Recommend one tool----Scoop. it?!

In this blog, I will talk about one curation tool: Scoop.it.
When I took this course in 2015 summer, I paid for Scoop.it to curate resources related to MOOCs. I found this tool useful because it is efficient. Every time a new piece of information is shared online, it will notify me. Meantime, Based on my conversations with my friends and classmates, Scoop.it is often used in a company compared with other tools.

In the following link, you can check whether you would like to try this tool. If you work in a company or potentially work in a company, I would recommend you to try out this tool. :)

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/scoop-this-a-comprehensive-guide-to-scoop-it-for-content-curation/38963/

Facebook usage and engagement is on the rise?!

I just came across a study on the usage of social media in U.S.A by Pew Research Center. It shows a surprising finding: Facebook usage is one the rise. That finding seems to be inconsistent with my experiences. Some friends surrounding me do not often use Facebook. 
Now, let's see what they found out. You can check the detailed report via the link: 
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/

From the above graph, you can see that Facebook usage among online adults is on the rise. The report also suggests that one reason is the growing number of older adults who are joining the site. The Twitter usage is steady from 2014 to 2016. 

What do you think of online adults' usage of social media based on your experiences? Do you think the trend in the above graph is consistent with your observation? 

My Experience with Reddit

In my eyes, the reddit is a large discussion board with many discussion forums related to topics of many areas like music, books. You can just type any topic you are interested, and find the right subreddit. Within one subreddit you subscribe, all posts will be ranked based on every redditor’s votes, which allow you to enjoy all the hot posts which rise to the top.  Within one reddit, you can send a private message to any redditor if want to talk about something further privately. You can also “friend” one another, and then have a quick access to posts and comments of your friend list. Except for online communicate with other redditors, you can socialize at meetups held at local parks and bars around the world, and attend local in-person meetings if you like ("Reddit Worldwide Meetups", 2011). So reddit is a kind of social network site like Facebook and Twitter where reddits can discuss with others, make friends, and maintain friendship with offline meetings. But the unique of it is that it promotes deep discussions among redditors who share the common areas of interests without revealing their real identity.

I have observed a subreddit “GradSchool” for one year due to my personal interest and research purpose since one classmate referred me to this website. The subreddit is active. Each day, around 20 posts are submitted, immediately followed by comments which are even more than 60. While I am writing this blog, 21,866 readers and 42 users are in this subreddit. Here, graduate students share any challenges they have in academic work and life, share their personal experiences and news, ask for advice, etc. Comments for those posts are constructive and helpful because every redditors are honest to each other. But most of posts and comments are text-based with few pictures and videos, which make this subreddit old-fashioned.

 I read others’ posts, and make suggestions to other graduate students once in a while. Personally, I feel safe to engage in this reddit because other redditors do not know who I am. I can engage in deep talks with any reddit about any topic I am interested. However, I find an interesting thing that after several days, the submitter for a post will stop responding to your pots. This makes me feel this website is kind of news websites where something hot and eye-catching every day is becoming hot topics.  Most of posts like news are about negative experiences or feelings. However, one interesting thing I notice is that on this subreddit, a post is always submitted on Friday “Let’s talk about something good” in which graduate students share their good news and feeling. 

This is my experience with reddit. Hope you guys have a nice trip with reddit.

References:

Reddit Worldwide Meetups" (2011, December 4). Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/meetup/

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How Many People Do you Have in your Networks? Reflections on the readings

As Rainie and Wellman (2012) claimed, average Americans now have an estimated six hundred people in their networks. The number sounds so crazy. How can we handle our relationship with so many people?

Reflect on my own experience. I have 4 family members, and around 40 close relatives in my father and mother' line. I have had lots of classmates in my elementary schools, secondary schools, and universities. In addition to my classmates, I also make some friends face-to-face or online who share some common interests with me. Moreover, I am in an interdisciplinary research group, and know students in other programs. I also have lots of friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, and Linkedin. As this number of connected people continue, I think I have six hundred people in my network, too.

Regarding how to handle our relationship with those people, I follow the Golden Rule that help will be there when needed. As Rainie and Wellman (2012) found, we can easily navigate our personal networks to get the aid and comfort we need in a certain situation. We can get information, support, and advice from more— and more diversified— sources. When I need assistance in paper, I turn directly to my advisor or students in my program for help. When I need assistance in assignment, I discuss with my classmates. When I feel sad or frustrates, I chat with my best friends to get emotional support. Another reason for contributing to my capacity in balancing my networks is my media-literacy. Majoring in Educational technology, I have known clearly how to find information, assess it, react to it, and even remix it by using different web 2.0 tools.

