .pdf

McLean, M. (2006). Pedagogy and the university: Critical theory and practice. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Moore, K. (2010). The three-part harmony of adult learning, critical thinking, and decision-making. Journal of Adult Education, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp.

Olson, G. (2006). History, praxis, and change: Paulo Freire and the politics of literacy. Retrieved from http ://www .jacweb .org /Archived _volumes /Text _articles /V 12_I 1_OlsonFreire .htm

Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (2008). The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. New York: SAGE Publications.

Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing knowledge. Retrieved from http ://www .elearnspace .org /KnowingKnowledge _LowRes .pdf

Scrivener, J. (2005). Learning teaching: The essential guide to English language teaching. Oxford. Macmillan Education.

Sergiovanni, T. (1999). Building community in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sergiovanni, T. (2005). Strengthening the heartbeat: Leading and learning together in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2007). Schooling by design: Mission, action, and achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Zmuda, A. (2010). Breaking free from myths about teaching and learning: Innovation as an engine for student success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Leadership Framework

2011-05-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

School-wide leadership and professional development endeavors that set out to close the gap between what teachers know and what teachers actually do oftentimes fall short of expectations (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008; Reeves, 2010; Reeves, 2009). During the 200th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, President Barack Obama (2009) declared the following: [Lincoln] recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can - although we are responsible for our own fates, in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do (as cited in Alvey & Robbins, 2010, p. 39). Stakeholders who cooperate and collaborate in an “open, diverse, autonomous, and interactive” (Downes, 2010) manner afford educators an equitable opportunity to cultivate their learning through the development of a personal learning network (PLN) that is maintained through iterative and reciprocal social relationships. Creating a connective community of educators provides the “social capital and relational trust” (Sergiovanni, 2005) required to help close the knowing-doing gap that ultimately leads to higher academic achievement for each student.

Like students, academic leaders (e.g., supervisors) and teachers have varying degrees of readiness with regard to personal knowledge, skill sets, and habits of mind. Academic leaders in particular also have the responsibility of fostering a learning organization through professional development endeavors that lead to closing the gap between the vision and reality of the school (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007). Closing the gap between the vision of the school and reality necessitates working with each teacher - depending on individual readiness - based on the behaviors that emerge within the teacher-academic leader relationship, namely listening, negotiating, and problem solving.

Listening that Leads to Learning

Interaction between the AL and the educator requires careful listening in order to better understand the educator’s position with regard to a particular phenomenon. But the way in which listening becomes a part of the discourse between the AL and educator will depend on the type of interaction and the behaviors that follow. In the three-minute walkthrough (Downey, Steffy, Poston, & English, 2009), the type of reflective discourse that results between the AL and the teacher will depend on the type of interaction that transpires (e.g., direct, indirect, and collaborative). Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon (2007) suggested that the listening phase as part of the overall reflective discourse (i.e., listening, clarifying, encouraging, reflecting, presenting, problem solving, negotiating, directing, standardizing, and reinforcing) will occur depending on the type of supervisory intervention taking place: “directive control behaviors, directive informational behaviors, collaborative behaviors, and nondirective behaviors” (pp. 144-149). Understanding the perspective of the teacher will depend on the type of supervision that is established between the AL and the educator and how the ongoing supervision transforms the educator from being dependent to independent to ultimately interdependent. Active listening becomes an iterative and reciprocal process that allows for such transformation.

To understand the perspective of the teacher, ALs actively listen to both what the teacher says and the intention of the what the teacher is saying. Giving teachers the AL’s undivided attention, noticing the teacher’s verbal and nonverbal communication, and responding to the teacher’s message through dialog help build the relational trust required to be a good leader (Hoppe, 2006). According to J.L. Austin, the sender’s message can have both an intended meaning or illocutionary force and the actual meaning as interpreted by the interlocutor which is referred to as perlocutionary force (as cited in Lycan, 2008; Kaplan, 2010). Thus, listening becomes the precursor to understanding the intended meaning of the speaker which corresponds to an acceptance of diversity.

Diversity throughout a professional learning community demands active listening via open dialog. President Lincoln had a way “of bringing aboard individuals with diverse personalities, ideas, and ambitions sheds light on the value of separating person from practice and choosing competence over personality” (Alvy & Robbins, 2010). Actively listening to teachers leads to professional learning that focuses more on people and practices than on programs (Reeves, 2010). And listening to parents and the community establishes mutual trust and respect among stakeholders who have a direct interest in the achievement levels of the students (Voltz, Sims, & Nelson, 2010). Accepting and respecting others through active listening enables a professional learning community to lead and flourish as a result of purposeful dialectic. Engaging in a purposeful dialectic comprises of negotiating meaning in terms of closing the gap between current teaching practices (i.e., reality) and what teachers should be practicing or the vision statement of the school (i.e., ideal).

Negotiation of Meaning that is Navigational and Nurturing

Negotiating meaning between teacher and AL employs an iterative and reciprocal process of listening and responding. Extending the previous notion of active listening and illocutionary and perlocutionary forces, negotiation leads to meaning-making processes based on the ongoing interpretations that emerge between speakers during the conference. A Wittgensteinian view of language is that people converse by way of a “language game” and that there is no difference between the meaning and use of a speech act (Lycan, 2008). Similarly, distinguishing between analytical, synthetic, and emotive statements helps speakers to interpret what is logically to be true, what can be proven through the scientific method, and what are statements of emotion (Gutek, 2004). Indeed, language and meaning that transpires over the course of a teacher conference forms interpretations and understandings of not only certain behaviors and perspectives but also is representative of the power relationship that exists between the educator and AL.

Power relationships between AL and educators influence social identities. When teaching children, power relationships dictate how the teacher sees the student and how the student sees the teacher (Rogers, Kramer, & Mosley, 2005). How an educator and AL relate to each other depends on the type of help that is given: “dependency and autonomous-oriented and assumptive help” (Nadler, Halabi, Harapz-Gorodeisky, & Ben-David, 2010). The authors argue that dependency-oriented help (i.e., the recipient turns to rely on the helper) and autonomous-oriented help (i.e., tools are provided to the recipient to solve problems) actually lead to the formation of “high and low status groups” (p. 188), doing little to resolve the power relations that exist. In contrast, assumptive help results from a solicitation on the part of the recipient as is viewed as being more preservative of self-identity. The negotiation of meaning, therefore, overlaps between the meaning of understanding via a dialectic and the meaning of the type of help that is being implemented. Instead of viewing negotiation as solely dyadic, negotiation across a network creates the dynamic that empowers all members to develop self-identity while recognizing the power relationships that can best serve the entire connected community.

Negotiating meaning through networks dissolves the expert/novice dichotomy that can formulate into status groups. Downes (2010) promotes a “connective intelligence” through the creation of community via the “semantic principal” that applies to the following four domains: (a) “autonomy”, (b) “diversity”, (c) “openness”, and (d) “interaction”. In this way, the educator becomes a part of a network that relies on more than just the AL for professional advice, but rather learns from colleagues and outside experts as well. The learning process emerges through having a choice in one’s learning, a respect for diversity in opinions, maintaining transparency in one’s learning, and interacting with others by sharing experiences and perspectives. Thus, the expert/novice notion that is often associated with one’s role is substituted for an expert/novice distinction linked to a particular activity or event where any particular moment warrants experts and novices depending on personal understandings, skill sets, and dispositions. Hence, negotiating meaning between educators becomes more reliant on assuring the success of others throughout the network and less about power relations that stifle the network.

