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This week I have discovered that there is a Whatsapp group of the IDEL cohort, as well as a Facebook group! I joined both of them and it has been nice to share thoughts and know people from the course beyond the University platform. This week I feel quite different than other weeks where I felt overwhelmed, intimidated and alone. being part of this informal context has allowed me to see that we are all in the same boat, struggling with the readings, time and blog post.
We have crossed the equator of the course and people are experiencing the pressure and tiredness. Probably because of that, we organised a Zoom call to comment on the MOOC task and share some ideas. I guess we all had the need to share and get ideas from others because our brains are starting to get dreined, I am sure we have been able to produce better individual ideas and blog post after that videocall.
In my opinion, I think we were being very critical with MOOCs, embracing the attitude learned from this week articles. At some point, I felt the need to take part in the positive side and here are some of my optimistic way of analysing open education.
We have to work with what we have. Reality is that the world is not fair, there are so inequalities, however, I believe that OER and MOOCs, in particular, are a good way to lower some high walls.
I think we were all having an education bias here when evaluating MOOCs, in general, everyone in the group comes from a similar professional background (working in education), and probably MOOCs don’t have a good offer here. However, I think they make a change when we are talking about technical skills like coding and programming. I have learned python and some coding thanks to Coursera and other platforms. That makes me positive considering the value of a MOOC and seeing the potential to improve my CV for example.
I don’t see MOOCs as the “fast food” of education, I think the conversation is more nuanced. Using the food metaphor I would say that MOOCs are the GMO products. It is not easy to take an extreme side when we are talking of GMO. Many people would argue that are bad because are genetically modified food, or maybe because there is a huge economic empire behind and it the food sovereignty is in danger. However, it cannot be denied the arguments that claim that GMO products are offering developing countries to sustain themselves and reduce worldwide hunger.
For me is difficult to have a strong opinion against MOOCs, because even though I am aware and acknowledge all the limitations and problems, I think they are not a bad idea per se. I think they can be a good ally to minimise the world inequalities.
I have to admit that I didn’t find this week articles as much as interesting than the weeks before. Maybe because articles are quite old, and they didn’t offer a real new idea to me. I would say that the only bit I take with me this week, is the importance of having a critical perspective on the term “open”, and probably this is the most important element when we are talking about Open Education. As I said, nothing completely new, but it is good to have the reminding alert turned on. I would highlight ideas from the articles: Bayne, S., Knox, J., & Ross, J. (2015). Open education: the need for a critical approach. and Knox, J. (2013). The limitations of access alone: moving towards open processes in education where the importance of having a critical perspective is well-argued.
I have been an active user of open education for the last 10 years, I have done so many MOOCs, I have just enrolled to some of them, but in general, I finish the course and I have paid to get the certification for a few. My partner is a computer scientist pro-Linux and open source, and of course we use it at home, and I am not new to the conversations behind… So, I guess this makes me quite familiar and aware of the reality of what we understand and assume for “open”.
During my professional and personal background, I have been lucky to get familiar with the new paradigm that was Web 2.0. Web 2.0 as an umbrella of changes that created a new way of how content, information and knowledge travels and is created.
While open access to learning resources may be of significant value in education, this paper will ques- tion whether free admittance to information is enough to realise the goals of universal education and economic prosperity often promised by the open education movement (see Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007; Caswell et al., 2008; Daniel & Killion, 2012).
Knox (2013)
I am sure, that thanks to open education people who never had access to a certain context, now are able to enjoy a variety of programmes at any time, from anywhere without cost. If we think in a 0-10 scale to measure the accessibility to knowledge, I would say that someone that had 4 in a level of access to the information, with OER and MOOCS could rich a level of 7 or 8. Of course, this is not solving the big issue that is that we still have so many people at the level of 0-2 of access to knowledge.
Five years ago I lived in San Francisco, CA and I volunteered in some public Highschools helping students to improve their Spanish skills. I was amazed by how many activities and extracurricular projects students did in order to be competitive when applying for the university. I never saw that in Spain, being accepted in the university doesn’t work like that.
Anyhow, I knew some students were taking Coursera courses of coding and programming, some at a very high level. They wanted to be ready for university and show that in their applications, but the truth was that they would probably be more than ready before starting studying. Clearly, these students were able to do this where the most privileged ones, usually white guys. They have the time, the resources and the support from home*. The group of students I helped, had other kinds of problems, and their goals were others, nothing that could be improved by joining to a Coursera course and learn by themselves.
Learning autonomously it is not easy at all, and MOOCs and OER assume that everyone will have the ability to work and learn independently, which is not easy and it requires a specific set of skills. Also, having access to open education is not that easy, some people still struggling to have a computer and wi-fi at home. Sure, the options are there, but it doesn’t mean that all barriers are demolished.
I acknowledge all the limitations described by Knox, and I embrace the need for a constant critical eye. However, I would say that we cannot deny that for the first time in the history information (and the creation of content) is not owned for a small bunch of people. Of course, there are barriers and power hasn’t flipped as much as I would like, but technically there is an open canal of communication for communities and groups that never had the option to create content and publish it before.
I am not being naif here. I now that even we have the technology and resources to open the knowledge and the creation of content to everyone, the truth is that who rich that information still a privileged percentage of people. What do we have to do then? As I said at the beginning, I agree with this week authors when they point out the importance of being critical, but at the same time, I want to be optimistic, I think MOOCs and OER are not solving the biggest problem, but they are a good step to rich changes. In fact, I am not sure there is a possible solution for the bigger problem that can be tackled from education by itself.
(*)Around May of this year I finished a MOOC on Coursera, it was quite interesting, and I linked some thoughts from a video I saw in the course. You can check it here. The main idea I wanted to highlight is that after 40 years of different studies (In the US) have shown that the student’s success is more impacted by the reality at home and society than by the school. Even, we can create the perfect school, with the perfect teacher, with the perfect content, society and family environment will have a huge impact on a student’s life. And we cannot pretend to reform that from the education without pointing the issues of the world’s reality.
First of all, I wanted to use some open-source programmes to do the video, I was playing a little with OpenShot and Kazam, sadly my laptop died finally this week, and I needed to find other ways to record last minute. You will see in the video that appears the name of my husband… Long story short, I used his work laptop and an internal tool to record and his name is everywhere… sorry about.
Click the image to go to the video
Find here the summary of the main ideas of the video, and the questions I wanted to raise. I know that 16 minutes of a not very fluid video are difficult to swallow 🙂
Structure, design elements:
It has all the ingredients you can expect from a MOOC
Overall, the platform has all the requisites to make good usability, even though I found some elements that bothered me. Constant notifications are visible that I am not able to close.
It has a free and certification option, but I am disappointed by the fact that audit access expires. When I enrol to a MOOC is because I want to check the information, and kind of keep it, like a book, something that is in my “virtual library” and I am able to check it when needed.
Content is correct, there is a clear lineal structure and video content is clear enough.
I am missing more clear objectives and information about the topics that you will be focused on during the course.
Information about the teacher and staff + Requirements of the programme, very helpful before enrolling to the course.
Thoughts and questions:
What is the framework that institutions work with?
Different institutions have access to different frameworks? more resources are given by the platform?
Is the data collected really useful and used to design and create the course?
By definition MOOCs has a massive audience, building a community and social network is not something expected, isn’t it? This probably clashed with part of the philosophy behind “open”.
How and Who is marking the quality baseline? in big platforms like edX or Coursera, are the courses being tested/rated by someone before going online?
Ideas of why people enrol to a MOOC: have access to resources, information and materials? curiosity?, check options to find areas of interest?, first step to making a career change, find a community?
Value of the programme. In order to get a certification sometimes is enough paying by the course. There a diverse kind of evaluations, some courses offer a better way to check progress. True/False or more complex questionaries, Peer review or just click to checkmark. How can we be sure that someone that has taken the course has the knowledge? Is the credibility of the platform enough?