However, I rarely think about managing my personal brand. I am always so naive that I do not need to manage my fame since I am nobody now. According to the Pew Internet survey, 57 percent of American internet users had searched for material about themselves online, 33 percent of internet users worried about how much information is available about them, and 8 percent had asked other users to remove information about them  (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). I did search for information about myself at all. I did not worry about what information was available about me. But this survey result reminds me of that I should take care of information about me out there on the search engine. The first step I will take is setting up the email alerts and syndicated news feeds when my name is mentioned on news or other prominent sites.The second step I will take is reviewing and cleaning up my posts on Facebook and WeChat, I will delete some negative stuff that I do not want my family members see because my father will be my WeChat friend.

Rainie, L., &Wellman, B. (2012-04-27). Networked: The New Social Operating System. The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Celebrity's Leaked or hacked Photos Violates their Privacy or Not?

The privacy issue is very tricky for celebrities. Does celebrities have a right to privacy?  According to the data, 33% said “No” and claimed “They signed a contract which basically gave the media the right to see their private lives. They make the majority of their money of their money off the public press. They are also paid so people can see their private lives. All in all they don’t deserve privacy at all.” Those who agreed with celebrities’ privacy claimed “Celebrities are also human like us. Like we want our privacy be safe, they want their privacy be safe. It's unfair when their privacy is show in public just because they are living in the pblic spotlight. ” I agree with most of people that they still have a right to privacy.

However, in the digital age, it's so hard for celebrities to protect their privacy.  It's so easy for hackers and the public to search the information about a celebrity.

I think all of you must know about the 2014 celebrity photo hack on August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr. 

The photo hack ruined many celebrities’ fame and life. I think those hackers badly violated those celebrities’ privacy. Even though those celebrities should be exposed to flashlight all the time, and reveal their private life in some situations, their privacy need to be protected. For them, exposing to the flashlight is sort of work. They also need to separate their life and work. 

In addition to hacked celebrity photos, their leaked photos also cause them into lots of trouble. Take a movie star in China for example. Since her private photos were leaked to the public, her career was destroyed, and she was criticized by the public. She is not popular any more.  

So I am thinking as a celebrity, what the line between violating their privacy and revealing their profile at an appropriate level? Unlike us, celebrities’ profile is easily searchable. Everyone with the internet can access to them. Then what about the information they want to hide from the public? This makes me think about that another female movie star lied about her age. After her real age was revealed, some of her fans turned back to her, and claimed “she is a liar”. However, I think the age should be privacy, right? It makes sense if they hide their age. 

How much does resume design matter to you? A tool called Vizualize can help you.

I was exploring the tool Vizualize which can be used to design a nice resume. Then I came across an interesting article about how much resume matter to the HR people. Quote from the comments to this article "The formatting on a resume tells me a lot about a person, almost as much as the resume itself." I actually felt surprised at this point.

To be honest, I do not have lots of experiences in editing my resumes to find a job. I still remember when I applied for FSU, I did not make a fancy resume. My resume was a little ugly with lots of words without picture or good structure. About this issue, I am thinking how much it is different between a resume for applying for a graduate program at an institution and applying for a job in a company. According to my knowledge, the resume for applying for a graduate program should look very professional and formal without pictures. The resume for a company can be more attracting by adding visual design.

What citation management software do you often use? Share with me here

Recently, I talked with my advisor about what citation software we should use.

She recommended the Endnote. I have tried it for several days. It is indeed convenient to manage our citations. However, we can only use it for free for 30 free-trial days. Then we will need to pay for it to add more citations.

The RefWorks embedded in FSU libraries is not a free software, either. But if you only want to manage your citation during your graduate study, you can definitely use the RefWorks to manage all your citations to complete your thesis or paper. Here is the link https://www.lib.fsu.edu/eresource/refworks. After you graduate, you can export all your collections of references to other bibliographic software like Zoteto which is free.

Of course, we can use Google Scholar to save citations for all articles we searched on Google scholar. But the problem is that sometimes we do not use it for searching for some articles. So Google Scholar is not convenient for managing our citations.

