EME6414 Web Log

This six-week course has been intense, but exceptionally productive! I personally think that this extreme immersion has been a captivating experience. We have learned so much about so many tools and different strategies for becoming effective prosumers. There has not been a single class in this program that has added this much to our toolboxes. During the first week, I was extremely nervous about starting a personal blog and sharing it with the world – I am now writing my 21 st blog post! The idea of putting something out there for others to evaluate is daunting, but fortunately, we have a supportive group in this class. I have been pleased with the overall feedback and everyone has been quite positive. This has helped squelch a lot of my previous trepidation.  Over the last six weeks, my nerves have settled and I feel a lot more comfortable writing and sharing online. It is a great feeling to know that I can jump out of my comfort zone and I have learned that experience can ...

If you follow a ton of people or have a large following on Twitter, you are not necessarily learning anything or gaining any professional development experience. There has to be some sort of meaning and method to the madness, or else we are actually doing ourselves a disservice. One must have a solid plan, goals, and a purpose if they want to gain benefits from the Twitterverse and develop a PLN. In developing my PLN, I am striving to find specific subject matter experts, relevant and useful content, and working to make sure that the information is efficiently organized in a manner that is personally useful to me. I want the content to be accessible and meaningful and I want the wheat separated from the chaff. I came across a journal article written by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach that has some good tips for building up a PLN on Twitter. Sheryl states that is important to use one single username across different networks so that you can easily build up an online reputation and person...

One researcher from NYU and another from Microsoft collaborated to write this journal article titled, ‘I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience.’ I thought that they had some good ideas in it for managing different identities in different environments and regulating context collapse. The authors explain how many users in the social media world will create ‘imagined audiences’ as they produce content and navigate different networks. They explain that many users will conceal certain subjects and self-monitor by emphasizing certain things and de-emphasizing others. It reminded me of the dating scene in a way. The authors discuss personal branding and strategic self-commodification. I found these perspectives to be relevant and accurate based on my personal experiences. The authors of this journal brought up several theories that I wanted to share. The self-preservation theory touches on self-conscious identity performances – t...

I found a neat article that discusses flipping online classrooms with Web 2.0 technologies. The author discusses the creation of asynchronous workshops built around social environments. He also discusses how the use of certain tools can maximize student engagement and participation. The author used some communication and writing classes at Miami University of Ohio for his experiment. He incorporated many Google Apps and other Web 2.0 tools to help students create flexible learning strategies where they wrote collaboratively and in open public spaces on the web. I thought that this was a cool new way to look at flipped classrooms – there doesn’t have to be a physical meeting space for all flipped classrooms. This two-directional platform helped students mix up data from multiple sources and they created extremely rich user networks along the way. The web 2.0 tools that were used helped create and foster learner to instructor interactions, learner to content interactions, and learne...

I found this cool article that reviewed the use of wikis at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine. They have a pathology program there where they created several wikis for educational purposes. They use virtual microscopy where students scan microbial slides by various sections and then other learners can manipulate the images by zooming in, underlining things, adding arrows, labeling attributes, etc. Students group images by topic and are even able to edit other student’s slides. This is all preparing them to work as pathologists and I thought that it was a unique way to develop these professional skills. Students also participate in discussions on the wiki and share new ideas with each other.  The college discovered that this method of instruction produced an extremely detailed analysis of the subject matter. It was also beneficial because the students could access this archive at any time for knowledge management. The instructors reviewed student access and tracked...

The benefits of constructivism, discovery learning, connectivism, and social learning are absolutely phenomenal. I have quickly noticed that these Web 2.0 tools facilitate learning through all of these cognitive theories. I think that this class has highlighted the importance of collaboration and the benefits of cognitive conflicts (diversity of opinions) that come with social learning. It has been interesting to see how knowledge can be created, synthesized, and shared more effectively and efficiently using these Web 2.0 tools. I also feel like these tools are great for role-playing activities and can be used for online learning games. I believe that learning outside of the traditional ‘formal’ environment can breed more authentic experiences and that the students will have access to a more diverse audience when they use these tools. Over the last four weeks I have noticed that learners tend to take more control of their learning when using these web 2.0 tools and that there are ...