The Third Place

Begin at the beginning, so they say.

The book has arrived – finally – and I have found some useful websites that could be helpful for my Hindi  project.

If I were my teacher, I would ask: So why do you want to learn Hindi?

As a student, I would answer: Years ago, I had the idea that I would always like to learn a language that doesn’t use the same old alphabet I learned as a child. I hesitated a long time between Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin. What was always missing is a human connection that I imagined would motivate me to take action.  I have learned languages from people. Isn’t that obvious? Not if you talk about a second language. Especially adults tend to think that “a book” and “a course” suffice to learn. Last year, I met people from India and started to read books written by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Although Gandhi`s native language is Gujarati and not Hindi, the choice to learn Hindi is a pragmatic one. More people speak it, and more publications in Hindi are available.

This is the initial motivation to begin my learning process. I know this will change over time.

The next question to ask is: How will I learn Hindi?

To be honest with myself, If have no idea which strategy will work. However, I have studied other languages and will begin to do things that worked in the past.

1. Have learning be fun. I am never going to do work if I have the feeling that “I have to”.

2. Listen, read, write, speak the language. From day 1.

3. Look for people who speak the language, ask them questions, learn from them.

4. Share what I learn with others and share my learning experience.

The image above is the first letter of the Hindi alphabet, if I am not mistake. It is not “A”, but “K” [cut]. This is the beginning.

So here I am, taking a course on how to administrate Moodle courses.

It occurs to me a little like walking backstage in a theatre and taking a look at the scenery and the lights to figure out how they work. I even get to add  new backdrops (i.e. courses, blocks, activities) and new floodlights (i.e. security configuration, roles).

It takes a lot of looking around, which means a lot of clicking, to explore every corner and every angle of this enormously complex space. Luckily, I am not alone in this adventure. A group of professionals with diverse backgrounds is ideal to gain an understanding of what it means to be a Moodle Administrator. Technical and pedagogical knowledge are necessary to be effective in this job.

Thank you, team, for moodling along with me!

Picture: Public Domaine Comédie Française, Paris

My attempt to understand this term begins with a virtual visit to digital resources. Looking up “authentic” in  the dictionary produced the following result:

Authentic is a synonym for real, in my interpretation in the sense of “true; not merely ostensible, nominal, and “existing or occurring as fact; actual rather than imaginary, ideal, or fictitious”.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, learn (v) means “to get knowledge, be cultivated”, with a base sense of “with a base sense of “to follow or find the track”. The word “cultivate”  means “to promote or improve the growth of (a plant, crop, etc.) by labor and attention”.

I like the association of “learning” with “promoting growth”. If the learning process doesn’t give the learner the impression that something is growing, e.g. the ability to perform and action, to produce something, I don’t think learning takes place. Attention and labor are needed to achieve growth, in the garden and in the classroom. As a digital learner, I am developing the skill to paying attention to information, and I decide what to do with it (read, bookmark, share, download, analyze, or connect with other sources of information).

In formal learning, the teacher determines what information learners are exposed to and how they are to interact with documents, with each other, and with the teacher. In informal learning, the learner decides all this. What is more, the learner also has the task of looking for information about what she wants to learn. A MOOC is something in between formal and informal learning. Although this type of course is created by teachers, the learner is free to treat the information suggested by them, and is encouraged to look for other resources. In addition, effective learning in a MOOC takes place in social networks where the participants of the course share information, ideas, and points of view and interact with each other. In this sense, learning occurs as communication that leaves digital traces, which is evidence for authenticity.

These are my thoughts today, at the very beginning of my first MOOC. I will come back later to reflect, reject, and expand on these ideas.

Reading G. Siemens’ (2005) article motivated me to reflect on the concept of “knowledge”. It is true that, since a lot of people I know from around the world have access to the internet and know how to use tools to communicate and share information, my learning has been impacted. In fact, I would not “know” a lot of these people without these tools and their willingness to communicate and share.

The following quote from Siemens’ article triggered an image similar to the picture I posted above:

“Information flow within an organization is an important element in organizational effectiveness. In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity. Knowledge flow can be likened to a river that meanders through the ecology of an organization.”

