# edcmooc Open Education

How can we define open education? I would love for education to be open to everybody but is that possible? Can an Professor just offer free online courses? Well, some of them already did. One of them was David Willey from Penn State.

Will these free online courses change the map of higher education? Is it already changing?

From my point of view, knowledge shoud be accessible to everybody because, generally speaking, the more educated or well- informed citizens are, the better the society they built together is. 

Gamification

# edc mooc   Gamification: from monetization to social benefit

I just find out about gamification and I have to say  that at first I embraced  the idea of applying game dynamics to a variety of different situations including learning. I agree with the definition that game is a form of play with goals and structure. I liked the idea that people, and by that I am thinking students, need rewards for their achievements when playing games.

Any person needs a purpose to play a game, which in an educational setting, translates into the teacher needing to think of the purpose students will pursue when completing the different activities of the lesson; lessons become games.

Another idea that I really liked was that "games are good when they unfold new things for the player, and they provide the right amount of challenge to keep enganged"; this concept sounds like it could be applied to education. Isn't that,as a teachers, what we are looking for in our classrooms?. And also the panelists talk about how gaming promotes collaborative work. That is another application to education, in my opinion.

The downside of gamification is that as a result of it, a lot of data are generated and according to the panelists, these data are floating around; where do they go? I wonder. Well, apparently a lot of companies get these data and use them to motivate people to buy their products or services. Isn't that manipulating people?

Another video that presents good ideas, in my modest opinion:

Extra Credits: Gamifying Education

I like the idea of changing the traditional letter-based grading into levels; students can move up from one level to the next one once they had master the previous one. I also feel it is very interesting the idea of rewarding the whole class with a field trip, for instance, if after adding up all the individual points the total amounts a total determined by the teacher. It seems to me that students would collaborate with each other to get the most points possible. Team commitment is sometimes strong than individual commitment because the students as individual do not want to dissapoint the rest of the students in the group.

Digital Native vs Digital Immigrants

I could not agree more with Marc Prensky: "Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." Our educational system is officially outdated!!
I feel it is possible that their brains are wired differently than ours. It feels like they need constant stimulation and their attention spans are much shorter than the previous generations because they get bored easily if they are not interacting with some kind of screen or device. Older generations can’t understand this because we never experienced that- we had “to learn how to use” the new technologies following someone’s instructions but they just do it intuitively- no directions needed.  I see 3-4 years old using tablets and Iphones like they were born with them, and they think it is a little strange when grandma does not know how to use them.

I can’t relate a little bit to them because when internet came out in the 90s I was living and working in the US after finishing my college Degree, and when I would come back home (Spain) for Christmas and my family did not have internet connection at home –just at work- I would feel so cut off from the rest of the world. How could they live WITHOUT internet? Thinking back I bet I sounded a little “nuts” when I told them I could not believe any person could possible go through their day without internet.

I could not bear with it to the point that I would sneak in my old college library to get in one of the computers to surf the net, chat with my friends from the US, etc. And this was only about missing having a computer with internet connection that I would use at work and home for about  8 hours a day… so I can’t imagine if you are used to have always your Iphone with you, 24/7, and as soon as you step in the classroom, your teacher asks you to shut it off  just to explain you a lesson at a such slow pace that it seems like he/she is moving in slow motion. It really must be painful for the student and honestly, it is painful for the teacher too seeing students who are not motivated  or who get distracted every five minutes. As a teacher, I can see how students multi-task constantly and how they prefer graphics to text and how they are used to receive information really fast. We need to start appreciating these skills and use them to the  students’ advantage and our advantage too. As a result, we will have more dynamic and fun classes where students  are learning in a way that suits them. I do not know about other subjects but foreign languages should be taught in a completely different way to these type of students: you can make them do role plays and record them on video, you can have watch videos of somebody (maybe even the teacher him/herself)  explaining certain grammar structure or cultural issue in a short video (let's not forget they have a short attention span because they capture information fast), they can interact live with students from another school who are native speakers of the language they are learning via Skype, etc… but the evaluation methods and the curricula  NEED TO CHANGE as well.

In my opinion, it is the teachers who need to react and change the way we teach; even if I tried to use videos with my students I still feel that the way I am required to teach does not fit their learning needs at all. The only problem is that they will be tested the old way,  so you prepare them to pass the test- the whole educational system needs to be re-designed: the teaching techniques and tools but also the curricula and the students’ evaluation methods.

 It is true that we, Digital Immigrants have an accent and our students do not but that does not mean we could not work with each other just fine; and maybe even have them teach us a few things. If you ask your students to make a video and you have never edited one yourself, they will probably know how to do it and can teachyou a thing or two about it – that does not mean you are less of a teacher. We are experiencing a crash among different generations but that does not mean we can work together to accomplish some common goals: teaching and learning useful things for this new digital world that is shaping before our eyes as we go.

Ideal E-learner profile. Does it sound like you?

While I was surfing the net today I stumbled upon this site: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/Preparingstudents.htm#Profile  and like the part about the  Profile of "Ideal" Online Student. 
Here it is:

• Self-disciplined
• Mature, experienced
• High emotional quotient
• Willingness to ask for help (which requires self-awareness and high
  emotional quotient
• Independent

Does this profile fit you like a glove? Are you going in that direction?

I thought it was interesting.
Happy e-learning!

Meritxell

Officially overwhelmed by MOOC!!

The E-learning and Digital Cultures starts officially today and I am officially overwhelmed. I have been browsing through your blogs - very informative, which gave me an idea of how "huge" the MOOCs "phenomena" is. I have to get up to speed!

On the other side, I love the slow movement http://www.slowmovement.com/ because even though followers of this "lifestyle" accept and use technology as part of life and progress, they want to follow their natural rhythms to stay connected to nature (and yes! the moon cycles affect you believe it or not). I love technology but you need to decide which one you want to use, why and when and do not let it take over your life. I guess it is going to take some adjustement for all of us.
I see little 3-4 year-olds using tablets and I-phones like they were born with them, which is great, do not get me wrong, but in my opinion they need to know that there is also a "real" world where you can do things that you can't do in  the "digital world".

I am enjoying reading everybody's blogs and I just feel- I guess like everybody these days- I don't have enough time to see all the different "digital tools" , read all the tweets, attend the hangouts, etc but I have decided that it is ok and that I will try my best.

Social Media make us more isolated or more social?

 Social Media and Technology- good or bad?

I love Social Media and I think we can't deny that a Digital Revolution is taking place. The world as we know it is changing-whether we like it or not. What it is important, in my opinion, is to decide how we will be using all these new tools and resources.

Dr. SherryTuckle, a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, criticizes social media and their impact on our society nowadays. There is a positive and a negative side of this revolution we are experiencing: some people are using social media to build incredible resources and networks of knowledge or support, but on the other side, there are people who are completely "hooked" to it, and the new generations don't even apologize personally to somebody- they do it on Facebook. These days you see parents in the park that are working in their laptops while their children are playing or checking their blackberries while they are telling a story to their kids before going to bed. Is this what we want as a society? On the other side, there is a lot of people on the net that are promoting a "living in the present" philosophy, which translates in doing one thing at a time. They advocate that technology is a very good thing but we need to decide when, where and how to use it before it is the other way around.

You can watch Dr. Sherry Tuckle in this video if your are interested:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLVCpZIiNs