October 2010 – JOYSTECHTOOL

Trends for the 21st Century in eLearning

30/10/201026/03/2011 Joy Ann LaJeret

This week the topic was local, state and federal trends in eLearning. I seemed to get stuck at the federal level. Since the U.S. Department of Education’s study in 1996 -2008, the United States is actively seeking to encourage educators to seriously make an effort to learn on line teaching techniques and technologies. The report concluded that blended on line courses were the most successful in engaging students. They stated the least effective mode of teaching was the face-to-face classroom. In a Seven Step Plan, the Department of Education stated teachers must have the opportunity to gain eLearning skills and students need the experience of taking on line courses. In fact educators have at their hands a way to engage students, not just in our cities, states and country; but globally.

As we as educators continue to learn the tools of the trade in eLearning, we have the ability to job train a whole new generation in jobs that do not exist yet. The illiterate and unskilled can be reached from the universities and colleges in the United States, through the World Wide Web. The possibilities are unlimited when we use the rich technologies at hand and those that will be developed in the next five to ten years. Not only will educators be able to teach on line; but there is a call to make virtual libraries and textbooks available to on line learners. Stretching one’s imagination even farther, we may see the day when we will no longer need to use paper or classrooms to teach students worldwide.

In an article called, “The power of the internet for learning ,” it states that the government set out to learn, from virtual hearings, what the Web had to offer today’s students. They listened to educators from many states and, even, the U.S. Army. What they found out was the young people of today have stated they want to use the Web to communicate with the world. They stated, “… the internet is uncharted territory…” and urged the government to put necessary protections in place. Without funding, they stated Web learning’s full potential would not be realized. Finally they made it clear that eLearning is not just a fad. It is a tool that must be used to bring student learning into the 21 century.

The U.S. Army clearly understands the need to educate soldiers in the newest high tech weapon systems. Tomorrow’s world has seen new virtual war-fighting weaponry and missions. A good example of this technology is unmanned aircraft. As a result of this type of weaponry, the U.S. Army is offering on line training to their soldiers and hopes to build the largest on line educational program in the world, per the article cited above. Educated soldiers are the backbone of the military and today’s weaponry makes education and training on line absolutely necessary. Since the nature of the battlefield is changing at a rapid pace, new methods of training and educating soldiers is critical. On line media and games offer the methods the military is exploring and has been implementing. Today’s colleges and universities are compelled to bring the latest technologies to their students, as well, and to keep pace with the military in the virtual reality of cyberspace and on line teaching…better know as eLearning.

Educators, Digital Learners and New Technologies in the 21st Century

23/10/201026/03/2011 Joy Ann LaJeret

This week a good deal of thought went into learning what the millennial or digital learners want to be taught and how. Some common threads appeared in the writings about this new generation, about to enter colleges in the United States and worldwide in a few years. They are very bright and multi-task like no other generation. They are highly skilled at using internet technologies, especially social media, e.g., Face book, You Tube, My space, cell phones and any digital media that connects them to other humans in the U.S. and globally. Their attention span is considerably shorter than other generations and they spend far less time reading from text books or books in general. They have grown up with digital technologies and resent “powering down” from their computers and cell phones in order to attend class. They are more self-confident and less likely to be as committed to their places of employment. In their own words, they lack the morality and ethics of the older digital immigrants or their instructors.

Okay, we ask what does this have to do with the way they’re being taught in the classrooms of today. I have sat in a class that was needed for a state certification for 3 hours, two nights a week for one month a few months ago. About eighty-five percent of the learning was done using power points that were dry, colorless and tremendously boring. Ten percent of the time was used in lecturing format. Five percent was acting out different scenarios. Questions were discouraged, unless asked directly by the instructors. By the time the class was over, I was indeed enraged. I can relate to how my grandchildren 17 and 18 must feel in this type of classroom. As educators and future educators, we must listen when they tell us, “engage us or enrage us.”

Last week we were asked to do a team motivated presentation in Creative Commons. Once again, I felt the old anger coming on. It lacked color, music and the very inventive qualities digital learners are telling educators they want to engage in. If you want to leave them behind in our classrooms, continue using lecture, power point and a lack of digital creativity in your classes. A large portion of digital learner’s day is spent texting, listening to iPods’ and socializing using digital media. If we cannot reach them maybe it is time to change the way educators teach, the design of the classroom and by reading what our futurists are telling us will be new technologies in just five years.

