The Evaluation phase of the instructional design process

During the implementation phase of the ADDIE process some evaluation of the course was done while it was implemented. The evaluation phase done during this last phase of the ADDIE process consists in doing a final, overall evaluation, making some adjustments to the course and releasing the project. The evaluation process continues by doing some personal reflections about the project.

During the the evaluation phase the following actions will be taken:

• Conduct a final overall action of the course
• Collect data and summarize the responses
• Adjust the course design and some parts of the media
• Release the project
• Write a summary and some reflections about anything learned for doing the project

Some interesting questions to ask :

• Did the learners achieve the goals of instruction?
• What did they like best or least about the course?
• What kinds of responses did one get when they rated parts of the work?
• What did one learn from all of this?
• What did one like or didn't like about designing one's own course?

The answers to some of these questions allow to know if learning happens effectively or not. Evaluation provides feedback and helps to improve the course. It can also lead to refine or reconceptualize and redo some elements of the analysis part of the ADDIE process

During the evaluation process the following steps will be taken:

Step 1: Plan and conduct the project evaluation

One will need to find out if the course fits the learners. How to determine that? The actions that the learners do as a result of taking the course can help to evaluate the learner. If the learners understand the lessons and do all the requirements correctly it means that they are doing well. However if If they don't understand the course and don't show anything related to their understanding it means that they are not doing well.

A course evaluation enables to find out the following information:

• All parts of the course are appropriate and useful
• The course parts flow in a convenient sequence
• All topics are suitable to the course
• Learners gain skills and knowledge
• Learning and instruction activities are appropriate. effective and efficient

One makes a copy of this worksheet for each people who participates in the course. One asks 5 people who participate in the Beta test evaluation in the implementation phase to fill out the evaluation form and to return it.

The results of the evaluation form allow to:

• Study the opinons and results of the evaluation
• Allow to adjust the project design and some parts of the course media
• Release the project
• Evaluate one's performance about doing the project 

Step 2: Write project reflections

After learning the main phases of the ADDIE process and doing this project it is time to reflect. The following questions can help write about these reflections:

• What were the surprises?
• What can one remember about doing this project?
• What is the favorite part or achievement in doing the ADDIE process?
• What parts of the projects one desires to go back and do better if one has the chance? This worksheet can help to write and summarize the reflections about the project experiences

The implementation phase of the the Instructional Design process

The instructional design process is similar to the design process of a house. In the building process the engineer or builder does some undertakings concerning the plan of the ground on which the building will be erected and some analysis of the soil. He closes the lot and starts preparing the design of the house. Then he develops and implements the design. When he finishes building the house the owners are ready to move. The builder will be satisfied with his work when everything works properly in the house. Usually things don't work well and the owners have to call the builder in order to have other workers to fix whatever that doesn't work properly..

The same thing happens in the ADDIE process. After the development process things might not work the way they were designed. That's the reason why some experiments have to be done to make sure that things work the way they are supposed to. Learner problems and challenges may arise. Some bugs in the media may be found. In this case flexibility is recommended  because as mentioned before things might not work the way they were planned, This situation can cause to redesign and redevelop some elements.

The experimentation phase consists in asking a few students to use the project. You watch them to see if they can use the elements of the project. You ask them questions and write down their answers. You find out what they like about the learning experiences and what is confusing to them. You also ask them about what they like you to fix about the project.

During the implementation phase you will have to do the following steps after developing the project enough to try it out:

• Conduct an alpha test with a few people
• Make revisions of the course based on suggestions from the alpha test
• Conduct a beta test with 5 or people in your target audience

Some considerations to take into account during the implementation phase are listed below. They are what you would like to achieve with your project and the reason why you are doing this experiment or pilot test.

• All parts of the lesson are appropriate and useful
• The lesson or course flows in a satisfactory sequence
• All relevant topics are included
• Learners gain skills and knowledge
• Instructions and learning activities are appropriate, appealing, effective and efficient.

Step One: Conduct an Alpha Test. These instructions have to be followed:

• Find three or five people to try the project
• Give each of them a copy of this Evaluation form and have them return it to you
• Write a list of questions to ask them at the same time they are trying the project
• Write down the answers to these questions in order to make the revisions.

Observe the learners to find out :

• They move through the lessons and media materials
• What could be causing negative feelings or confusion
• What are the positive feelings and behavior about this project and the learning experience

Step Two: Make revisions

Use the notes from the previous step to plan changes about some specific areas of the project. Keep them for redoing later some parts of the project.

Use this worksheet  to make the revisions that will improve the project. The assignment consists in:

• Making lists of all the revisions to be made
• Do the improvements
• Try out the revised project before conducting the Beta test.

Step Three: Conduct the Beta Test

The beta test allows to make a few other changes that couldn't be done during the alpha test. Use this worksheet to list the changes necessary to make the project better. The assignment consists in doing the following checklist:

• Make the lists of changes base on feedback received.
• Do the improvements
• Write 3 things you learned from doing this project and describe them.

The third phase of the instructional design process: the Development

The purpose of the design phase of the ADDIE process is to give designers an idea of the structure of the course. During the development phase designers actually create the materials of the course. This process is similar to the building process of a house. One starts by creating a blueprint. Then during the executing phase one starts by acquiring and creating the materials necessary to build the house.

In the development phase instructional designers do the following things:

• Develop all the materials for a prototype lesson or multimedia presentation
• Create a file directory and store all files
• Create a prototype lesson 
• Check copyright permissions and list the credits
• Use a production checklist to double check that everything looks and functions properly.

This is done by doing the following steps:

Step 1 Acquire, Produce Media and Store the Project Files

In this phase one designs the web page(s), text, images, audio and video necessary to teach the lessons. One chooses the appropriate media for these lessons according to the design process. One can create a web page with text, images, video. etc. It could be a PowerPoint slide. a single video or a combination of the two. It could be a web page with a combination of text and links. Think about it. We live in an evolving world and one can't limit oneself to a single process. There are various learning theories and each of them brings different learning approaches. If you think that a video is the best learning approach you can do it. But if you want to experiment and innovate you need to try different ways. With the internet and the development of web technologies there are different ways of teaching and learning.

The first thing to do is to create a directory structure to store all the project files and that might not be necessary if one doesn't produce the media. An example of the directory structure is provided in this worksheet. The next thing to do is to go to the storyboard created during the design phase to decide the type of files that have to be produced. One can produce the text and media files or one can acquire them. In the design phase a storyboard or a sort of blueprint of the materials that need to be produced was created. The storyboard holds also a web page design.  The web page design is a plan of the different web pages for the project. One can go to the home page for example and decide what type of media and text that can be put on this page. One can acquire the text and media or produce them. The pages can contain text, video, images, etc. This worksheet is an example of a web page(s) design that can be used as a reference to decide what type of of media that can go on the page(s). The storyboard is where one decides what type of materials need to be created. For me there is no fixed storyboard design as there is no unique design for all the houses that were built and that can be built. Houses are built according to the needs and preferences of the owner. The instructional designer designs instruction according to the needs of the learner. He also brings his own preferences according to what he thinks is best for the learner.

Three types of designs were created during the the design process: task design, information design and user interface or graphic design. In the task design one asks the following question: What are the steps the learner has to follow in order to perform a particular task? In the information design one decides the amount of content and the type of design that will draw attention to important information. During the user interface design one decides the type of handout, web page or PowerPoint slides that will best convey the information. These media should be easy for the learner to use. Feedback for the prototype created is gathered from targeted learners and subject matter experts to see if the design reflects the goals of instruction. This prototype is preliminary and will be evaluated in the first implementation of instruction. It is recommended to plan for feedback and evaluation throughout the design process so that the evaluation phase can reflect the goals and objectives for the redesigned instruction and materials.

