Web Technology

While searching a web2.0 Google group, I found an interesting group which the URL is: http://groups.google.com/group/net-gold. This group is created to share information and facilitate a discussion of important, informative and useful Internet and other resources for learning and improvement of skills.

Some topics from the postings that I found interesting were about diverse features of Google Lab technologies-the Google Street View Cam-Car, Google Sites, Google Experimental Search and Google Search - Cookin' With Google ,etc. Particularly, Google Site enabled me to create personal website very easily and in a more sophisticated way than Google Page Creator.

It is exciting to see more and more web technology helping everyone to play with web tools very easily and very usefully. In some ways, I think the digital gap is being narrowed by more advanced web tools

Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom

The impact of electronic and cyber technologies on teaching has been studied by many scholars. The authors claim that an alternative model of education that may be better suited to the cyber age would be to take advantage of secondary orality, which relies on the affordances of print culture but also reintroduces the value of such oral characteristics. (secondary orality is explained in http://www.innovateonline.info/extra.php?id=980)

I think this is a very insightful point. For example, Wikipedia encourages everyone who has interest in the topic of the chapter to discuss, share and add knowledge. This online technology presents the secondary orality aspect in which the "orality" feature is enhanced. At the same time, when the participant's (Wikipedian) posting is published and becomes open to the online world, this presents the secondary orality aspect in which the "print culture" is enhanced.As the emerging technology having this "secondary orality" characteristics, it becomes a more powerful tool to serve learners to be critical thinkers and digitally literate.
Ferris, S. P., & Wilder, H. (2006, June/July). Uses and potentials of wikis in the classroom. Innovate Journal of Online Education, 2(5), Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=258

Wikipedia

Why should we care about traditional notions of accuracy in Wikipedia? It is because in this web technology age, so "many" people can "easily" access to the information of Wikipedia and then "repeat the wikiclaims as "background" without bothering to cite them" (Garfinkel, 2008, para.3).

People write on the online encyclopedia without verifying their claims with reliable, third-party published sources which virtual Wikipedia clearly asks Wikipedians to do.

This becomes a serious problem when the content of the articles are cited and published in other articles and then translated to a different language and becomes available free online in a global scale.

Now that we are living in a global web technology world we ought to have a critical discernment and bear serious accountability to claim an accurate statement in web space, particularly in an online encyclopedia.


Ferris, S. P., & Wilder, H. (2006, June/July). Uses and potentials of wikis in the classroom. Innovate Journal of Online Education, 2(5), Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=258

Digital Literacy in Workplace

The article "Cassner-Lotto, Jill, & Wright Benner, Mary: Report: Are they really ready to work?" introduces perspectives of employers about what basic knowledge and applied skills' of employees should have. The very important basic skills that the employer expects from four-year college graduates were writing in English and the applied skill was oral communication. Information Technology ranked 8th on the top, percent rating as 81%. Encountering this information, I was curious when this research was completed.. I was wondering if this research is conducted at present time, how the result might change. Would there be some additional skills that the employer would be looking for or would it be the same as the previous result? I personally think more and more companies these days would expect employees to have a higher degree of digital literacy than before because systems and environments in companies are becoming more digitalized. When I was working in staff training company, although my role was to evaluate online programs that were already developed by a technician, sometimes I eventually was involved in correcting actual computer programming errors. Now days companies desire their employees to become multidisciplinary players who has hands-on computer skills, knowledge and who can be a trouble-shooter in a complex advanced computerized workplace. So I think it would be beneficial for senior college students to be prepared well in school on honing their specialized computer skills.

Open Education

Feedback of © 2008 John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler. Text illustrations © 2008 Susan E. Haviland. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).EDUCAUSE Re view, vol. 43, no. 1 (January/February 2008): 16–32Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler

In the past knowledge was mostly created by schools but now there are many routes and means that help us to expand our knowledge and wisdom. The Internet is especially playing an enormous role of fostering a culture of sharing and contributing to freely distribute contents. This is important in terms of informing mankind and civilizing a country. I am, however, suspicious of drawbacks of this phenomenon.In the past it was easy to evaluate students. It was also easy for students to process information. Now it's not easy to assess the amount of knowledge because variousinformation is collected in very different ways. It's also not easy for students to absorb the information effectively because information is flooded by Internet and other media tools. It's getting harder and harder to select the pertinent information you need and then re-structure it into your mental system for future retrieval. Especially, these days more participation is being encouraged in education, and this concerns me whether people would be overwhelmed by excessive resources, ideas and talks and mislead by incorrect information that is produced by socially constructed interpretation, even though I admit there are good points aside.

Online Learning

feedback on the article: Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2007). Online nation: Five years of growth in online learning. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/online_nation.pdf

The article and its data collection evidently shows that online instruction is expected to keep growing and faculties are seemingly planning to increase their online classes as they see their student’s needs and desires.However, I do not give full credit to this survey results as representing predictions about future social change. It is because the answers were collected by email and several other delivery methods that were not fully explained. If the sample answers were compiled from online then there are some possibilities that online respondents have conveyed some positive impressions about online instruction, online classes and online tools because they are already the user group of online setting. This report about online learning would have been more accurate predictions if it went through more rigorous qualitative research methods including some personal interviews.

Course Management Systems

Carmean, C., & Haefner, J. (2003). Next-generation course management systems. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 26(1)), pp. 10–13. Retrieved August 12, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0311.pdf

Carmean pointed out that for a CMS to become a true learning environment, it should accommodate more student's academic needs. I agree with this point. CMS simply working as a supplementary tool for teacher's instruction is not enough. A new CMS system should require more students’ participation in the process of acquiring knowledge and expressing thoughts. It should also be more helpful to teachers than in the past while they interact with students and understanding them. For example, discussion and communication features should be enhanced as much as students feel they are in a class. If discussion features of CMS such as postings/feedbacks/Q&A sessions are actively used, student's participation can be raised and student's can gain more broad and diverse ideas.