On the other hand, I found the post I wrote last year when I was attempting to do the course for the first time. Find the text here, in case you are interested, I realise now it was not a deep analysis…
I am already immerse to this week’s topic, but today something happened that deserves to be mentioned. My husband is a researcher and part of his job is to attend conferences. This year, for obvious reasons, all conferences have been cancelled and I have seen him attending virtual events, making talks and recording himself.
I guess conference organisers have been trying different ways to recreate what the conference means. Panels, conference, presentations of posters, workshops, etc. But also the social space, informal conversations, networking… Because conferences are the perfect place to meet up and create connections that are beyond work. I have been lucky to attend some conference with him because he always has conferences in cool places like Japan, South Africa or Canary Island. I know this kind of conferences encourage relationships and many of them organise activities, some with family members included! So, every year these conferences are the perfect excuse to do a holiday (after the conference of course!).
Anyways, with the “new reality” conference organisation need to be creative and today my husband joined a conference in which they have created a virtual space through Gather Town that we found very cool, and I wanted to share. Who has created the place wanted to recreate all the relevant elements of a physical conference This platform, though, it has the idea of not having a super realistic environment, ideas that we learn on the article: Virtualizing the real: a virtual reality contemporary sculpture park for children. Virtual spaces are less realistic and that allows the user to fill in the gaps with creativity and imagination Turner (2016).
In this conference we can find:
– Companies stands that when your avatar goes close, it gets interactive, showing a video, linking to their website or there is a person answering the question.
– Social spaces with coffee and cookies!
– You can walk around with your camera and microphone close or open(something that we realised after a while…) When you cross with someone their camera gets visible and you can open a chat.
– Avatar can be customised and we saw some zombies and mummies walking around.
– The big hall where the main conferences happen. With microphones to make questions.
– It is a virtual space but we observed how people keep social distancing while sitting to hear the conference 😉
– Conference in action, with people presenting their posters. I have seen this face to face and I can say that the feeling was quite similar. You could walk around and listen to the conversations people have around the posters.
A funny note, one of my husband’s colleague attending to the conference has said: “I spent some time walking around without talking to anyone, and I realised that is what I do in conferences, the only difference is the free food available.”
Today I found this ad near to my home. I need to take a picture because clearly it ring some bells! The text is is Catalan, but I think it is quite clear: Digital Humanism.
Bankia is not my kind of Bank, but I decided to check their website and see what they mean by Digital humanism. It is interesting what they sell for digital humanism, basically that you can manage you account from everywhere, attention through whatsapp and the use of an app.
After all the influence of Bayne, I cannot see this ad as something interesting or good for me… (well, is Bankia I would never consider it as my Bank, hahaha)
On my first post of this block, I described a learning space like “a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.”
After these two weeks, I have been going back to that post to examine my previous thoughts after reading the articles, everyone’s metaphor, and especially the comment you left. This has been resonating in my mind the whole week. “I wonder whether this accommodates the contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem, or the moment in the middle of the night where we might be struck by an original idea, and so on? Can a learning space not also be somewhat more impromptu and unplanned? I suppose it depends on how we define learning?“
It is well exposed on Bayne et al (2014) and Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015) articles, that we are in the situation to affirm that technology has changed the way we can work and learn such that the constraints of time and place are re-defined. Learning space is a fluid and mobile concept and it goes beyond a class or virtual class. However, ‘contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem’ can be defined as a learning space?
I completely embrace the idea that learning can happen everywhere, anytime! Also, I totally share the idea that you can learn while you are walking around or sitting in a cafe. However, where do we draw a line here? depending on what is happening in our brain? I mean, if we are in a cafe solving a problem, then we are learning and the cafe becomes a learning space? but if we are in a class thinking and planning the next summer (without following the class activity), we are not in a learning space?