Problem Setting and Solving Through Action Research

Active listening and negotiation of meaning intertwines with problem setting and solving. Taking a pragmatic view of learning and doing through experience, the educator and AL can co-create a personal learning path based on the mission and vision statements of the school. For pragmatists, general questions related to one’s experience are of the utmost importance: “How do we know? What is the most accurate way of knowing? How do we know that our ideas and beliefs are true?” (Gutek, 2004, p. 73). And “experience is experimental, and all of our beliefs are fallible. Meanings, and hence the determination of truths within their structures, are never final, but are subject to revision” (Rosenthal, 2007, p. 5). Implementing a systematic approach to setting and solving problems (e.g., educators focusing on a personal weaknesses in their teaching practice) permits learning by doing and reflection in a way that is conductive to the semantic principle mentioned earlier.

Action research ties the practitioner to the problem. Within the education field, the term practitioner research has gained popularity “which implies that insiders to the setting are the researchers, whereas in other traditions of action research, the researcher is an outsider who collaborates to varying degrees with insider practitioners or community members” (Herr & Anderson, 2005). When comparing participatory action research (PAR) in particular with the pragmatic approach of experimentalism, “PAR adherents agree that is breaks from the positivist and empiricist science” (Reason & Bradbury, 2008, p. 31). Hence positionality (insider or outside) can vary in PAR, but nonetheless remains a “negotiated process” between educator and AL until favorable responses result. (Ravitch & Wirth, 2007).

Kemmis (1982) put forth the notion that the “spiral of action cycles” begins with the development of “a plan of action to improve what is already happening” (as cited in Herr and Anderston, 2005, p. 5). The AL and educator collaboratively sets a problem through negotiating meaning, which leads to understandings, and active listening. The type of reflective dialog that results from such collaboration will depend on whether the teacher is at the dependent, independent, or interdependent stage. What follows is a description of an action research proposal that is intended to develop improved teachers through a cyclical process that includes setting a problem, taking action, observing the results of the action, and reflecting on the final experience.

Academic Leadership in Practice

Academic leadership requires actively listening, negotiating meaning, and problem setting and solving. What follows is a plan that will explain how academic leadership emerges from a distributed entitlement that affords a learning community to be open, interactive, diverse, and autonomous (Downes, 2010) through a problem solving cycle of problem setting, action, observation, and reflection. The goal of the plan is to create the educational ecosystem necessary for educators to connect with others so that they might take on a more active role in their own professional development, a professional development endeavor that consequently all stakeholders are responsible.

Before describing the plan, a description of the educational context is necessary. The plan is meant for educators teaching English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) at the University of Aguascalientes (UAA) (Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, 2011) located in the country of Mexico. Teachers’ ages range from 24-60 and although most teachers have a bachelor’s degree in English language training, others have varying degrees in medicine, business, and other degrees in the humanities. Years of experience range from one year to 12, and about half of the teachers hold a master’s degree. There are no EFL educators with doctorate degrees. The EFL educators teach general English in a program that consists of eight levels, each level constitutes 80 hours of study. EFL students can choose between classes during the week, Monday through Friday for one hour each day, or Saturday classes that run five hours each session. Teachers teach between one to four classes per semester and are paid monthly for their services. Teachers are responsible for attending various face-to-face meetings throughout the semester as well as certain online workshops that are held both synchronous and asynchronously, and their participation is considered as part of their evaluation that occurs each semester.

The Plan

Over the last year, the EFL educators at the UAA have participated in various online workshops (Stewart, 2010a; Stewart, 2010b) that were intended to promote more interaction and teacher autonomy. The objective of these two virtual workshops was to provide faculty the opportunities to interactive with not only themselves but with other EFL educators from around the world. At the same time, EFL educators learned about different technologies that could be used to not only promote their own learning but also as tools to be used in their own classroom teaching. During the semester a few face-to-face sessions were scheduled but the intention was that teachers would work through the modules of the workshop interdependently. The result of these efforts were less than stellar in that few teachers participated even though their participation was included in their teacher evaluation.

This semester - January-June of 2011 - a similar plan was implemented but with a slightly different focus. To promote more interaction between the EFL educators and the AL (i.e., coordinating department of the English program), the online workshop was centered around PAR (Stewart, 2011). Prior workshops lacked the collaborative participation among teachers and more importantly lacked the evidence of problem setting and solving capacities required to address improvements to current teaching practices. To resolve this, a student questionnaire (Stewart, 2010c) was administered to 65% of the student population (n=900) in order to gain insight on student perspective and current teaching practices. Some question items included topics such as teacher-to-student talk time, the use of English versus Spanish in the classroom, and the types of feedback teachers use to assess learners. The results of the questionnaire were shared with teachers shortly after the questionnaire was administered to allow teachers to reflect on the results and on their own practice in relation to a variety of topics. Thus the workshop began by having the faculty to develop an area to improve upon in any combination of the following domains: (a) communicator of the English language, (b) pedagogical skill set, and/or (c) knowledge of how languages are learned or applied linguistics (Bartels, 2005).

Once the teachers developed a problem, they were asked to create a Google Docs (2011) as a means for fostering a negotiation of meaning (and thus understandings) as well as active listening skills. The document was shared with at least one other colleague as well as the AL so to create at least a triadic discourse of shared experiences. The document includes the following three sections: (a) the problem or area the teacher feels needs the greatest improvement, (b) scheme of work that outlines content and language to be covered on a weekly basis, and (c) a personal reflection on how current thoughts, perspectives, and behavior have changed in terms of the initial problem that the teacher set. Since the document is shared with another colleague and the AL, the problem and the reflection can manifest itself in many different ways: (a) the educator can work alone, (b) groups of educators can work together, and (c) the educator and AL can work collaboratively. And the three types of manifestations can shift throughout the action research cycle as the EFL educator becomes more interdependent by gaining more confidence in making personal learning more transparent and participatory. The listening process and the negotiation of meaning indeed become an iterative and reciprocal process that all but eliminate the fixed expert and novice dichotomy often associated with traditional views of teacher supervision.

The final part of making learning more transparent is by sharing thoughts and experiences in an open forum. Since the distance English language training workshop is open to anyone, EFL educators working at the UAA have the chance to collaborate with other EFL educators from around the world. As they are expected to reflect and share thoughts in Google Docs (with a colleague or colleagues of their choice and their AL), they are also expected to share something in an open forum for everyone to see. The sharing between Google Docs and the open forum might be the same reflection but it does not have to be. The EFL educator can decide on how much or little to share in the open forum just as long as some amount of reflection is occurring. As with Google Docs, the open forum is designed to provide the means for EFL teachers to share more with others in the field of EFL education. The entire workshop is meant to be a place where teachers feel comfortable to take risks, reflect on their results, and share those results with others. Without interaction, diversity, autonomy, and openness (Downes, 2010), teachers will not be able to actively listen to each other, negotiate meaning that leads to understandings, and problem set and solve their way to improved classroom practice.

Challenges and Expectations

Planning a professional learning community around listening, negotiating meaning, and problem setting/solving behaviors renders a professional network that is open, diverse, autonomous, and interactive (Downes, 2010). The time and place for active listening between the EFL educator and the AL will depend on if the teacher is dependent, independent, or interdependent. The AL’s responsibility is to guide the teacher so that a personal transition can take place, moving the teacher from dependency to interdependency. Moreover, active listening is the ability to understand now only what an EFL educator says explicitly but the way in which statements are being expressed (i.e., tone, register, nonverbal communication) and what is not being said. Active listening thus becomes a precursor to negotiating meaning whereby speakers are giving and receiving illocutionary and perlocutionary forces that aid in the collaborative meaning-making process. Moreover, negotiation between individuals or groups can involve power relationships that can negatively influence one’s social identity. For this reason, creating a community based on the “semantic principal” yield educators who are more autonomous, diverse, open, and interactive (Downes, 2010) as the concept of negotiation extends through a more networked discourse as opposed to the typical dyadic discourse often associated with more traditional approaches. Through active listening and negotiating between faculty members themselves and the AL, problem setting and solving occurs at both the individual and group level such that the educational experience is viewed as “experimental” (Rosenthal, 2007, p.5).