We were asked to participate in a Voice Thread this week. I was thrilled to use this technology and began to think of ways it could be used in a classroom. I read as much material as I could get my hands on regarding the ways this technology can be used in the classroom be it online or not. It was exciting and fun. It allowed one to really think about the response asked for by the instructor. While it was still based on a power point concept and used with a bit of a lecture, it gave me the ability to use a new technology and take time to think, really think about the topic. This seemed to be a step in the right direction, as was Creative Commons, Wiki and Diigo. I am anxiously waiting for more information on these fun innovations, and I’m a bit sad the quarter is moving so fast.

Copyright Law and Creative Commons

16/10/201027/03/2011 Joy Ann LaJeret

I am sitting down to write this blog and trying to figure out if Dr. Sam is a Wizard. I suppose, one could look at that in one of two ways: a.) a person who practices magic or sorcery; or b.) a person of amazing skill or accomplishment. Like beauty, I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder. Whatever you might think should you know him, our lesson was a real challenge. Having spent a good deal of my time taking courses in the law department at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have come to hate lawyer jargon. Much of what they say can be said succinctly, in a way the common or average man could understand. If you doubt this try understanding Copyright Law, as it is written.

After reading a million or so words, it can all be boiled down to a few simple sentences. Everything you see online that someone has drawn (art work), said or done ( I think this includes humming and doodling)…except maybe drawing a breath of air, is copyrighted and falls under the protection of the law. The second lesson is very little of this material can be released, if any, unless you get permission to use it. So given this situation, a section was added into the law that was suppose to give “fair use “to scholars, teachers and professors or others who would use it to teach, or in commentary and etc. The problem with “fair use” is, if you have something you have found that you believe you could use to teach your class or use in your scholarly works, there is just so much of that work you can use. For example, you may use 250 words of a poem or 1000 words of an essay, provided you have cited your source correctly or you have to be given permission by the author or creator and pay for it.

For those of you who have read my blog on First Amendment rights, it certainly seems like the primary reasons for copyright law is the dollar or money in a capitalist driven society and limiting access. A closer look shows there is another aspect to this law…the limiting of free speech when it comes to the world of academia. There was a way out of this box and god love the intellectuals and creative thinkers on the internet who came up with a licensing entity called Creative Commons. The license tells the user what changes can be made in four simple license stipulations and bypasses the conservative terms of the original copyright law by going directly to the creator and getting permission.

Once more we are free to gather information on the internet, share in the creative commons application and become as creative as we want to be without worrying about the Copyright cops ruining our career or that of our students. Dr. Sam did not create Creative Commons, but he led us to it and asked for a simple presentation we could create with other teammates. I loved it and thought it was brilliant. I think is was about that time I started wondering if he was a wizard…it does take a bit of magic to understand how all this works and then, to do it.

Finally, once I figured out one of my teammates was the administrator in Creative Commons (about 10-20 hours later) and I could not download directly to the presentation, things worked out pretty well (so far). I would probably have helped organized the team effort better, in hindsight. However I believe if you give people free rein, they will do what needs to be done without having to tell them what they need to do on a creative project. I would make it a bottom line rule not to delete or not use what each team member contributes. All team members are important contributors and any and every contribution creates the whole. The wizardry in this is making it a collaborative whole with meaning and presentation.

1st Amendment Rights: Consequences of Using Cyberspace Technology on Future or Current Employment

08/10/201027/03/2011 Joy Ann LaJeret

There has been much discussion regarding the right to free speech in and out of the workplace, recently. I think many of us tend to believe we have certain rights in the workplace, when it comes to our personal conversations with another employee at work or at home. I think we believe we have free speech protections in our discussions of our employer or our workplace online in, chat rooms, blogs and emails, when we are not at work. According to Bruce Barry in his book, Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the Workplace, our First Amendment rights have been seriously eroded in all of these cyberspace places. I find this rather ” chilling ” to use a term succinctly used by Dr. Barry. This leaves me wondering what free speech rights I still have, if any, and what the broader implications are.