Step 2 Create a prototype lesson

The preceding paragraph dealt with the design process. It reminded of certain important considerations in that phase. During the development phase one creates the materials such as web page, handout, PowerPoint slides or online activities that will be used with the learners in the first implementation of the lesson (s).  Media and technology specialized knowledge may be required during the development phase if the web materials are created from scratch. However armed with the necessary information the instructional designer can create everything by himself. Some instructional platforms give instructions to anybody who wants to  teach without having a lot of knowledge in web development and instructional design. It means that to teach a course online one doesn't need to be an expert in web development, media technology and instructional design. These platforms have already their web developers, media technologists and instructional designers. When you want to teach you only have to follow the instructions to design a course. What is deceiving is like the instructor has to follow these instructions and doesn't have the maneuver to bring his own preferences.

Step 3 Check resource permissions and write the credits

In this phase one determines the amount of copyrighted work that will be used without copyright infringement. According to an instructional design course of Utah State University 10% of a song or article can be used to stay in the limits of non violation copyrights. One can always use open source and open educational resources, which is a better option. One writes the credits and includes them in an appropriate place of the media used.

Step 4 Use the Production checklist

The ADDIE production checklist has the following elements:
Management.
This section deals with the management of the project: hard drive file structure, backup system
Treatments.
In this section is found the theme/motif of the project, the project metaphor that supports the theme, the style, color scheme. Pacing and tone match learner's skills, views and goals for the project.
Media.
This section deals with the requirements for graphics, audio, video and text. Use a media log to track filenames of files created or acquired. An copy of the course can also be created in a CD or DVD for learners who don't have access to high speed internet.
Project authoring.
Elements considered are: formatting styles, typeface, unit consistency, menu consistency, learner activities, script, test items, caption, instruction or directions
Navigation
Considerations are given to buttons, links, site map, exit button
Language check
Spell check, language easy to understand, absence of implicit or explicit bias are considered
Copyright check
Citation of sources for graphics, sound, video and text. correctness of materials quoted, permission for use of copyrighted material, attribution of credits to contributors are taken into consideration
Double checking of the total project
Critique of pages, media log, accuracy of information, feedback from experts, debugging, proofreading, media testing, clarity of objectives are considered. Detailed information about the production checklist can be found in this workshet
      

The second phase of the instructional Design process (continued)

Step 2 Create a course map
A course map is the foundation of the instructional deign process. This is also a course map that allows to get a clearer picture of the course. It shows all the pieces of a courses. Some of the pieces can be: Overview, Introduction, Pre-test, Unit, Lesson, Post-test, Summary, Glossary, etc. Before laying out the course map one can do two things:
1. Lengthen the list of objectives by dividing topics in subtopics and writing each subtopic as an objective.
2. Refine the objectives by making them more specific
One can define a strategy component corresponding to a teaching strategy for each specific objective.
Step 3: Define a project style guide
In this step one decides of the theme, color scheme, metaphor, the look and feel of the project.
Step 4: Design lesson strategies, events and practice activities
In this step one creates the blueprint design document that shows the plan for the entire course. First the course is created in one's mind and one paper. Then one creates it in the computer. It is a question of putting together steps one and two in order to show the plan for the entire course.
Step 5: Evaluation strategy
In this phase one plans a way to measure how well the learners accomplish the goals and objectives of the course or lesson. One plans the lesson evaluation at the end of the lesson plan. The assessment can take several forms: a portfolio, a project, a test,  etc. A test is usually measured quantitatively. But other forms of evaluation can be used qualitatively. A portfolio and a project can be measured qualitatively where one can write a report on how well the learner reaches the goals and objectives of the lesson or course. The quantitative measure is very traditional and is still maintained as the most correct measure of evaluation. This measure is ridiculous because it requires the evaluation to be done by an instructor. But what's the evaluation measure of a self-learner and a lifelong learner? Out of school who evaluates the learning while one continues to learn everyday by experiences, reading and self-study?. I think in this case self-evaluation and society's evaluation are some measures of one's evaluation. For example one can use one's own judgement to determine if one has done well in a subject area or even in life. For example one can have good grades in college and not perform well in the exercise of one's profession. If you want to find a good physician you don't research his scores at the school of medicine but you research how well he has treated other patients. A good physician gets his patients by word of mouth. Once he treats them well  these patients refer other people to him. This medical doctor continues to learn by experiences, reading, attending seminars. The feedback that he gets from his patients and a sense of confidence in himself create a value for his competence that cannot be equated to a grade mark.
In a traditional measure of evaluation you give a test at the end of the lesson to see to what degree the learners consume the knowledge, skills and attitudes of what they are supposed to learn. When a student first take a course it is sometimes good to test the prerequisites to see how well they do. This can be pre-test. Depending on the results of the test one reviews the prerequisites before starting the course. All the tests of the actual course can be considered as post tests of this course. One test for a lesson can be considered as a pre-test for the second lesson when the lessons of the course are related.
I think a pretest and a posttest can be given for each lesson if the lessons of the  same course are not related.  

The second phase of the instructional design process: the design

Engineers create a blueprint before undertaking any construction project. Similarly the instructional designer creates a "design blueprint" or "course architecture" before physically creating a course. This phase is the second phase of the ADDIE process defined in the previous post. It is the planning phase of a course and requires brainstorming and creative thinking. The course design blueprint includes a course map, lesson event strategies and treatments, graphical user interface design, assessment plan and storyboard. The following steps are used in this phase:
Step 1: Refine Course Scope and Strategy
Step 2: Create Course Map
Step 3: Define Project Style Guide
Step 4: Design Lesson Strategies, Events and Practices
Step 5: Plan Evaluation Strategy
Step 6: Design Storyboard and layout screens.

Refine Course Scope and Strategy

In this step one focuses on the goal of the course. One reduces the content to some specific topics and some particular aspects of a topic or topics.

This step consists in two tasks: Reduction of topics and organization of  the overall teaching strategy.

Reduction of topics

This task consists in reducing the topics of the course and organizing them in sequence or putting them in a certain order. One can assimilate this organization to a table of contents. The content is set according to the objectives and tasks. The content is arranged according to some guidelines: general to specific, frequency (first skills used first), simple to complex or logical sequence.

Organization of the overall teaching strategy

This task contains the following components:
1. Have a  clear idea of the objectives of the course. One can check the objectives set previously
2. Define the strategies to help students learn. These strategies and learning events depend on the content topics and objectives. Not all events and strategies are introduced in a lesson. These strategies are divided in : pre-instructional events, instructional events. Strategies are set for each objective.

Pre-instructional events help focus on the overview of your topic. They set up all the events that follow.
a. Gain attention. Can be motivational. State a problem to solve. A dramatic statement or question. Show a real object, a model, a video.
Use actions (a demonstration, a song, quotation, a survey of learner’s opinions, some gimmick or unexpected event).
b. Tell or show what is expected (the objectives)
c. Remind them of things they already know about the new topic or task. Make a bridge to your message & the learners’experience.
Instructional events (decide how much to do with students and in what sequence). Decide the scope of each activity. Sequence the events.
a. Present new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Work with only 3- 5 key messages or new steps in each lesson.
b. Provide guided learning (interactive), such as: practice, examples, nonexamples, embedded assessment, questions and answers,
analogies, demonstrations, presentations, discussions, interviews, games, role playing, scavenger hunts, and application exercises.
Give frequent examples to help students visualize what you mean. Give tips and summaries often.
Follow-through events
a.  Summarize learning points (use a dramatic statement that sums up your key messages)
b. Final lesson assessment (students will act and respond to quizzes, questions, problems to solve, projects and worksheets to complete

3. Break the instruction into manageable pieces incorporating objectives and strategies
4. Putting these pieces in a logical order as follows:

• Introduction, motivation, attention getting, review
• Statement of objectives
• Learning activity
• Summary
• Assessments. Assessments can also include non conventional forms: portfolio, projects, reflections, etc.