The challenges of implementing a relationship between the AL and faculty that incorporates active listening, negotiation of meaning, and problem setting and solving constitute the creation of a professional learning network that emerges from a participative action research process that is daring, sharing, and caring. Specifically, teachers rely on relational trust and social capital (Sergiovanni, 2005) that extends throughout the network in order to achieve personal goals that are aligned with the mission and vision of the school. Although the expectations are that EFL educators are to share ideas and experiences openly, the learning ecosystem needs to exist beforehand in order to encourage faculty to take more risks and to learn from their successes and failures through ongoing and open discourse with others. By creating interdependent educators, accountability becomes a shared responsibility, commonly expresses as one for all and all for one while still maintaining autonomy and respecting the personal goals of each teacher.

References

Alvy, H. & Robbins, P. (2010). Learning from Lincoln: Leadership practices for school success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Bartels, N. (2005). Applied linguistics and language teacher education. New York: Springer.

Downes, S. (2010). Dimensions of a learning network. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/dimensions-of-a-learning-network-5560762

Downey, C., Steffy, B., Poston, W., & English, F. (2009). Advancing the three minute walkthrough: Mastering reflective practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Google Docs. (2011). Retrieved from https://docs.google.com

Gutek, G. (2004). Philosophical and ideological voices in education. New York: Pearson.

Herr, K., & Anderson, G. (2005). The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty. Thousand Oaks; CA: Sage Publications.

Hoppe, M. (2006). Active listening: Improving your ability to listen and lead. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

Kaplan, R. (2010). The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lycan, W. (2008). Philosophy of language: A contemporary introduction. New York: Routledge.

Nadler, A., Halabi, S., Harapz-Gorodeisky, G., & Ben-David, Y. (2010). Helping relations as status relations. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver (Eds.) , Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature (pp. 181-200). Washington, DC US: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/12061-010

Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (2008). The SAGE handbook of action research: Participatory inquiry and practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Reeves, D. (2009). Leading change in your school: How to conquer myths, build commitment, and get results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Reeves, D. (2010). Transforming professional development into student results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Rogers, R., Kramer, M. A., Mosley, M., Fuller, C. (2005). Professional development as social transformation: The literacy for social justice teacher research group. Language Arts, 82(5), 347. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196859334?accountid=28180

Rosenthal, S. (2007). C.I. Lewis in focus. The pulse of pragmatism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Ravitch, S. & Wirth, K. (2007). Developing a pedagogy of opportunity for students and their teachers: Navigations and negotiations in insider action research. Action Reseach, 5(75). doi: 10.1177/1476750307072878

Sergiovanni, T. (2005). Strengthening the hearbeat: Leading and learning together in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Stewart, B. (2010a). Collaborative Understandings. Retrieved from http://wikieducator.org/PFLE

Stewart, B. (2010b). Distance English language training workshop. Retrieved from http://bnleez.moodlehub.com/course/view.php?id=11

Stewart, B. (2010c). Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. Retrieved from https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dFBlczJ1Vi1qc2dpMEtqWF9wVll1cEE6MQ#gid=0

Stewart, B. (2011). Distance English language training workshop. Retrieved from http://bnleez.com/moodle/course/view.php?id=3

Voltz, D., Sims, M., Nelson, B. (2010). Connecting teachers, students, and standards: Strategies for success in diverse and inclusive classrooms. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.uaa.mx/

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2007). Schooling by design: Mission, action, and achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

I Don't Want More Professional Development

2011-04-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

I Don't Want More Professional Development

After several failed attempts to post a comment to TeachPaperless, I decided to post here instead...

I believe we all should want more professional development (with no quotation marks).

Professional development or growth – learning - is personal (not social) and stems from social interaction for the most part. “Social development” is partly the (synergetic) result of personal development within the network and is partly the influence the network has on the individual. The development of one’s personal learning network can be viewed as professional development, but also can be too vague to have much meaning. Forming relationships, for example, does not automatically equate to professional development unless there is a formal system that links what an educator knows and what an educator can do to an improvement in student achievement.

The formal system that links what an educator knows and can do to higher student achievement is participatory action research (PAR). PAR allows educators the opportunity to goal/problem set, take action, collect data, and reflect on past actions and project on future actions. PAR bridges theory and practice in that it can tie general theory to a local context or vice versa. PAR sharing in particular is helpful to those professionals who work at a school or organization since typically missions and vision statements must be met as well.

“The world is not professional. The world -- at least our communal experience of it and of one another -- is social.”

I would argue that the world is made up of professionals as in those who work for a living, but I would also add that some people have vocations (a calling) as well. Learning is personal (not social) and occurs by connecting with people and constantly reflecting on the way information and experiences flow between these connections in a way that best suits the individual and society as a whole.

The Classroom versus Online Learning of an Additional Language

2011-04-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

The Internet is a fertile new space for the development of effective and inexpensive learning solutions.

In order for this statement to have meaning, certain contextual dichotomies (not as discrete opposites but rather extremes that fall along a continuum) need to be addressed beforehand: (a) explicit/implicit learning, (b) native/non-native speaker, (c) instructed (formal)/naturalistic (informal) learning, (d) deductive/inductive inference, (e) concrete/abstract thinking, (f) declarative/procedural knowledge, (g) intentional/unintentional learning, etc. Without considering these dichotomies, the risk is that some may interpret any use of technology as being fruitful.
It's been my experience that noticing, consciousness-raising, attention, etc. is best served through interaction (with human beings) which provides feedback, recasts, and positive/negative evidence back to the language learner.

The classroom, at great cost, reduces this spirit of independent learning and inquiry.

I guess this depends on who's teaching the class. If we are talking affordances (i.e., potential for action), the classroom (with a teacher) offers more to motive students, provide strategies that lead to learners engaging in the language (in and outside the classroom), and help language learners notice differences between L1 and L2 in ways that better lead to intake (gasp). I recognize that potentiality and reality are two different things, but the classroom can (and does in some cases) breakdown the barrier between formal and informal learning. In other words, it's easier for formal learning environments (like schools) to incorporate informal learning than vice versa.

It will remain the job of the teacher (i.e., as didactic leader, facilitator, and coach) to play "curator" in orchestrating the learning ecosystem that evolves around the language learner.

Descriptive, Prescriptive, Semiotics, & Variation...Oh my!

2011-04-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

Was asked this question online once. Thought I'd pose it here and get your input: There [is / are] a vase and a flower on the table.

Click on the link above to see the thread that led to my response below...

Ok, so we are talking about (a) descriptive English (i.e., how English is actually used), prescriptive English (i.e., what the book(s) say), (c) idiomatic expressions, and (d) English variation. Anita alludes to a syntactic (and semantic/pragmatic) alternative as well. I've always been of the belief that it's better to discuss each of the above issues with students instead of having personal opinions sway me in any one particular direction. As far as (traditional) testing is concerned, I've stuck with prescriptive English over descriptive for the most part but this has not refrained me from teaching students other varieties of English (American/British English, descriptive/prescriptive, etc.).

Personal opinions aside, how would you go about teaching these different expressions? Or do your personal opinions lean you to one particular style of English being taught in your classroom?

Do Quantitative Findings Mean Anything?

