Sunday, November 28, 2010
Key issue: how to meet a learner's fundamental needs through facilitation
Once again I have reached a crunch point. This last week was a great time of collaboration and team building with Tom. The topic of the week on the M4T Advanced was Constructivist Learning through Moodle.
A constructivist approach focuses on setting up a group learning event during which collaborators create a learning artifact which they later reflect upon. Even as individuals we learn by putting our understanding on the line by creating or repairing things. A good car mechanic will learn a little by observing another expert at work solving problems, but he will learn a lot more when he puts this theoretical knowledge into practice. Has the car fault been fixed, do the brakes now work?
Of course the extent that we can learn by doing and making mistakes depends on the nature of the job. But even the skilled surgeon one day has to practice on live human beings. A corpse can be used to simulate a real body but there is no substitute for cutting through living flesh and bone!
Tom and I put our knowledge of constructivist theory to the test on Saturday and boy was it fun. Preparation for the journey was long but free flowing largely due to an ease of communication between us. This was really well supported by good old google docs. We were deeply impressed with this tool as soon as we first jointly edited our business card. Just 2 seconds of delay between edits from both sides of the Atlantic; Last week it proved reliable and flexible enough for us to create a coherent plan for our 90 minute online session with the team. We laid out our activities in around 20 slides in an attractive form that was a useful reference point on the day. As I said to Tom after the event, it gave us the opportunity to plan and with that the flexibility to digress from the plan to meet the needs of the learners on the day.
The needs of the learners
This is what I want to talk about in today's posting. During the last week one of the big topics in the Advanced Moodlers lounge was the need to feel safe and secure within Moodle. Much discussion revolved around this issue of trust. Just as we have techniques to establish trust in our daily offline lives we have conventions that have become established on the web for maintaining trust, essential before a degree of intimacy can been established within a learning environment.
Right now you are reading my blog which is in this case published for the whole online world to see. In reality if you are reading it you probably know me. But I am writing it not with a view to forming a trust relationship. This is just a record of my thoughts. It's a one to many communication. Notice I only mention "Tom" by his first name. He has a right to his anonymity. If he chooses to reveal himself thrugh his own blog that's up to him. So I respect my co-learners need for anonymity.
But once I have learners in a virtual learning environment like Moodle, they have other fundamental needs. Trust is the main one here.
I said I'm at a crunch point. At such points I like to go back to basics and look at Maslow's Pyramid of Needs:
As you see and well remember safety comes right at the bottom as a fundamental need. When we have noone to trust we lose our sense of safety. This has to be maintained within a Moodle. But all the other needs have to be met too. And we should do nothing which might undermine those needs being met.
Once we feel secure we can build friendships. From friendships we derive our confidence in dealing what ever life throws our way. Then of course we can move on to the higher levels of creativity and problem solving which is at the heart of our Moodle work.
Let me pick out the key point in our discussion on feeling safe in Moodle. We need to feel happy about our own identity online. I suggest that this means we are happy with ourselves offline too. Then we need to see that our colleagues are who they purport to be. Then we can build a relationship with them and carry on with our mutual learning journey.
Ian, get to the point!
This is the crunch point right here, and it hurts!
So our shared learning session on Saturday highlighted two major issues for me:
- we had not yet grappled with constructivist learning theory and understood it, we had not completed the set assignments
- we had not got stuck into our Moodle sandboxes sufficiently (Tom excepted) so we were not actually becoming the Advanced Moodlers we are supposed to be turning into
So why on earth are we about to go beyond Moodle? We have not done Moodle yet. What is the rationale behind the curriculum here? Perhaps the assumption was that we all had the skills in setting up forums and other activities in Moodle. This certainly does not appear to be the case here.
So why Second Life?
We are now being urged to dive into Second Life. Second Life does not build on what we have learned so far about being ourselves. Or I am I over-emphasising my personal learning here? Others have different needs which need to be fulfilled. I have found people in M4T to be genuine people I would like to know thee people in what I call the "Real World". Perhaps the "offline world" is a better term here. I know that some of you out there feel so at home online that "online" equals "real".
I am not trying to say anything profound here, just stating the way I see things.
