Kyle Roark's EME 6414 blog

 I thought that for my third blogpost for the week I would take a look at one of our readings for the week. While I am very much a beginner to the process I am looking forward to exploring data analytics more in coming courses within the ISLT program. Thus, my interest was peaked by several of the readings for this week in class, especially the one from Watson, Wilson, Drew and Thompson on Small Data in the educational analytics process. The authors argue that the use of "big data" in the learning process has ultimately been a failure. For the authors the distinction between big and small data comes in the number of students analyzed and the attention to detail given to each student. The big data process focuses on large numbers of students looking for overall patterns in engagement. This study however, focuses only on one student and uses the data on that students interaction with an online learning environment to come to conclusions on its effectiveness. Especially interest...

 For my second blog post for the week with EME 6414 I thought I would take a look at Sutori. This is a tool used to design classroom presentations that allow for a little more interaction with the content than traditional resources such as PowerPoint or Prezi. As I have played around with it a little bit the real benefit seems to come in the ability of the creator to allow integration with Google, or Microsoft Teams. But in addition it is very easy to embed web content. Instructors can tag the content and recommend it to particular members of the class. In addition, to more traditional methods of assessment such as Quizzes. As an example of the types of content you can embed into Sutori and the overall look, here is a screenshot: Notice that the overall look is sort of like a timeline going down that guides you through the materials. Along with text and the other tagging features I mentioned above you can also fairly easily embed other visual or video content.  When looking at...

Over the past several weeks I have gotten into the habit of blogging about the different tools that we have been using for EME 6414. In the past I have mostly enjoyed learning about some new and relevant tools that I had not really heard of or used in any real depth in an educational setting. However, this week I was surprised to see Google Earth as a web2.0 tool recommended to us to try out for educational purposes with some guidance being provided by Google on how to do so.   First, Google points out in its instructional content that users have the ability to add their own images to the satellite, or street view, images provided by the site itself, but more importantly from an educational perspective users can share their own images and comments regarding particular locations on the map. This makes Google Earth more like the other tools we have explored in the class around tagging and sharing internet-based content, such as Hypothes from a few weeks back.  Second, G...

 As the week is coming to an end for EME 6414 I thought I would go through one final reading for the week as I compose my final blog post. I took a look at an article from Hu, Torphy, Opperman, Jansen, and Lo regarding knowledge communities on Pinterest. They focus on the informal learning that takes place through Pinterest, an online platform where individuals can post images of projects that they have been working on to spark discussions regarding best practices in the classroom or other topics that may come up.  Not surprisingly, the authors found that Pinterest was the most popular form of social media use to share technology ideas for the classroom. Through the process of sharing ideas, the authors point out that social capital is developed among educators on Pinterest through this unique Social Knowledge Community. This is simply to say that when teachers are looking for new ideas they turn to those that they see as peers and mentors through this social space. Yet, what ...

 For the second tool that we explored this week for EME 6414 we took a look at Slack. I actually have used Slack before for group projects and found it to be very helpful in organizing conversations. However, I am sure that I only scratched the surface of all of the different tools that are available in Slack.  An initial thought that came to mind as I was looking over the product webpage was that the product is very similar to Microsoft Teams and some of the features that have been recently updated there. Thus, I think when I'm looking at what platforms I personally might use in the futute it seems like Slack might not be the best option because I can essentially do most of the same things with a platform that is provided to me for free by being at FSU.  One feature however that I did notice on slack that is not available on Teams, at least not that I am aware of, is the ability to click on someone's profile and see their location in the overall org chart of their team. ...

 I really enjoyed learning about several of the tools in last weeks readings/tools for EME6414, especially Hypothes. Similarly, this week I was introduced to Trello for the first time. I found this platform to be overall fairly appealing to the eye and very intuitive to use. As I looked at it the platform seems like it could be used in a variety of settings, such as the workspace, as it is primarily designed to create collaborative lists of content. For EME6414 in an instructional setting our class focused on the lists corresponding to certain questions to answer. Responses to lists are referred to as cards in Trello and each card came to be class answers to the questions asked at the top of the list. However, I could definitely imagine uses far beyond this question/answer format.  As I'm thinking of how I might use this in a collaborative educational setting beyond the Q/A format it seems that it would be particularly well suited for group projects where there are a list of t...

 For the second article I took a look at this week for EME 6414 I decided to check out  Effects of group reflection variations in project-based learning integrated in a Web 2.0 learning space by Kim, Hong, Bonk, and Lim. The authors explore the use of Web2.0 in the classroom but from the specific lens of group collaboration. More specifically they are focused on the role of group reflection in the learning process in connection to Web 2.0. What is interesting about their approach is that they test three different methods of  reflection, namely self-reflection, group reflection, and instructor led reflection. This allows the authors both to understand the benefits of reflecting as a group and how the instructor presence also benefits that reflection.  The authors start by emphasizing the team nature that social media and new forms of technology such as smart phones allows. Through their common interests students can collaborate through apps such as Facebook or LinkedI...