2011-04-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

52% of Online Language Learners Consider Classic Offline Learning as More Efficient

Without knowing the details of the study, my first reaction to this analysis is that macro findings say very little. A micro-analysis that reveals specific demographics would provide a deeper description. Even the question itself leads to ambiguity. For example, I could choose books as my first choice and podcasts as my second. But these choices do not indicate degree - do I think books and podcasts will help me about the same in the future or do I think there will a be a big different between the two? And what does each learner interpret as "efficient" learning? And the socio-economic aspect of this analysis is not phase 2 but rather an essential part of the main analysis, again at the micro level.

Your question is a legitimate on: "Do we tend to prefer learning using the tools and methods we grew up with?" Was this question part of the study? I've seen literature that supports the notion that we tend to teach the way we were taught, so I would suspect the same goes for learning over time. Regardless, since everyone learns differently, it's hard to draw conclusions even if we know we tend to stick to the same tools and behaviors as we've done in the past.

I'd be interested in knowing how learners currently take advantage of learning affordances now (to learn another language) and how do they forecast learning affordances for the future. A third question addressing past affordances would also provide a historical perspective.

Human behavior (e.g., learning) is simply too complex to generalize quantitatively in an analysis of this type - there are simply too many concomitant variables at play. The amount of detail what is required to draw any sound conclusions would require detailed information, information that I suspect Busuu is not willing to provide. :)

Note: It's been my belief that efficient and engaging learning (and the teaching that allows this to happen) looks about the same whether being delivered f2f, through blended courses, or at a distance.

52% of Online Language Learners Consider Classic Offline Learning as More Efficient

Top Criteria when Designing Professional E-learning Courses?

2011-04-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

What do you think should be top criteria when designing professional e-learning courses (Both synchronous or non-synchronous)?

The most important thing to remember about providing professional e-learning courses is that there should be a consistent alignment of learning theories (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism, critical constructivism, connectivism, etc.), methods (synchronous and asynchronous), and multimedia (web 2.0/3.0 tools, software, etc.) that is conducive to forming a learning community that takes the learner from being dependent, to independent, to finally interdependent. Such a learning community would be "open, diverse, interactive, and autonomous" (to use Stephen Downes's words).

I know, a broad answer (to a broad question), but we need to consider the whole ball of wax.

Note: I'm avoiding a detailed description of the method (synchronous and asynchronous) because it's only a third (actually less in my opinion) of the real issue: aligning learning theory, method, and media. These three impact each other as in it's all or nothing. We can't talk about one without mentioning the other two.

DELT11: Participatory Action Research and TESOL (3)

2011-03-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

This session is designed for anyone interested in improving how they teach English to students of other languages (TESOL). We will cover the basics of participatory action research (PAR) and will discuss an open and ongoing Distance English Language Training (DELT) workshop where educators can share ideas and experiences.

delt11: Open and Ongoing TESOL Workshop

2011-03-04T00:14:00.000-08:00

You are all invited to participate in an open and ongoing TESOL workshop that is just getting started. If you are interested in knowing more, feel free to contact me.

Critical Literacies Online (#CritLit2010)

2011-02-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, another MOOC is underway: Critical Literacies Online blog and Moodle. I like participating in MOOCs but I much prefer to avoid any learning management system all together. I understand the advantages of using Moodle for research, but it seems to go against the principles and benefits of connective learning. Anyway, I plan to capture questions of interest and shift them to this blog, linking it to the Moodle discussion, so if you are interested in seeing related comments, sorry, you'll have to join the group.

...in an age where there is so much information evolving so rapidly, do we also need to evolve our notion of expertise and knowing?

I think the literacies of today (which incidentally are no different than those of the past) include creativity, criticality, and caring. We need to learn how to create through the interaction with others and the manipulation of content, to develop content discernment, and to value a common good. The difference now is that these same literacies are even more important than they were in the past and the way in which they are being developed. Technology has changed the learning ecosystem and has provided affordances that did not exist before.

Current technologies and open licences allow learners to have access to more content and are able to manipulate the content to suit a particular need. This changes the epistemological "playing field" in that knowing something is emergent and is in a constant state of flux. As a result, defining teaching a learning roles becomes less important while defining teaching and learning moments becomes more important. At any given moment, the "expert" could be any person who is interacting within the network.

A final literacy that is vital to today's learning environment is the ability and will to shift back and forth between "learner" and "expert"...

The Web of Identity: Identity Formation in Online Learning

2011-02-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

As learners interact in online networks of learning, how do they come to know one another? Building on the work of Goffman (1959) and Foucault (1988), the Web of Identity (WoI) model shows how online learners may use dramaturgical strategies to create and negotiate their personal identities in a continuous flux of presentation and interpretation. Philosophically, the model is highly social constructionist and places a great emphasis on relational dialogue. For practitioners, the implications include finding ways to aid learners to improve their use and translation of WoI strategies. Such skill, theoretically, should help them to enact their unique personalities, lessen their sense of fragmentation, increase their sense of belonging, and gauge authenticity of others. The researchers will then discuss some preliminary research projects on identity in networked learning and future research in the field.

When: Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 11am-12pm Mountain Time (Canada)
*Local times for the CIDER sessions are provided on our website:
http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/

Where: Online via Elluminate at:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.8B71B60F2931D029AC3837DC06B70D

Pre-Configuration:
Please make sure your Mac or PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers, so that you can use the audio functionality built into the web conferencing software. Please note that it is extremely important that you get your system set up prior to the start of the event. Information on installing the necessary software and configuring your PC is available at http://www.elluminate.com/support/ in the "First Time Users" section.

CIDER sessions are brought to you by the Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University - Canada's Open University and leader in professional online education.

CIDER is a Community Partner of Elluminate - http://www.elluminate.com/ - who proudly sponsors our web conferencing needs. To sign up for a free, no obligation three-user version of Elluminate, please visit http://www.getvroom.com

The Knowledge Sharing Place

2011-02-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Join Tina and Barbara of LiveBinders along with Dean Mantz as they visit with educators about 21st Century learning issues. This month we visit with Toby Price, Assistant Principal of Richland Upper Elementary School in Richland, MS. Toby will be talking about "21st Century Educational Leadership".

Incentive for being open

2011-02-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

Nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.

#CCK11: What is learning and teaching?

2011-02-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

What is learning and teaching?

Beyond Dewey's (1909) training and thought and logical considerations, creating opportunities for learners to explain, interpret, apply, have perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) would seem to cover what learning is for me. Classifying all performance verbs in terms of these "six facets of understanding" (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005), and then affording learners to develop these six facets over a period of time provide the experience for individuals to learn.

Also, learners (through the guidance of others, including teachers) need to recognize and adapt both intended and unintended learning outcomes in a way that serves some future benefit.

Teachers and learners need to co-create the "educative experience" (Dewey, 1938) by reflecting (critically and with devotion) on the types of connections that exist throughout PLNs as well as the attributes that make up the boundary nodes they entail. This connective perspective is precisely what is needed in order for learning to occur.

OER University

2011-02-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

The first week of this seminar, leading up to an 8-hour meeting at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand (streamed), is intended to generate discussion and input on the context, problem, concept, partners, and objectives of an OER University. The second week will provide an opportunity for summary, follow-on discussions, and recommendations.

Live video stream from Otago Polytechnic meeting, sponsored by UNESCO
February 22, noon (PT) 20:00 GMT - February 23, 04:00 GMT

Reading Comprehension 2.0

2011-02-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

Explores how the use of digital resources and free web 2.0 tools can improve reading comprehension, vocabulary development, and other related literacy skills.

Jessica Fries-Gaither is an education resource specialist in the College of Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. She serves as project director for the NSF-funded Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears and is also involved with the Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways (also funded by NSF).