In another article called, Fear vs Free Speech at Work, Dr. Barry tells the reader he is most concerned when someone gets fired for what they say in a blog, what is said on their bumper sticker or the content of their email, when it has little to do with the workplace or the person’s employment. He states, this sends a message to the employee, other employees and the outside world that your employer is “…paying attention to your speech “…and may be censoring it even when it has nothing to do with your employment. Dr. Barry goes on to say when you are employed ” at will, ” you are in danger of having your First Amendment right to the freedom of speech seriously compromised. He adds, you have been employed ” at will ” and your employer needs no reason to fire you. In fact, from this we can conclude, future employers may not hire you in the first place, after plugging your name into a search engine.

Being a proponent of our U.S. Constitutional Rights and Supreme Court decisions (whether I agree with those decisions or not), the First Amendment right to free speech is the most important. I believe we must have this right to monitor our government, which is what our fore fathers told us must be done, because “we the people” must be ever watchful to keep our country free. Democracy and freedom are at risk when we do not or cannot participate in our government. Our valuable Free Speech needs to be upheld by the Supreme Court in its rulings; and reinforced in state legislation. As it stands, however, we have lost many of our rights in the workplace and free speech seems to be one of them. Or this seems to be what many of us are experiencing in our lives or reading in the latest articles on free speech in the workplace.

Having experienced free speech abuses first hand in the workplace, I know the dangers of lawful free speech and its consequences, when your employer doesn’t agree with you or feels threatened by what you have said. I think it is time to protect ” at will ” employees with legislation, because employers are misusing their power in the workplace and there are many articles recently published that attest to this, including Dr. Barry’s book, as I stated earlier. Having said that, I do not believe employer abuses of free of speech is overwhelmingly wide spread. I would need some rather intense academic statistical research and/or studies to confirm that fact. Dr. Barry’s book is only the beginning, I hope. Nevertheless I do not like what I have experienced so far and what I have been reading on the subject, within the past five years.

In a previous blog, a relative wrote something on my Facebook page that was within his right to post. Regardless of whether he was shocking in his comments, I respect his right to express his political beliefs. In fact regardless of whether political comments are made on my Facebook or the world wide web, I uphold the rights of those in my country and in other countries to express their opinions and beliefs. Even when I know the dangers. I may not like what extremists or terrorists say in their blogs or on their websites, but I think democracy on the world wide web calls for freedom of expression whether we agree or not. What we cannot say in a public forum may easily be said behind closed doors until it festers and gives rise to violent behaviors and/or revolution and war.

Of course all this depends on whether you believe in a concept of cyberspace democracy. In an article, called, Free Speech v Terrorism on the Internet, an argument was being made regarding the right of terrorists to exercise their free speech freedoms ( if they have any) on the Internet and whether they should be regulated. The argument was fundamentally debating whether terrorist organizations should be able to post their agendas online. The question waiting for an answer is, who shall we censor and why. Herein lies the real danger. Once censorship begins, where does it end? Who gets to decide, regardless where that speech is taking place and whose speech it is, what can be said or not? For what reason or reasons will this censoring be done?

In an interesting article on the subject of both national and international freedoms of speech on the web, posted by the Center for Democracy, Sophia Cope wrote in, Next President Must Preserve Free Speech on the Internet, that digital media deserves constitutional protections. I would add to her observations and comments, that employees working ” at will ” need the same protections while using these technologies. Neither of us are stating we think all words and/or thoughts should be protected. However, we might want to consider the consequences of limiting speech in whatever media it occurs. It may be time to ask ourselves, who will make the decisions regarding free speech limitations in cyberspace? When we are using available technologies on the web, what entities are responsible for these censoring decisions? What institution or person gets to limit speech when cyberspace speech crosses national boundaries and becomes transnational?

In his article, Speechless at Work, Onnlesha Roychoudhuri states the U.S. Supreme Court seems to decide cases on free speech in favor of employers. He goes on to cite cases that have been precedent setting prohibitions on employee speech in the workplace. Clearly this does not bode well for the many employees in the United States who have witnessed their rights eroding and have been fired or sanctioned by their employer for using freedom of speech rights. This is especially true when this speech has been within the legal boundaries of the law or so they thought at the time. Maybe this is an issue all employees and web digital media users need to watch closely and consider. Why? Because there seems to be a growing issue of transnationalism when workplaces and technologies become global.

Incidentally, one of the most highly published and discussed cases involving Daniel Ellsberg was recently aired on television. Maybe it is time to consider Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers and the consequences of whistleblowing and free speech in the workplace in the past and in the future. His case is an example of how suppressing free speech can endanger an entire country and world population. Dr. Ellsberg has spoken at the universities I have attended. At the time, I wasn’t certain whether I considered him a “dangerous man ” or a truly brave one. Since revisiting the issue and the issues discussed in this blog, I am satisfied that if no other protections exist, we are still protected if we take up the cause of whistleblowing. Naturally, we must be aware that to do so means we may no longer be working for that company or any other corporation, even though we have legal recourse and protections under the law.

I believe it was Hitler who wrote, “…those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” With those words in mind, since printed U.S. newspapers are giving way to Internet postings and blogs, U.S. corporate and governmental attempts to stop the truth (protected by national security agreements) from being leaked to the world’s public has become a whole new issue because of advanced technology. Closely tied to this problem is the issue of individual freedoms and who has them and who does not. Will free speech in the workplace and in cyberspace change our world? More importantly, will each of us change in ways we do not want and cannot foresee, simply because we have access to new technologies and cannot accurately predict legalistic future trends and outcomes?

Netiquette: Flame Baiting and Flame Wars

01/10/201027/03/2011 Joy Ann LaJeret

This week the class was asked to read about net etiquette better known as Netiquette. The class is comprised of professional people. A few are teaching instructors at Lake Washington Technical College and Bellevue College. But for those of us new to the scene of eLearning, we most probably needed to know or review the rules of etiquette online or in cyberspace. Having taught third through twelfth grade Christian Doctrine classes for my local church for about 20 years, I thought I knew a bit about courtesy, ethics, religious values and professional behavior. That was before I started to read the rules of internet etiquette written by Virginia Shea, in her book Netiquette.

By the time I finished reading her ideas, I was totally paranoid and certain I have no common sense when it came to cyberspace. Or, I learned I must think about most of what I say before hitting the keys. I have lived my academic life being educated in an environment which allowed me to read the faces of my professors and classmates. Now I find myself in a world where body language doesn’t apply, because as pure spirits in cyberspace we have no bodies to speak of. We are technically spirits or minds journeying through cyberspace unaware that I our words could provoke a Flame War.

Okay you ask, what is the meaning of Flame Wars or better yet what is Flaming Baiting? I suppose I could waste your time and mine trying to explain this terminology. However, I think I can give you a better example of this rather interesting concept, which skirts the boundaries of illegal of prohibited internet behavior. When I found myself weak and sick for about a year, I started trying to find family members on the internet. Once I located them, I joined Facebook and You Tube. It wasn’t long before I stopped my membership in You Tube (another story there) and stayed with Facebook.

Everything was fine for a while, until my newly found relative began a campaign on Facebook to discredit President Obama. My relative is a man who has devoted much of his time to his church. He deeply believes in a Higher Power and works to help others find their spirituality…that is, until his fingers hit a keyboard and he logged into Facebook. That’s when his Flame Baiting comments began and their content would have make even the most seasoned sailor of old cringe. Since he was accepted as a friend on my Facebook, his words showed up on my home page. The first time it happened and I read what he wrote, I truly wondered if he was possessed. Okay not really. I have to admit I was shocked!

I was left wondering why a self-admitted Christian and successful business person and church going Christian was so shockingly unprofessional (in my naive opinion) regarding his online comments about our current President. When I tried to intercede with a few positive comments on the head of our government and commander-in-chief, I was verbally attack and told to stay out of the conversation, even though his comments were appearing on my Facebook home page.

After the incident and since reading Netiquette, I think during the Holidays I am going to send him Virginia’s book (or, could it be possible he knows more about this subject then I did?) After all, once he gets properly educated (or not) in internet etiquette, he may become a famous Flamer or maybe he already is working on his technique of flaming. Whatever the case may be, I will be watching his progress on my Facebook page, with “tongue in cheek” never daring to put fingers to the keyboard and feed the troll, again ( just in case your wondering, I am smiling with a calm, patient, tolerant interest in mind).