Final post on CENL2008

First of all, thanks for the name "Gung Ho" and "The Fast One". Hehehe... I only get that kind of names when I'm in UCSI University. I think I brought that culture from my previous company - something I learnt from my big boss then. (Somebody needs to explain to George, Peter and the rest the meaning of 'gung ho'. Hope I spelt it right.)

About the CENL2008 course
I'm so happy that I could accomplish every task given. Not all are perfect, but with the skills I have and the way I work, I could've done more. Nevertheless, the course has made me feel 'belong' to the education world. I could understand well on how students nowadays learn (by being a learner myself) and I could imagine how they would want us to teach/guide them. The concept of "being near but yet it's far" should be there (I mean, us being reachable to the learners even though we are far apart, via emails, IMs, SNCs, Twitter, etc.)

Personally...
Personally, being a person in the middle of technical-side and user-side (for the past 9 years) actually made me a little bit unsatisfied when I can't get myself to hack on the applications/technology that we've learnt in CENL2008. I guess it is my habit to crack/hack whatever in front of me, so that I could understand better how the whole thing works and what's the possibilities we could further achieve from it. (I guess that's where the "gung ho" part comes from. Sigh!)

That's why I took an extra effort to figure out how to install and set up my own moodle and wiki (programmatically) onto my personal web hosting server (shahrinaz.com). All were half-cooked, sorry. The excitement dwindles down after some time hacking through the brickwalls... huu huu...

I'm yet to try out the PHP scripting in Facebook Application to make some learning environment in it. It's still in blue draft in my head, no time to sit on it. Hehehe...

Final Paragraph now... I promise!
All in all... It's been a wonderful adventure, and it helps me kick-start on having ideas and ideas pouring into my head (I think I need an external portable harddisk for my head soon! Haha!!) on how to 'reach' the learners' expectations via technology around us today. I learn a lot from CENL2008, and I think from now on, I would know how to learn on my own using the same methods taught here. Thank you so much, George and Peter.

Knowlede we give others
will be replicated again and again
that it reach beyond the numbers we could've imagined;
Knowledge we share with others
will be appreciated continuously
that it would grow into bigger and bigger ideas;
Knowledge we taught otherswould make them grow
with more confidence in facing life ahead;
Knowledge itself is a wondrous journey,
not a destination.

The knowledge-sharing enthusiast,
- Sha @ Teaching and Learning
10 Dec 2008

Emerging trends - my review

"In this respect, the fundamental pattern oflearning and innovation using social tools – find -> remix-> share – seems ideally suited to the way most youngpeople like to discover and make sense of the worldaround them, which is reason enough for an optimisticview of their likely impact." - Lee Bryant, Becta 2007 http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/emerging_technologies07_chapter1.pdf

I've been searching around the Net, and I found a list of interesting articles about emerging trends in the use of technology for learning, reported by Becta. (EDUCAUSE also wrote an article in this Becta's publication!)

Among the articles on emerging trends reported by Becta are:

• Emerging Trends in Social Software for Education
• Learning Networks in Practice
• The Challenge of New Digital Literacies and the 'Hidden Curriculum'
• How to Teach with Technology: Keeping Both Teachers and Students
• Comfortable in an Era of Exponential Change
• Games in Education
• Ubiquitous Computing

* You can download the PDFs of these articles and more at http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&rid=13768.

My interest lies on the last two titles - "games" and "ubiquitous". It may be easier to think of a way to teach a younger students (i.e. primary school, high school) using games and ubiquitous - games as a way to teach the concept or relate to theory via metaphor; ubiquitous as a more practical way for their history and geography research papers (we have that in our high school here). But what about educating (or providing a condusive environment for learning to) the undergraduates?

I also came across new terminology that is worth a research. A lot more to read on these:

• augmented reality
• mapping mashups
• interactive tables
• interactive papers
• collective intelligence
• ... and many more...

So what will the future trend going to be? More virtualised, more metophoric in concept, more creative, more socialised, more collaboration of all 5 senses (or 6? Hehe...), more 3-dimensional... Probably that's what the new generation of learners would crave for, something that serves their 5 senses. It would make them remember more on what they've learnt.
(Hold on a minute, did I include sense of 'smell' in that 5? Ops! Sorry about that. Should be only 4 then...)

In other words, back to square one - IT infrastructure. If we have at least broadband and RFID, it will be a start to go virtual almost everywhere anytime. We can even implement the 'interactive table' WITHOUT the 'table', or without computers even. That's what I think the future would be. Probably I watched too much of futuristic movies (who doesn't?) and the ideas may be way ahead of our 'near future' capabilities, but hey... it's a start. Starting with 'wireless', retrieving and sending files from anywhere at anytime in any format, etc...

PS: I read a lot about students spending much time in "Second Life" (an online virtual reality game) and how they learn a lot from 'there'. I tried to download and install yesterday, so I will spend time trying that out, too! ... If I have some nick of time for it. Hhmm...

Whatever 'sense' I have left (including non-sense?), that's what I use to learn and teach,
- Sha at Teaching and Learning
10 Dec 2008

George's Visit to UCSI University on 09 Dec 2008

I missed George's forum on Connectivism yesterday, due to the exam proctoring duty I had that I could not get swapped with anyone at the last moment. Sigh!

Anyway, I ran all the way from the next block to meet George for our little CENL2008 group gathering, after the exam. Took me some time to catch my breath before I could think clearly and respond to any of the things they were discussing. Haha!

Here are the photos captured during our little gathering. (Peter, wish you were here too! At least George got to hear my sweet voice finally hahaha!!)

Christine, thinking hard to understand what George is trying to say in response to her question. Or is she acting like she's digesting George's idea? Hehehe... Just joking, Christine! :-*

George's best pose... well, actually it's the best pic I could capture with my mobile phone. My hands were too shakey after the running... Phew!

The group photo of CENL2008 from UCSI University, with George Siemens... well, only half of us, I think. Dr Irene, in case you can't see, the "gung ho" one (a.k.a. Ms-Sha) is on the far left. I could hardly see the face with this notebook screen. I think better not let Jim take the photo, next time, eh? Huu huu...

Anyway, thanks all for the pics. You too, Jim!

Having fun between the hectic schedule,
- Sha @ Teaching and Learning
10 Dec 2008

What I learnt in NVivo Training Today!

This is the tag cloud result of the word frequency query, from the NVivo training today! Wow wee!! :-D

Excited for no reason over new technology learnt,
- Sha @ Teaching and Learning
05 Dec 2008