(To be continued)
   

Realization of the tasks of the Open PhD challenge in the learning contract

In continuation with a PhD I started a few years ago and for the fulfillment of the requirements of the OnPhD candidacy challenge at Peer-to-Peer University I am submitting the following links for each task:

 Learning history. Identification of knowledge, skills and abilities from prior work and experiences. The learning history is part of the learning contract I set in my OnPhD page at Wikiversity. The elements of the learning history are: formal learning, informal learning, background summary,  specialties, interests and professional experiences and educational portfolio.
 Domain of Study
Contributions
Research Methodology
Skills and Knowledge development
Personal learning networks
Supervision and endorsements

The instructional design process of a multimedia project

Instructional technology is a systematic way of designing, developing, implementing and evaluating the process of teaching and learning. It uses a combination of technical and human resources to make instruction more effective. It includes some elements of the instructional design, product development, interactive learning technologies, multimedia, distance education. library and information literacy. Each of these elements makes its contribution to the teaching and learning learning process. Instructional design is based on a process that makes learning more efficient. It consists in identifying the learner needs, setting some instructional goals and designing a teaching process that addresses those needs. The instructional method uses the ADDIE model that includes six phases: Analysis, Design Development, Implementation and Evaluation. The first step is developed below

Analysis. This phase comprises 8 steps:

1. Define the Purpose
2. Identify the Needs
3. Identify the Learner characteristics
4. Identify the Learning environment
5. Discover the Technical constraints
6. Write objectives
7. Decide the content
8. Prepare a brief project plan

Defining the purpose

In this phase the purpose of instruction is defined. The purpose includes the benefits that the learner will get from the instruction. Example the social studies teacher is teaching about the Industrial Revolution so that students understand how the Industrial Revolution influenced people at that time and how it impacts people's lives today.

Identifying the needs

In this phase is identified what the learner needs to learn or do in order to reach the goal of instruction. The learning prerequisites are identified. The gap between what students can actually do and what they need to do define the knowledge and skills that the students need to acquire. Example: In order to achieve a level of understanding of the past influence and the present impact of the Industrial Revolution the students need to describe some major aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Actually they lack the learning prerequisites about the Industrial Revolution or they vaguely remember the major aspects of it if they already learn about it. The focus of the Instruction at this point is to give the specific details about some major aspects of the industrial Revolution. This is what the students need to know at this point.

Learner characteristics

In this phase the designer learns about the learner's characteristics in order to match the instruction to the goals, attitude and abilities of the students. The essential information required is : age and grade, attitude, background experience, etc. the student's attitude determines if the students are interested or not about the subject. The background experience includes their current knowledge level about the topic to be taught. Other characteristics include the ability to learn through different media (audio, video, text), reading level, computer literacy, student's aptitude to learn the content, etc.

Learning environment

Some aspects of the learning environment include:
- location, facilities for instruction
- delivery platforms and medium
- teacher availability, involvement during instruction
- number of students involved
- learning done individually, in small groups or in class

Technical constraints

In this phase is analyzed the availability of equipment and program. For example: availability of computers, internet access, projector, etc. In cases where equipments and programs are not available, plans can be made to provide or substitute them.

Writing of objectives  

In this phase are written the objectives which are the actions the learner are supposed to perform. The objectives are also skills related to the topics that have to be taught. They are also based on course goals and what is needed for the students to accomplish.  Objectives need to be observable and measurable.

Content

In this phase are outlined the topics needed to be taught. They are based on the objectives stated.

Brief project plan

A brief project plan includes the project and main phases due dates., people involved and their role. 

The different faces of open education and my contributions

The Open Education movement has been considered inclusive by eliminating barriers that limit access to traditional education. Before the development of computers and the invention of the internet open education exists with the correspondence schools. Correspondence schools deliver courses to participants through mail. These participants have to read, study the courses and do the assignments that they have to send back to the schools for evaluation. Open Education in its informal aspect was and it is still delivered through live radio and television broadcasting. It was also delivered in a larger scale of openness through radio and television cassette recording. With the development of computers and the internet an electronic form of learning called elearning took place through computer discs (CD) and the web. Some european universities like the Open university in UK enrolled thousands of students by eliminating university admission.

Open education originates in the free culture movement. The free culture movement is a social movement that allows to distribute and modify freely Creative Works by using the internet and other forms of media. Creative Works are considered to be works in the Arts, Literature,  Music and Software. Open education learners are responsible for their own learning and take a personal and social approach to reach their learning objectives. They are also more interested in hands-on learning. In a formal learning setting facilitated by educators learners discuss and share their learning in communities. The instructor provides the learning materials through a Learning Management System (LMS) and is responsible to guide the students. Synchronous lectures are delivered through special platforms or through live videos on YouTube or other platforms. Other resources can be provided in the form of PDFs, links, etc. Learning facilitators communicate with learners synchronously (video-audio, audio only, instant messages) and asynchronously using email or other asynchronous forms.

Open education was developed through many concepts and resources such as open courseware, open educational resources (oer), open access, etc. Open courseware consists of course materials made available by some universities and other educational institutions freely on the internet. Open courseware started in the early 2000's with MIT that decided to put their courses freely online. Since then many other universities throughout the world followed suit. MIT and Harvard have decided to create an online platform, EdX, to teach open courses. Other professors from renowned universities started their own open courseware or teach in other ones. Coursera, Udacity, etc are well known new platforms delivering open university courses for free to anybody located throughout the world.

Open Educational Resources are educational resources that others can use, remix and distribute freely to others under certain types of licences. Creative Commons issue different types of licenses for open educational resources. Those licenses are necessary for others to copy, remix and distribute these resources thereby eliminating traditional copyright permission. The common licenses used are: CC BY, CC BY NC, CC BY SA, CC BY NC SA. An author creating Open Educational Resources uses CC BY so that others can use his work by attributing credit to him. The CC BY NC license is used so that other authors remixing the resource can use it for  for non-commercial purposes and don't have to license the derivative works using the same terms of the original license. In the CC BY SA license that can be used for commercial purposes other authors remixing the resource have to license the derivative work under the same terms as the previous license.Under the CC BY NC SA other authors use the previous work for non-commercial purposes and have to license the derivative work under the same term as the previous one. Acknowledgement of the previous author is required in all the licenses mentioned below.    The licenses allow others to copy. remix and distribute the work of the original author.

There are many open courseware and open educational resources sites in the web. An organization called OER university comprised of some universities has taken the initiative to evaluate and give credits for informal learning but learners have to continue their education at these institutions and it is unlikely that an amount of learning equal to a degree can be evaluated to confer a degree earned only through self-directed learning without matriculating at any educational institution. Instead of matriculating at an existing educational institution self-directed learners use a PLN (Professional learning network) and/or a learning plan to reach their educational and professional goals. Some self-directed learners like myself, Leigh Blackall. Peter Prawsthorn, etc use Wikiversity and Peer- to- Peer University to develop a plan and execute it using our blog and other social platforms to reach a level of graduate learning called Open and networked PhD (OnPhD) or simply Open PhD. I have already taken 21 credits towards a PhD and I intended to continue the journey by pursuing an Open PhD. This takes an enormous amount of time, self-discipline and cooperation to develop a common plan and figure out individually some personal approaches. Such an approach of an Open PhD is not completely different from the traditional approach. That's the reason why we have discussed about being guided by PhD professors and supervisors. The goals of my open PhD are to develop skills that enable me to develop online or not educational projects, online and traditional courses, online and traditional tutoring, educating online informally and developing individual and lifelong learning skills along the way. All these skills are also based on my previous formal, informal learning and teaching experiences. I have started developing Open Popular University and I am still inviting people willing to support this educational endevour in any way they can and participate actively by contributing to advance its mission. People interested can contact me. New Direction Education Services provide face-to-face and online tutoring in Math, French, ESL and Spanish. It provides also online courses and some other services.