Wayne Mackintosh on an Open Educational Resources University

2011-02-08T22:07:00.000-08:00

Steve Hargadon interviews Wayne Mackintosh about WikiEducator and the formation of an OER University. Wayne Mackintosh talks about WikiEducator and the formation of an OER University.

Fri February 11, 2011, 11:00-12:00, US/Pacific(GMT-08:00).

Webinar: What’s ELF and BELF and does it matter?

2011-02-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

The role English plays as an international business lingua franca has attracted the interest of some of the world’s top researchers in linguistics. How is successful communication achieved when many or all of the people involved aren’t native English speakers? And what implications does this have for the kind of English we should be teaching in our business English classes?

In the next of BESIG’s successful series of webinars, the world’s top authorities on ELF will be meeting ‘virtually’ to hammer it out. In this online discussion you can come and find out what they’re thinking and join in the debate.

Jennifer Jenkins, who set everyone talking with her ground breaking research into ELF phonology will be a panelist, along with Mark Powell, our favourite author and ‘lean English’ ELF skeptic. Internet willing, Barbara Seidlhofer, leader of the VOICE (Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English) project and the world’s foremost authority on the lexico-grammar of ELF, will also be there in a discussion chaired by Vicki Hollett. And other key figures will be stopping by, such as Almut Koester,Susanne Ehrenreich, Jeremy Comfort, Ian McMaster, Robin Walker and many more.

Open Content Licensing for Educators

2011-02-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

Open content licensing for educators is a free online workshop designed for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.

The course materials were developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons. The course will provide prerequisite knowledge required by educators to legally remix open education materials and help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses.

We acknowledge and thank UNESCO for their financial support for the inaugural presentation of this free workshop scheduled for 21 - 25 March 2011.

Thesis Seminar

2011-02-05T22:34:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I will provide an orientation class to Nancy, and pre-service, English language educator, on the technologies that will be used this semester for Thesis Seminar. The class is open to English language learner interested in improving writing skills.

delt0111: Introductions

2011-01-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

If you haven't already, please introduce yourself in the VoiceThread below. Tell us something about yourself and what your expectations are for the class. Let us know specifically what you would like to get out of this course.

LUIS Lesson Plan

2011-01-23T01:26:00.000-08:00

As part of an ongoing series of live sessions dedicated to TESOL, on Monday I will discuss the Language and Understanding Integrative Sense-making (LUIS) Lesson Plan which is an adapted SIOP Lesson Plan incorporating Wiggins and McTighe's notion of understanding and assessment, Popham's idea of learning progression, a personal learning network (PLN), and how a PLN influences change regarding an EFL educator's ideas, beliefs, and/or actions. You're encouraged to take part in the discussion!

delt0111: Learning English in Chunks

2011-01-19T23:50:00.000-08:00

Watch this video and reflect on how people learn languages.

Activity options:

1. Add a comment below and discuss your thoughts and opinions regarding this video.

2. Add a comment to your blog (linking this video), discussing your own thoughts and opinions regarding this video (using the hashtag #delt0111)

2. Create your own 90 second video, explaining your own method of teaching EFL/ESL. Then upload it to YouTube or some other video hosting site and share it here.

Choose any of the above activities and feel free to work individually or in groups.

DELT Workshop

CCK11: Connectivism Course

2011-01-17T23:44:00.000-08:00

As I gear up for the next course on connectivism and connective knowledge, I like to idea of no Moodle! Using Twitter as an aggregator that later is published to a newsletter is really a connectivist approach to learning online. It would have been interesting to see how this same course (which started back in 2008 if memory serves) developed if at no time an LMS, facebook, etc. would have been used. Simply, a newsletter, perhaps a syllabus (wiki), and twitter and social bookmarking sites as the only technologies along with whatever technologies the participants wanted to use (including an LMS, facebook, etc.). I suspect that there would have been fewer participants participating more.

My plans for this course are to post to my blog and respond to others. I'll use Twitter, the Daily, Diigo, and whatever technologies I find others using...but will not use facebook or any LMS.

My hopes are to generate some traffic to my site as well as find others to interact with that will extend beyond this 12-week course, beyond the topic of connectivism.

New website!

2011-01-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

Well, this is officially day two of the new Collaborative Understandings website! If anyone's interested, I'm using FatCow and WordPress, the right "one, two punch" I really needed to get the site off the ground! It's still very much a work in progress, but it's slowing getting there. Expect many changes over the next few weeks as I will continue to move content extended out over the web into this single space. Comments, contributions, and/or suggestions are always appreciated!

By the way, I just had an interesting discussion this evening with Bram and Priscilla. Bram shared a class experience where learners were using Drupal to create online projects. Check it out!

Collaborative Understandings Session #3 by Benjamin Stewart

Get your own Virtual Classroom

Mentoring and Community Acceptance

2011-01-11T01:47:00.000-08:00

In response to a recent post...

Malderez (2009) says, "...a mentoring process as being supportive of the transformation of development of the mentee and of their acceptance into a professional community...It is this process of one-to-one, workplace-based, contingent and personally appropriate support for the person during their professional acclimatization (or integration), learning, growth and development, which is referred to as Mentoring."

So, how would one define "acceptance into a professional community"? And what is exactly, "professional acclimatization"?

I would argue that neither of these two notions have much to do with mentoring. Mentoring is less about helping someone else enter a group, community, or school , and is more about facilitating another educator's personal growth. The individual (i.e., mentee) will decide on what communities to participate in, which people to interact with, and which technologies to use to make it all happen. So in essence, everyone the individual interacts with has the potential to serve as "mentor(s)" depending on the situation at that particular moment.

English for Academic Purposes, but with a Purpose

2010-12-30T01:12:00.000-08:00

Speaking in Social Contexts: Issues for Pre-Sessional EAP Students

In response to this article, possibly linking the course organization, the pre-sessional EAP course, and the criteria used to select the EAP learners would help the adaptation process.

Course organization: The EAP course that offered a social service project would not only provide EAP learners the contact with locals they seek, but also would serve as a way to better the local community in some way.

Pre-sessional EAP course: Mainly strategically based, a pre-sessional EAP course prepares the learner for knowledge, skills and strategies (i.e., more about survival than linguistic skills alone), and dispositions in terms of the actual project to be carried out in the EAP course.

Selection process: The criteria used to select EAP learners would include language and cultural components. The selection process might include measuring a learner’s language proficiency, (local) cultural understanding, and more specific understandings that relate to the project that is to be covered in the EAP course.

Course organization, the pre-sessional EAP course, and the selection process might benefit from having an online space (i.e., an online social network linking related information required for the project) that is open and ongoing (lasting at least one year), providing the support and feedback all stakeholders would need in order to create an educative experience for the learner as well as a successful social service project that serves a need.

Any other thoughts?

Edupunk, Free, and Openness

2010-12-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

I attended a session this morning on free and freedom moderated by My ESL Friend's George Machlan. George has spent countless hours online helping a number of English language learners better their proficiency, and for that, I applaud him! However, we do tend to disagree from time to time and after this morning's session, I feel compelled to share a different perspective. Let's begin with his.

George begins his discussion on free and freedom (at 31:26) where he states the following:

Is freedom free?

Internet expectations - free...value...advertising...sustainable

Motivation - students...[entrepreneurs]...teachers

freedom - where, when, how, who

healthy community

What does freedom do?

cheapens product

dependency

devalues teacher

creates/maintains power structure

sets up a false paradigm

slows creativity

ensures mediocrity - the best move on

Is anything free? At what cost?

