The authors of this article explain the success of Web 2.0 as a communication platform for e-learning and global communications. Their article specifically highlights weblogs and microblogs as important tools of the new Internet. Both tools accommodate several forms of input from phones, apps, IM, SMS, and Internet.
My thoughts: This article reminds me of Dr. Pfaffman’s IT566 class I was enrolled in the Spring of 2011. He postulated a radical change in the way he instructed this class for his final semester at the University of Tennessee. He would utilize Twitter as a platform to announce assignments for us to solve in Ubuntu. His also added a redundant feature where he had another webpage that served as a homebase for questions, links, and a preview of future assignments that would be tweeted at undetermined dates. The supreme intent of his curricular approach was as a game format where points were to be tabulated when we finished a task, participants would have posted points totals. However Dr. Pfaffman misjudged how long tweets would last on Twitter, and he did not figure out a way to tabulate our tweets into a master database.
I don’t think it was entirely impossible for a database to be programmed to tabulate our classes tweets. Dr. Pfaffman figured as much but did not know a programmer would have enough time to put something together by the time class was over. So as the class went on he determined we would keep our own points for a later comparison with our classmates. The rest of the class proceeded as planned.
This class was a total learner-center learning intent. We had our own Twitter and blog page linked by CSS to Dr. Pfaffmans Twitter account. We had instant communications from his tweets. When we completed an assignment we would tweet our results as well as write a short story how we accomplished task.
I liked this class format very much as it helped us understand, Ubuntu, Twitter, php, LAMP, and several other software and application solutions. However some students in the class grew to question of this class format as they complained about not enough tasks or professor direction. As per Dr. Pfaffmans wry response to them, I rationalized that it was up to the individual student to learn or gather enough content to satisfy the user.
I had talked with Jay a little bit about his design for the class; both you and Mac blogged about the experience this week. Very interesting. I do think you have to create buy-in among the students so that their expectations are adjusted or met - so they understand the context and goals and purpose of a radical new design. Sounds pretty cool.
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