For me, I am now using Evernote to organize all citations I am interested. I always create a note in which I write down some reflections on articles I am interested and add reference lists at the bottom. But I realize it is not enough to manage a large amount of citations which we are interested. For example, when we read an article, we may find the reference list for it can be useful for us. It will be good to find citation manager tool to export those citations directly for us.

Here is a comparison of different citationmange software, based on which you can decide which software you can choose from to manage your citation. By the way, I will plan to use Zotero more frequently because it's free. I once used Zotero, and then stopped. And I actually do not know about other citation management tools.

What citation management software do you often use? Share with me here.

Continue my reflection of the application of Facebook in higher education

I have already read my classmates' thoughts against the application of Facebook in higher education. I must say they all make their own points. I want to especially address some issues here

Should higher education instructors and students be connected to each other on social media systems such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? How should they manage friendship requests? What 
action(s) should be taken when the virtual aspect of the instructor-­‐student relationship becomes uncomfortable?

According to Dennen and Burner (2014), students do not want to be friends with instructors because they want to maintain their privacy, feel  inappropriate, and not in peer group. I agree with these three reasons. I was there as an undergraduate student. When I was a college student, I did not add my instructors as my friends because I was afraid of them. I did not know how to interact with them. As Dennen and Burner (2014) found, students need to censor content they put on their page if they are friends with their instructors. I agree with this. When I realized my instructors may read my messages, I became very cautious about what I should post online. However, as time goes by, I did not think like this anymore. I actively added one of my instructors to my WeChat group because I wanted to talk with her, and know what was happening to her. We were having a great relationship. Why should we stop connecting with each other? After graduation, undergraduate will know their instructors are just like them, not so special. After graduation, they do not need to talk with their instructors about professional stuff. They may talk about some common hobbies or sharing travel experiences.

Let's look at reasons to be friends with instructors which include learning more about them, interacting socially, professional networking, Actually, I requested friendship with my instructors based on the three reasons. At the beginning, I feel nervous when posting my status because I am worried that I make some grammatical errors. Now, I feel pretty OK with posting appropriate messages even though I know my instructors will see them. I think I will be totally OK even when my instructor tell me I make mistake at some places because we always learn from mistakes. I want to build a wonderful relationship with my instructors.  As Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds argued, disclosing more personal information via Facebook led to  higher levels of trustworthiness and caring from students to those instructors (as cited in Dennen & Burner, 2013, October). Students may feel free to talk about some issues on Facebook. Those issues can be not course-related. In other words, friends with teachers on Facebook offer another way for them to communicate with each other, and broaden topics they can talk about.

In a nutshell, I think that instructors and students should be connected to each other on Facebook to enhance mutual understanding of each other. For me, I am now connected with my instructors on these three social media. I do feel nothing is wrong. For me, it's interesting to see on Facebook what is happening in my instructors' work or life even though most of time I only like and share their posts instead of leaving a comment to their post. As an international student, it's always necessary and interesting to observe American faculty's life if they is OK with that. I will consider it as necessary for experiencing different cultures.

References

Dennen, V., & Burner, K. (2013, October). Friending and Footprints: Privacy and Ethical Issues of Facebook Use in Higher Education. In World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (Vol. 2013, No. 1, pp. 642-648). 

Dennen, V. P., & Burner, K. J. (2014). FACEBOOK, “FRIENDS,” AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM: STUDENT PREFERENCES AND ATTITUDES. Selected Papers of Internet Research, 4.

Dog knows meme? Human has selfish meme?

Here is a funny meme center. http://www.memecenter.com/ . You can check it out.
Thank V for talking about MEME stuff in the blog meme-no-me-me.html. I found this meme center, and found lots of funny pictures.
One I like most is about a dog who does not trust anyone. He is so genius that he considers his paw as enemy to steal the food from him. That's funny.  Check it out. genius-dog-knows-meme

This is a another one.  A big gift for a cat. This makes me laugh. The cat is so cute!

The above is about funny stuff. 
I just found this article the-selfish-meme which is concerned with our selfish meme: we always want to share our thoughts. According to the author, when we share our feeling or thoughts on the social media, we activate our brain reward system and feel satisfied. Based on my experiences, I think posting my thoughts online is indeed making me happy in some ways. When I feel so frustrated or surprising, exciting about something, I feel eager to share with others. I guess others' likes, replies, or retweeting of my tweets are rewarding to me. 

