Month: August 2021

Major, C. H. (2015). eaching online : a guide to theory, research, and practice. Teaching online : a guide to theory, research, and practice. https://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-online-a-guide-to-theory-research-and-practice/oclc/904212181.

Regan, P. M., & Jesse, J. (2018, December 3). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and PERSONALIZED learning: Twenty-first century STUDENT sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2.

Weller, M. (2021, August 11). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01.

Showcase Post （Topic 2）

In Topic2, I realized the positive role of open and distributed learning in helping students learn and promoting education development.

We are in an information age, and I find that open and distributed learning is not just dependent on technology, but an independent education platform, which makes its existence more human. Blogs, podcasts, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Wikipedia, etc., are social networks, and their origins are for people to socialize and network. Take blogs for example; people can publish moods and status, write logs and articles, etc., but it is not just a record of pure trivia, but for communication and to provide help to others, it has a high sharing value. At the same time, students can also obtain a large number of high-quality learning resources, effectively improve personal skills, accumulate experience and lessons, social practice and knowledge.

The article, Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice, presented by Claire Howell Major, discusses in depth the importance of educational approaches in open and distributed learning, but I think Major ignores the shortcomings of online courses. As argued in 25 Years of EDTech (Weller, 2021), personalized learning can provide more interactive teaching and a lack of emotional communication, which can easily eliminate students’ thinking process. We can get this explanation from Topic 1, personalized learning at the autonomous level has shortcomings; it is easy to block the communication between teachers and students. In Pedagogy, we should think critically about education.

However, considering the fact that students need to visit the web, visiting may not be suitable for offline courses and may reduce learning efficiency. Therefore, I think we should explore our own learning methods on the premise of open and distributed learning while combining online and offline learning methods. This is consistent with the idea of mixed education in Topic1 reading，Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: twenty-first century student sorting and tracking (Regan & Jesse, 2018). While these principles have served higher education well in directing attention to good teaching and learning practices, we believe they need to be updated to meet the changing needs of higher education.

If I am a teacher, I would like to increase student autonomy in an open, distributed teaching process and let students learn as much as possible. Then the teacher explains and summarizes the students’ homework. I will act as the mainline guide. Students and teachers collaborate in practice to create, update and improve open educational resources in the learning process.

I believe that education technology is the trend of the future. The combination of open distributed learning and educational technology will promote the development of higher quality education. For the future of education, it is challenging to rely on technology to achieve breakthroughs. Instead, it requires a deeper collaboration among educators, universities and learners, an open and distributed integration that promotes each other and better serves the development of students.

Description of the changes and additions

In this Showcase article, I have a deeper understanding of social platforms and illustrate the educational role of the platform by taking blogs as an example. while discussing the pros and cons of personalized learning, I used topIC1 materials and looked at the problem from a critical point of view. Moreover, considering the fact that students need to access the server, I turned to the topic1’s idea of hybrid education to update the existing education methods to serve the ever-changing higher education.

Screenshot （comments）

Reference page:  https://henglang.opened.ca/reference-page-%ef%bc%88showcase-post%ef%bc%89/

Original Post：https://henglang.opened.ca/topic-2/

Reference：

Major, C. H. (2015). eaching online : a guide to theory, research, and practice. Teaching online : a guide to theory, research, and practice. https://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-online-a-guide-to-theory-research-and-practice/oclc/904212181.

Regan, P. M., & Jesse, J. (2018, December 3). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and PERSONALIZED learning: Twenty-first century STUDENT sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2.

Weller, M. (2021, August 11). 25 years of ed tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01.

Showcase link：https://henglang.opened.ca/showcase-post-%ef%bc%88topic-2%ef%bc%89/

 Topic 4

According to the article, Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy, presented by David Wiley and John Hilton(2018), I found that the teaching method supported by open educational resources is in line with teaching and learning practice.

First of all, I think the exam is necessary, but the form and content of the exam should be open. Students can learn in the creation and achieve their goals through their imagination and creativity. It can train students’ thinking ability, make them have the courage to try and stick to it, and achieve their individual learning goals. In addition, I passed the test of these four parts in my education. Through the open teaching method, as students, we can openly share our works and achievements. The lecturer evaluates the works. According to the results, other students can obtain opportunities for knowledge review and self-examination so that both sides can master particular learning abilities.
If I am a teacher, I plan to design these four parts of the test to assist learning. For example, students are required to create new works and publicly share their new works because this is not only supporting the author’s autonomous learning and open learning. In addition, the works shared by the author can also be used as resources to support the learning value of other learners and potentially improve the learning ability of future students.
The different views between open educational resources and open textbooks that need further research have attracted my attention at the end of the article. Most people believe that open textbooks will give students more resources and improve their learning ability, and open educational resources are free, not as good as commercial alternatives. However, from the conclusion, we find that some methods using OER are actually expensive. Therefore, we can assume that students and teachers find its value in their work, encourage them to save costs, improve this learning method, and find the benefits of open education, improving the quality of students’ learning and teachers’ work.

Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19(4).

