The PB&J Project

After completing our lesson and analyzing the other group lessons on the design, composition, nutrition, history and variations of the good ole peanut butter and jelly sandwich I feel like an expert.  As a mother of three boys I often felt like a PB&J mass manufacturer.  Yet, even if I were a novice I feel I could have quickly become proficient in the art of designing a PB&J by studying these lessons.  Learning in the comfort of my home, being able to review the material multiple times at my own pace and not needing to feel critiqued if it took me several attempts to create an impeccable product were all a very valuable part of this online learning exercise.

I never thought about PB&J as much as I have this week!  I learned about it's history.  I learned about it's plethora of variations.  I learned about it's accessories ~ who knew a sandwich could have accessories?!  I learned about it's nutritional value.  Oh, but the lessons were deeper than just bread.....I learned about asynchronous collaboration, multimedia presentations - design & delivery, Google docs, embedding, Prezi, making crosswords and surveys.  I thought each group did an excellent job - presenting the learner with objectives and even a pre-assessment; using interactive forms of presentation to motivate & pique the learner's interest; and organizing activities that allowed the learner to assess and/or reflect on their learning.  Perhaps, the desire for a group presentation post learning was a bit ambitious; but, it represented a diverse way of assessing learning.  Just saying...I think we are great 21st century educators!

Yes, I did make a PB&J for myself Friday as I pondered the lessons.  My favorites?  White bread, grape jelly, crunchy Jiff, served whole (why fractionate perfection!) with a large glass of milk.  And, yes the peanut butter MUST go on both sides of the bread prior to the application of jelly...least your bread become stained and soggy!! 

Building An Online Community

So, this was our first week online in ADLT640.  I found it challenging and motivating at the same time.  The ability to timelessly connect is liberating.  The ability to learn from peers is inspiring.  (If they can do it there is hope for me!)  It was perplexing at times – trying to type my thoughts and ideas and clearly communicate them.  Our schedules, not to mention Mother Nature’s designs, directly affected connectivity.  Assignments needed to be coordinated and broken into smaller tasks.  Tasks needed to be divided.  Choosing a format for our presentation proved problematic, only because there are so many choices of digital presentation media.  Overall, it was a good experience.  I like online learning.  I like the ability to peruse posts, formulate questions, and reflect.  I came away wondering how this virtual group work could be facilitated.  I believe our group was at an advantage, having met several times face to face.  What if I hadn’t known them at all?  Would our interactions have been different?  I believe so.  In order for any group to function effectively there has to be a level of trust.  Trust is difficult to establish in person, much more so in an online environment…unless it is planned well.  Additionally, roles, rules and norms need to be established – something we did collectively in the traditional setting.  As I did some reading on the subject, I kept coming across the need to build an online community.  This seems vital to facilitating interactions between teacher, students and content.  However, I had never thought of this component of eLearning.  I have pondered design, delivery, maintenance and assessment.  I guess I just assumed (yes, I know that is dangerous!) that community would follow.  Now, I think the online educator needs to be proactive in establishing “presence” and helping the students develop their own educational society.  I am beginning to see this ability to facilitate an online community as an art as well as an educational mission.  It takes technology and content knowledge PLUS the talent to manage students online.  I found this article, Online Facilitation: It’s Not Just For Geeks Anymore!, that you may find enlightening.  Dr. Watwood also put a link under week 3 course lessons to a set of excellent videos by UNSW Teaching Online, two of which speak on this topic of creating online communities:  Online Teamwork & Collaboration  and Engaging and Motivating Students.  The video below also gives excellent tips for using Web 2.0 applications in fostering students’ sense of online community and presence.  

p.s.  I guess this means I am going to have to learn to tweet!! :-)  

Theories of Learning

What is learning?  A change in behavior.  A change in response to a stimulus.  A change in perception.  An ability to observe and internalize.  Bumping up against the world, processing and adapting.  Reflection on the education culture.  A linear acquisition.  A mosaic, networking acquisition.  Plugging in to sources.

What is teaching?  Design.  Delivery.  Facilitation. Providing reinforcements.  Providing insights.  Transferring knowledge.  Providing scaffolding for knowledge construction.  Planning learning outcomes and assessing their achievement.  Modeling/nurturing  curiosity and passion for learning by active interaction. 

What is knowledge?  Formal, school smarts.  Informal, street smarts.  An ability to recall facts.  An ability to perform skills.  An awareness.  Problem solving.  Encounters – experiential or vicarious.  Social discourse content.  Sensory information.  Peer and instructor feedback.  Ordered chaos. 

With so many descriptors for the phenomenon of education, it is no wonder there are many theories that try to explain the assimilation of knowledge.  No one theory is better than the others are; they each improve our understanding of the complexities of scholarship.  These theories offer a framework for educators to plan learning opportunities for their students.  As example, a teacher may provide positive reinforcements for students as a conditioning method.  Likewise, the educator may use a LMS or concept mapping as a way of helping students organize and construct knowledge.  Encouraging students to explore and consult online sources helps them to connect with other experts and learners.  A meta-cognition activity such as journaling provides students a chance to apply concepts in new ways.  Theories of learning are more than just ethereal concepts.  The praxis they provide has practical implications for educators and learners alike.