Right now you might have to drag me into Second Life. I want Moodle, Skype, Google Docs to be a set of tools that let me function in my offline life.
The more I get involved online, the more I see the need to be grounded in offline activities. It could be a great symbiosis I guess. Finally I might get a real balance between on and offline. And I might also learn to switch off when I am not working and R E L A X!
For example, as a skilled ICT person I want to be able to make a living online. I am totally happy with Skype as a tool for chatting and phoning with friends and family all over the world.
This course has already changed my behaviour online, so it must have met a need. This I believe is the need for intimacy and friendship. So now I use chat in Skype a lot more. It helps me sort out my thoughts.
When I write emails or blog entries like this one I feel like I am preaching! But the parishioners have all gone home to chat in Skype! This blogging thing is just a way of gettig something off my chest and it's therapeutic. But communication it probably is not. If you got this far reading my blog for today, then wll done you!
I think one of you pointed out already that blogging is sooo Nineties! It's all about Facebook and Twitter now, two technolgies I could also write about sometime.
What need does Second Life fulfill in someone's life? All those groovy things you can do in Second Life you can do in the streets of Cork and in the surrounding countryside.
Go to the pub and enjoy a pint of Beamish, some live fiddling and the craic!
Walk through a frost covered field and watch the sunrise.
Get a First Life first.
Here's my friend Pius by the way, an IT guy but a real Cork man, always down the pub at sessions He has life SORTED:
Cheers,
Ian
Sunday, November 14, 2010
How do you feel about the M4T so far?
My main thoughts revolve around participation and collaboration.
Week 0 was ok, mainly spent starting this blog, a very useful exercise.
Week 0 enden on Saturday 13th with our first Wiziq. I am a bit hazy o what we achieved. I do know that I found speaking into Wiziq quite spooky. Everything goes dead for a while as the mike is passed to you and you pick it up. Then its like speaking to yourself. There is no audio or facial feedback as you get with Skype. What you do get are the text prompts which I found useful to read out as the came in. I guess this kind of completes the communication loop. Anyway some talented people introduced themselves, I am very keen to work and learn with you.
I think the decision we made to continue holding the Wiziqs 11.00 EST on Saturdays could be a mistake. Several people didn't make the first one, possibly because the time is wrong. 11.00 EST is 16.00 Dublin/London time. I guess that would be 21.30 for example in Delhi, perhaps not convenient for Ramesh.
Ramesh what do you think?
The wiziq terminated abruptly and we went on to try and sort out the groups for week 1 collaboration. We went straight from WizIQ to the chat facility in M4T Advanced. This threw up the idea of using a Wiki or Google docs to organise ourselves. But of course the chat involved the people from the Wiziq.
We need to widen participation here. I decided to continue the debate in the Forum. Once again it's the same people who are participating here. How do we fix this I wonder?
Another thing that interests me is how effectively I am using the Moodle interface. I still find the interface very texty. I like the use of the icons such as
for forums, but they could be clearer and bigger. Actually I have noticed we are not using the this classic icon for forums anymore. I don' think our new icons are very clear, especially for a Moodle newbie. Better and larger icons would aid Navigation by making things more graphical. Maybe this is different in Moodle 2.0.
Anyway we move forward slowly but surely.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Watch my video
I just turned on Imovie and moved the Mac to a corner of my room where there is light. Next time I will do it all during the day by the window when there is natural light. I look so much more beautiful!
So for now what you get is basically a talking head with poor lighting, but at least you hear my voice.
It's my first attempt so I am pretty pleased with it.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Thoughts for Wednesday
I am feeling in two minds about Moodle right now.
On the one hand it is the future. I viewed the Dougiamas video on Moodle 2.0 and I can see that it is a major step forward from the first version.
It allows so much linking to other online worlds, there are so many ways to add photos, videos, and even links to colaborative workspaces like Google Docs.
Moodle does not aim to compete with other products, it accomodates them.
What about my second mind?
I aleady live apart from my family, they are in the UK and for work reasons I am in Cork, Ireland. So I communicate with them by phone and email - and skype.
