I was wandering about whether I could use the term of e-reflections. Then I browsed my university library, I found no books referred to it. Then I browsed it in search engines throughout the web, I found that no definite definition of e-reflection. However, there were some who used that term. They use it only to see the term of reflection in different way. So, in this post I will use that term since the assignment is to write a reflection and it is in regarding with e-learning.

When I was enrolling in this subject, what I had in mind was that the class would deal with computer programming to build a medium that can facilitate e-learning. The fact was quite far from that. The class instead use many media that already built to facilitate e-learning. However, the lecturer did offer the class to have an extra class to learn about a computer program; which is Dreamweaver, to have some knowledge in developing a website. Yet, the class has not taken the offer until now, and I guess it would not be realized since the subject only got two more classes before it ends. If the class is manage to have time spending on this, it would give another benefit apart from many tools that had been discussed and used throughout the weeks.

Start from creating a blog; which is this blog, each student has their own blog to be able to contribute their view on each week discussion. Moreover, students can post a comment regarding the post written by other students within that week discussion. The blog therefore, stands as a medium where students post their assignments; they are the week discussion, eportfolio, reflection, and final project.

There were many topics had been discusses as I do have posted all the weekly topics. Digital native – digital immigrant was the first topic where I put my self as a digital immigrant.

The next topic, mailing –discussion list is where students have to subscribe into two websites which provide certain benefit for its subscriber. I have subscribed to an online bookstore and a discussion website of education in Indonesia. Then we discuss about blogging itself as for me is to write my reflection.

Furthermore, eportfolio was introduced in week 4. I was new to eportfolio that I found it is very useful for the sake of introducing you in the World Wide Web. Move forward to another week, wiki come as another tool to develop discussions about certain topic according to what the wiki is about.

The next topic is social bookmarking; it is designed as bookmarks for your particular websites that you could track them not only within your hardware, but wherever you have internet connection and share them into the web community. The third last topic; week 7, is the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for learning. The topic looks deeper on the evolving of learning as technology emerge within education.

 

 

The week 8 has online teaching as the topic. It has a similar issue with week 7, but it goes deeper by describing steps to develop an online teaching. The last topic discussed in the blog, ends in week 9; which is the use of podcast. It is another tool among educator who implements technology in their learning that function as a medium to transfer and share teaching in a voice mode, and even video.

 

For me, all those topics really bring me a new realm of knowing learning in another platform. The lecturer revealed and brought the class deeper into the subject of e-learning. In addition, there are some materials within those topics that were presented by a guest speaker. The guest speaker, as the class highly acknowledged her work, provided more insights into the materials as I try to describe them in this blog.

Furthermore, apart from those topics above, the class did once engage in online class. The lecturer set the platform inside the web for the class to be able to run the learning. It was an audio conference and two people could speak together at most. All the participants were at their own place wherever they could connect into the internet. This online class was new for me as I kept wandered of what benefits that this way of learning could be significant to each participant. We were in the same web program designed like a class room. I found that we were not limited by place, but time did have to concern, because we should be together at the same time. Then, like in the class, the material could be presented on that program. Moreover, the lecturer did mention that there were more functions that we could have within that program; such as, video conference, and more number of people to speak together. However, the internet connection should be adequate enough in term of continuity and fast to be able to have those functions run smoothly without bugs within the World Wide Web.

Thus, to make a conclusion for this reflection, I agree that, ‘E-Learning refers to the use of Internet technologies to deliver a broad array of solutions that enhance knowledge and performance’ (Rosenberg 2001, 28). It does have made a lot of changes and improvements in education. I believe that it will be more advanced in the future that we now hardly imagine.

References

Rosenberg, Marc J., 2001, e-Learning: STRATEGIES FOR DELIVERING KNOWLEDGE IN THE DIGITAL AGE, McGraw-Hill, New York

 

On other hand,  podcast also has many concerning matters. The availability of podcast triggers the absentism of students because they could just listen to the recorded lecture without attending the class. Another matter is, the broadcasting process that need more assistence as well as the accessibility. Furthermore, the content could bring some issues that need to be acknowledged and regarded. Then, as it was in the previous that podcast just limited for audio, now it can be viewed as a video. Thus, there was some enhancement in the using of podcast that there is another term for viewing as a video; it is vodcast.