What does this mean for people who work in educational institutions?
First, I need to recognize that transfer of information and testing based on learned and memorized content is misleading students, since it sends a message that memorizing information is worth the effort and will be rewarded.
Second, teachers need to let go of control regarding the information content of their lessons. Instead, a teacher should train herself to create an information flow in the classroom and to make learners aware that they are learning to make decisions regarding what information to search and how to apply it to a given task.
Third, it is in everybody’s interest to create a free flow of information. Critical reflection about laws and regulations that block access to information useful for teachers and students is in order.

Picture found at: Tourismus-Landshut.de

This is my second attempt to participate in a course like this. The first time I registered, in 2011, I was overwhelmed (swamped) by a instructions about “how to” do things and so many information and shares from fellow participants that I simply shoot the digital door after a week or so. I remember telling myself “this is too much to handle”.

This time around, I bring some online learning habits to the experience. The structures used in the course aren’t new to me any more (Wiki, Twitter, WizIQ, Diigo, a blog like this one). I still expect to be challenged by the task of navigating an abundance of assigned readings and information shared by other participants.

Another participant is asking an interesting question: Why does everyone have to connect with everyone? I don’t think we “have to” connect. But, hey, the course is about Connectivism. Why not play a new game and see what comes out of it?

I’m as ready as I can be. Let’s roll!

I am grateful for the opportunity to design and teach a Moodle course at Integrating Technology in the future.

In preparation of this task, I read a very useful book for teachers with some knowledge of Moodle 1.9 who are interested in becoming course designers.  A good book to read about this topic is “Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques“.

Here is a good mind map of the book’s content, chapter by chapter. Thank  you, Tom Hogers!

I would be delighted to receive comments from other Moodle course designers about their experience of working with the book.

Happy moodling!

In a socioconstructive learning environment such as Moodle, teachers are learners and learners are teachers. In fact, the word “expert” is not a term that can be applied to the same person throughout a course. Teaching with ICT works best for everyone in the  traditional classroom as well as in a synchronous and in an asynchronous online environment when the teacher lets go of the idea that she has to be the expert at all times. Steve Wheeler expresses this approach to teaching in a recent blog and describes what happens in a class when the teacher becomes a learner.

The question teachers and teacher trainers are to ask themselves is: How do we teach and learn this attitude? Who do we inform parents and school boards about this new development? The possibility I see is that learners are acknowledged and empowered by people outside their classroom for their learning outcomes and the contribution they made to society.

This week, I enrolled into the Evo 12 course on Moodle 6 days after the official starting date. Since I consider myself a punctual person, I started to think about the idea of “being late” in an asynchronous learning context.

The first thing I saw was that I had missed the introductory session on WizIQ. That, I thought, was a shame, but I found the link to the session recording, which meant that I could at least find out about everything that was said, everything that was written in the chat, and I could view everything that had been written on the whiteboard.

Still, I know a lot of things had happened in the course in the first five days, and when I saw that there were 150 participants, with about 70 people actively participating, my heart began to sink. To be able to participate in the course and to contribute to others, I know it was necessary to read the messages in the welcome forum before jumping into the course activities as such. I know that I had better send some people a reply to acknowledge what they had written, to ask them questions about their messages, and to share some information and ideas with them. Finally, I had to introduce myself by creating a short text and a voice message on Voice Thread.

Once that was done, I considered myself “in”. Now, I had to figure out a way to prioritize the activities assigned for the first week. By “prioritize”, I mean that I evaluated the activities according to their interactivity. I chose to complete the tasks with a follow-up on a discussion forum first. I did this to create a conversation with a couple of people in the course. Remember “in the course” doesn’t mean that their names show up in the participant list. It means that they have logged in, completed some tasks, and participated in the discussion forums. By “participaing in a discussion forum”, I mean that I share about what I did, but I also looked at other people’s contributions and responded whenever I could think of something meaningful to say.

I will now catch up with the less interactive tasks as the second week begins.