Learning, literacy and digital literacy

Learning is a survival human skill and literacy is an activity that allows it. Learning has been equated to literacy including digital literacy thanks to a perpetuating belief that confuses learning with literacy creating a bipolar world of learners and non-learners, literate and illiterate. The formalization of the educational system has deepened the divide between these contrasting categories by ignoring those who are informal literate and informal illiterate learners. In fact learning is a natural skill of the human beings and starts from conception to death. Learning and knowledge exist well before the symbolic representation of knowledge, the invention of print and the formalization of learning through schooling. This formalization contributes to widen the gap between social and economic classes marginalizing some vast categories of people. Literacy as a subproduct of formalized learning denies the illiterate the power of learning. In fact it would be impossible for a human being to survive without the ability to learn. We are all learners whether literate or illiterate and whether as literate we learn formally or informally. Technology as a creation of the social structures that create the formalization of education has evolved to the point of breaking out the structures of formalized learning and ways of social living. The open education movement and the creation of learning materials in the web allow people to learn less formally and more informally. Web technologies allow people to communicate. share and collaborate virtually to a certain low degree. Structures of formalized learning and detrimental traditional ways of living persist through technology which is a mirror of the social structures that create it. Traditional ways of learning find their ways in the digital learnng. Consequently literacy as a way of learning find its way in the digital world as digital literacy.

Digital literacy encompasses an umbrella of literacies enabled by digital technology and called "new literacies". Digital literacy can be defined as the ability to find. use, evaluate, summarize, critique and create information. Information and communication tecknology is widely used in digital literacy. It involves the use of computers, hardware and software, the internet, web technologies and various telecommunications systems. The digitally literate is able to navigate the web, create content using digital spaces, use different web 2.0 tools to save, communicate and share information. The digitally literate uses the web for learning, innovating and different social functions. Blogging, sharing different types of information through text, photos and videos, emailing, posting information, communicating are some common actions performed by the digitally literate.

Traditional concepts of learning such as literacy, fluency, etc persist in spite of the development of digital technology.This development has the potential of providing the marginalized illiterate tools of learning that don't rely on the ability of reading and writing. Perhaps this development can eliminate the printed word and replace it with auditory, visual, kinesthesic and many other ways of learning therefore putting aside the dichotomy of literate and illiterate. The use of cognitive abilities can still be used without the existence of the printed word. The transformation of society through tools created by the dominant social structures seem to be an utopy but meanwhile technology can be used to reduce social inequalities by making its tools more affordable and useful to the majority of people. For example the cost of computers, cellphones, telephone and internet services could be reduced to facilitate access to more people. Computers and cellphones can be built with a lot of educational software allowing the user to access to information without paying for additional services. The so-called illiterate can learn without using the printed word through cheap computers and cellphones. Some educational software can be created in digital devices allowing the illiterate to read, write and learn automomously.        

The use of story and digital story

A tentative definition of story

1. A narrative, either true or fictious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse or instruct the hearer or reader. A narrative is an account of events, experiences, etc.
2. The plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc.

Development

During our child and adolescent formal and informal education we read stories of different types and tell also stories orally. While written stories can reflect account of different cultures, oral stories reflect national culture and are transmitted from generation to generation. These stories are generally told between family members or friends in the young age mostly at night. It is specially interesting to tell these stories outside of the house when a full moon projects its light on earth.

What is interesting about story is that its use has been expanded in society not as a fictional account but as a true one. Many leaders in different fields use stories to propel themselves ahead in their career. Life stories are particular important because it can show the ups and downs in someone's life. Stories may reflect some kind of behavior that is repetitive. They can be used to predict the probability of an event. Stories are used in the medical field in order to treat a physical or mental symptom. In the professional field a resume or a portfolio is a story of different events happening in someone's educational and professional life. Science fiction stories have played a great role in the development of science since most science fiction stories have become reality. Story can play an important role in someone's personal life as an evaluation tool. Personal imaginative stories can be used to project one's personal desired future.

Stories are often categorized according to their use,  An imagined personified story lends language to animals and gives life to inanimated objects. An explanatory story can be used to explore a scientific phenomenon. From this perspective a story can be used in any human field specially in the academic field. Explanatory stories are used even in the most rigorous sciences like mathematics. Explanatory stories can be used to solve a mathematical problem and to demonstrate a theorem for example. The transfer in mathematics is very easy as a story is the account of a set of events and mathematical problems are solved by following a number of steps that can be compared to an account of a number of events. The educational implications are important for transfer from one subject to the other. A student well versed in litterature and history can transfer his story skills in mathematics and science. An educator can help facilitate this transfer by using the word story in the solution of a problem.For example some students tend to skip some steps in the solution of problems. By knowing that the resolution of a math problem is a story the student knows that he has to state all the steps of the solution to make the story coherent. A stoy has a beginning. a development and a conclusion. Otherwise the story is not coherent and nobody would understand it. Even in a fictional story conceived to amuse coherence is important. Otherwise it won't produce the desired result. Likewise if the story of the resolution of a math problem is not coherent the solution will be false.

I have been talking in the previous paragraphs about story and its use in different areas. I am going to explore different things that a  digital story can be. Digital story is a story using digits. Digit is defined as being a finger, a toe or a figure from 0 to 9. A written story written by hand couldn't be considered as a digital story?. In this sense we can say that digital story is very old dating from thousands or millions of years. The word digital has been used in science to refer to something that has to do with numerical values. Computers convert any data in numerical values. So any data made from a computer is cosidered digital. But many things like sound, pictures, writing exist before computers were born. So digital story considered as any story made using computerized technology doesn't make sense since stories have been told using different medias that  now become digitized. What is now interesting is with computer technology or software applications it is posible to create several artifacts that can relay a story. Based on the stoy of "digital" I agree with Alan Levine who writes in his blog www.cogdogblog.com he doesn't know what a digital story is. He continues further to say that the media is not the story. The story is what is conveyed to the media. In this sense can we say that technology has a bad effect here in the sense that we tend to focus on the digital effects of pictures, sounds, movies etc on our snses than the real value of the story?. Technology can be used to enhance the value of something not to influence the viewer to agree with the author's viewpoint or to incite people to do something without using their own will. Anything in life has its good and bad aspect. So one has to use any tool wisely exploiting the positive aspects for everyone not the positive ones beneficial to a few nor the negative aspect detrimental to everybody or the vast majority of people.

Digital story can have many educational uses as story in general. Digital story can be used to help students understand abstract concepts. In a 5th grade science class a teacher uses a digital story to explain the anatomy of the eye. Digital story using several media such as pictures, sounds, etc can be used to describe many scientific concepts. In this sense many scientific documentaries use sdigital story to explain different concepts to the public. Digital stories can be adapted to different learning styles: visual.auditory, kinesthesic.etc. Educators can use it to introduce any content. Since digital story has been used in class through documentary movies students can learn to make their own digital documentary or story to show their understanding of something learned in class. But here power of choice should be given because educaion has been viewed too dogmatic. If you don't do something exactly as it is said to be done it is not good. An educator might tend for example to tell  students to use pictures.sounds, etc to represent something learned in class. But some students might not have skills in all the media and may be more skilled in presenting something using text and pictures. Their work should be accepted as long as long as the media they used served as vehicles of transmission of their work, Several literacy skills can be developed in using digital story telling. These include research skills, writing skills and organization skills. Technology skils can also be developed with the ability of using some media devices and some multimedia authoring software. Presentation skills, interviewing and problem solving skills can thrive through the use of digital story teeling. Historical events can be analyzed from a personal and present viewpoint using digital storytelling. Stories have been part of human life since man's existence. Now we might be more aware of it. Let's use it to our advantage.      