Today's session is part of an ongoing series dedicated to what he frames as an "Edupunk movement", and his purpose is to support the notion of You get what you pay for. If you do not pay for it, then it must be of lesser value. If anyone offers free classes to English language learners, for example, the classes will be less creative, mediocre, and learners will be less participative than if learners paid for classes. Also, the perception will be that if teachers are offering free classes that they will be viewed as being devalued yet still maintain a power structure that puts students at a disadvantage. This is my understanding of George's perspective and from where I plan to base my argument.

For the purpose of my argument, I will define the term free as 1) gratis and 2) open. Regarding the latter, I think George and I agree on the value of using open educational resources that allow users to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute content as long as attribution is given. But regarding the former, it's difficult to be open when one has to pay for that openness. Edupunk (i.e., a do-it-yourself education) is based on the premise that learners take responsibility for their own learning and look for ways to incorporate both formal and informal learning opportunities to best suit personal needs, wants, and learning preferences. I have never associated the Edupunk "movement" with the notion that one must pay money to have a quality learning experience with an instructor who is seen as more valuable simply because a fee exchange has taken place.

I equate the idea of since it's free, it must be of lesser value similarly to those who feel that Wikieducator must be useless because 1) it's free and 2) anyone can edit the content. Let's consider the following questions:

Is anyone really benefiting from Wikieducator? I would argue, yes! I would dare say that if it weren't for Wikieducator, we would still be paying tons of money for printed encyclopedias that would be outdated the day of being published. Consider the people around the world who have access and who benefit from this free (gratis and open) information. Having access to open information that promotes learning has to make them less dependent and more powerful at the end of the day.

All things being equal, let's assume that Wikieducator suddenly started charging users to access information. Would this automatically make the content more valuable? I don't think so. This would mean less people contributing and less people viewing the content, both of which would actually devalue the content in my view.

But if anyone can edit Wikipedia, doesn't this mean that some content could be inaccurate? Well, yes it does. But this also means that 1) people need to be more critical of what they read (regardless if it's an online source, book, article, etc.) and 2) if the content is of poor quality, anyone can theoretically make it better. There are other aspects of openness other than reuse that promote cooperation and collaboration of content, namely revision, remix, and redistribution. Learning to be critical of all content (even peer-reviewed) and playing an active role in content development are two skills that will serve the learner well in the future.

The misconception is that because one pays for something, it must be valuable. You don't always get what you pay for. And if a learner has to pay for a class, there is much more power among those who have money than with those who do not - 80%-20% power law. Additionally, promoting creativity and dependency of the learner towards someone else relate more to how participants (i.e., teacher, educator, coach, instructor, etc. and learners) interact with each other and the content, less about how much one pays for a course.

What does freedom do?

Freedom affords individuals to a do-it-yourself (DIY) education that requires a level of creativity, criticality, and caring when placing value judgments on one's education. These value judgments are independent of whether a monetary transaction happens to take place or not.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires - Bertrand Russell

Many learners are still faced with two obstacles that reduce their freedom to learn: 1) money and 2) being confined to one teacher or class (e.g., being obligated to finish a paid course delivered in isolation).

How can we eliminate obstacles that interfere with the freedom to learn?

Finding a space to create, critique, and care

2010-12-24T01:19:00.000-08:00

I've been spending a lot of time recently reevaluating my virtual space, online identity, and general approach as to how I can open up my own teaching and learning. For example, I've decided to connect a lot of what I've done in the past and what I plan to do in the future to a Udemy course dedicated to anyone interested in teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL).

What drew me to Udemy is its ease of getting a course up and running and its networking concept. Other sites tend to focus more on the content or the live sessions as separate components whereas Udemy focuses more on the instructor (i.e., teacher, educator, trainer, coach, etc.) and the course itself. Instructors can bring in live sessions and content directly to the course, rearranging the content if the learning progression is of importance. And through livestream, Udemy live sessions can be recorded and uploaded so that the recordings themselves become additional content as well. Essentially, any document, audio, or video file can be uploaded to Udemy including content that is embedded from virtually any other site. This is what sets Udemy apart from the others: content can be either brought into a course directly or it can just as easily be linked to other sites such as YouTube, BlipTV, among others.

Along with Udemy, I am also investing more time into a complementary wiki. The wiki provides the means for greater interaction between educators interested in TESOL since all content (shared in both the wiki as well as the Udemy course) can be reused, revised, remixed, and/or redistributed as long as attribution is given and its use is noncommercial (i.e., Creative Commons, attribution-noncommercial-sharealike 3.0 unported license). The goal in connecting technologies in this way is to grow connections between educators interested in TESOL in ways that foster creativity, criticality, and caring.

If you are interested in the ongoing live events that are a part of this open and ongoing course, check the schedule and add your comments and suggestions as to how you'd like to participate and what should be included.

Happy holidays!

Connecting ELLs to the community

2010-12-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

What events or activities have you used to help language students (K-16)connect to their communities (i.e. international fair, service learning, etc.)?

This past October, we had our 3rd Annual English Festival at the UAA. Our undergraduate English language learners had the opportunity to present a leader of the past by creating an altar that depicted the individual. Neighboring schools brought their English language learners and their English language teachers (who acted as judges) who interacted with our students, giving our learners a purpose for learning a foreign language. We also had our university students visit other altars and learn about the various leaders from around the world which allowed them to not only increase their language capacity but also their knowledge of what makes a good leader. Our students were also proud to demonstrate all their hard work for other teachers and administrators from the UAA as well.

In addition to the English festival, we also just created a facebook page where English language learners and educators can interact. We want our language learners to learn how to connect with others in ways that help them achieve their language goals...a strategy that will serve them well both in their current classes as well as in the future.

Jim Scrivener on Traditional PPP in the EFL Classroom

2010-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

My response to this post...

I think the problem I have most with this technique is the lack of contextualization, and the tendency to fall into a teaching rut. I don't discredit it completely, but do think that the inclusion of technology, for example, affords teachers and English language learners more opportunities to learn the target language in more authentic situations (at all levels). The more authentic the situation, the more motivated the learner. It's all about mixing it up.

Thesis seminar

2010-11-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

I'll be teaching a thesis seminar next semester and plan on using Wikispaces for nearly the entire class. I plan on having a series of live sessions (WiZiQ) and will use Engrade for maintaining grades for credit-seeking students attending the UAA. Because the class is a Wiki, anyone can join, participate in the developing a thesis, provide feedback, and/or contribute to the design of the course. Any comments or suggestions can be made here and are greatly appreciated!

As a side note, I tested Vokle this (very early) morning and this might also be used throughout the course as well. However, I'm still looking for a third-party video capture solution so I can archive discussions; will see what I can find over the next few weeks.

Having fun and DIY learning

2010-11-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

In response to Sylvia after a live session earlier today,

I would like to think of myself as a do-it-yourself (DIY) facilitator and coach - a bass player of a typical jazz group in 1957 (think groups with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.). The "edupunk movement" I feel forces some to dichotomize formal and informal learning in how they relate to academic circles. I don't see it that way. Just as jazz music in the 50s incorporated many aspects of classical music, formal and informal learning can also “live as one”.

The topic of "edutainment" is certainly worth pursuing as long as activities remain "effective” and "engaging" (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005); that is, educative and entertaining. When you consider "edutainment" through an online, live session, the notions of teacher-talk time (TTT) – which also refers to moderator talk time – and student-talk time (STT) become important. If we agree that more STT is required, then one must consider how to motivate and assure that students will interact (e.g., will use writing controls, audio, and/or video); otherwise, students are just having fun but may not be learning a lot (i.e., learning that is educative). Note: the terms “teacher” and “student” can be substituted for “session moderator” and “attendees” respectively.