Going back to the idea of “prepared environment”, I am still thinking that a learning space requires some preparation/intention behind, of course, a cafe can become a place where learning might happen, but not sure if it should have the category of learning space. I hope I can explain myself.
When I think about “prepared” I mean, that someone (the teacher) has an idea in mind, they is thinking in a specific goal to achieve by the students. This set up doesn’t mean that the activities and steps to rich the goal will happen in only one space, in a specific time or with concrete resources. If I use this course as an example, I would say that the prepared environment is: the IDEL virtual portal, with all their elements: announcements, forum, materials and curated articles. Teachers of the course don’t know where the students will engage with the materials and when this will happen, but you know and have some ideas and expectations of what students have to do in order to show progress and learning, don’t you?
That way, I would say that even that I can find my self walking around thinking about the course, and having unplanned learning moment, I would argue that this moment was somehow planned by you (James, as a teacher). Because you were anticipating (and hoping) I would have an “aha moment” and I would learn something. I guess for that reason, we could call ‘learning space’ to all the places I have been thinking and engaging with the materials (physical or virtual).
I remember, when I was teaching people that will become educators of after school classes, normally people with a little background in education. I remember I selected and designed some activities that I thought it was a journey to arrive at a certain point. I expected they would be able to change their view and preconceptions about children. I didn’t want to arrive at the class and make a statement. I wanted them to think about and arrive at their own conclusions, obviously with my particular bias because we know that education is never neutral! I wanted them to have an “aha moment”, and probably that didn’t happen during the hours we were together in the class. I also prepared reading, poems and song for them. I am sure they engaged with those on different places, and probably they critique, answered or made questions about the materials in their minds, far away from the class. I would consider those moments as something prepared. Does it make sense?
Of course, I think that someone can learn without anyone acting as the puppet master of their process of learning! this is not what I am thinking. But, for me, in order to consider a “learning space,” there is involved this idea of preparation and of course interaction with someone acting as a guide, and the design behind.
Learning environments are successful because users are motivated and educated to learn how to use them in particular successful ways. They are helped, educated, and supported to use environments in new ways. This is particularly the case when technology becomes an increasingly significant aspect of the learning environment. This means that the planners, managers, and leaders of learning environments have themselves also to become active agents in the curation, facilitation, and activation of the networked learning landscape that they have helped to brief, design, and construct.
Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015)
As a conclusion, I would say that my previous idea of what is a learning space has not been changed completly, but it has been enriched with more arguments and thoughts. Today I would say that learning space can be defined as the structured context that has been designed to let students play, think and learn. The prepared environment is not only a place where students can learn from, the kind of preparation can make that students engange and learn from a huge range of fluid and open spaces.
Following your suggestion about trying to go further into exploring the use of different resources this week I have intended to use tools I never used before, for example, ThingLink, actually, I think it is the first time I do an interactive image.
In this image I am trying to express what is my engagement with the IDEL course, making special attention to this week’s topic: learning spaces.
I used the University ID because it is my personal connection to the programme. I wanted to make the ID the protagonist of the image story. I carry my ID everywhere, basically because I have it in my phone case. An interesting fact is that I don’t carry it in my wallet. When I got it, I decided to put it on the phone case where I don’t have many spaces for ids, but I keep the important ones: bus ticket, debit card and university ID. Why did I decide to carry it there? I am not sure, maybe I am giving some mysticism, but I have realised that this ID is what makes me feel connected to the course and makes me identify as a student, probably it what makes me feel to be in the campus, whatever I am, embracing the concept of new mobilities paradigm’ that is discussed by Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014), which supports learning in unbounded regions and terrains.
It has shown that the material campus continues to be a symbolically and materially significant ‘mooring’ for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus.
Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014)
With the image, I want to present the different places where I have engaged with the IDEL course and the different tools and resources I have used so far. I would say that my laptop has been my main moored item. It is quite funny because my laptop is not portable anymore, it only turns on when is charging, so it really moors me. However, I feel that my learning space has been fluid in terms that I move around my home depending on what is space is free and quiet to be. Usually, the headquarters is my living room, a comfortable armchair in a nice corner where I like to sit to read and, of course, to write all the post in my blog.