You may ask yourself where the image I posted on this post comes from. Thinking about “being late” reminded me of a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm I had heard when I was a kid. Although I don’t like the way the hedgehog husband treats his wife in the English version I found, the strategy the hedgehog uses to win the race is still something to remember. In Moodle, I can “show up at different places” by leaving  messages that are hopefully perceived as interesting and/or helpful by the other course participants. And I trust that information and help will come from others if I ask for it. This way, I won’t end up the way the poor hare did in the fairy tale. If you would like to find out more about the place where this tale was first told, click on this link to “visit” Buxtehude.

What brought me to explore Second Life was an assignment I was committed to complete while taking a course about Moodle. Thus, my perspective was that of an educator who is looking of synchronous webtools to enhance asynchronous learning environments.

Let me say first that I have never played online games of any kind, and I am not a fan of Xbox, either. On one occasion, I had participated in a car race on Wii at a friend’s party.

The first time this software got me thinking about myself was when I was asked to create and name a three-dimensional avatar. The models provided on the welcome page didn’t appeal to me at all, but I was informed that I could change the avatar’s appearance later. As a matter of fact, I found out that one can have more than one avatar, and not every avatar is human.

The second moment of insight occurred during my first visit to the welcome area.  After my avatar “got dressed” (I clicked on a list of cloth items and accessoires on a menu),  it learned how to walk, chat, fly, and teleport.

Second Life is a parallel world of sorts, open to anyone who has a computer with certain system characteristics. This implies that one isn’t alone, and although I can choose where I “go”, I can’t choose who is there with me (unless I buy land and build a fence around it, I suppose). My first encounter in the welcome area was rather unpleasant. An avatar of the opposite sex approached and chatted messages that contained remarks about my avatar’s rear end and something he would like to do to it. It appears that he hadn’t learned how to use the gesture tool yet, so the exchange was limited to verbal action. My avatar (or should I say “I”?) politely replied that she didn’t appreciate to be treated as an object. So that was that. I soon logged off and didn’t go back for three days.

My second, third, and fourth visit took place on three consecutive days and lasted about one hour each, including the documentation I prepared while looking for places related to educational activities.  I read that some universities offer courses on Second Life. So far, however, I haven’t been able to attend a lecture in these places.

There is a map of this virtual world that shows a variety of places, divided into three categories: G (you can take your grandmother and be sure she won’t be offended), M (places where adults socialize), and A (places where educators can’t find anything of interest – at least, that’s what I gathered).

Traveling from place to place is achieved by teleporting. Go actively go someplace, I type the name of the location in a window and click on “go”, or I choose a location from the official map that looks something like this. When I am connected, I only have to click on a place on the map, and the coordinates will show up in my Second Life viewer. I can then click on “teleport”. The transfer to the location takes a few seconds. I found out that I can also teleport other people’s avatars  from their locations to the place where my avatar is located, at any given time.  Amazing. In real life, this could be considered kidnapping, or at least extremely rude behavior. Imagine, class has started, and some students haven’t arrived yet. Would a teacher just “teleport” them to the classroom?

I would like to share a final remark on the issue of “having an avatar” and “having an identity”. What I noticed during my avatar’s visit to Second Life is that I started to think of this three-dimensional object as “myself”. In a way, I found this disturbing, without being able to explain why, at least for now. I also noticed that the avatar’s activity, with myself sitting in front of the screen, seemed to completely absorb my attention. It appeared that the physical world, my computer screen, the sensation of sitting in a chair, the temperature in the room, didn’t matter.

What are my next steps in Second Life? I would like to attend a class – lecture, find places to learn and exchange with educators, and explore this virtual world.

Today I “invented” a cool way to practice languages. I went to a website in the language I am studying (Hindi) and copied and pasted the text I found there to a WORD document. Next, I “print” the file to a PDF annotator file. This allows me to hightlight and to add new text in the file on my tablet PC by using the stylus. No more printing needed, and I can send the file to a tandem partner or teacher to have it corrected.

Picture found on spreadshirt.com