Introduction for ETMOOC

This post is my introduction for ETMOOC, an online educational media course. I have subscribed to this course, have been listening to lectures and read the different posts related but I haven't had time to be an active active participant. I'll take advantage of this course until its end in March while I will continue with my posts for this Open PhD.

As my introduction to the ETMOOC community I'll start by expressing my pleasure to participate in this course and to take benefit of it for my own learning and professional development. My educational background is in Civil Engineering, Math and Science, Educational Administration, Curriculum and Instruction. Having interrupted a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction for reasons irrelevant to me I decided to pursue it independently with a few colleagues specializing in open learning. People interested in the Open PhD can visit this page Doctor of Philosophy. I am an experienced educator in Math, Science and other subjects. I provide tutoring services in Math, French,ESL and Spanish at New Direction Education Services. I started Open Popular University for which I am looking for human and material resources for its development. I own 4 blogs that I update regularly and I am an active social media participant. For more information you are welcome to explore this blog and its different links. Any suggestion, possible collaboration or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Personal learning networks: tools and applications in practice

In Joyce Seitzinger's Professional learning environment she uses a four quadrant work/office model to describe four discrete functions of a PLN. The first quadrant is called Staff Room and involves high personal profile and high levels of communication. It is based on the use of microblogging tools such as Twitter where one subscribes to a number of different accounts to share the users' ideas and converse with them. This type of connections works if one subscribes to an enough number of accounts or is followed by other subscribers. The level of profile and communication varies according the individual's interests. Some people might be interested only in getting information and sharing. This is my case. I read other's tweets and links and occasionally share them. I share also information but I don't converse. I find not having time, need and not being in an atmosphere of motivation of doing so. My first attempt of conversation was to ask people to support Open Popular University in any way they can but my appeal has been unanswered. This is a permanent appeal that can be read on the site of Open Popular University and can also be accessed if someone reads my twitter profile. I believe that my twitter profile has been read by many people and so far I haven't found any support.  But I think twitter conversation is something to work on. I find also it is not easy to initiate and maintain a high level of communication in social media. We live in a solitary world and people are more concerned about taking care of their own things instead of establishing and maintaining relationships with others. Social media allow to maintain and cultivate relationships in a long distance if in the real word people are interested in doing so but in a society where even the basic institutions such as the family are in crisis it is obvious that if people are not interested in being connected in the real word the same behavior will reproduce in the digital world,

The second quadrant of Joyce's model is called Filing cabinet and it's low in profile and level of communication. It provides users the opportunities to store their content and possibly share it with others. Tools such as Diigo, Delicious and Scoop.it are used for that purpose. Other tools such as wikis can also be used for that purpose. In terms of collaborative tools Google drive can also be included. Bookmarking tools allow to store, categorize, share content and converse with others. Diigo has some interesting features where one can annotate some web pages and write some notes. Besides tagging content can also be categorized in lists. One can also take a screenshot of a part or a whole web page. There is also a feature that I haven't used yet where one can annotate, add sticky notes to a web page and share it in social media. I use Wikiversity to share different educational resources and use it to collaborate with others on an open PhD. Talking about Diigo what I found not convenient is not to find one's content from tags. When I click on one tag I might not find all my content. However if I type the keywords in the search box I might find all of it.

The third quadrant of Joyce's model is called Newspaper. It is low in profile and level of engagement. This part of a PLN uses push technology (RSS feeds, Google Reader). Scoop.it magazines, Collected magazines, Isuu magazines, blogs, etc, can be included in this category. Blogs can add a level of engagement in this category provided that readers comment on posts.

The fourth quadrant of Joyce's model is called Portfolio and is high in profile and low in level of engagement. Blogs and other authoring tools are used in this category. Using blogs, wikis and Google docs can imply a high level of profile but the level of communication can be low if readers don't comment on posts.

Applications in Practice

Staff room

It is made of people we learn from. It can be people who are family members, friends, colleagues and people met at the internet. I listen to some educational talk show radios regularly. I follow a number of experts in some social media such as Twitter, Google+, etc. I also follow some curators in Scoop.it. I belong to some groups in Facebook and LinkedIn. I followed some experts in Scribd and Slideshare. I belong also to other educational communities where people get together to share educational resources. I subscribe to some Google groups and I receive information from people from a number of different sources.

Filing cabinet

 I use Diigo, Delicious, Blogger, Pearltrees, Scoop.it, Wikiversity and Collected etc to store, tag and categorize information. I subscribe also to some Diigo groups. I find Diigo very interesting and I stopped using Delicious. My level of profile is high in Scoop.it where I publish various magazines categorized in a number of subjects such as Open Education, Health, Science, etc. I published some educational magazines such as Open Educatiion , Alterzine, DIY learning, etc. I found some very interesting articles from topics I follow.

Newspaper

 I subscribe to a number of feeds in Google Reader. I list a numer of blogs I read in my blogs. I subscribe to a different news feeds in different subjects of interests. In this blog can be seen a number of different blogs I read as well as a number of news feeds in Open Education. I subscribe and made a number of lists from Twitter and Facebook in a number of different subjects. I made some Paper.li magazines where I access information in subjects of interests. As I mentioned above I access many articles from topics I follow in Scoop. I subscribe to a number of different subjects in Stumbleupon and I find it very interesting and rich. The problem is to find time to access this kind of information. The most important thing is that I have to my disposal a wealth of information that I can access when I need and feel to and I can also share with others.

Portfolio

I use blogs to publish educational content and my thoughts. I also use them as repository of content I learn. I use this blog to publish and store content for my Open PhD. Most of all it is a place where I can share my reflections on a number of different subjects and where my thoughts are shaped. I published 4 blogs: Open PhD, Alterzine, Alteredzine and Haiti Reconstuction. I use Google Docs to write courses I teach and other documents. I edit Open Popular University with a lot of educational resources. My profile is high in Facebook where I use status updates to share my opinions in a number of different articles I read and I find it very interesting. I subscribe to a number of people and sites in Facebook. Whenever I went to my newsfeeds I find some interesting articles that I can comment and share. What is discouraging is that there isn't a number of people with whom to engage with especially when one comments and publishes an interesting article. One interesting feature of Facebook is to "like" something that someone publishes and it is very difficult to find people doing so. I try myself to model this example by "liking" and commenting on interesting content that other people publish on Facebook. Most people don't use social media to educate themselves and use it mostly to publish photos and status updates. Even when they use it to publish and access content they don't know the kind of behavior to use to make their time on social media more usefuful

Personal learning network as learning communities

"A personal learning network is a set of learning communities to which someone belongs. If a learning community equates somewhat with a course then our learning network is equivalent to a degree program. Each community is a node on the network" (Siemens,2003). In this sense one can learn a program and achieve a degree similar to a degree earned in an university by belonging to several learning communities of which each one is equivalent to a course. I believe this can be achieved by carefully choosing these communities. The problem is to find structured communities where this goal can be achieved. There are some learning communities organized around some specific subjects. For example LinkedIn  Facebook, etc have different groups to which one can subscribe. One can follow several people and organizations in twitter. One can also subscribe to different groups in Quora. One can follow different Scoop.it magazines curated by different people. One can also follow organizations, people in Google + and subscribe to different communities. One should select carefully these communities and doesn't tend to participate to several communities which are not interesting or for which one doesn't have time to visit and participate. One is attracted to subscribe to several communities but sometimes time doesn't allow ourselves to participate in all these groups. Another problem is that some communities are not very active. I am thinking also while writing this post to unsubscribe to some groups that are not useful or active and focus on those that correspond more to my interests. I think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)  and other open courses constitute also learning communities. One thing that is very stressed in learning communities is communication. I find this very hard as people are not sufficiently connected to communicate, are not interested in communicating or may not find something to say. Communication depends on affinity and reality. Affinity is the degree of emotional connection between members of a community. Reality is some sort of understanding of what is being communicated. One or two of these factors can impede communication. Sometimes it is better to focus on learning and not worry about communication. I attended online courses and MOOCs and the lack of communication is a pattern. This is also true in social media. Frustration can lead someone to leave a group if this person believes that the group doesn't satisfy his/her needs for example if someone asks for something in the group and no one answers or doesn't adequately address this person's needs. Another example is if one finds oneself as the only contributor in the group while others who can be active choose to be passive or if there is no interaction and acknowledgement

