Dear all

Yes, as you have already read. I am a DJ student. I do not know how, but I arrived to the DJ school in Second Life.

I was exploring for a couple of hours, and I first enrolled in a Hall of something regarding laws. Then, I typed “school”,  and I have found a lot of schools of everything. I found there the DJ school, so I got in. Let me tell you that I was completely lost. There are many classrooms, many seminars, I did not know what to do. I have to confess that it was my first time in SL. I found a chat application, so I looked for help. I thought that I was not going to receive assistance, but a nice guy called Bob came to my rescue. He briefly explained me what to do. He said “You have to live, what do you do to live?” Well… It seems to be a simple question, but this simple question made me think. And I answered “Well… I work, study…” He said, “Don’t you dance, run, play something?” I did not answer. He said “Why are you here?”. I replied “because of the music”. He said “So.. go and enjoy music, girl!”  And then started explaining me how to get in, to use the tools and so on.

This is Second Life, it is another real life. You find people with an amazing disposition to help you, in different ways. Second Life, as the first one involves a cooperation. It is the same as you are in a place for the first time. The other person helps you, but not only that; this person is reinforcing their own learning process. He already knew how to explore SL, how to find the basic needs, so he became my trainer.

But being a DJ was unexpected but my decision too. So, when I started training it was wonderful!! I have the opportunity to make my own decisions and feel challenged to look for ways to cope with whatever I want and enjoy for the results.

Those are valuable advantages and implications in education. I still see that Second Life is mainly for adults. Perhaps I am wrong, and I need to look ways to involve kids and teenagers.

Basically what is expected is to take advantage of students’ knowledge, and “sell” them the idea that this knowledge can be used to achieve academic objectives. Unfortunately, students put a gap between technology and academy, and in my opinion this is the main reason why teachers and students will be separated because of technology, based on the wrong teachers’ idea that ICTs are not positive for academic purposes.

I do consider that teachers must be familiar with ICTs, in spite of the fact that our students should have a most active participation in this issue, given that their knowledge and management of technologies. This familiarity must be in terms of exploring by themselves before using with students. In this way, the “interchange” of information can be helpful and meaningful because teachers would not start from zero, instead the share of experiences—and consequently information and knowledge—will create a sense of agreed construction or reinforcement of new knowledge.

Implementing digital game-based learning implies for teachers to receive the training to design or to work collaboratively with designers. Doing so, teachers would have not only the point of view of the creators, but also the one of the final users since they really know who the final users are (their students).

 More advantage would be taken if the game is a relevant part of a task-based approach activity because it lets students be more aware of the goals and think critically about the strategies to achieve such goal 

Reference:

Harvard Business School (2002). Seven principles for cultivating Communities of Prctice. Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Retrieved June 18, from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html

After having a look at the material provided and some communities of practice, I would like to highlight the first points that came to my mind: Autonomy and motivation. Some time ago, we were discussing about what comes first: the motivation or the autonomy. This discussion was not finished… but according to my own experience, motivation could come first. I enrolled in a couple of CoP’s because I found them appealing, attractive, interesting, relevant for my context but especially because I felt I could be an active participant.

Once you join, it is necessary to explore and find in this amount of resources which could be helpful for you as teacher or learner. At this point, I can say that a CoP has a relevance in education (teaching and learning) since your role is a “mixture”; as teacher, you are LEARNING from your peers and you take advantage of the resources and tools there for your TEACHING practice. Likewise, for students is a way to promote scaffolding through this mixture of roles. This is the other issue that came to my mind: The opportunity to allow learners to identify their knowledge and the ways to improve it, to help others (peers), and to provide food for thought for teachers. Their voices would be listened to. A CoP is for students a strong and concrete opportunity to be active participants.

Exploring some CoP’s, I can say that Colombian English Network (http://www.colombianenglishteachers.net/ ) is not just a Ning community. It is somehow a CoP for teachers. Everyteacher who joins in is encouraged to contribute with their knowledge, resources, successful experiences. Perhaps through the different groups created there, people can join taking into account the interests. I am not sure if there are collaborative projects. I think this an aspect that makes the difference between a CoP and a social network.