I spend my day at work in virtual worlds looking at problems with anti-malware products. I do not interact with people in what I feel is a meaningful, fulfilling way, I solve problems. From my previous post you can see I would like this to be different.
So in the evenings do I really want to be doing what I am doing now? Reflecting to myself on what I am learning? "Communicating" with a group of people I am likely never to meet in person?
I see inherent dangers in working online.
It's a 24/7 world and I haven't learned to switch off. I don't have my family with me to help me do this, and i find it tough being alone. Do I really want to be an online learning facilitator? There is the danger that I will be helping others learn how to learn online and I wil lose touch with any "real-world" activities.
I do have my music which grounds me and brings me real life encounters. I need more of this.
Anyway, tomorrow or Friday I will make another entry here. I want to investigate another way I could use Moodle. This would be to help friends I have made here in Cork with their career development. There are a number of French people who do not realize how different the employment market is in the UK and Eire.
I would like to get them Moodling - perhaps...
But is Moodle the right platform for this. I don't want to lead people into a world I am not happy with myself. It's a media rich world which teams with learning opportnities, but can we find that balance between the real and the virtual worlds.
It remains to be seen.
Monday, November 8, 2010
One Avenue I could go down - the journey looks exciting!
So now it's time to start planning. What would I like to achieve on this Advanced Moodle Course that I have just enrolled on?
I am considering a number of options that I would like to investigate to improve my skills in facilitating learning. Some of these options are related to my work in a leading anti-malware company. Another option is based on idea I have to teach and coach in my spare time.
But here's more on my work-related project.
Work-related project
My first idea is based on my desire to improve the learning environment for new starters at my company. The world of anti-malware is complex and the learner is faced with many challenges. He or she has to contend with the following fast-changing landscapes:
the internet threat landscape changes as cyber criminals constantly develop new ways of infecting and controlling private computers for financial gain;
the anti-malware company responds to these threats by developing new techniques, strategies and products, with the added challenge of deploying detection engines and patterns to an ever-increasing range of computers of different types;
these computers themselves have specific architectures that need to be fully understood for the anti-malware to be effective.
The last point is perhaps the toughest challenge for the new starter in an anti-malware company. Leading hardware and software manufacturers are always producing new products to satisfy user needs and wants, using new design technologies. Every new technology has actual or potential vulnerabilities which could lead to problems for the user and could be exploited by hackers.
Implications for learning
The three factors above have significant implications for anyone working in this environment but especially for the new-starter. The one relatively fixed area of knowledge is the internet itself and the protocols which govern it. The new-starter at my company is tested for this skill set when being interviewed for the position in the first place.
Having said that the technical specialist at the company can always improve on and enhance these skills.
On top of this the specialist has also to develop his “professional” skillset which is his ability to think on his feet and solve problems for the customer. In a sense all his other skills or knowledge areas are secondary to this.
All of this implies that the specialist can be described as having 5 learning “sensors” all working with various degrees of sensitivity but being lead by the problem solving sensor.
There might be more sensors that the technician is using. Part of my work on Moodle development will be to delve deeper into how these sensors work, how they need to be nutured, and what controls them.
All of this analysis will I hope lead to some understanding of how individuals with their sensors can nuture the sensors of their colleagues and thus turn the team into a learning organisation.
This is a big topic about which much knowledge has been developed over the last 20 years. From looking at the credentials and experience of my fellow students on the Advanced Moodle Course, I am clearly in a good place to advance my understanding of this area.
Friday, November 5, 2010
The new moodle blog from Cork
Hi all blog readers,
Here's a brand new blog about Moodle and my experiences with this versatile and powerful online learning system.
Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. But that's computer-speak. The other way to look at it is that to moodle is a verb similar to doodle.
The idea is that you moodle or doodle your way through a bunch of on line learning objects which could be forums, blogs or simple websites and get your learning accomplished.
I call it googling and doodling but from now on it's just moodling.
To moodle there is a key prerequisite: you are your own teacher, you provide your own motivation and your own structure. The moodle environment you join will be facilitated by yourself but it's really key to have a support network of other people with similar learning goals.
You share the learning journey with them.
But you need to know where you want to go. Otherwise how will you know when you have arrived?