Ashford EDU 651: Week 4

This week, we discussed an article called Minds on Fire: Open Education, The Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 . The article covered many different ways that Universities are helping to give open education opportunities. For example, MIT’s, “OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which today provides open access to undergraduate and graduate level materials and modules from more than seventeen hundred courses(covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum)”(Brown & Adler, 2008). In addition, Harvard Law School and Harvard Extensions School conducted an interesting experiment using the Second Life network to launch a fall 2006 course called “Cyber One: Law in the Court of Public Opinion” (Brown & Adler, 2008). Although the course was offered to students enrolled in Harvard Law, non-law or just curious persons, “any participant in Second Life could review the lectures and other course materials online at no cost” (Brown & Adler, 2008). Ever since the “compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to leaning (came) from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education” (Brown & Adler, 2008), the way course material seemed to evolve around this concept seemed to make more sense. In his study, “Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education- more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles- was their ability to form or participate in small study groups”(Brown & Adler, 2008). Light highlighted the importance of the social learning concept and with his findings, altered the educational prophecy previously known as the Cartesian perspective “I think therefore, I am” to a new outlook of “we participate, therefore we are”, and brought “our attention from the content of a subject to the learning activities and human interactions around which that content is situated” (Brown & Adler, 2008).
The way we learn is so different, and the new innovations can not only update how we learn, what we learn and how much we learn, but how we learn it! :)
Very cool, please check out the article.

Week Three: EDU 651- There is Nothing Private About Facebook

As we know, Facebook is a social network. Although it has potential for other uses, such as promoting a business, connecting with organizations, such as March of Dimes to show support to premature babies, and many other causes of good nature- There is NOTHING private about Facebook.
This week, we reviewed an article about a woman who made a comment that she was "teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte"(Schaffhauser, 2008), and although she was making this comment on her private facebook page, her settings were not made private, and her opinion left her open to public scrutiny in addition to consequences from her school board. So yes, we can see that although sometimes we are making comments to our friends or whatnot that we consider to be "private", posting them on Facebook isn't technically the most professional thing to do. In addition, if you are considering operating a facebook page and living any sort of professional life, be sure that what is posted, or what gets posted is something that you don't mind sharing with the WORLD, because literally, that's what Facebook exposes you to- a global network!

Something I must share on this topic: I recently had a friend of mine post pictures of myself from highschool onto my Facebook page. Luckily, they were genuinely congenial pictures and ones that I could identify with, and I was "tagged" in them, so they showed up in my pictures as well. Funny to be able to remember the moments of highschool drama club- literally, but had this been another picture, from say, a party where my attendance was more or less "unknown" by let's say my parents, I might have chosen to delete the "tag" and just simply say to my "friend"- "THANKS FOR POSTING THIS PICTURE, I hope I never have to see it again in my life time".
Hahah.



Reference:

Scaffhauser, D. (2008). Suspend Teacher in Facebook Incident Ignites Debate: should ONline Privacy for Educators Exist? Retrieved July 27, 2010 from URL: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23611 for job seekers to get a preview

EDU651:Week 2- What I've learned

During Week Two of EDU 651 at Ashford University, I have learned about the pitfals of wikis. I learned that despite the functions and many uses of wikis, there are important things to avoid when using them, because wikis can be editied by anyone, anywhere at any given time. Making sure that when you are exposing yourself to the realm of the read/write web that you not only edit your content, but that you are posting information that you don't mind others reading and making note of for future access. Otherwise, that information could come back and hang you.

The popularity of Social Networks is one example of a website where your personal information can be misinterpreted. Sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are popular these days, and they are great tools if used for the right reasons. To keep yourself safe, and to protect others that you care about, make sure that if you are posting content, pictures, or disclosing personal information, that it is something that you have control over, and that you are comfortable sharing with the world! Literally! Because you never know who will gain access to that information in the future. Keeping yourself and your family and friends safe on the web is important, and you should keep in mind that although social networking is great for keeping in touch, others may take the information they gather and use it in ways that you may not approve of. I am not in any way discouraging you from posting your photos, or your information on these sites, but simply asking that before you do so, you understand the risks. Some of the ways that you can protect yourself is by setting your profile to private, or by limiting who has access to your profile. Make sure that only your friends and family can view your information by adjusting your account settings.

Happy Social Networking, Blogging and wiki-ing!!

Sarah

Implementations

I just saw my first Apple ipad the other day and it was the coolest thing I've seen since a transformer. The implementation of new technology is just mind boggling to me, and to many of you I'm sure. Its so convenient with all of the new devices that are made available to us- cell phones, iphones, wireless internet, mp3 players and gps!! We now have devices that keep us organized, digitally, while we walk, drive, eat and sleep! In fact, it seems that we are so organized that if we lose our devices, we would be lost in the world anymore and not know what music we like, how to navigate and find places, and most of us would definitely not know a single phone number of someone close to us to call, should we need something, because its all stored right there for us in our digital hard drive. Yes, these technologies allow us so many freedoms and luxuries, such as working at the beach, speaking commands to our cars and pulling up directions to a remote location, finding the nearest Starbucks etc., etc., etc...all of the world right there ar our fingertips with ETA's and 3G networking capabilities. If only we could get these things to store our clothes, shoes and beauty products, we could go on vacation, work at the beach and not have to bring a suitcase. Heck, we should just all become Avatars and then life would really allow us to travel to the places it seems we are already going. Our lives would really be conducted mostly in cyberspace. We could leave the earth behind, eliminate the earthly issues and begin our lives anew in a digital hemisphere! Just think about all the possiblities, and solutions that technological implementation could be providing in the future! We've already come this far, what could possibly be next?!