Alternative ways of learning instead of courses include Communities of Practice (CoP), archives, access to gurus, self-reflection/expression forums, etc. In LinkedIn I found there is a section where one can subscribe to posts of several leaders in different fields. These leaders or gurus price highly their seminars. Following them can be somewhat beneficial. Belonging to a productive learning community can make us knowledgeable in a field of interest. One doesn't limit to the knowledge learned in the community. One has to complement this knowledge by doing further research much like one attends a course and does further research in physical libraries and the internet.

A learning network can be defined as the connection of learning communities with he intent of sharing experiences/resources and a self-defined goal of competency/knowledge. In other words one belongs to a learning community in order to achieve competency and knowledge not to be just  a reader who glances at discussions without learning something or someone who cares only about voicing his/her own opinions. The intent of competency/knowledge can be compared to a degree which is the intent of a school program. One can argue that a degree is more structured, etc. But a degree is not equivalent to knowledge. A degree is conferred in a  piece of cardboard paper after having forgotten most of what one was forced to learn to pass an exam and not to achieve knowledge and competency. In this sense competency and knowledge achieved in learning communities are worth much more than what is learned in school in the sense that one is more interested and has time for self-reflection. Some components o learning communities allow to update knowledge and provide access when it is needed. One has access to new information in learning communities and this information can be accessible any time and anywhere.

 A portfolio allows to track one's learning. It holds workshops, seminars, etc. Online seminars are also an important part of a learning community. I belong to learning communities that invite me to different online seminars by mail. I just attended some online conferences this past weekend from CO2013 Integrating technology in teaching. These seminars are recorded and if one doesn't have time to attend them they can be attended later. A personal portfolio is a proof of past learning just like a transcript is a recording of courses attended. A piece of paper or degree is a proof that someone attended some courses and passed them. A degree is not equivalent to knowledge and skill. These are learned and cannot be fully actualized in a piece of paper. A community that witnesses the production of one's knowledge can attest someone's worth. A community can attest an active participant's worth. The media (physical or online) offers the possibility to judge someone's knowledge. Some people have been recognized for their knowledge because of books they have written. Some are recognized because they are good TV or radio speakers. Now with the web many people are recognized for their contribution or the expression of their knowledge in blogs and different online spaces.          

Origin of the term "personal learning network".

Clint in a post dated October 8, 2009 and titled "On historically defining Personal Learning Network" wanted to elaborate more on the attempt of Stephen Downes to find the origin of the expression "personal learning network". In his post Clint acknowledged Stephen's point in his article that the meaning of the term seems to evolve over time thanks to the contribution of a number of people. Clint has used the term very often and was very interested in finding a definition, He cited the definition of Daniel R Tobin mentioned in his article "Building your own personal learning network": "An important part of learning is to build your own learning network - a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions and give you the benefit of their knowledge and experiences". Clint found the definition very useful but was intrigued about finding the origin of the term.

He emailed Tobin with the link of Stephen's post and Tobin responded later. Tobin mentioned in his response that he didn't know if he is the originator of the phrase or not. He also stated how he used the term "personal learning network". "What I was referring to was my informal network of colleagues and professional acquaintances to who I could learn if I needed information i.e people who could help me learn whatever it was I was seeking. When I started using the phrase, I wasn't particularly thinking about this in the sense of a virtual P.C based network. In fact in 1998 there weren't many websites and discussion boards that could be used for this purpose".

Clint continued to dig further and and discovered a 1999 article written by Don Digenti ( Collaborative learning A Core Capability for Organizations in the New Economy, Reflections) which uses the term "personal learning network" along with the acronym "PLN".

The first paragraph in this document where the term "personal learning network" is introduced contains a reference to a 1998 unpublished manuscript by Digenti called "The Learning Consortium Sourcebook". Clint said he couldn't find the work that might be the source of the term "personal learning nework". He concluded that the term may be originated in the work of these two authors around 1998-1999.   

Personal learning environments

Defining personal learning environment as a learning environment where one is connected to learning materials and communities I have used personal learning environment long before the internet became popular. Considered as learning done outside of school, I have used personal learning environments all my life from primary school until now. During my primary school my personal environment was restricted and consisted in studying at home and doing homework. In secondary school it became broad consisting in home and group study for school work, borrowing books from friends and libraries, some poetry writing and discussion with friends. At the undergraduate level of university it consisted in a lot of home study, group study and acquiring a lot of books for school work and personal study. At the graduate level I attended several universities and some work was done collaboratively. During the first decade of 2000 I have used the internet extensively for graduate work at the master's and PhD level. Pursuing an open PhD now my personal learning environment consists in using a lot of web 2.0 tools and communicating with other PhD candidates from different countries around the world. For my personal and professional life I use a broad personal learning environment made of mainly of online resources but also of other resources.

Personal learning environments are considered to be systems that allow independent learners to take control and manage their own learning. It is to take advantage of both online and offline resources to learn independently. Personal learning environments allow the learners to set goals for their learning, manage the content and process of learning, share and communicate with others. The learner is the sole responsible of his learning. There is no school, no teacher, no curriculum, no administrator. Using the term "e-learning 2.0," Stephen Downes describes the PLE as: "... one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a system". Stephen Downes was defining PLE in a context where it is used by students. It can be generalized to any type of learner and defined in several ways by simplifying Stephen’s description:” a node in a web content connected to  other nodes of content”,” a personal learning center where content is reused and remixed”,” a collection of interoperating applications”. The PlE technically represents  a number of web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, bookmark sites like Delicious, Stumble Upon, Diigo, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc set as a learning environment by the learner. In a personal learning environment (PLE) the learner is at the center of learning and connected to information and communities. The learner has his personal space that he can connect to other spaces for knowledge sharing and knowledge collaborative creation.. Anderson and Dron define communities as “groups”, “networks” and “collectives”. I tend to think that certain sites provide only personal spaces for content creation only. This is not true. The sites are not designed for building networks but they are tools that allow to create communities. For example a Ning provides one with personal space for content creation and allows creating communities. Blogger provides space for content creation but is not designed explicitly to build communities where one can share content but tools are integrated in the site where one can build a community around the content for sharing and collaborative knowledge creation.Some sites provide a space for sharing and communicating only. This is the case for Twitter. One can’t create content. One can publish and communicate only. Other sites provide the ability of creating content and sharing. For example Facebook allows creating content, publishing and communicating but I haven’t seen any tools allowing to create content collaboratively. Google docs allow to create content collaboratively and communicate around that content. Some bookmarking sites allow to save content, share and communicate. Diigo allows to save content and some little content creation by adding notes to the content. One can share content in groups and communicate in these groups.         

             

Open learning and the web 2.0

 Introduction

Many people refer to the web as a location to look for information and not an effective educational tool. Even though the internet becomes an essential tool for educators and students it is not considered as an authentic tool for learning. It is criticized by many as holding many non-reliable sources of information for learning. Others emphasize the need to be very cautious when using the internet because it can be dangerous for kids and adults alike. In fact it is true that the internet is used for many bad purposes. It is even used to violate the civil rights of citizens. Besides its bad side the internet has spaces that are educational. One has to know the tools that one can use for formal and informal learning. 