Topic 3

After reading topic three, I found the transformative significance of open pedagogy methods, and content filtering can also cause fairness and privacy issues. In addition, the design principles of the self-learning space bring positive ideas. Topic three has aroused my thinking about education on a more profound level.
In the article, A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students, Elizabeth Mays(2017) defined that open pedagogy as a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice exchange with each other and provide information for the development of educational practices and structures. According to Ed. Elizabeth Mays definition, assuming that I am an instructor, I would like to use educational technology to promote interpersonal relationships, advocate collaboration and connection between teachers and students. At the same time, it would support democracy, express personal ideas, and create an open learning environment. With this method, learners can have equal opportunities for higher education and reduce the burden of resources such as textbooks or other kinds of paper supplies which motivates learners to persist in completing the course and achieving success.
In the post, Filtering content is often done with good intent, but filtering can also create equity and privacy issues, Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik(2016) mentioned the problem of network filtering and restricting teaching. They exemplified and explained to us that network filtering plays a vital role in preventing malware and viruses. However, just like the students in the case, community college students are easily restricted from accessing the school website when searching for information and finding some resources.
According to the Learning spaces by Inge Kral and Robert G. Schwab (2012), the resources generated by family education practice lie in literacy learning in schools, which can be connected with the design principles of local learning spaces. By observing the people around them to master theoretical knowledge, autonomous learning to master practical knowledge and participating in the discussion to gain experience, this learning method makes it easier for learners to absorb knowledge. These factors limit the implementation of teaching, and the privacy teaching method is unfair to many people. Looking to the future, educational technology should be updated and implanted with open and clear teaching methods to help students achieve their goals.

Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community.
Gilliard, C., & Culik, H. (2016, May 24). Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy. Common Sense Education.
Kral, I. & Schwab, R.G. (2012). Chapter 4: Design Principles for Indigenous Learning Spaces. Safe Learning Spaces. Youth, Literacy and New Media in Remote Indigenous Australia. ANU Press. http://doi.org/10.22459/LS.08.2012

Week 2 readings inspired me a lot about open and distributed learning theory.
Today we live in an information-rich era, everyone can get the knowledge he wants, and the most considerable driving force of this educational change is open and distributed learning. The methods we usually use to teach literacy, blackboard teaching, and physical methods, namely textbooks, videos, courses, etc., are now generally “digitalized.” However, I found that open and distributed learning does not only rely on technology but an independent education platform, which makes its existence more humane.
Blogs, podcasts, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Wikipedia, etc. These are the work of educators and a platform for students to obtain a large number of high-quality learning resources, which can effectively improve personal skills and accumulate experience lessons, social practice and knowledge.
The article discusses the importance of educational methods in open and distributed learning in more depth, but I think Major ignored its drawbacks in the online courses. Just like the author’s view in “25 Years of EDTech”, personalized learning can provide more interactive teaching, but it also lacks emotional communication, easily eliminates learning skills, and eliminates the process of students’ thinking. Therefore, online courses should still adhere to the combination of online and offline, with equal emphasis on educational resources and interpersonal communication.
If I am a teacher, I hope to improve student autonomy in the open and distributed teaching process and give the students the initiative to learn as much as possible. Then the teachers will make generalizations and conclusions for students’ work. The instructor plays the role of a main line guide. Students and teachers cooperate in practice and create, update and improve open educational resources in the learning process.

I believe that educational technology is a trend in the future. Open and distributed learning combined with educational technology will promote a higher quality development of education. For future education, it is challenging to achieve breakthrough development by relying on technology. Instead, it requires deeper cooperation between educators, universities and learners, open and distributed integration, and mutual promotion to serve students’ development better.

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching Online – A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874 (pp. 76-108) Note: UVic login required.
Jordan, K. & Weller, M. (2017). Openness and Education: A beginners’ guide. Global OER Graduate Network.

25 Years of Ed Tech

I realized the importance of protecting personal privacy from the first week’s readings.
I agree with respecting personal information and protecting privacy. People’s privacy protection is also facing a risk.The law does not specify the right to privacy, but it refers to the right to privacy and the protection of personal information in some rules and regulations. I believe that people have the right to decide whether others intervene in their private life or open to the public with the degree or scope of the disclosure. （FIPPA）

The aha moment: There will be some risks if the password is not well spread. The information in mobile phones, computers and other electronic products will be in danger, and even mobile banking will be threatened. Therefore, setting the management password is a piece of important knowledge. Most of my online account passwords are record by the browser on my computer or cellphones, and now I realize that is not a safe way to protect my personal info. （Passphrases tips）

I believe that learning management systems is a significant development trend in the future. So i think we need to consider the scale of education services and the high quality of the teaching system (I used Kpu’s online learning system for serval years before transferring to Uvic. For me, bright space is more straightforward) being able to control costs. （Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press.Chapter 1: Conceptual Framework）

In the ethical challenges of big data and personalized learning, I can’t entirely agree with the autonomy level of personalized learning. Personalized learning has disadvantages. On the other hand, online software and educational technology are used for personalized learning, and it is easy to block the communication between teachers and students sometimes. For example, it cuts off the connection between teachers and students, complicates the tasks, and even prolongs teachers’ feedbacks. (Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2 )