Differences in language proficiency, accessibility to technology, and experience interacting live with technology are all challenges moderators face when planning and implementing live, public sessions. Another challenge is limiting the moderator talk time and at the same time promoting interaction among all attendees through the implementation of an “edu-entertaining” activity. In my humble opinion, these issues are more important than simply talking about what a fun activity is. It’s more about the process of how to create a fun activity in a live, open space (i.e., "sharing our unique angles") than the product of the (fun) activity itself - the former being contextualized while the latter is not.

There's free, then there's free

2010-11-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

Interesting, Giving Knowledge for Free is, well less than free. It's free in the sense that the work doesn't cost you anything, granted; but it appears that you need permission to reuse, remix, revise, and/or redistribute their work.

I understand there are degrees of openness, but the least someone could do if they are going to write an article, book, etc. about open educational resources is to make the work itself as open as possible (e.g., CC, CC-BY, etc.).

OERs, copyright, and access to educational materials

2010-11-18T20:40:00.000-08:00

This is in response to a discussion on OERs, copyright, and access to educational materials:

I would argue that contributing to OERs and earning a living are not necessarily diametrically opposite of each other. Consider the connections one might gain by adhering to open authorship as opposed to closed authorship. Granted, perhaps financial compensation from the published work would not exist but what about all the additional ways that a person might make money that would be as a result of connecting with someone through an OER. And what about the interactions that are created from the generation and ongoing development of an OER and the learning potential that this generates.

You ask, If everyone had to freely [give] away their knowledge because OER was the only option, would folks who need to earn a living through knowledge creation survive?

Well, I wonder how much close authorship really leads to "knowledge creation". In my humble opinion, "knowledge creation", or simply learning occurs to a greater degree when individuals interact with content (i.e., revise, reuse, remix, and/or redistribute) as opposed to creating content through closed authorship. The shelf-life of information these days is becoming shorter my the minute. I suspect that in the future, we will need more people who can teach, facilitate, and coach others how to revise, reuse, remix and/or redistribute content than people who can write a book (i.e., closed authorship).

Great discussion and certainly will be interesting to see how OERs bloom around the world going forward.

Openness versus being open and closed

2010-11-13T01:09:00.000-08:00

This discussion made me reflect on the term openness in terms of degree.

Simply, everyone should have the freedom to use any type of license that is available - I typically refrain from judging which creative license is "better" than another. Each type of license provides different degrees of openness and I don't see this changing anytime in the future (if ever); that is, an open educational resource under a Creative Commons License typically falls along an open and closed continuum. There are many types of teaching and learning contexts that exist and it is unfair to generalize the importance of any particular type of license over any other. When I see groups develop a licensing policy (that usually singles out one or a few acceptable licenses), I am quickly reminded of how my own learning is networked based (i.e., connective) as opposed to group based (i.e., collective).

Shifting from mentoring to "unmentoring"

2010-10-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

Mentoring in a network environment means facilitating an individual to a point when the mentor is no longer needed - taking the mentee from being dependent to independent, to interdependent. A mentor should guide the mentee in finding additional nodes (both human and nonhuman devices) that aid personal learning. If a mentor and mentee are working within the same organization, which would take precedent, personal or “shared”, organizational mission or vision statements? “Mentoring” someone towards a mission or vision of an organization seems like brainwashing. It's all about working towards personal goals while attending the need for earning a living.

...in a networked learning environment where learner autonomy could be more important than anything else...

If one agrees that a connective community involves what Downes has referred to as being autonomous, open, diverse, and interactive, I would argue that one is no more important than any other. They all influence each other to a point that if I am not open, or willing to accept other perspectives, or am not interactive, then I can't really be autonomous, for example. A mentor should coach a mentee to be all of these things. If a mentee is being honest about learning in a connective community and the organization's mission and vision align to that of the mentee's, then it would seem that this would be more relevant than simply the mentor/mentee relationship. If a mentee is still at a dependent stage, then the individual is not quite ready to reap the benefits of participating in a connective community.

To provide or not to provide the answers - Is that the question?

2010-10-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

A learning moment recently presented itself.

Background

English language learners (ELLs) take free (general) English courses at the university level in order to prepare themselves for an exit (high-stakes) exam. The courses are pass/no pass and the ELLs have the option to retake the same level course regardless if they pass or not. Finally, homework is not graded which includes work done in the course workbook.

Superficial Question

Should the course workbook that accompanies the student course book contain the answers to the questions or not?

Argument for having the workbook with answers

What incentive does the student have for simply copying the answers? Doing or not doing the workbook exercises has no direct effect on the students' grades. Obviously there is an indirect effect in most cases since understanding the answers to the questions (not just knowing the answers) can help ELLs with the learning process.

The "only" thing that ELLs lose if they fail to understand the answers (not simply by copying them from the answer key) is time. Granted, time is of the essence for many students who put off meeting their foreign language requirement, but there is no financial loss and students are free to choose to retake the same level at no cost if they feel they are not ready to proceed to the next level.

Spending class time simply checking answers from the workbook is a waste of time - it does not provide the evidence needed in order for EFL/ESL educators to infer whether students understand why the answer is correct. Providing the answers to the questions alone should not be confused with providing sound feedback from activities completed in the workbook through formative or dynamic assessment. This is also referred to as "solving the problem backward" through "planning in reverse: means-ways-ends".

Having answers to the workbook can promote autonomous learning. I say can promote because many times autonomous learning requires teachers to facilitate the process, providing ELLs the strategies to become more autonomous.

The main argument (that I've heard from teachers) against having the workbook answer key

ELLs will simply copy the answers and will not learn anything.

Essential question

Instead of asking whether the course workbook should include the answers or not, I propose a more essential question:

How do EFL/ESL educators use a workbook with an answer key in ways that are formative in nature and seek to provide the evidence needed in order for EFL/ESL educators to infer whether ELLs understand why their answer in correct or incorrect?

As I am sure there are EFL/ESL educators (and teachers in general) on both sides of the argument, I would enjoy hearing from others on the subject. Any references to support your claim are also appreciated (besides the fact that it strengthens your argument).

Chunking

2010-10-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

Chunking... what side of the debate are you on?

The WikiEducator "Invite them and they will come" Online Workshop - (September 22 to October 5, 2010)

2010-09-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Register today for the next Wikieducator workshop, Invite them and they will come! Join us this Wednesday for a live session that will serve as a general overview of the course as well.

Celebrating the gift of knowledge

Image courtesy of maveric2003

This free wiki workshop is presented online over 10 working days and requires approximately 15 - 20 minutes per day. The course is presented asynchronously -- so you can work at times which fit your own schedule. Join educators around the world who are returning to the core values of sharing knowledge freely.

Learning4Content is the world largest attempt to build wiki skills for education and is administered by the OER Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation helping individual and organisations achieve their objectives using open education approaches.

We have achieved our targets in providing free wiki skills training to over 1000 educators this past year. Since our first pilot workshop in 2008, we have provided free training opportunities to more than 4,000 educators to learn how to develop OER the wiki way. In celebrating this gift of knowledge, we are hosting the this WikiEducator workshop where all facilitators donate of their time freely to help their WikiNeighbours. In the spirit of open philanthropy, the "WikiEducator Gives Back" annual workshop also provides an opportunity to scale-up our international team of Learning4Content facilitators.

L4C facilitators will be giving back in two ways:

Donating their time freely to assist with facilitating this record breaking workshop attempt - (Designated as L4C Facilitators on the participants page)

Sharing their knowledge with future L4C facilitators to join our international team of WikiEducator online facilitators so we can scale capability development for OER the wiki way. (Designated as L4C Co-Facilitators on the participants page)

The OER Foundation will institute this as an annual WikiEducator event which aims to:

Break the previous year's record for hosting the largest free online wiki workshop measured by the number of registered participants

Provide an opportunity for educators around the world to meet and interact with some of WikiEducators' top editors and seasoned wiki facilitators measured by their approximate edit count in WikiEducator

We aim to have a little fun. We will award community Kudos achievements for:

The workshop participant who achieves the highest number of edits during the workshop

The Facilitator / or Co-Facilitator who achieves the highest number of support edits during the workshop.