When do you feel eager to share with someone else? 

Does Chinese Internet Censorship Really Work Out?

"According to the latest statistics from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), an administrative body under the Ministry of Information Industry, China currently has 618 million Internet users and 281 million use popular microblogging sites known collectively as Weibo" (Ng, 2014). "In a 2013 study of social media site Sina Weibo, researchers at Northeastern University found empirical evidence that censorship sometimes not only fails to quash discussion of sensitive topics on Chinese social media sites, but may even encourage it. Though numerous factors may be at play, the finding reinforces the popular notion that attempts to conceal information can backfire and even become a central part of a story—a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect" (Ng, 2014). According to Ng (2014), "one should not underestimate the ability of Chinese Internet users to dig up information authorities are trying to hide—especially when it directly affects them or when it relates to righting injustices. But one must also acknowledge that China’s censors often still have the will and the tools to manage online information effectively to suit the government’s need".  

So it is clear that even though CNNIC wants to censor voices on social media, it seems not to work out sometimes. According to my own experiences, online discussions about information which is hided by authorities are always quickly missing in one day. I know clearly that CNNIC sometimes work very efficiently to censor contents online to avoid the harm to the public. The well-known great wall prevents us from using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and google services to make sure that CNNIC is able to control our voices and speaking. However, we have already managed to have access to Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube in some ways. Even though some authorities are hiding information, several days later, or months later, the information came out eventually. As an old saying goes, “The best way to hide a misdeed is not to commit it".

In a nutshell, Chinese Internet censorship seems to work out sometimes, but it does not eventually due to the Chinese people' pursuit of the truth.


References

Ng, J.Q. (2014, March 17). How Chinese Internet Censorship Works, Sometimes. ChinaFile. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/china-internet-censorship_n_4981389.html

The Merits and Risks of Using Twitter for Professional Learning and Relationship Building?

Recently, I came up on two many conversations about the application of Twitter to support students' professional learning and language learning. So I want to explore more about the merits and risks of using Twitter for the two purposes.

As Dennen (2011) found, Twitter could be used to seek specific information about conference, and promote talks about all kinds of stuff about the conference thus enabling professional learning beyond the conference room. However, they found the potential downside of the application of Twitter was the sporadic and at times cryptic posting of useful information make people who did not take the conference at a lost and had no clues about what was going on. I think one reason is that Twitter has the limitation of 140 words. 140 words make most of tweets lose the background information. Dennen (2011) also found that people from different fields might post different types and number of tweets. For those fields like computer science, information studies, most people are early adopters of Twitter technology. I think different stages of adoption of technology greatly affect people engagement in Twitter-based professional discourse. Another downside of the application of Twitter interaction is that a large percentage of tweets are replies and retweets instead of constructive replies because most participants are not familiar with each other.
By summarizing Dennen (2011)'s study, we can see that Twitter can support us to engage in professional conversations with followers under a certain hashtag. However, the limitation in words make it not easy to pass complete thoughts or ideas to others by tweets.  Also, for some people, they are not getting used to the application of Twitter on academic or profession purpose. Another downside of twitter is that when followers for a hashtag are not familiar with each other, they do not often engage in deep conversations with others.

Taking my own experience in the course for example. At the beginning, I actively engaged in Twitter because I had something to share with. During these two weeks, I kind of left behind the twitter conversations because I did not have time to check updated tweets and share my ideas. I guess the time is also a big factor affecting students' engagement in Twitter-based conversations.

You can also go to this website, and check the pros and cons of Using Twitter. http://www.grosocial.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-twitter/ I echoed with the following point.

• Twitter is busy. Twitter users generate 340 million tweets per day, and most users follow several hundred profiles. Because there is no Edgerank, if you only tweet once or twice a day, your tweets are quickly buried in your followers’ feeds.

  This is true. When you post a tweet and wait for someone to respond to you, your tweets are buried in your followers' feeds. This makes participating in a certain hashtag or handle a good choice to take to engage in dialogue with followers who share the same research interest with you.

I remember Michelle posted a question in discussion board: would it be better to use email instead than Twitter when we engage in a quite daily-life conversation with one person? I totally agree. Most of us have been used to sending email at a fingertip. Why do we bother using Twitter when we want to talk about kind of private life or topic with others.?

