Research / Blog #7

First of all I intended to present three articles focusing on youtube and collaboration potential using Google+ technologies recently introduced within an instructional setting.  After seeing commercials for March Madness and a group of journalists using “hang out” to comment on material real-time sparked my interest.  Applications for this technology within instructional methods are something I perceive as a very strong asset for teachers to wield.

Not finding an abundance of written articles adequately addressing the use of Google+ hang out technology I have chosen three articles from the Podcasting/User-Created Content category in an effort to research the concepts that go behind the strength of real-time sharing of video material and participant content creation within the instructional experience.

Article One:

My first article is “Digital spaces and young people's online authoring: Challenges for teachers.” found in the Australian Journal of Language & Literacy in 2009.  It’s an interesting article with relevance to technology in the classroom touching on today’s learners being Digital Natives compared to learners that adapted to new technologies, Digital Immigrants, and the difference in points of view.  The author actively cites Prensky (Prensky, M. 2004). Prensky writes of how the generation currently learning is part of a digital generation fluid in the language of technology of the period.  The authors do point out a flaw in that thought with socioeconomic conditions creating barriers of entry, individual students having different interests and motivations, and the non-sequential growth of digital populations globally.

At the articles core is the challenge for teachers instructing students within this digital native group.  “Classrooms that privilege alphabetic, print-based, hard copy texts over electronic, multimedia and online texts are failing to capitalize on their students’ expertise and creating dissonance, as well as perpetuating disadvantage for those teens, who are not engaging with new texts outside of school.” (Hansford, Anlington p.59)  The suggestion is that there is a distinct disconnect with the language of bourgeois teaching methods and the native digital population.  Connecting with students in a language best suited toward them is a challenge educators must meet head on.

Teachers are challenged with new realities surrounding their educational and cultural environment and a new directive designed to teach students.  This directive the authors suggest that humankind is designed to use more than one of the senses and stresses that these senses never operate in isolation. (Hansford, Anlington p.61)  In a multimedia stimuli driven world this has become a large contributing factor whether instruction achieve goals and objectives.  In order to enable all students to actively and powerfully engage with online authoring in the classroom, it is imperative that we identify and articulate what makes these new texts work well.

Designing meaningful tasks is another challenge teachers find difficult while teaching the native digital student.  The article suggests that for effective powerful writing to take place using blogs, the focus should be on ‘genuine affinity spaces’ that will interest and challenge students into writing effective pieces for significant purposes. (Hansford, Anlington p.62)  An essential element to the design of instruction should include technology that embraces the task at hand and not make the experience murky, immaterial, or irrelevant.  A group of students writing to a blog is an example.  While the idea is sound if not properly placed within the learning experience and focus identified the practice may not provide the desired result and produce irrelevant results.  Incorporating effective materials and technologies into a plan is needed.

So how are teachers to address design issues in the early stages of developing a plan?  To initiate student learning, effective digital texts can be co-examined to determine the multimodal components that combine to result in effective texts. (Hansford, Anlington p.65)  The authors believe multimodal forms of teaching are needed in much the same way that was discussed in the previous Gardner article on Multiple Intelligences in our previous week.  The design components, such as, linguistic, spatial, gestural, visual and audio elements should be analyzed both for their separate and synergistic qualities. Exploring these components form a foundation for the learner to build upon and embrace within their learning experience.  Students need to learn to learn within a digital text as well as create content within a digital space and the teacher, presumed to be a digital immigrant, bridges the gap between the traditional ideologies and the new digital minded educational thought. 

Article Two:

My second article I am to review was found on our class site.  Though it was written in 2006 I found the content to be relevant in today’s educational culture. “Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration” by Yoanny Beldarrain addresses how new technologies have become transformational in their presence.  Delivery structures and traditional thought on pedagagogical practices have been challenged with fresh ideas on how to best interact, engage, and educate our students.  Educational environments are evolving.

One aspect I found interesting about this article is that it was published over six years ago.  In today’s technological culture that is ancient.  However the concepts remain the same and many of the methods are very relevant in today’s distance learning and internet savvy classrooms.  Applications such as podcasts, wikis, blogs and vlogs are introduced while other forms such as Google+ Hang Outs, Facebook and YouTube interface upgrades, and cloud computing advancements had yet to hit the market.   More and more synchronous focused software and web solutions are popping up and this article touches on how emerging technologies are transforming the environmental environment.  These emerging technologies are expanding the learning community in ways that even distance learning has been redefined these past few years.

One important observation by the author is that emerging technology tools fostering interaction must be properly integrated into the design process to ensure appropriate application. (Beldarrain p.143)  If the design is off the mark students will not achieve the desired outcome.  Design structures need to maintain flexibility and be able to adapt during any point in the process. 

The closing paragraph serves as an example of how this article maintains its relevance within today’s learning culture. “The demand for distance education will only continue to grow. The ever-evolving nature of technology will continue to push distance educators to use new tools to create learning environments that will indeed prepare students to be life-long learners, who can problem solve through collaboration with global partners.” (Beldarrain p.150) This statement stands strong today.