Please share this gift of knowledge and spread the word.

WE look forward to meeting you in the wiki!

Where a PLN and an LMS Become One (#PLENK2010)

2010-09-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if a blog post from nearly six years ago holds a similar perspective in today's terms which is central to topics being covered in PLENK2010.

Anderson lists some Advantages of an LMS which to me actually seem like disadvantages or at the very least, have no advantage at all.

Purposefully designed: Is this specific to an LMS? It seems to me that a purposeful design has more to do with what the teacher does than the tool itself.

The capacity and functionality of tools designed to facilitate a net enabled class are now commonly understood by both learners and teachers and fit well with a cohort model of formal teaching and learning. Perhaps a cohort model of formal teaching and learning should not be the objective.

Institutional, teacher and student concerns over IP, privacy and support have been largely been addressed in current LMS systems. But does this equate to a more rigorous, relevant, and meaningful learning experience for the student?

Mature. There are many mature sites outside an LMS.

LMS systems have been around for about ten years and the primary interaction tools – threaded discussion groups for an additional 20 years, They are reliable, well supported by both vendors, development communities and typically institutional IT staff. There are many ways to communicate outside an LMS.

Universal – Adapative technologies are often available within LMS with little configuration required by learners or teachers. There are many adaptive technologies outside an LMS.

Safe and Secure Is being "safe and secure" really preparing the learner for the real world?

Educational institutions have long developed traditions of being safe places for the pursuit of learning and scholarship. One can reasonably expect to be treated fairly (or at least openly) and there are formal and informal norms adopted and enforced within contexts controlled by the institution. Such security is not provided on the open Net. This is redundant. See comments above.

Learning at its best is personal and transformational. To accomplish this may require a sense of security whereby ideas, tones and emotions can be developed and shared. Learners have expectations that their comments, images and ideas are created and shared within this protected environment and are not available on the Open web, nor capable of being archived for decades and brought back to haunt the future. This will depend on the age and maturity level of the individual, but a capacity that is essential for all learners is to understand how to build a digital identity. There are ways to prepare the "tones and emotions" beforehand while still having learners contribute to an open web. Also, many spaces on the web allow for open and closed environments. Finally, framing bad (online) experiences as haunting the learner in the future is the same as saying making mistakes is a bad thing. It's all about preparing, guiding, and reflecting as the student contributions to the open web.

Ease of Use Same as above, is "ease of use" really preparing the learner for the real world? There is a difference between ease of use and feasibility.

While developments in syndication technologies are rapidly improving, the challenge for a teacher or a learner to read through postings and their responses, in threaded or time stamped formats remains a challenge. Modern LMS systems default to easily support search, sort and organize postings in multiple formats. There are ways to do this outside the LMS.

Providing support to students for a single LMS system is relatively easy for learning services support staff. Such service can often be outsourced to 7*24 help desks if required. Ease of use argument.

Categories for postings are easily made, edited and expanded by teachers (for example typical LMS systems allow creation of informal coffee-room chats and threaded discussion areas, workspaces for teams and theme or chronological ordering of discourse. Categorization of blog posting even for those designed for a particular class are problematic, but become greater when a single PLE is used to contribute to personal, educational and vocational entries. There are technologies that exist today that enable the teacher to work smarter not harder. There are ways to organize information in a public way.

Storing, uploading, archiving, editing and retrieval of course content is relatively easy in full featured LMS systems and usually undertaken by someone else – a prime requirement for effective backup! Storing, uploading, archiving, etc. can be done by teachers, students, and the community (i.e., anyone) in the open web.

LMS are the educational tools of today. The busy teacher or learner needs to invest little personal time and energy, but can ‘fall into” the supportive routines provided by educational support systems and expend their innovation energy in other directions. Are LMSs still the "educational tools of today"? Plus, the tendency might be to set up a class in an LMS and then do little to contribute to it in the future.

My thoughts regarding the essential questions for this week follow.

Can PLEs be seen as institutional level software?

In part, yes. If a course is offered in Moodle to degree-seeking students within an institution, that course more-than-likely will make up part of the learner's PLN (you say PLE, I say PLN). I say more-than-likely because it depends on whether the student is getting anything out of the course, specifically what the student gets from the interaction of content and individuals that originate from the course offered in Moodle. What the learner learns outside of the Moodle course constitutes the rest of the learner's PLE.

Do PLEs require dramatic reform of the education system?

Not in Mexico. Even though we have courses in Moodle (blended and distance) and have restrictions to some websites when accessing the web at the university, the learners still have access to the web outside of the university which still contributes to their PLN in productive ways. And although training teachers, admins. etc. to think in terms of a PLN is an ongoing process, I don't consider this as being a "dramatic reform of the education system".

Must PLEs and LMS be seen as antagonistic to each other? Why can't they just get along?

In my world, an "LMS" is just a part of a PLN (i.e., PLE) ; they are extensions of each other. It's like those who just know me at school may or may not have the same understanding of who I am outside of school. Even though I'm the same person, each network influences each other while maintaining some level of overlap between the two as well.

This is why I don't like the term LMS and I avoid discussing whether an "LMS" is a good or bad thing. It has little to do with the tool itself (or collection of tools) and more to do with how the tool is being used at any given moment.

Is it a PLN, PLE, VLE, LMS, CMS, or something else?

2010-09-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

" The only question I have is whether the LMS could be the complete PLN for you or anyone."

Good question. In fact, this is a question that everyone should ask and be able to answer when choosing the different technologies and social, f2f contacts that ultimately become one's PLN. In my blog post I say, " If I choose and determine that an LMS is the best way for me to learn, then the LMS is my PLN". My point was that if a person can justify why an LMS best serves the individual's learning needs, interests, and learning preferences, then who am I to judge. I also say this because many people are for or against an LMS; I think this is the wrong conversation to be having. We should be addressing the question you pose that forwards this notion of articulating a learner's rationale in developing a PLN. A learner's rationale for using any tool will also depend greatly on how the tool is being used.

Clearly for me, an LMS is never my PLN. For this MOOC (and for the first time), I am completely staying away from Moodle and it's made all the difference! I weave in-and-out of blogs, tweet, and read The Daily in order to interact with individuals and content for the course. This part of my PLN works for me and I can explain why it works for me...but I cannot judge others if they can explain an alternative way that works best for them, including using only an LMS.

If someone says the only place they learn anything worthwhile is through some Moodle course, online community, etc., who am I to argue. Technologies today are so integrated anyway that everything really is just varying degrees of a PLN. Think of all the different ways online content can be brought into Moodle for example.

#PLENK2010: A PLN and Shifting Power Back to the Learner

2010-09-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

If an institution sets up PLEs for students using something like Elgg is that really that much better than an LMS? The students are still at the whim of whatever the institution chose to use.

An institution cannot set up a PLN (what is being referred to here as a PLE) for students because, well, it's only personal if the students have a say in its design. An institution can set up an LMS (i.e., an infrastructure) but that's just a tool. Whether one calls it an LMS or Elgg, it really depends on how the tool is being used. The functionality between Moodle and Elgg might be different, but when looking at one's possible PLN, an LMS typically is only a small part of the whole. The university might be able to control the LMS, but they can do little to restrict the learner's PLN (even with the capability of blocking a few sites).

The long tail (i.e., students) will continue to rise if teachers, administrators, etc. support learners in pursuing a PLN that is truly personal.