All in all, I think we should think thoroughly about using Twitter to support professional learning.

What types of reflection do we need? Group reflection, instructor-supported reflection, and self-reflection?

Since the readings in this week are my interest, I would like to reflect on those readings.  According to Kim, Hong, Bonk, and Lim (2011)'s experimental study, instructor-supported reflection led to better performance, and team effectiveness. Their result was consistent with previous studies. Based on my experiences, I think that makes lots of sense. A group members could not build a mutual trust during a short time period, and thus need instructors' feedback.  Instructors should monitor and take part in their learning process, make suggestions, references, or resources related to their project to learners, replies to student emails, and grade work with comments. Teachers' feedback let students feel that they are not alone. Even though team members do not collaborate very well with each other, they can hang there with teachers' guidance or even interventions.

Regarding group reflection, the study showed that actually team effectiveness was improved towards the ending of the experiment. This also made sense. At the beginning of the teamwork, members may not be familiar with each other. Thus they do not know how to interact with each other, and what words should be used. You know, individuals have different preferences. For example, my preference is that I am almost offline at weekends, and choosing reading articles and papers. However, in one team project I was working on, my team members still worked at weekends because of the deadline. So I did not respond to them immediately via email. As I think back, I feel sorry for them. But I indeed actively participate in the group project. But I can feel they feel not so safe when failing in receiving my email immediately. So when working in a team, knowing individual preferences in the schedule, learning characteristic is very important.  As time goes by, team members can gradually know better about each other. At this point, they can collaborate with each other more smoothly. As Kim et al. (2011) found, team members felt a burden when critically evaluating others’ performance. But I think if every member in a team try their best to make contributions to the team work, they won’t feel awkward at all. I remember I made good friends with my team members in a team project. We actually kept weekly meeting even after the class project. When giving peer feedback, I did not feel nervous at all because they were all great team members.

As self-reflection is concerned, I think it is hard to do, but more deeply. Even though the study did not reveal the importance of self-reflection, I do think it is very helpful to improve our critical thinking and knowledge base. Personally speaking, knowledge can only be taken after the application and reflection. For example, after I read the article, I could not connect the knowledge and studies with my previous knowledge base and cognition until I made reflections on it in this blog. Also, I like reading others’ deep reflection blog, which make me learn about unfamiliar topics and experiences. I think individuals have their own wisdom and ways of thinking. We can always learn from others’ deep reflection on their experiences or perceptions.  

The above are my thoughts. Look forward to your feedback. Lol. 

Kim, P., Hong, J., Bonk, C., & Lim, G (2011): Effects of group reflection variations in project-based learning integrated in a Web 2.0 learning space, Interactive Learning Environments, 19(4), 333-349. doi:10.1080/10494820903210782

How’s CampusPress different than Edublogs?

Refer to this webpage: http://edublogs.org/2014/03/04/campuspress-wordpress-for-education/

Different from edublog, the CampusPress is dedicated network for schools & universities! Schools and universities need to pay for it.  

There are two better features provided by CampusPress are as follows:

• a dedicated WordPress Multisite network at a branded domain, like sites.myschool.edu
• unlimited sites, users, traffic, and storage

With the two features, every school, department, and program can create their own pages where students and teachers can share news, valuable resources, and engage in conversations with educators from all over the world. 

By exploring more on the CampusPress, I find that as super administrator, you can enable Google Analytics to track visitor data across all of the blogs in your CampusPress  network. This is very powerful. You can check it out via http://www.campuspress.com/docs/general-settings/creating-a-network-google-analytics-account/

How can we use Twitter to support a community of practice (CoP) changing practice?

To be honest, I think a CoP is necessary condition for professional learning and knowledge growth.  CoP refers to the relations between community members: mutual engagement, a shared repertoire and joint enterprise (Wenger, 1998). As the definition suggest, in a CoP, members often engage in sharing their knowledge, understanding, and ideas to achieve a common goal.  Based on my personal experience, I think engaging in a community of practice is a perfect way to improve our knowledge and skills. I still remember how little I know about the research, work ethics, study norms, and life in this program. By engaging in all kinds of social events, research mix, research team meeting with other students in one research group, and group projects, I grow my knowledge about the research, work ethics, study norms, and life in this program, and then my love in this program. Now I know very well who share the same or similar research interest with me, who have a different interest, and what scholar practices I need to participate in. For example, I know I should try to present my paper at AECT or AERA, or other related conference, and then write and publish my paper. 