In relation with my situation when I was doing tutoring, I never used it as I mentioned that I just happened to know podcast here in Melbourne when I started my study. Nevertheless, in my opinion, podcast would be useful to encourage students to share their voice and to engage technology in education. However, it may not be that useful in the case of tutoring because of the small number of participants. It is also not necessary to use it since it was a tutoring class that need more interaction rather than just lecturing. Therefore, the main idea of using podcast in the case of my situation; tutoring, is to encourage protege to initiatively use technology within their learning.

So to make a finalize for this week 9 post, I would like quote Campbell (2005) that ’podcasting can help education realize one of its noblest goals: to make a better conversation out of the thing we call civilization’. It means that there is a force within the voice that could raise better understanding.

Reference

Campbell, Gardner (2005), ‘There’s Something in the Air’, Educause Review, November/December, viewed 6 October 2008.

< http://education.vu.edu.au/subjects/aeg5018/w9/erm0561.pdf >

To find out whether the knowledge and styles match with the concept of online teaching, there are self assessments test provided through web, and there are three tests linked to the material of elearning subject by which this blog was created. As I tried the learning-styles-self-evaluation, I found that my attitude of learning is more likely close to online learning style. I prefer to have visualisized of what i learn. Moreover, the teaching-styles-self-evaluation is in the same preference of implementing online teaching. I would rather have my students to develope their mind independently. Then, the last test is to find out whether online teaching is design for you. The result for my case, showed to be very well fit for my profile that the web adviced me to apply for the online teaching.

Thus, I was not aware of the styles I have until those websites analized them for me. Nevertheless, as I reflected through the professionalism that I had run back in my home country; Indonesia, the styles that those websites regarded for the online teaching, are prove to be well applied as well for face-to-face teaching as the websites also acknowledge them.

The first article; Angus, Snyder, and Sutherland-Smith (2004), observe this issue by doing a research through four families and those who get involve with these family engaging ICT in their everyday life, including the schools in which their children study. They found interesting behaviour from each of the families. The first family had their daughter capable to operate computer for her study since her parents had acknowledged the importance of this technology; whereas her parents themself were not familiar with the technology. The second family likely use this ICT to have a chat with people from another part of the world. Though the two children in this family also use computer for their study, but it was not associate them within the learning itself. Moreover, the third family had been competently with the technology since the parents work in ICT environment. Thus, their only daughter was regarded competent as well in using computer both for learning and playing. The last family; similar with the third one, had acknowlegded the importance uf using computer within their life. Yet, they were still highly look to the printed medium for reference.

On the second article, Kalantzis and Cope (2003) developed a project to build a platform to engage learning. They initially regarded today’s society that lives in the rapid change of how knowledge being delivered. From this background, the designs for the project were tried to replace the leraning environment along with the equipments with digital technology. They proposed different ways to run schooling. Teachers and students can collaboratively use network technology to run the class through a website. Teachers can put teaching materials and assess the students’ work. On the other hand, Students can creatively develope their web space in which they express them self for the sake of their learning engagement. Thus, this framework will not be limited by rooms and time as schools used to have.

Finally, as the two articles have clearly defined ICT involvement in learning, it is true to say that the future schooling will be much more digitalized. However, there are issues of accessibility and socio-political aspects (Angus, Snyder, and Sutherland-Smith 2004), that need to be met in order for this new era could be fully developed.

References

Angus, L, Snyder, I & Sutherland-Smith, W (2004), ‘ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families, computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 03-16, viewed 23 September 2008

<https://ce6.vu.edu.au/webct/urw/lc6102359710021.tp6102359730021//RelativeResourceManager;JSESSIONID=k4LzLYvJ5Z4shLJh2gJclC5T2zTygT2dsJGhF7t4MR2fvLDL3GTK!370130270!vuwebctapp01!80!-1!1719709886!vuwebctapp02!80!-1!1222127369843?contentID=6102359833021>

Kalantzis, M & Cope, B (2003), ‘The Learning by Design’, viewed 23 September 2008

<https://ce6.vu.edu.au/webct/urw/lc6102359710021.tp6102359730021//RelativeResourceManager;JSESSIONID=k4LzLYvJ5Z4shLJh2gJclC5T2zTygT2dsJGhF7t4MR2fvLDL3GTK!370130270!vuwebctapp01!80!-1!1719709886!vuwebctapp02!80!-1!1222127369843?contentID=6102359825021>

So, in my opinion, social bookmarking website has an important place for internet users. They can track their favorite websites without having log-in to their own computer.