Surrocki describes the internet as being chaotic:

- No principles or rules describing quality: individual preferences only

-No rubric or metric

- No "peers or committee of experts"

- It is chaos!

In spite of its chaotic structure the web is embedded of tools that can facilitate formal and informal learning. As the internet is made of different networks open learning uses some of its networks for learning. One uses a set of networked tools called "personal learning networks" to facilitate learning. Personal learning networks considered as personal environments (PLE) include blogs, wikis, social bookmarks sites like Delicious and Diigo and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is the web 2.0     

The web 2.0

Initially the web was read only, called web 1.0 and began in 1994. It consisted in publishing content only. It was about the visitor’s web only contrasting with the author’s web that requires a lot of technical expertise. In other words it means at that time the web wasn't equipped of technical tools that allow the visitor to publish content. Later it evolves to become the read/write web called web 2.0. This began in 2004 and allowed the web visitor to publish content because of the authoring tools implemented in the web. The web visitor is also able to publish content interactively thanks to the social network technologies tools. The term web 2.0 was challenged by an early web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee who argues that most of the social tools attributed to the internet existed since the beginning of the internet. In fact the first decade of the second millennium witnessed an accelerated development of the web 2.0.

As early as 2003 a Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults or 44 percent of adult internet users had used the internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share available content online and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online (Lenhart, Follows, & Horrigan, 2004). In 2005 another Pew study showed that 57% of all teens  using the internet are potential content creators.

In early 2008 Technorati,com, a blog tracking service listed 110 million blogs. This site was considered the first easy publishing tool used massively by people to publish journals of their lives , build collaborative resource web sites and publish daily news without the knowledge of code and file transfer.

In early 2008 over 100,000 videos were uploaded to YouTube each day. A vast amount of photos, audio files and other content is being uploaded daily to the web becoming a vast repository of information. The Read/Write web has created millions of amateur reporters and editors reporting news on the web.

The web 2.0 doesn't refer only to the reading and writing of the web but also to its listening, speaking and doing part. With a variety of tools at their disposal people are using the web in different ways.

Learning 2.0

 From the web 2.0 derives learning 2.0 which is a set of pedagogical approaches based on participative, democratic and collaborative methods. Learning 2.0 uses web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis and other hosted services to enable users to generate and broadcast content, share resources and connect into communities of interest. Teachers are using worldwide the potentialities of this architecture of participation for the promotion of deeper and more engaging learning within social and collaborative environments.

Open Content

Open Content can be defined as content produced by using the web tools to facilitate learning. Open Content promotes the student-centered learning approaches in different ways. Learners generate their own content and become managers of their own learning. Teachers become facilitators. Open Content pedagogical approaches are based on the student-centered learning philosophies of Dewey (1916) or Rogers and Friberg (1994). The central theory of these philosophies is that students can take ownership of their learning. Different open content software tools allow learners to create their own content, manage, reflect and share their learning. Podcasting and audio broadcasting tools allow small self-organized communities to unite themselves. Blogs allow learners to create their content and share it with others. Photo sharing sites allow learners to be more creative in their photo making and presentational skills. Wikis allow collaborative work on content.

Learning 2.0. Self-organized learning

In self-organized learning students take responsibility of their learning. Teachers provide the environment and resources to learn and assess learning. Teachers play the role of mentor for learners. They are not responsible for providing content to the students. Another characteristic of Learning 2.0 is connectionism which is a new learning theory for the digital age. This learning theory is based on the ability of forming connections between sources of information. According to Siemens (2005) the connectionist approach allows new forms of knowledge to be created. He continued by stating that many traditional learning approaches can be supported by new technologies.

Technology can play the role of mind tool to enhance the capabilities of the mind.

Learning 2.0 promotes the use of informal kinds of learning. Activities of informal kind of learning involve casual internet surfing, visual media viewing, etc. Informal learning leads to the adoption of digital learning environments commonly referred as personal learning environments (PLE).

PLEs can take any form imaginable using the digital technologies and tools. Personal learning environments or spaces are essential for the application of student-centered learning approaches. Personal learning environments commonly refer to a number of online social networking tools, blogs and communication tools. Social bookmarking and tagging is important for those who want to save information and discover similar one. Personalizable and multi-functional social networking tools such as Facebook, Ning, Twitter are used by people according o their needs.

Social Connections for learning

 From the early days of the Socratic discourse to the contemporary time online social network learning happens as a result of discussion, collaboration, etc. People share their thoughts and reflections based on resources and artifacts created by others. Dialog takes place through audio, text and object based conversation. The social connections enable the learner to tap into a vast amount of knowledge, skill and opinion that go beyond what a single individual can produce. The benefits surpass those offered by the most highly resources institution. The integration of web 2.0 tools into a PLE facilitates connections that are immediate, rich in dialog and archived for later retrieval. Tools such as blogs, micro-blogs, image sharing tools and podcasting facilities integrated in the space that allows reflective and collaborative learning enable learners to generate their own content and share it with others. These artifacts allow reflection, dialog and collaboration to take place. Students in one study reported that exchanging artifacts strengthened social ties and facilitated more effective, collaborative learning later in the course (Minocha and Roberts, 2008).

The Business Model Cycle

For profit organizations invest money in the beginning of their venture to allow them to sell their products or services. Non-profits don't draw revenues from offering their services. They depend on fundraising to operate. Both types of organizations need to know the costs necessary for the operation of their venture. In this case it is necessary to define the functions necessary to deliver the services. These functions define the core unit of the organization and allow to set the costs involved in providing the services. It is necessary to define each unit of services if the organization provides different types of services. Once one or several units are defined it is necessary to calculate the costs and revenues associated with the operation of this unit or these units. For non-profits there are no calculations of revenues involved. That is the case for Open Popular University that doesn't draw any revenues from offering its services. In this post I will focus on costs only.

Definition of the unit

I have defined two units in Open Popular University: providing access to open courses from the site and teaching courses. I hold off teaching courses and concentrate on designing the model for providing access to open courses from the site and improving this model. I have spent some time thinking and reading about the functions related to this unit. There are certainly different types of models of functions applicable to each type of organization. But an organization needs to focus on a model based on the nature of services provided. Based  on this concept I have created a set of administrative functions based on open courseware.

Calculation of the costs and fund raising

Based on the functions of the unit I have set a budget for the operation of the unit. The costs are certainly related to the personnel salaries, physical location and materials necessary to operate this unit. A certain amount of money is needed to finance these costs. This is where it is getting tough. You have to identify the different sources of funding and this takes a lot of time and research. Receiving the amount of funds necessary for operating is another tough thing. I advise anyone reading this post to go to the site of Open Popular University and click on the donations link on the right side bar. Your contributions and advice will be appreciated. In spite of the great amount of effort I made in order to find the support for this endevour but no one and no organization haven't provided their support. I am the only one fulfilling the administrative, research and technological functions of Open Popular University.

Cycling

The costs of operations are known but funds are needed to cover them. The fundraising depends on the good will of people and organizations willing to support a noble cause. I appeal to these people and organizations to provide their support. My focus now is finding a fundraiser who can raise funds. I will appreciate a good referral. I  am certainly interested in other type of support such as volunteering, partnership, etc necessary for the operation of Open Popular University.

   

The Impact cycle

The purpose of a social entreprise represents its impact. Hopefully one would expect to make a positive impact. But some unexpected positive or negative impact might happen. It is important to take into account these considerations about the impact of one's social endevour:

1. Define the expected impact.
2. State a measure of the desired impact.
3. Find ways to get information about the unexpected positive or negative results.
4. Record the results obtained.

