PLENK2010 - random comments

I'm going for incoherent and random comments on my wanderings around the PLENK2010 course site today:

I read through some of the discussions on all the abbreviations: PLE, PLN, VLE, LMS.

LMS... I don't exactly understand what seems to be resentment against the idea of an LMS. I started teaching online courses via email before there was any such thing as an LMS. These were for-credit courses and the university collected tuition. I needed to account for students work. Just the sheer amount of time managing student email addresses, making up distribution lists, saving student work, recording grades for their work... I don't particularly want to go back to doing all those chores when there's an LMS that can help!

LMS and standardization: Some standardization seems like a good idea to me! If students can find some basic documents like the syllabus, that's useful. I've worked with one LMS that has very few options - and faculty are still able to be creative enough to confuse their students! It is actually quite remarkable!

I recently monitored a course that used Angel. Inexplicably the syllabus was under a tab with a label other than "syllabus". This was not a problem intrinsic to the LMS. It is possible to change label names for tabs. This was a policy decision.

One complaint seems to be that students can't access a course installed in an LMS after the course is over. Isn't this just another policy decision?

Guest access to LMS courses: Hmmm.. you've got me there. Even though I know one school that has provided some easier ways to allow for guest access to courses should instructors choose to do that. However... there might be a limit to generousity. I know that the school is concerned about FIRPA requirements.

Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html
People learn if they are curious. I wonder if this is the opposite: If we have a mandated curriculum, we can't wait for students to get curious? Not necessarily according to Mitra's experience. Leave children alone to organize their own learning. In some experiements, he set the question. Why did the dinosaurs die out? In some cases he left tools available - an arithmetic game - with no instructions.

A friend mentioned she was going to keep an eye on Alec Couris' course on Social Media and Open Education, so I'm going to try to do that as well. http://eci831.wikispaces.com/NonCredit

PLENK2010 Personal Learning Environments, Networks, and Knowledge

PLENK2010 has started up. I've been on the fringes of other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) run by Steven Downes and the others. I start out reading everything attentively for a couple of weeks and then drifting off to other activities... I'm going to see if I can impose some discipline on myself and stick with it this time.
Dave Feguson( http://www.daveswhiteboard.com/archives/3661 ) mentioned trying to find his way around Moodle. That mirrors my experience with the previous course on Critical Literacies. I felt that I had to log in too many times and kept getting bogged down trying to figure out if I wanted to go to the discussion forums (which seemed underutilized to me) or the wiki or..read the daily or head for the blog.. rss feeds? Archives? Live sessions? Recording of live sessions? Whew! One thing I do notice: PLENK2010 home page has a nice schedule of what's going to be covered week-by-week on the main screen. That's helpful!
Ok... PLE (Personal Learning Environments): I'm reading through the Educause 7 things you should know about Personal Learning Environments: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf Is PLE just another term for using Web 2.0 tools with students? Does the term PLE imply a coherent collection of Web 2.0 tools? "A PLE ... puts students in charge of their own learning resources..." but it seems like this particular article is discussing PLEs as "student created" but a component of a course in which a student will receive a grade. So a PLE is "personalized", but not private and is still up for judging. Will I get an A?

Problems with the use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

Rundown on the Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers report released August 29, 2010 http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/problems-with-use-of-student-test.html states "I do not know how anyone who knows the work of these scholars and who reads this brief can accept the idea of placing any stakes as to firing or awarding of merit pay based on the current status of Value-Added Assessment methodologies."

Costs of Higher education

The costs of higher education continue to be an issue. Blog U had a good discussion going on the economics of higher education with people providing some suggestions on where to read up. See http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/questions_on_economics_of_higher_ed#Comments

University of the People to build sites in 6 developing countries

University of the People is working with the World Computer Exchange to set up computer access sites in Zimbabwe, the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, Haiti, Liberia, and Palestine. The sites will have internet access and 20 computers at each location. (Info from various press releases and Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2010 "Online University Aims to Build Sites in 6 Developing Countries" by Kelly Truong.) The first comment points out that University of the People is not accredited without noting that UoPeople is applying for accreditation. Other comments point out that there are other free elearning programs for programming, etc., but fail to note that this program will provide access to computers and the Internet as well courses.

Looking for good search tools for OER resources

Scott Leslie has a search engine for OER resources called "Search all of these Open Education Sites from one place" posted at http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine.

Tony Hirst has a Google Custom search that covers 166 listings of OER resources that were posted at ZaidLearn, 2008

And see earlier custom search from ZaidLearn in an earlier blog posting.

What's new?

Information is floating by and I'm not catching all of it. I've been absorbed grading, posting grades, cajoling stragglers into finishing up course work... and that seems to be about it! In spare moments I'm still wondering what higher education is supposed to look like. There's discontent, but I'm still not sure everyone thinks ought to change. No "courses"? No semesters? No grades? No curriculum? No diplomas certifying that student has accrued a certain amount of credits? No accreditation of schools? I think the only thing I'm sure about is that we need to figure out a way for students to get through college and incur less debt.

In my field, newly-graduated library science students are complaining there are no jobs when everyone predicted that there would be openings for librarians. Will Manley tapped a nerve on his blog - See posts and comments from around June 15 and further back. Trying to find a job these days is a frustrating experience for new grads in other professions as well. I'm not sure that library schools should feel any guilt about accepting students. Did most of us get that there would be a financial crisis of this magnitude?