Little did I understand what a journey this fall would be! My own development in digital literacy has been tremendous. I would like to describe my starting level at “Skills” in Beetham and Sharpe’s pyramid model of digital literacy development. (JISC infoNet 2014)
I found a blog about Georgie, a five years old blogger and vlogger. This is a comic strip but many of the comic strips are spot on! Like this one about digital natives, immigrants and retards. Very funny (I know, not a scientific site, but couldn’t resist). (Being Five 2018)
During the second topic I came to the awareness that if we want to share, we have to stop keeping it all to ourselves and being afraid of everyone “stealing” our material. Without sharing there is no education (Wiley 2010) and expertice can be given without given away.
I think topic 3 was the eye-opening week for me. I realized how comfortable I was in my own courses, doing what I do best, lecturing! Well, I called my courses blended courses, but the digital part of the course was mostly sharing my power points and posting links and YouTube videos on our course site. Not much of online learning or a digital course.
I was hooked on collaborative connectivism where the internet creates new opportunities in learning and sharing information. The teacher’s role is no more lecturing, but more of being a guide or facilitator. (Downes 2010, Siemens 2005)
I also learned that you have to let go. To let go from your old course to be able to build up a new course that is truly an online course. To be brave. Converting your old material into an online course is not building an online course. Another difficult thing is the difference between the teaching presence vs teacher presence. (Garrison, Anderson & Archer 2000; Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison 2013)
Online Network Learning is not about making it easier for the teacher or saving resources. ONL is about involving students and turning them into thinking individuals, make them collaborate and unite their strengths to produce knowledge.
The ONL course has come to the end, but with everything I learned during the journey, my thinking about course building will never be the same. I want to be more open, I want to offer more online learning and I will start developing my course for next fall during the spring and we’ll see how it goes!
Thank y’all!
REFERENCES
Being Five 2018. Found 8.12.2018 at http://beingfive.blogspot.com/
Downes, S. (2010). New technology supporting informal learning. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 2(1)
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. 2000. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment. Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), pp 87-105
JISC infoNet 2014. Developing digital literacies. Found 7.10.2018 http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1)
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M. & Garrison, D. R. 2013. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.
Wiley, T. 2010. Open education and the future. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M