By gugu nyoni

Great resources! Thanks!

I think mash up technology will prevent individualism in learning environments. And maybe shared learning environments are the “things” in the middle: http://eduspaces.net/impelgg/weblog/124472.html or http://wilfredrubens.typepad.com/wilfred_rubens_weblog/2007/07/gedeelde-leerom.html (in Dutch with English quotes).

Actually I believe here the ID are also separated from the students, however some originally may have been educators before becoming IDs. I have invited both and ID and a developer into my classes – just so they could watch how the students interact and that is the only information they take away with them.

Sue

No, the thunderstorms have been keeping me from sleeping well, but not the blog.

It may be that it’s a bit more complicated in the U.S. than in Australia, and certainly my particular situation adds some additional challenge. The privacy regulations for student information within the U.S. do seem to restrict who can have student names and contact info. Both at my current job and a previous one doing online higher ed, there was a very clear wall of separation between IDs and students. Now, maybe that’s not actually required by the law and we are just being overly cautious, but it seems to be pretty standard.

The other complicating factor is that I’m not working directly for a university; our company provides courses for a number of different universities. We’re in effect contracted with those colleges to provide courses. Even if the law allowed me to interact with students directly if I was a university employee, sharing personal student info with a 3rd-party contractor would most likely violate the regulations.

For me, the focus needs to be more along what Bob Greenwood was talking about with organizational change. We are blessed with amazing, passionate faculty; trust me, if they can be convinced that these tools are beneficial, they’ll go out and persuade students themselves.

Christy

I hope you did not have a sleepless night as a result. With it being Day 24 of the 31 Day Project I can definitely relate to dreaming about your blog during the night.

I do interact with programmers and instructional designers that have been involved with creating toolboxes for the Australian Flexible Framework. And my suggestion to them is to work more closely with learners to see how both the educators and learners interact with the material. Understandably educators will use e-learning material in varying ways, but surely working more closely with them will give all a better understand of each others needs and everyone will have greater gain? Maybe I am naive?

Sue

I realized when I went to bed last night that I had made a note for myself to reply to this comment but never got back to it. Does thinking about your blog when you’re trying to sleep mean you’re obsessed? Anyway, sorry for the slow reply.

I have to be a little more indirect than what you can do; I’m entirely behind the scenes and don’t interact directly with our learners. In some respects, that means I need to work to convince our facilitators the value of Web 2.0 tools first, so they can convince the students. It’s definitely a matter of ongoing cultural change, first within our organization and then hopefully spreading out to the teachers in the schools.

Christy

My remote students, are older, and quite a few have are actually teachers. I have tried integrating some of these Web 2.0 tools with my students, but with very limited success. As they point out to me, in their case, their motivation is to learn aquaculture.

Your circumstance is different as is your group, and we should be opening up the eyes of our teachers to the possibilities but it will be a challenge – I suggest you use a web conferencing tool like Elluminate (you can get a Vroom for free that allows up to 4 people). Then you can do a presentation on why they should use it then get them to set up tools but sending them to separate break out rooms and using application sharing.

Good Luck
Sue

I see what you’re saying about the expectations associated with the word LMS; that does imply a certain sort of structure and tracking that isn’t really what we’re looking at here. Perhaps this is where it intersects with the idea of a PLE instead, although I’m not sure that’s where I want to go either. A PLE is going to be a different collection of tools for every individual, very decentralized. I wonder if you could do something that would be somewhere in the middle–not as structured and centralized as a traditional LMS, but not as decentralized and individual as a PLE.

Anyone have an idea for a term for that “something in the middle” that isn’t a traditional LMS or a PLE?

Great example of what I use to call: “a blog as a mean for thoughts under construction”.
Imho is the paradigm of learning crucial for the kind of technology. Social network services fit with more social-constructivistic concepts of learning. The traditional LMS fits with more ‘traditional’ concepts of learning (although social-constructivism isn’t that new). I believe it is essential to manage teacher’s and students’ expectations. If a teacher wants to follow the progress of students in a more traditional way (including formative testing), Facebook etc are not suitable. Perhaps it is preferable not to speak about Social networking as LMS, because it can confuse teachers. They might have certain expectations with an LMS. And these expectations differ from applications like Facebook.
best regards from the Netherlands.