The idea of
“online “tribes” as a community of like-minded people without geographic
constraints”[1]
immediately struck me and served as a catalyst for my learning goals this
week. I have a student who has more than
one online tribe, and he interacts with his tribes in a manner that does pique
his curiosity, engage his evaluative thinking and foster new stimuli
regularly. One tribe member in
particular, whom he met on a Mongolian underwater basket-weaving site, is a
constant frame of reference for this student as he navigates life and learning. This shifts online perception away from
deviance or sources to be skeptical of towards imagining the hopeful
possibility that is connected learning.
The chats are more than fodder to distract, as so much online life is,
and instead offer random touchstones of sects of the world that might never
have been encountered in one’s “regular” life, even with travels. This leads me to the essential question,
“What is the purpose of an educator in connected learning?”
Two key
“educational affordances” stood out to me in my goals with trying to find
meaningful ways to incorporate mobile learning.
One is “ Context sensitivity, the ability to “gather data unique to the
current location, environment, and time, including both real and simulated
data,”[2]
as it puts learning in the now, though I am reluctant to jump into using the
“just in time” mindset. The second key
point speaks directly to my current practice and focus for change in education
which is, “Individuality, a “unique
scaffolding” that can be “customized to the individual’s path
of investigation.”[3] There is a clear advantage to students
learning at their own pace, in their own way and when it suits them. Additionally, as summed up so well in Ms.
Peters’ words, “Managing m-learning as a
part of a suite of services that offers greater choice to learners will have
benefits for providers, because it can allow teachers to move from delivery to
the management of learning, and will help learners to gain specific skills of
immediate value in the knowledge-based economy.”
Admittedly, this
should be driving my work, and specifically in writing performance objectives
for the mobile learning module I’m trying create. How, though, do I take the educational
principles of objectives and focus more on providing this “suite of services”
for my students. How can I focus on conditions,
performance and criterion[4]
for an objective, assuming I am still managing the learning, while allowing my
students to learn however, wherever, and whenever mobily?
I disagree with
Hall Davidson’s theory that we are returning to non-reading or that all
learning will be inevitably e-learning.[5] As a question lover, with support from Make
Just One Change[6],
which is the basis for the Question Generation practice I use regularly, I
believe reading is one of many ways we learn to question ideas of others as a means to think critically.
I also believe that seeking ideas from words along with other
modalities, allows for higher likelihood of imagination, personal connections
and practice finding “voice” or other aspects of storytelling. If I’m attempting to nurture a generation of
thinkers, I want multiple means of information as part of the deal in order to
maximize construction of learning networks. E-learning, m-learning, face-to-face learning and reading are essential.
In the interest of
brevity, writing performance objectives felt quite challenging in relation to
my learning goal. I’m trying to put the
Critical Thinking skills into concrete actions, yet have no idea how to put
thinking into words let alone a succinct one to two sentence objective. My big picture plan includes students helping
define what it will look like if they achieve mastery of the CT skills, so
perhaps my next step is to have that conversation in order to find ways to
build backwards from those goals.
[1] Peters, Kristine. "m-Learning: Positioning
educators for a mobile, connected future." The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning
8.2 (2007).
[2] Peters, Kristine. "m-Learning: Positioning
educators for a mobile, connected future." The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning
8.2 (2007).
[3] Peters, Kristine. "m-Learning: Positioning
educators for a mobile, connected future." The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning
8.2 (2007).
[4] "Lesson 6 - Writing Objectives - ITMA."
2003. 1 Nov. 2015 <http://www.itma.vt.edu/modules/spring03/instrdes/lesson6.htm>
[5] "TEDxManhattanBeach - Hall Davidson - The
Teacher with a ..." 2011. 1 Nov. 2015 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdIhMV2DWLU>
[6] "Make Just One Change - Right Question
Institute." 2012. 1 Nov. 2015 <http://rightquestion.org/make-just-one-change/>
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