 After spending some time exploring Hypothes, which I am still excited about, I decided to read the article from Gülbahar , Rapp , Kilis , and Sitnikova on social media use in higher education for EME6414. The authors of this article explore the acceptance of social media within a higher education setting both among students and among faculty.  Interestingly, although the authors found that students approved of using social media in the classroom, and faculty indicated that there were clear benefits to using social media even over the university's LMS, there had not been widespread use of social media in higher education practice.  I found it interesting that although few professors utilized this for their courses they did mention that they used social media platforms for their own personal research and learning often. In response to the lack of knowledge regarding social media, or better yet the lack of awareness of how to use this in a Higher Ed classroom, the auth...

 I started my week with EME6414 by exploring one of the tools for the week, namely Hypothes. I had never heard of this tool before this week and oh how I wish I had discovered this tool sooner in my life. To give a quick introductio, Hypothes allows you to tag and highlight directly on to web pages and othtr articles and resources you are exploring on the web. Thus it functions as both a way to tag content on the web and add annotations as the means that you use to search. While I have not used this tool yet for any official research project or anything it seems like it would be tremendously helpful. Here is a quick screenshot of what the interface looks like Currently when trying to keep track of my thoughts in relation to some topic that I am researching, and the articles connected to them I am forced to use multiple apps. For instance, I often use Zotero to keep track of citations for articles/books that I am reading or want to read, but then use Evernote to keep track of my tho...

 In my role at the FSU Career Center I manage our ProfessioNole Ready Pathways and Badging program and am always looking for ways to promote and improve the program. Thus I was excited to read this week several articles regarding microcredentialing and also microlearning, especially Dr. Dennen's article on Sharing Microlearning Materials as OER. The article points out how microlearning has openned up new avenues for instruction and that already in fields like tech professional development takes place through many channels both informala and formal that are influenced by microlearning. By breaking up larger units of instruction into microelements many of them can be reused in new environments for individuals just wanting to learn one particular skill or needing help in a particular area. These microlearning elements could also be curated and combined into a new instructional unit tailored to a persons unique learning goals.  In this context where units are being recombined and ...

 This week in EME 6414 I spent some time reading about the formation of online communities for the a paper we had for the class. One article that I found particularly interesting was from N.J. Foss How Context and Attention Shape Behavior in Online Communities. While Foss spent the article discussing the open software online communities surrounding popular technologies, one of the things that I found most interesting was the theory that he drew upon to understand the formation of heirarchy within these communities. Foss describes these communities as organized through a means of organized anarchy, where no one really knows how things are suppose to be organized but they find a way to organize anyway. Mostly this takes place through the conversation of energy and also the prestiget that comes with providing an answer to a question that is stumping the rest of the community. However, when someone already knows the answer to the question or has worked on something similar it is very l...

 I am excited this week to dive a little deeper into issues of intellectual property, specifically in relation to their use in a Web2.0 context in education. IP in general is an important topic that I wish I knew more about, and while I have learned a lot from other courses in the ISLT program that touched on this topic I have never approached it from the standpoint of social media use specifically.  I decided to start the weeks readings taking a look at Dennen's article on T echnology Transience and Learner Data . Dennen's work explores the complexity surrounding digital artifacts created by courses utilizing social media and the emerging safeguards and concerns that accompany changes in technology in this area.  As Dennen points out, one of the key challenges in this area is that people often are not overly concerned about issues of privacy around student data until something goes wrong or they hear of something bad happening to someone else.  It is particularl...

Since the article I was reading this week on Folksonomy was fairly long, I was finding a lot of interesting insights in it, and due to overall length of my post, I decided to use this final post for the week to spend a little more time with Folksonomy, particularly in light of the article A N APPROACH TO FOLKSONOMY-BASED ONTOLOGY MAINTENANCE FOR LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS.  AS I mentioned in my last post, in this article the authors are seeking to find ways to improve on folksonomy as an educational tool, focusing on providing initial scaffolding for the tagging system and a better visual layout to help with user interaction and understanding of that system.  An important addition to these ideas is that the authors also sought out a method for students to use external content following their preferred terminology for organization of the data. This provides greater flexibility to students, but I wonder if it could also bring back in some of the disorganization that this metho...