Speaking of the application of social media in supporting CoP, I am thinking about integrating necessary social media tools to support my CoP in a specific research group.  Of course, Twitter, Facebook, Diigo, and Youtube would be included.

Social media like Twitter can offer a virtual space for improving our knowledge, skills, and practices in a community. As Goodyear, Casey and Kirk 2014) found, the tweets, RTs and likes could reinforce teachers’ good changing practice by passing a message “you are doing the right thing”, which developing the trust between members. I think the trust built on those tweets, RTs and likes was more important. Since community members trust in other members, they felt comfortable in sharing their feelings, attitudes, knowledge and real practices. With trust, community members felt that their tweets were valued, meaningful to others. Thus, they would rather share more about themselves and practices by Twitter.

For some members who were very active, they portrayed themselves in a new identity as star performers (Goodyear, Casey & Kirk 2014), thus promoting their engagement in Twitter-based communication. For these members, they were motivated by their high self-efficacy. When they felt confident in doing something, they would rather continuing doing that. Also, it is important to have a leader in Twitter-based communication.  In the study case, Vitoria played a big role in answering members’ questions, modeling twitter-based communication and good practices, promoting the communication between members by retweeting, likes and encouraging face-to-face talk without her. Even though Victoria as a leader for the Twitter-based conversation, she was just a facilitator for a project for a short time. The engagement of the real leader in the department was more important. By creating an account to support teachers’ changing practice, the real leader passed a message “we are together doing something right”.  This eventually signifying the CoP in a Twitter environment. I think, at this point, Twitter was not a simple communication tool. Instead, it was an online CoP.

Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014): Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice, Sport, Education and Society, 19(7), 927-943. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2013.858624

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice; learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Quora: a collection of questions and answers. I like it!

Thank our teacher for sharing this tool: http://www.quora.com/

I think this quora tool is a good one to help us to find answers we want.  I have already registered for this website, and chose all the topics that I am interested. Personally speaking, I think nowadays, proposing a valuable question is even more important than answering a question. You know, before we extend our knowledge by exploring more resources, we do not even know what we do not know. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.  So it’s good of Quora to offer a platform to collect all questions in various areas. For example, I chose the topic about education and technology. I am wondering what questions others hold about these two questions.  Another thing attract me of this tool is that I can see how they express their questions related to some topics I am interested.  Quora makes sure that all the questions are of quality. Otherwise, it won’t take it. That’s a blessing for me. My written English is not good enough. I need to learn from others about how I can express my ideas and thoughts appropriately. Also, I can learn a lot from answers from professionals. On this website, it also allows you to rate the questions and answers. The rating would help people to identify which questions are valuable and most popular.  

In the near future, I will explore lots of questions related to my interest: online learning in Quora. I highly recommend you explore this tool, and share with me about your feelings.  

The following is a screenshot of what I got when searched for a topic about MOOCs. I found lots of valuable resources. 

After going through this question, I would clear know what questions are most proposed regarding MOOCs. 

  

What guidance should be given to students for their web 2.0 assignments?

Gray et al (2012) found teachers have encountered too main challenges towards assessment of web 2.0 assignments. In the last blog post, I mainly discussed about the second challenge: how to evaluate students' evaluation. In this blog, I will focus on what guidance students should receive for the Web 2.0 assignments. 

What guidance should be given to students for their web 2.0 assignments? 

 Teachers are worried about that what guidance they should offer students. They are worried that too much guidance would put constraints on students' thinking. But inadequate guidance may let students get lost and feel frustrated (Gray et al, 2012).  I think they should work together with their tutors, or assistants to give clear guidance for students during the whole process of web 2.0 assignments.

Before they work on the assignments, teachers need to offer clear criteria for the web 2.0 assignments. and also prepare students for a new form of assignments.