 

Article Three:

I found this article, “Teen Content Creators and Consumers” by Amanda Lenhart & Mary Madden,  on our class website much like I did article two and was drawn to the article originally because of the year it was published as much as the content the article contained.  Unlike my former two articles, this article is a study published in 2005 from a sample of 1100 teens ages 12-17 during the period of October 26 to November 28, 2004. (Lenhart, Madden p.18)  I would have to project that the numbers are significantly higher in the majority of the categories as the evolution of digital content creation; barriers to entry have become easier to penetrate.  Within our digital culture it’s my belief that some of the definitions within this article have been transformed by the presence of popular wifi tablets, new price points on smart phone data plans, and the latest sources of entry into the world of content creation.  

This article promotes the idea that American teenagers can engage media material and create their own content in ways the generation before them could not.  This is similar to the Digital native observed in my first article review and the absence of naturally being immersed in technology, the internet, and the current forms of collaboration available to today’s students, businesses, and households.  This article presents the teenaged student often is the one leading adoption of new technologies within the household and that this reality translates into the youth being the aggressive agent bringing the need for adapting educational practices to fit needed methods engaging students with this knowledge in learning. 

One striking observation made reading this article was the portion on dial-up.  In discussing students within the generation of online instruction many users would not know what dial-up is. In the age of digital media, the possibilities for the manipulation of text, images, video, and audio files have increased dramatically. (Lenhart, Madden p.2)  This is made possible because of very wide broadband access and the growing wireless internet availability.  Consumers can listen to, view, search, download, upload, and manipulate content like never before and the growth within this category is not going to slow down any time soon. 

Reading the numbers is refreshing as I compare them to similar statistics collected or projected about current content creation numbers.  Youtube, Google+, Facebook, Blogger, and similar web applications serve as growth points for teens to branch out and engage more with life-long learning.  As educators it is good to know how technology is transformative and a comparison of the findings of a study closing its books for publishing November of 2004 and the teens found creating content and the activities of consumers today is very beneficial.

Sources:

Hansford, Diane; Adlington, Rachael. “Digital spaces and young people's online authoring: Challenges for teachers.” Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, v. 32 issue 1, 2009, p. 55-68.

Beldarrain, Y. (2006, August). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), 139-153. Retrieved March 3, 2008, from Academic Search Complete database.

Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2005). Teen Content Creators and Consumers. Pew Internet & American Life Project Report. Retrieved December 14, 2007, from pewinternet.org.
"The emerging online life of the digital native: What they do differently because of technology, and how they do it" [Electronic Version], from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky-the_emerging_online_life_of_the_digital_native-03.pdf). 

ENGAGEMENT THEORY

               I like how a number of the theories we are researching apply in classroom applications but the one that interests me the most is Engagement Theory.  This theory in particular interests me because of the learning environment constructed in many distance learning class applications.  It promotes the idea that students need to be engaged through activities and participation for a meaningful educational experience.  It’s much more than being presented with the materials or tests on what one knows.  Being immersed within the materials and experiencing the process of gathering knowledge is the valued result.  It's also project driven which I find interesting.

                Students partake in the learning experience by working together in groups or teams.  Much like our group exercise our class just completed, participants work together to form an end product and learn along the way.  This way students collaborate within the learning process creating a relevant learning experience.  The basic principles of this theory have three components: Relate, Create & Donate (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).   The first component, relate, has the students working collaboratively in teams or groups.  As was the case with our group projects, students engage one another through the use of technology such as a Wiki or the use of Skype communicating ideas and forming thoughts.   In a classroom setting this may include clustering around a desk or a group meeting outside of class.  Both of these examples follow the first principle of collaboration emphasizing a team effort that involves communication, planning, management and social skills (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).  The group collaborates on a subject to discuss fresh perspectives on the material.  Individuals exchange ideas and essentially brainstorm new forms of knowledge. 

                The second component, create, involves the collaborating group engaging in the learning process to create a project.  Teams have one common goal: the project.  Whether this is in the form of a presentation such as this class presented, some sort of knowledge scrapbook put together by a team of students, or a collaborative paper, the group executes their planning and communication in the form of a project.  The group has an end goal in mind when exchanging ideas and follows through on the intended plan.

                The third component, donate, stresses the value of making a useful contribution while learning (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).  This principle boils down to relevancy.  The project needs to carry meaning in which others outside the group can learn from or be relevant in its being.  Central in this theory is a center around an “outside” customer.  This ideology is central to my personal belief in instructional methodology because I believe in teaching real-world applications in which students learn through breaking down actual realistic situations or occurrences and develop their own plan, description, and workarounds based on their own group knowledge as well as that written in the material.

                The engagement theory and the three basic principals are relevant in internet based classes: online and traditional brick and mortar classes utilizing internet tools.  Communication is easily done within class or outside of class with texting, email, wikis, and other forms of digital communication.  Collaborative cohesion is an issue face-to-face or completely via internet communication methods but the intent is to engage all students into doing their part, learning through the process, and following through with completion of the project.  The reality that engagement theory focuses on non-academic measures and is built to maintain contact with the learner and their learning environment is also a key component that draws me to this theory. 

A few statements within the text resonate with me.
First:  "Engagement theory places a great deal of emphasis on providing an authentic (i.e., meaningful) setting for learning, something not present in previous models."
Lessons are very relevent, meaningful, and beneficial to the learner and help establish a pattern of troubleshooting and working within the system that will only help build their academic arsenal for lessons to come.

Second, I love the authors closing statement:

“We believe that engagement theory represents a new paradigm for learning and teaching in the information age which emphasizes the positive role that technology can play in human interaction and evolution. We challenge others to examine this theory and test it in their own teaching efforts.”

These two statements are why I too feel strongly for this style of instruction.