[OLR] Exercise 2.1: Virtual environments and my cognition

The great hope / promise of collaborative / online learning is that it will allow us, as educators, to achieve some sort of learning outcome that we couldn't otherwise achieve (or achieve so well) without the use of the technology. A certain richness is implied. For example:

"By using these tools we expect our students to create and publish content and respond to the content creation of others. Created content can be aggregated to show progress and richness and depth of learning. Students can respond to the work of others, provide feedback and learn through their interactions with others online. Not only are our students learning, they are also learning how to be independent learners."

Linked to from here

As a teacher I'm all for this but I think that delivery presents challenges. Of course one of the benefits of something like Facebook is that you're only relating to people that you know - not strangers. Pedagogically this is important - because potentially students can know that they will be relating to people within their trust circle, within the circle of

[OLR] Exercise 2.1: Virtual environments and your cognition

a. Are you happy with the ethics? Report your findings.

No. In particular I am concerned about adding friends who add students as friends on Facebook. In particular I'm concerned about responding to an adult conversation and then having that friends own friends (i.e. students) being able to read my own comment. If I'm using a virtual environment to work do I really want to go to the bother of using this sort of virtual environment.

b. What do you think is the difference between social cognition and visual cognition?

Social cognition means acquiring knowledge and understanding through social thought and experience. In the case of a virtual environment it would allow for knowledge acquisition that doesn't so obviously relate to the appearance of a person or their social standing in a class peer group. Implies to my mind the idea of shared knowledge, knowledge that exists by virtue of the social processes that gave rise to it. cognition to me means the reading in of visual stimuli into the knowledge acquisition process. I kind of have the feeling that it's a bad thing because it could imply overemphasis on the appearance / delivery of information rather than focus on content.

The Hell of Acronyms

Q. How do you know that:

A.) You're doing a new University course?
B.) You're doing something 'computery'?
C.) You're getting older?

A. You're using acronyms that you don't recognise.

Seriously I'm happy to be doing this course CSU Online Communities ITC510. But I'm over acronyms and course guides that just throw them around like confetti. I know that they'll all mean something to me soon. But for now I'm a bit hesitant - how shall we say, about getting down to it all RSN FWIW although IDK when I'll be getting my head around it all.

• FWIW: For What It's Worth
• IDK: I Don't Know
• RSN: Real Soon Now

Wired but not Web 2.0? That's normal ...

Although most U.S. adults have a cell phone, a computer and Internet access, a study says only a small percentage are participating in Web 2.0 activities. (SNIP) Lackluster veteran (8 percent) Been there, done that on the Internet since the mid-'90s and could care less about Web 2.0 or mobile media. Usually fortysomething men (not me thirty-something and grateful) who have a laptop and a broadband connection. E-mail and cell phones are seen as essential for work for these users, and they surf the Web to find information (SNIP - but this last bit just ain't me) as well as e-mail to stay in touch with family and friends, but the interest ends there. (End quote). I honestly can't remember the last time I e-mailed someone for a chat or to stay in touch.

I grabbed this quote to get started with my online communities course because it resonates with where I'm at just right now:

In theory I'm in a place that likes online communities - as places for students to develop their learning and knowledge building skills and to develop their thinking and communication skills and build their computer competencies. As places for us to authentically publish and share our work. But that's about it for me. Paradoxically I've long loved the idea of doing things online (you know sharing interests and so on with like minded people). But in reality I'd rather give it all a miss. I chat online with my wife when I'm 'out of town' and I make posts on forums of interest, but mostly when I'm doing that sort of stuff I also doing something else at the same time. And I ask myself do I multi-task because I use a computer or do I use a computer because I multi-task? Either way I get about this far into a blog post and start to think 'this is rambling, it doesn't make sense, it's an underdeveloped thought process' - all these are things that I don't want to finish off and leave in print. Breadcrumbs of a disorganised mind. At least in a conversation one's ideas can trail off and just fade away into the ether.