As with the criteria, different levels of study, and potential diverse content types make it hard to establish a clear and fixed criteria (Gray et al, 2012). But I think it is necessary and doable to offer clear criteria for web 2.0 assignments. Take one assignment based on blogger for example. In the criteria, teachers can make it clear that students need to finish the minimum requirement: writing at least 4 blogs reflecting on what we have learned in this weekin a week (borrowing ideas from V), making at least 4 comments on classmates, reading at least 8 blogs. As long as they finish the minimum requirement, they feel free to post more blogs. I think the minimum requirement works effectively in web 2.0 assignments and traditional assignments. Students always need to know what they should finish. I know web 2.0 tools should enable students to express freely. But as long as they are applied in educational environments, clear learning objectives should be attached to the assignments, I believe.  

They should also inform students of that they may go through a different process with web 2.0 technologies if some students are not used to web 2.0 assignments. As Gray et al (2012) found, students need to know they may not do well in the web 2.0 assignments at first. Students need to know that they may gradually find their unique voices, and understand the rules for sharing appropriately and writing with authority. Teachers also need to inform students that their process for doing their assignments would be assessed. As long as students know about that, they will purposely keep notes of their contributions to the assignments. Take Wiki-based collective assignments for example. Students need to know they should not directly overwrite others' input. Instead, they should leave a comment to others' editing. After two students agree on rewriting some sentences, they can do that. But they should make notes of that. This will make it easier for teachers to evaluate students' different contributions to the Wiki assignments.  However, Students not only demonstrate learning outcomes in a discipline, but also facilitate their learning processes in web 2.0 assignments (Gray et al, 2012). They facilitated their learning processes by optimizing peer review, extending the learning community, encouraging ongoing engagement (Gray et al, 2012). So to be fair, teachers should make clear about how they assign grades to individuals' contributions to facilitating the learning process. Let's imagine this situation: a student always lead the wiki writing, and leave positive comment and feedback to others' writing. His contribution needs definitely to be marked to encourage students to make such contributions.

Reference: 

Gray, K., Waycott, J., Clerehan, R., Hamilton, M., Richardson, J., Sheard, J., & Thompson, C. (2012). Worth it? Findings from a study of how academics assess students. Research in Learning Technology 2012, 2, 21-35- doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/16153

How can we evaluate students' interaction in web 2.0 assignments?

 Teachers do not know how to evaluate students' interaction (Gray et al., 2012).  I think evaluation of interactions on social media should refer to evaluation of student participation in online discussions in Blackboard or other learning management system. Even though social media is a new research area, online discussion is not a new one. Many studies have focused on how to evaluate what and how to evaluate online discussions in various platforms. This rubric should include the three aspects: the quality, quantity, timing, and the nature of student participation in social media. This rubric is based on Dennen (2005)’s definition of participation in online discussion. The nature of student participation refers to on-topic, off-topic or administrative or technical issues while the quality of student participation is the level of dialogue (Dennen, 2005).

But there are some problems. It’s hard to evaluate the quality of student participation in social media. It’s hard to let students focus on the topic on social media related to the class all the time. Take a class Twitter hashtag for example, some students may share some interesting pictures or videos which are not related to our course content. Some students often retweet or favorites others’ tweets. Other students just read the tweets without leaving any footprints. Still others never care about class tweets because they do not get used to using twitter for learning purpose. For these students who do not participate in Twitter, teachers cannot blame them because they feel free to use it or not.

Indeed, one merit of evaluation of learning activities on social media is “capturing the visible evidence of invisible learning” (Bass and Eynon 2009, p. 4). Nowadays, with specific social media analytic tools like Klout and Google Analytics, students’ page views, watching videos, and checkpoints can be accurately recorded and analyzed. Take a class twitter hashtag for example, teachers can easily use Twitter analytic tools to analyze interaction between students and teachers. Students’ retweets, replies, and favorites can be easily analyzed. The social network analysis tool can be also used to analyze social network among students and teachers to check who have more interactions with whom, and who the center of the conversation in this class is.

Bass, R. & Eynon, B. (2009) ‘Capturing the visible evidence of invisible learning (Introduction and synthesis of findings)’, Academic Commons, (January), pp. 4_29.

Dennen, V. P. (2005). From message posting to learning Dialogues:  Factors affecting learner participation in asynchronous discussions. Distance 

Making Money by Using Social Media?

 I like this short but interesting video which is about how social media comes to use in connecting customers and companies. In the past, customers need to write down comments, rate the flavors for ice creams, and leave notes for other customers on a board in front an ice cream store. Nowadays, with social media like Twitter, Facebook, customers can easily do such things online. So companies can make better flavors for ice creams, while customers can get what they want based on other customers’ ratings, and notes. Also, customers feel they participate in producing better and better flavors. Isn’t that a mutual interest enabled by social media?

