Category Archives: Education

e-Learning, Education, Education & Society, Thoughts, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Tools

Downes on Learning and Web 2.0

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I just found, via David Wilcox, a video presentation made by Stephen, in which he talks about how Web2.0 opportunities can help to develop your own learning process.

Three important things (among all the other interesting things said):

  1. You are at the center of your own personal learning network: Sounds obvious, but it has strong implications in our minds. When I htink about learning, I'm supposed to think about MY needs, MY interests, and not those suggested/imposed externally (curricula, undesirable work, etc.). This has all to do with studying, working and doing what is really important for me. It becomes a very transcendental issue, because in order to exploit my full potential as a learner, I have to be doing what makes sense to me. In the end, it's not about my teachers, my employers or even my family or friends. It's about ME. Very humanistic lesson... :D
  2. To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed: This is in line with the previous point. If someone/something else than myself is proposing my interests, I won't be able to exploit my own full potential as learner. Then again, it is REALLY complicated for many of us to behave in a self-directed way. And this kind of behavior has to do not only with learning, but with our role as citizens and part of a community. A self-directed individual will have a stronger voice and a stronger critical sense. Sadly, many of our formal education settings are structured to diminish that self-directed behavior.
  3. These principles should guide how we teach as well as how we learn: I keep thinking about how often we, as teachers, refer to our students as if they were "study subjects". "The students these days are like this", "The students these days are like that". And we identify a lot of characteristics of these students, but we forget to see that we are supposed to have those characteristics in order to be functional learners in this world. Only when we, as teachers, start to behave like real long life learners, it will be clear what are we supposed to do as teachers, in order to foster and cultivate our students' abilities.

Here´s the video:

Now I'm kind of curious about how Stephen made appear that video window... It's clear that it is on a Powerpoint presentation but, was that in real time, or edited? Hmmmm... :-/



Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Conferences, e-Learning, Education, Virtual Educa Brasil 2007

Seminar: Quality on Distance Higher Education: Luis Miguel Romero

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This is the Rector of UPTL.

Again, lots of text. So sad..

There is a strong need to QA and accreditation. According to them, Colombia seems to be doing very well on Distance Education reglamentation. It is the only country, along with Brasil and Costa Rica, to have Distance Education guidelines.

If Colombia is one of the strongest countries in the region, who is working in CALED? It seems to be the UNAD and University Javeriana. The thing is that Distance Education is not e-Learning.

Self-question: Making studies on, let's say, e-Learning, and writing reports on those studies makes someone an expert on the development of e-Learning solutions?

http://www.utpl.edu.ec/centrovirtual. CHECK!!!

Alfa-Rueda network, on Distance Education quality standards. I remember something I heard (maybe from Jay Cross?) in the Future of Education conference: something like "Standards are built for things that doesn't change frequently"...

There is an online self-assessment tool…

http://www.uptc.edu.ec/caled

They were doing courses on DE quality. They found that people didn't even knew what was DE, so they made courses on this basic subject.

Myths of e-Learning quality:

  • Market as origin of the subject of quality.
  • Discovering the wheel.
  • The purpose of quality evaluation is quality evaluation.
  • Making life hard: The myth of perfect rationality.
  • We discuss little details, but accept willingly big mistakes. (Colamos un mosquito y nos tragamos un camello).
  • ICT as key factor
  • Change anything in order to be original, even if there's no need to.

Knowledge assessment scorecards!!!

The rector highlights the importance of focusing on the USE.

It is so refreshing to see a Rector who is so well informed about these issues.

Quality and values are the most important subjects for the LAC Universities on the 21st century.

Mental note: The great breakthroughs of humanity didn't happen on comitees.



Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Conferences, Education, Virtual Educa Brasil 2007

Seminar: Quality on Distance Higher Education: Piet Henderikx

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Finally, I'm at UNIVAP/Urbanova. Surprisingly, no laptops in the auditorium, so far. Maybe a couple of Blackberrys, but that's it. Restricted wireless access, by the way. You would expect to have open access in an event like this one.

EADTU (www.eadtu.nl): Lifelong open and flexible learning (LOF).

Bullet-style presentation. In English, with a translator…

Single mode universities: 100% distance education. Athabasca y TELUQ are associated with EADTU.
Dual mode across Europe.

Driving forces: Bologna, Lisbon Strategy (??), lifelong learning, internationalization, educational technology, global development.

Task forces: Virtual mobility, eLearning QA & Benchmarking, EPICS (European portal for international courses and services -check!-), funding & researching LOF, sustainability…

Looks like this people makes no difference between distance learning and e-Learning…

Principles: Interactivity, flexibility, accessibility…

Requirements: Learner centered Pedagogy, curriculum & course design & organization, pedagogical services. The most important thing is not the platform, but the learning processes involved.

Virtual mobility: Erasmus mobility: Take a course, take a module, international learning communities, support for physical mobility, virtual internship, virtual libraries. Funny thing: Some of these amazing "innovative" projects sound just like the kind of collaborative projects that you have found in Kidlink, for example, all these years… Higher Education is definitely walking a very slow path...

OER: MIT OCW, OpenLearn (UKOU), MORIL (??). They seems to be developing Multilingual educational resources. He calls "second generation", resources which include learning activities, in addition to content. Go figure, our LO definition is "second generation"… The difference is that they seem to be working a lot in localization of the resources (they are using 10 languages, it seems). They have an operational plan, and they are working now on its implementation.. But this is only multilingual, not multicultural approaches. They talk only about localization. If the institution that translates wants to include cultural aspects, it's their choice.

What about the intellectual property issues of these materials?

Are these resources synchronized? In a centralized LOR?

MORIL stands for Multilingual Open Educational Resources.

Task force: QA Assurance & Accreditation: Develop a core of facets, criteria parameters and procedures for QA for LOF learning/e-Learning.

E-xcellence (??): Set of 33 european benchmarks (which ones?) Who knows about this? Who could talk about this? They say the have manuals, books, etc.

Time's up. Not a very good time management strategy, so the presentation is over in the middle of it. The presenter says that the information is on the Web. If that is the case, what was the point of the talk?

That was Mr. Piet Henderikx, General Secretary, European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), talking about Current trends on Virtual Education in Europe.

So far, nothing that I'm not aware of, at least in the conceptual sense. A lot of common places, sometimes oxymoron.. I have yet to see the Downes, Leinonen, Wiley, Warlick characters in this conference...



Original post blogged on b2evolution.

e-Learning, Education, Education & Society

At the airport: Virtual Educa Colombia

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I'm going to Barranquilla. I'll be participating in a panel, in an event called "Iberoamerican Meeting on Virtual Learning", organized by the newborn Virtual Educa Colombia.

I got to the airport at 5:15. It was unexpectedly busy, but I was able to check in on time. Avianca has become very efficient at this... However, the fog is so thick this morning, that the airport is closed and we are on standby, till further notice.

I'll try and blog the meeting (hopefully live, and that is, if I manage to get there... :D), but I'll be depending on the availability of electric outlets. My battery has decided it's no longer interested in working with me...

The panel will address four questions, so I'm already thinking about them (Now, keep in mind that this is in the Colombian education context):

  1. What are the most relevant initiatives in the country, referred to the e-Learning area?
  2. In which ways can you innovate education with IT, and what trend do you like the most: online learning, b-learning or learning networks?
  3. What is the teacher role in the new educational model?
  4. Surprising and unexpected question by the audience. :roll:

So, I'll try and report later about the panel...

(DISCLAIMER: Please, bear with me. I'm trying to improve my english writing, so any comment or correction will be really welcome. Thank you!)



Original post blogged on b2evolution.