Wikibooks has a similar interface with wikipedia; and it looks like being developed under the same operator as with wikipedia. It is developed to be a free library that has free educational textbooks. The community that involves in the development and using of this wiki are those from educational sake for the most variety of books are ranging from educational contexts. Moreover, same as wikipedia, people need to log-in in order to edit the page in wikibooks; this means also can edit the page of those books.

To end this week discussion, in my opinion, wiki could be effective to be used as a tool to engage students’ understanding. Furthermore, students can participate by editing and posting what they want to discuss or put as a topic. However, in order to keep the content reliable and accountable, wiki needs to be evaluated and updated by credible moderator.

1. student-centred;

2. competence-oriented;

3. cyclical with regard to action and reflection

4. multimedia-oriented.

Although these characteristics are targeted for student, but they could be applied for proffesionals. Moreover, the last two points show the advantages of having eportfolio. The third point indicates that eportfolio can be updated in a certain period as action take place. Then, the last characteristic points out that eportfolio can have multimedia attached in order to represent the work and/or the owner. Thus, based on both references, eportfolio could be seen the same as blog, but built in a more proffesional way.

Reference

Wickersham, Leah E. & Chambers, Sharon M. 2006, ‘ePORTFOLIOS: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE AND ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING’, Education, Vol. 126, Issue 4, pp. 738-746, viewed 6 September 2008, retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

< http://0-web.ebscohost.com.library.vu.edu.au/ehost/pdf?vid=4&hid=102&sid=ee1d2396-99c4-43f6-bee3-4ea0eeba6250%40sessionmgr102 >

Meeus, W, Questier, F, & Derks, T 2006, ‘Open source eportfolio: development and implementation of an institution-wide electronic portfolio platform for students’, Educational Media INternational, Vol. 43, Issue 2, pp. 133 – 145, viewed 6 September 2008, retrieved from Informaworld database.

< http://0-pdfserve.informaworld.com.library.vu.edu.au/Pdf/AddCoversheet?xml=/mnt/pdfserve/pdfserve/758471-758845107-747848429.xml >

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Victoria_University_Footscray_Park.jpg

Then, as I go on with my second degree here in Melbourne by taking Master of Education in Victoria University within the subject of E-Learning, I have another blog. It is hosted in educational blog and I named it ‘My Journal in Education’. This blog is to engage the learning of that subject. One way to do it is to have a post in each week based on discussion topic given by the lecturer; and at this time, it is about blogging. thus to discuss more about this, I look briefly into two articles that have been attached within the outline of E-Learning course.

First, according to the article of ‘Educational Blogging’ by Stephen Downes, 2004 in EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5, page 14-26, blogging has been a usefull instrument for engaging study especially to encourage students to have their skills of communication improves. Yet, there are some aspects as well to be considered. Blog could be used in improper ways such as posting some inappropriate contents that could ruin others’ goodwill. However, as concluded in that article, ‘Blogging is about, first reading’.

Second article, ‘Weblog as dynamic learning spaces’ by Marica Sevelj, 2006, is very much encourage readers to start blogging. The point; that is being emphasized in that article, is blogs are regarded as social medium to share learning experiences. Another point to stress out is from those sharing, relationship could occur. Then, reflection comes afterward that each other in that relationship could contribute their values and beliefs.

Thus, why I want to do this blogging activity? For me, I like to read and write. This medium can satisfy me in one way or another. Then, some of my friends told me that they got inspired from some of my writings. For this reason, I also keep updating my blog, and I was very much appreciate their compliment. I do as well got inspired from some of their blogs. So, to conclude; as I write for the title in this post, I feel that the main reason for me is when I do blogging, I do reflection.