In creating Open Popular University the primary impact I expected to create is for people to realize that   the accumulation of knowledge beyond the minimum is not a privilege reserved to a few. People have to realize how educational institutions can deceive people in attaining their educational goals. I have been myself deceived by some predators located behind some american so-called educational institutions. My realization is that the attainment of some degree of knowledge is not the prerogative of educational institutions, people with degrees or people with some exceptional cognitive abilities. Knowledge is not necessarily acquired from educators and educational institutions. Knowledge primarily resides in books and books are acquired by educational institutions. Now knowledge resides in the world wide web. Learning in formalized educational institutions is  managed by private and government administrators who decide what to teach and who can teach. However learning doesn't take place exclusively in this manner. Knowledge is acquired by oneself from books, the web, radio, television and from family members, friends, the community, etc. Knowledge comes also from one's personal inquiry, intuition, reflection, etc. Whether one wants it or not knowledge starts from birth and stops at death at least in that lifetime. Learning is a lifelong process.

Specifically for Open Popular University the desired impact is that students. professionals, self-learners worldwide access the site to satisfy their educational needs. I expect that many people come to the site, spend a reasonable amount and come back. More specifically the impact for students is that they can use the site to understand concepts they misunderstood in class and to deepen their knowledge. Professionals can use the site to review a subject that they learned in college, undertake new studies or study a subject related to a project, etc. Educators can enrich their curriculum  from the content of different subjects. More importantly the most important aspect of the impact is that people after spending a lot of time exploring the resources in the site are urged to cultivate self-learning and lifelong learning. I will measure this impact by surveying people who accessed the site.. This can be done by setting a form in the site asking people specific questions. It can also be done by e-mail and on other social media pages for Open Popular University. As in any human endevour there are unexpected positive or negative results. Unexpected positive results might be defined by people having obtained spectacular results from using the site. Unexpected negative results are that the site has made no impact on people. Unexpected positive results  can be assessed by asking questions like: " What huge benefits have you gotten by using the site?". Unexpected negative results can be assessed by asking questions like this: " What are the negative effects of using the site? In summary the impact can be defined by the number of people  accessing the site and the benefits obtained from its use.

In a follow-up to assess the impact I can report on the access of the site. Specifically I can say
1. I have had positive feedback from people using the site. Although there isn't a huge amount of people accessing the site but the number of users is growing.
2. As unexpected positive result I have seen the access increasing suddenly
3. I haven't seen any unexpected negative result.
The statistics suggest that people benefits from using the site because of a fair amount of returning users. The nature of the benefits cannot be assessed at this time but a protocol will be set for this. Cycling on the use of the site I will increase its marketing to make the access growing although the number of users suddenly keeps growing.
  

Technological challenges for Educators

A few months ago I took an online teaching course and I had the opportunity to learn about the use of technology by "digital natives" (students born in the information technology age) in comparison to their teachers. I didn't like how adult educators were put down because their lack of using technology. In the discussion forum of this course I expressed my feelings about those allegations. Technology is only a tool. The old educators educated the creators of technology even though they didn't know about technology. Do the "digital natives" not owe some recognition to their educators? I haven't read anything about students blaming their teachers because they are more proficient than them in their use of technology.The irony is that educators were blaming themselves for that. I read a book by Will Richardson about the use of the web in Education and later I read his wiki. "Students are leading teachers by participating, collaborating and creating more", he noted in his wiki site. He related some statistics about the use of social software by students. “ 71% of students with online access use social networking tools on a weekly basis”. “75% of college students have a Facebook site”. Indeed students use Information and Computer Technology more than their educators but are they using it for educational purposes?

 A survey of 25,000 students at the university of Wisconsin in 2008 concerning the use of technology by students showed the following results:
Only 3% don’t own a computer.
59% own an internet capable cell phone.
18% of freshmen spent more than 16 hrs per week on social networking.
Fine Arts use the least amount of technology. Engineering uses the most.
Students believe that instructors do not understand their IT skills level.
47% of students believe IT improves learning in courses. 37% were neutral.
 Only 26% believed that online recording of lectures tempt them to skip class more often.
56.7% use social networking to set up conversations.

The Do It Student Technology report showed the differences between the student and faculty uses of tech. Here are some results:
88% of students but only 59% use Wikipedia.
78% of students but only 39% of faculty use portable media devices.
85% of students but only 45% of faculty use YouTube.
75% of students but only 35% of faculty uses SMS.
41% of faculty use Google apps.
32% of students use a gaming console.

 The good side about the University of Wisconsin report is that a little less than half of the students surveyed believe that IT improves learning in courses (47%). This survey doesn't show the educational use of the Information and Computer Technology by students more than their teachers. “ We are entering a time of deeply personalized, passion based learning . Youth using new media often learn from their peers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads” (John Steely Brown). He continued further to state that this fact makes our curricula less and less relevant to our students. The learning expectation is to create and not to consume and creation is not coming yet.

The above citation from John Steely Brown showed that students use technology for educational purposes but don't state if they use technology more than their teachers for educational purposes.Technology remains a tool that helps to reach educational goals. Some cognitive skills and a willingness to use it for educational purposes are the prerequisites to reap its benefits in Education. The educational benefits of technology are multiple. Learners can create their own content. They can use technology to learn collaboratively and teachers can become more facilitators than instructors.

The Market Cycle

 I have been thinking about the abilities exercised during this course. Doing some research in open learning, I found the concept of the four quadrants circle of a PLN (Personal Learning Network). The concept is drawn in a circle of four quadrants. The first quadrant is called the STAFF ROOM. This is basically learning from people in your social network. Twitter is referred as the best element for this part. The second quadrant is called FILING CABINET. This is the process of saving things you learned from and it is done using bookmarking sites such as Diigo and D.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. The third one is called NEWSPAPER. This is the process of having knowledge came to you using aggregate sites like READER. The fourth quadrant is called PORTFOLIO which is publishing one's content . This is done using a common media called BLOG. Blogs usually allow to reflect and produce one's own content. We have been using the blog to produce assignments content in this course. This allows me to clarify ideas that would otherwise not benefit of this kind of clarification. The practical aspects of the assignments allow to do so.

In this assignment it is required to identify the the people who benefit from the services offered, your means of communicating to them and your message. I used a Google spreadsheet to identify the characteristics of the different categories of potential people likely to use the site of Open Popular University. and my means of communicating to them. Even though I have identified these categories before this assignment allows me to identify several locations where these categories are located. The categories who benefit from Open Popular University are : High School students, University students, Professionals, Self-learners and Educators.

High School students

Demographics: they are adolescent students.

Means of communication: Social media and other means of communication.


Message: Open Popular University gives access to different courses such as Math and Science that can help you better understand the concepts taught in school. These courses are advanced courses that can help you to prepare for college.

Direct messages to parents: Open Popular University holds advanced courses specially in Math and Science that can help your children prepare for college. I invite you to have your children visit the site of Open Popular University

University students

Demographics: They are young adults and mid-life adults.

Means of communication: Social media networks and other means of communication.

Message: Open Popular University is offering courses in different academic disciplines. These can help you understand better the concepts taught in class. They can also increase your knowledge of the subject matter.

Professionals

Demographics: They are adults and mid-life adults.

Means of communication: Several means of communication

Message: Open Popular University is a place that encourage lifelong learning. I encourage you to visit it to see if there is something that might be useful to you.

Self-learners

Demographics: They are adults and mid life and old adults.

Means of communications: Different means of communication.

Message: Open Popular University is a place for self-learners. Check it out to see if there is something that can interest you.

Educators

Demographics: They are adults and mid-life adults.

Means of communication: Several means of communication

Message: Open Popular University is a place for educators. Visit its site to see how it can help you in developing your curriculum

Cycle: This exercise allows me to set up a clear marketing plan and means of communication. In communicating about Open Popular University I will have to target specific groups and deliver the appropriate messages to them using specific channels of communication.