Retrieved from :

Retrieved from: http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Connectivism

The 21st Century Learner

The 21^st century student is an expert at multitasking.  They are mosaic thinkers, nonlinear in thought.  Remember when your mother told you to turn off the music to do your homework?  Well, today’s students text, tweet, watch streaming videos, follow friends on Facebook, listen to Pandora, upload, download, shop online and scan hundreds of channels while they study! This connectivity and collaboration is key to their existence, not distractions from it.  Yet, many educators continue to offer their students linear PowerPoint lectures as the mainstay of their instruction.  Some teachers resist the notion of change.  Others see the need for a minor change in methodology.  I believe more than methodology needs to change.  Education must be wholly transformed to keep up with the needs of today’s students.  Dan Brown, a student that uploaded An Open Letter to Educators on YouTube, stated…“We are in the midst of a very real revolution and if institutional education refuses to adapt to the landscape of the information age, it will die, and it should die.”  (Brown, D. 2010.  Retrieved from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4&NR=1&feature=fvwp )

The resistance to change, I believe, stems from a paradigm shift in power.  No longer is the teacher the expert or in total control.  Students desire active self-directed learning.  They yearn for educators that function as guides and facilitators, catalysts of creativity and knowledge construction.  Technology is not technology to them; it merely represents the tools of daily life, the norm.  Don Topscott, author of Grown Up Digital: Meet the Net Generation, has this brief video on YouTube that summarizes the differences in today’s learners.  

Ten Best Practices for Online Educators

Hello fellow ADLT 640 students!

Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online Quick Guide for New Online Faculty 

by J. V. Boettcher, Ph.D.

I found this article that provides 10 tips for online educators.  It seems to be an excellent synopsis of what we will be talking about this summer.  Several of the author’s comments caught my attention.  Specifically suggestions for building an online community – which prior to this class I had never really understood as vital to the online learning process.  Another was the author’s suggestion for using Socratic type questioning.  Socratic questioning is a metacognition activity that I believe models reflective practice.  It interests me because I believe nurses need to become better reflective practioners in order to increase the critical thinking skills that are vital in clinical venues.  I hope you like the tips as much as I did!

The Boiled Frog

If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.

Version of the story from Daniel Quinn's The Story of B

  

 I like this metaphor.  I do believe that it is common for people to tolerate subtle changes, even if those ever so delicate alterations culminate into an unendurable outcome.  The majority of people, and frogs, are not masochistic. I believe the “boiled frog syndrome” stems from Model 1 behaviors.  One of the core values of the Unilateral Control Model is suppressing negative feelings.   Undoubtedly, the frog would have espoused to a different theory of behavior than allowing himself to be boiled alive.  Yet his theory-in-use allowed just that!  Perhaps his desire to suppress negative feelings overruled his good sense.  We are like the frog when we refuse to raise our concerns because we do not want to hurt someone’s feelings or prolong the decision process.  We prefer to remain politically correct at all times, never sharing our frustrations.  We fear appearing undiplomatic or offending.  The paradoxical reality is that by subduing our “undiscussable” emotions we can endanger the health of the group, the task, and ourselves.  Maybe if the frog had been able to practice Mutual Learning Model strategies he would still be alive.  Had he been comfortable enough to test assumptions and inferences, share all relevant information, combine advocacy and inquiry and discuss undiscussables he may have discovered the temperature of the water before it was too late!  Curiosity could have motivated him to seek information that he obviously was missing.  Compassion would have prevented him from generating defensiveness.  Curiosity and compassion are key principles associated with the Mutual Learning Model. We all can learn a lesson from the frog.  The main take away is to practice the principles of the Mutual Learning Model and embrace differences as the opportunities of learning that they are.

Political Parties

I generally do not talk politics with anyone.  However, when reading about intergroup paradoxes I could only think of our two party political system.  I wonder if any of our leaders ever read Smith and Berg’s Paradoxes of Group Life?

The paradox of scarcity is overwhelming apparent when looking at budget debates.  Instead of being able to focus on the good of the whole, parties and lobbying groups can only see what they are getting and what is being taken away from them.  No matter the size of the resources, they are viewed as inadequate; hence the need to increase taxing or borrowing in order to fund all the various group interests.  Smith and Berg described this as a self-referential circularity (p. 186), wherein action that solves one problem creates another.

Then there is the paradox of perception.  The struggle here is for groups to understand the necessity of other group’s goals, values and tasks as it relates to the viability of the whole.  Unsuccessful management of this paradox is manifested by the inability to integrate - bringing unique parts together to make a stronger whole.  Sometimes I think different group members are not really sure what they stand for other than being “anti-other.”  There is rarely an affirmative light burning anywhere.  There is certainly no trust or disclosure.  

These concepts of differential access to resources and inability to view the whole result in power struggles.  The intergroup paradox of power is seen when the group not currently in power views their position as absolute powerlessness.  This extreme polarization of “haves” and “have-nots” creates unhealthy conflict.  Such conflicts require leadership that is courageous, creative and inspires acceptance and interdependence.  Besides leadership, a larger external threat can positively influence intergroup dynamics; as was seen in our country immediately post 9/11.    That external threat served as a cohesive factor between all types of groups, blurring the lines of creed, color, and values, albeit briefly.  While I realize we do not live in a utopian society I do believe we need to learn to work better together, for the good of the whole.  I liked this illustration Smith & Berg used (p. 196): 

Differences in values can coexist in mutually enriching ways, as in the case of melding music and drama in the production of musical theater.  This does not mean that the tension created by the differences in values disappears; rather, it is out of these tensions that the overall fabric of the production is created, generating an outcome not possible within the medium of either music or drama alone.