Reference

Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice: A brief Introduction. Retrieved from 

http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm

As teacher, I have not found a clear and relevant relationship between twitter and education, except for some connections that I have established with some researchers and professors. I recently created a social network for my university students. Ning has allowed me to create a social community like a facebook which has been appealing for the students.

After having a careful look at Twitter in educacion, I think that using microblogging tools could be a challenging and interesting goal because a problem that these learners have is that they do not have a strong background to compose solid texts (grammar problems and vocabulary mainly), so where some people see a disadvantage, I see a potential opportunity. The limitations in terms of number of words could be helpful if we want to start with the writing process, developing collaborative activities (constructing texts for instance), following the steps (brainstorming, classifying, etc), and with these elements, building short texts that can be extended to another web 2.0 tool (for instance a blog).

Considering La Chucua School population, using mobiles phones for microblogging could be difficult despite most of the students have one, given that it implies costs and the students just acquire such devices to receive phone calls. Contrastively, I really see a possibility to get the benefits of this tool with La Sabana University learners, but it is a matter of awareness from both, the teachers (to enhance its use in a meaningful way), and the students (to see a new alternative to learn).

Hugs,

Retrieved May 13, 2010, from http://www.knowledgejump.com/learning/formal_informal_learning.jpg

What is better, formal or informal learning?

It is a difficult question to answer; taking into account how biased could be the second one. “Formal” implies thinking about a physical environment, for example a school. “Informal”—on the other hand—could mean from another institution (like a library, for example) to a web page.  I have seen relevant advantages encouraging my students to take advantage of informal learning. However, I think that in so doing, the character of “informal” would consequently “disappear” because this is something that I am using in a formal environment.

In my opinion, informal learning is important because learners are able to go beyond the input received in the formal scenario. In this case, the learners can be more AUTONOMOUS, deciding on the strategies that fix better, in terms of what are the most appealing for them.

On the other hand, according to Handy (as cited by Cross, 2003), the best learning occurs when there is the opportunity to link what is learned with the real context, in other words, when learning is applied. This is what meaningful learning is about.

Additionally, informal learning involves a more direct interaction with others since observation is one of the most useful strategies. Peer feedback and study groups are other resources to improve learning.

My point is that the informal learning must be encouraged and enriched not only in the school. Students need to understand that learning not always takes place at school; every experience becomes in a resource for learning. The most students exploit it, the most meaningful will be their learning, given that the productivity evidenced in the outcome.

Reference

Cross, Jay (2003) Informal Learning – the other 80%. Retrieved May 18, from

http://www.internettime.com/Learning/The%20Other%2080%25.htm 

Retrieved May 2, from http://elblogpenka.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pa-blog.jpg

Dear all

Being web 2.0 an interesting revolution in technology to promote interaction and collaborative learning, it is necessary that we, as teachers, explore them in order to determine which tools would be useful in our classes and in general, for our professional development.

I have checked some of them (not only those provided in the NLE course), and now I am sharing my findings.  I just hope you can take advantage of them:

There are other tools that can be use in class. Here you are a useful document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19576895/Web-20-Tools-for-Teachers

Retrieved April 23, 2010, from http://wagenugraha.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/wikinomics.jpg

Wikinomics is one of the most meaningful ways to promote collaboration in economy and business.  The amazing results that it has carried out in several companies could be applied in Education.

In my opinion, people do not necessarily learn in an isolate way. Human being is social, so we learn from the others and the others learn from us.

When goals in common are set up, learning is an easier process. When we promote such strategy to foster learning into the classroom, students could learn to be more tolerant, what they plan as aims or goals would be more meaningful, and those who are usually passive or “low profile” have the chance to show who they are.

Additionally, when the collaboration is among different schools, the language that they can learn is more real; for example, when the school makes agreements with others where English is the native language.

Consuelo