Why Not Online Learning for Chores?

I believe that when discussing online learning, we have to look at a bigger picture for the students that is not so dictated by an academic educational lens. For much of my studies regarding online learning, I have been part of a discussion that is looking at how to put material that would have been studied in an academic space (classroom, school) into effective online learning environments. This thinking may actually be holding online learning back.  

By default, online learning has now taken learning out of the physical context and into the digital. This means that if I want to learn something in an organized manner, I do not have to do so inside of a school's classroom.  But this also means that there is potential to learn just about anything, at any time in an organized manner, if someone designs an online learning experience for it. This means that organized learning could be fostered through the lens of all dynamics of life, not just the academic educational dynamic, through online learning. 

Online learning is a tool that has expanded the concept of organized learning itself.  Because of this, if we talk about online learning for our students in regards to their academic education, shouldn't we also discuss how online learning can be used in other aspects of their lives?  Wouldn't this give us a more complete picture of the power of online learning? In higher ed, we could discuss how online learning can be used in residential life, career services, student affairs, and more. In K12, why not talk about how online learning can be applied in parent-child relationships, and neighborhood socialization? (and not just social media).  And why not talk about all these things as their own distinct learning opportunities, that need their own research, but actually complete the role online learning plays in the life of a student?

As I read through this week's reading I couldn't help but think these thoughts.  It would seem that my sentiments lend themselves at least in the realm of connectivism as fleshed out earlier in the course and within Kop's article.  I particularly look at "Connectivists advocate a learning organization whereby there is not a body of knowledge to be transferred from educator to learner and where learning does not take place in a single environment; instead, knowledge is distributed across the Web, and people’s engagement with it constitutes learning" (p. 20).  Here we see that there is reference to the fact that learning does not take place in a single environment, but is instead distributed across the web.  I agree. Where my thoughts intersect with this theory is how I believe that in the real world, there is knowledge distributed everywhere. A student's knowledge is received and interpreted in many different real-world contexts, and those contexts are interconnected only in that student's life (because it's his or her life!).  If these contexts are interconnected, how can we expect that student to fully embrace online learning in one aspect (academic educational content) if they never have to do this for their learning (or what we usually call "growth" and "maturity") in the other aspects?

In reading the article by Mishra and Koehler, I realized that we spend so much time trying to figure out teacher frameworks for online learning, that we miss the opportunity to create general frameworks that would allow anyone, anywhere to further foster the online learning experience for students. So a student would use online learning to learn something about Math as taught and designed by her teacher; but then that student would use online learning to learn more about how to do her chores as taught by her parents. Then she could do an online learning module, put together by the block captain, that allows her to get to know the people that live on her block better.

I'm not advocating that we always spend our time in online learning, but there seems to be so many ways we can use it to expand our learning in all aspects of life. Yet we are so focused on the academic education part of things that we may be limiting what we can truly do with this powerful technological emergence. Because we are in a world now where learning is everywhere, instantaneous, continuous, and on-demand, it has become difficult for me to imagine researching and discussing online learning in education without thinking about the other aspects of a students' life where online learning could also be applied. 

My undergraduate major was Sociology.  I believe this blog post was the Sociologist in me crying out!

Scaffolds & Literacies

The readings this week talked about scaffolding and the literacies of today.  Scaffolding is important when discussing literacy; I remember as a kid how teachers used to walk us through the alphabet letter by letter, and through stories word by word.  Over time, they gave us the space to decipher these letters and these words on our own while still providing support.  Finally, we reached our goal of learning how to read on our own, entering into the world of literacy (this same process applied to our ability to write).

As we enter into this digital age where the application of literacy has expanded beyond pen and paper to include digital tools and such, scaffolding will continue to be important. And although I've always been a proponent for the "single human agent as the scaffold" approach, I recognize through Tabak's article that we have reached an age where scaffolding can - and most likely should - come from a variety of sources to accommodate a variety of learners.  The key is that the scaffolds need to be carefully designed.

Transitioning to the articles specifically talking about literacies...the Leu et al. article frames the skills needed today to successfully navigate the plethora of information and information sources available  as "new literacies." I see where they are coming from, however, much like my cohort colleague Bryan Kurnish, I'm not quite on board with this.  The idea of literacy has not changed, but rather, the avenues of which we have to gain literacy has diversified.

The Thompson article brings up some great points in this regard.  In particular, data interpretation and visualization is probably one of the most important emergences of this digital age.  We've had data visualization throughout the years, but more and more it seems to be reaching the point where this is a part of everyday life.  And through this data visualization, we are able to make educated guesses of what to do next or what approach to take. This is in education and beyond.  So the capability to be literate in the reading, interpretation, synthesis, and analysis of data is increasingly important for everyone and not just researchers.

This  is a reason why I did my video project on Google Analytics. I think it is so important for students today to know how to interpret this type of web analytical data. More than likely they will create a blog or website for school or out of school.  Knowing how to interpret web analytical data will help them to create the most effective websites to truly communicate the message they are trying to send.