1. Elearninglearning site: I cannot stress enough how wonderful and important the www.elearninglearning.com site is. I subscribe to the weekly digest and this is a great way to be alerted to interesting news, tools and articles around e-Learning. In fact my number 2 "thing" came from a link from the e-mail digest of elearninglearning! So here goes thing nr 2...
2. Hybrid teaching and learning: There has been a lot written about blended- or mixed mode, or hybrid learning, and the Learning Solution article "Hybrid learning: How to reach digital natives" gives a concise and useful summary of the issues as well as ideas for using the power of hybrid teaching and learning. Seeing that the kind of students that we are already teaching might gain by us knowing about this powerful model, it is a worthwhile read and builds on the post I wrote recently about Digital immigrants . I would like some comments on the hybrid model - especially on how you implement it in the Higher Education context. Which brings me to the third thing ...
3. The benefits of e-Learning is not always so abvious: This article is quite clever in that it is honest about the fact that e-Learning does not function "automatically". Sometimes you could have the greatest e-Learning idea or course, and the students are quite "langtand" or unmotivated to join. The author takes a look at cultural factors (mainly West vs East) and how that may impact on the uptake of e-Learning. It does not only give a negative outlook, but suggests ways in which one might address the issues of adoption (like couching your learning as a traditional style of learning, but through a technology medium).
I hope everybody is tinkering away at their prototype design for e-Learning. The blogs are quiet. Could we have some dialogue perhaps - it always makes a facilitator's heart beat faster!
I found this article on Hybrid learning very interesting - especially the fact that it is not so much about the teachers' knowledge about technology, but rather about the interesting learning experiences they can create. The teachers' role is to guide, mentor and nurture the students while they use interactive tools to explore the world around them, to figure things out and to make mental connections.
ReplyDeleteI realised that I must make a mind-shift here as I often tend to be too worried about my own knowledge of technology (or the lack thereof). And it is also so different to how I learnt - but so exciting!
Thanks JP - this was a great article that helped me to get another perspective on e-learning.
To me, there is a new kind of trust involved. What physicalot said about "so different to how I learnt" is so true - one defaults to that position (which is not necessarily bad) but we might be missing other opportunities to teach younger generation students in a mode that will make them excel. So we have to take the leap of faith that our new methods (even if we have not learned with them ourselves) is going to have an impact. The research seems to indicate that, maybe we can try out in small increments, and also add our voices to what seems to be better or working well. Thanks for the comment!
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