Since it is one of the key themes for the week, I thought I should take the chance in my second reading for the week to dive into Folksonomy a little bit. This is a new term for me and not one that I was previously familiar with so I was excited to get started with it. I decided to read  An Approach to Folksonomy-Based Ontology Maintenance for Learning Environments to get started. I have to admit that the language used initially seems very daunting. Ontology enhanced learning environments, measuring semantic relatedness, and software architecture are not the types of phrases that I normally throw around on a day to day basis. Although it seems to me upon initial glance that all of this really just refers to a sophisticated form of tagging, but I could be wrong. When viewed from the standpoint of how this system could improve the learning process, however, the authors argue that previous uses of folksonomy have been limited by their conceptions of learning that are based on a tutor...

 I began this week’s reading for EME6414 by diving into an article by Im and Dennen regarding the Diigo tool, which I had never heard of. Apparently, this is a method for booking marking data on social media sites, along with including some note taking functionality. What Im and Dennen are focused on in this article, however, is the ability for Diigo to help with collaboration and sharing across students in a course. I was not surprised to learn from the study that the tool was extensively used by a few members of the class but that many participated only minimally. I was also not surprised to learn that many who did participate were more engaged with the instructors content than that of other students.  The findings of Im and Dennen do not, I think, point to the overall effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Diigo, but instead to how students respond to new forms of technology when they are being asked to do so as part of a class. It was nice to hear those students who were ac...

 For the final article that I read this week for EME6414 I decided to check out Ma and Leung's work on social capital as it relates to LinkedIn usage. Initially I found the summary of the article a little odd in that the article focuses on "perceived" social capital, whereas with someo of the advanced analytics features within LinkedIn it would seem that they could have focused instead of actual interaction by participants. As one would suspect the authors focus specifically on content posting as opposed to mere usage, such as reading or browsing through LinkedIn. But the actual creation of written content is not the only thing of importance to the authors since they also note the importance of liking and/or sharing content from others within their professional network since this also shows professional competence in an area.  An added element to the article's study of the correlation between LinkedIn use and social capital is the examination of how personality types,...

 After spending some time this week reading through Dennen's article on ps eudonymity, I thought it best to focus next on building a web-presence that wasn’t pseudonymous. Thus, I read through Creating an Intentional Web Presence: Strategies for Every Educational Technology Professional by Lowenthal, Dunlap, and Stitson.   Interestingly, the authors start by noting that no longer do most hiring committees look to web-presence to find reasons not to hire someone. Instead they look to web-presence now to validate why they should hire someone. Especially for those in the educational technology space, their web presence is of particular importance in the job search. Currently working in Career Services myself, I found the article to be very thorough and a great checklist of both the items that one should have on the web and also the quality of those items. Often at the Career Center we give presentations to classes on social media use and personal branding and this article took ...

For week 3 of EME6414 we shifted our focus to the way that communities, or Personal Learning Networks are developed through social media use  I began the readings for the week by diving into Vanessa Dennen's work  Constructing academic alter-egos: identity issues in a blog-based community.  In the article Dennen argues that interactions on blogging communities becomes an instance of exploring ones own identity. While individuals may approach these blogs with different goals, as they engage with that community and seek things like status and reputation with the group they are simultaneously constructing their identity. Not only is this a necessary part of interacting in this forum, but it is also an important part of attracting readers to one content. Dennen is particularly interested in pseudonymous blogging among academics, something she refers to as “Blogademe”, by focusing on six key elements of the blogging process, namely “(1) Name and blog title; (2) Profiles; ...

 After spending a couple articles focusing on the arguments regarding whether someone's upbringing as a digital native or immigrant impacts their learning styles, I think I am finding myself agreeing more with those who claim that generation is not the key deciding factor in engagement with technology. This is why I especially enjoyed our last reading in EME6414 this week from White and Cornu. Instead of focusing on age they emphasize someones motivation and desire to engagement with technology that is the deciding factor in their involvement.  While I noted in my first blog from this week that Prensky seemed to note changes in Brain structure for those born as digital natives but did not go into detail to prove these claims, White and Cornu do a little better job of explaining how technology has influenced everyday life. They focus on the distinction between personal and professional. Technology, they argue, has blurred this distinction and helped to allow individuals to do w...

 After the first reading from this weekt hat argued strongly for a distinction in digital natives it was great to hear the counter opinion to this from Paul Kirschner. I noted in my last past that while I found much of the argument from Prensky convincing, one aspect that really stuck out to me was the claim that there were different "brain structures' structures that developed in digital natives, and that these structures were so strong that they led to different political and ethical assumptions. I found this claim to be a little outrageous, but what was frustrating is that Prensky just states this without really backing it up with anything. However, in the second article from this week from Kirschner there is an overall critique of the view that being a digital native leads to different thought patterns, but Kirschner really focuses in on the aspect of multi-tasking. Thus, when I first started to read Kirschner I was really excited for a challenge to Prensky, hopefully on t...