Sometimes, I go to use the uplift desk (usually when I want to keep my eyes open and don’t fall asleep), or a read in the bedroom when everyone is sleeping. On this week Padlet I have discovered that some classmates use a voice reader to hear the articles and be able to do another thing at the same time. I have been inspired by them, and I am sure I will use it in the future to brake more bounded and rigid container that is “reading”.
As you can see in the image, I have used a Kindle, which helped me to be freer and bring my learning space outside the house, for example checking the materials from a playground. But I have also used inside, reading in the Kindle and writing in the laptop. Many times I have found myself having two virtual places used at the same time, for example playing Minecraft on my phone while I was checking tutorials on the laptop. I can say that I have deflated the sedentarist claims.
Today we are celebrating “La castanyada” a Catalan tradition. The translation would be something like “The chestnut party”. Like other regions, countries and cultures today and tomorrow are important days to celebrate: Halloween, El dia de los muertos, Samhain or Todos los santos.
In Catalonia we have our particular party to celebrate the Autumn and be warm. Like any other celebration food it is so important, and we eat cooked chestnuts and Panellets. You can buy panellets, but the best ones are the ones you make at home. We could say that each family has its own recipe and bake the favourite flavours. The traditional ones are made of pine nuts, almond, coconut or lemon, but nowadays you can find so many different ones and everyone will tell you that theirs ARE the original ones!
This year, I have made panellets with my son for the first time, he is only one and I was sure that making panallets would be difficult, but I wanted him to participate at his level and get familiar with the tradition.
Two weeks ago we went to the library and took some books that talk about chestnuts, La castanyada and La castanyera (traditionally an old woman who sells chestnuts and baked sweet potato), and of course a book about panellets. We have been reading and observing the books for the last two weeks, singing songs about this party and getting familiar with all the elements.
Finally, yesterday was the big moment, the moment where we are ready to make panellets and let them ready to eat today. As I said, I knew Blai was too young to follow the whole process, so I adapted the way he will be involved. I considered his materials, the ingredients he was using, the place where he will be placed and what I would be doing. I actually, spent a lot of time thinking WHERE he would be doing the panallets. And of course, I related all the process to this week’s topic.
I thought that all of this was a great metaphor of a learning space. Starting from the concept I had in mind, how I planned the information, how I prepared the space to do the activity and selected the materials and the final moment: where Blai connects all the dots and realises what we are doing!
This blog reflexes my opinion about education, and as a reader, you know that I think that learning can happen everywhere, not only with a very directed instructor, and I believe in promoting daily activities and make connections from there. However, I recognise when I consider a “learning space” I think in a specific time-space. I think in a specific goal, at least a specific concept/idea. What is a learning space then, shared space and time? Is the environment that, as teachers, we recreate in order to guide students to conquer the concept we had in mind? In my case, I think the learning space are all the steps I have taken (going to the library, reading the books, signing the songs, buying ingredients together, prepare the materials, etc… ) in order to have this “aha” moment where my son listens “panellets” and looks at the camera making the sign I have been doing every single day for the last two weeks. So, learning space are all the elements we use and recreate in order to help students to get to our idea/knowledge?
A learning space is a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.
I like the Reggio Emilia view that considers the physical space as the third teacher. I could try to say it with my own words, but I think this quote of Loris Malaguzzi is a perfect description of what I understand for a learning space, what should have and be.
We value space for its power to organize, promote pleasant relationships between people of different ages, create a beautiful environment, bring change, promote options and activities, and its potential to unleash all kinds of social, affective and cognitive learning.All of this contributes to a feeling of well-being and security in children.We also think that, as has been said, the space has to be a kind of aquarium that reflects the ideas, values, attitudes and cultures of the people who live in it.