What is the difference between Edmodo and Symbaloo EDU?

First,, I want to give credit to Chuncoo. I am inspired by his comparison of Edmodo and Symbaloo EDU. Check his blog out. https://hescholarintraining.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/web-2-0-tools-of-the-week-720-726/

 After watching the videos about Symbaloo EDU and exploring the two tools, I find these tools share the similarity and difference. They have in common that they all aim at offering a platform for teachers and students to connect with each other outside of classroom by sharing resources, leaving comments, and the like. But the difference is bigger.

Edmodo is like an open blackboard for serving education. After the teacher creates a group for a class, there are automatically functions including note, assignment, quiz and poll. Teachers can easily communicate with students by leaving a note, invite a poll, and create all kinds of quiz. They can check students’ progress all the time, and give student badges. I think digital badges is one feature for this Edmodo. The open feature for Edmodo is mainly embodied by the search function. Teachers can search for posts, groups, apps and more in this website, which is powerful. Even though it is an open blackboard, I do not think it is much better than Blackboard. It’s just my opinion. When I search for “facebook”, results did not include the facebook webpage for me. All results were other teachers’ username. So I think this Edmodo is not open as Symbaloo EDU.

 Symbaloo EDU is also serving education, which is more like a webmix. After teachers create a Symbaloo EDU account, all websites related to education pop up on the screen including PBS, Edmodo, KHAN academy. I especially like EDU news, which is useful. Teachers are welcome to add more webmix to their account and share with their students. Emphasizing on knowledge sharing in the symbaloo is the powerful feature. After teachers share a webmix, students can communicate with teachers inside a webmix including facebook, twitter, email or other tools.

 Based on the above, I prefer Symbaloo EDU, which shows the power of web 2.0 tools in knowledge sharing, and social networking.

 Your feedback is so welcome. I cannot think more about the differences between them. Look forward to your thoughts.

What issues do you find about searching online? Unorganized resources? Fake information? Taking it easy?

I could not agree more with issues with Web 2.0 inquiry found out in Crook (2012)'s study: unauthorized resources, unorganized resources, and simply copy or cut and paste. They are so true. In old times, I relied on Wikipedia to search for new terms or phrases or events. Later, someone told me there were lots of mistake with Wikipedia results, and I should not trust it. Now I would just use it to check the background for the topic I am interested, and then continue to search online for other resources.

When searching for answers to our questions, we are always offered lots of unorganized resources out there. Many irrelevant but interesting entertainment websites popping up always distract us from the questions we are really working on. For example, we may be attracted by gossiping news about a movie star. In my case, I sometimes need to search for articles related to one topic. Once I searched for articles about a topic, lots of pictures, news, or social networking sites came out. I was upset with the large amount of information. Even though I narrowed down my research by setting the keywords in the google scholar, I got hundreds of articles which were not so related. Then when I used the Proquest to search for articles, still hundreds of articles came out. It took me time to choose articles I should check out. As Crook (2012) argued students really need support in finding right high-quality learning resources.

The last issue is actually most important. Web 2.0 tools make it too easy to cut, and then paste. When students work on their paper, when they find some interesting ideas posted by someone online, they feel an urge to cut, and paste. I have been there. When I was an undergraduate student, when writing a paper about why one educational policy or theory was working well, I would search for answers to that question. I rarely read though the book or articles about the topic back then. I just copied and pasted others’ opinions without thinking critically about it. I must admit that cutting and pasting really interfere with students’ critical thinking and independent thinking. With the popularity of Web 2.0 tools, regarding a theory or policy, we can find so diversified voices out there from so many people all over the world. This makes students feel safe to just cut and paste some sentences from somewhere because they think teachers must not have time to go through all resources related to a topic. I did feel in this way back then. Eventually, I was told students’ thinking was totally wrong. With much experiences, most teachers can easily detect whether construct your own ideas by integrating existing resources, or easily steal others’ ideas.

So what do you think of the three problems with Web 2.0 inquiry?

References


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Crook, C. (2012). The ‘digital native’ in context: tensions associated with importing
     Web 2.0 practices into the school setting. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1),  
     63-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2011.577946