Virtual Learning Environments

Teaching and Learning in Public: An Open Learning Concept for a New Age

Social networks are creating distributed platforms of sharing and deliberation, and these networks, fueled by online social media, are redefining the nature of knowledge and what it means to be educated in the 21^st century.

The Network and New Conceptions of Knowledge

Educational reformer John Dewey wrote at length in the early 1900’s about social reform and transparency in knowledge and education. In his book, “Democracy and Education” he writes, “Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication”. TLP’s philosophy and work follows this very perspective. We are working to open up the boundaries between those individuals who posses knowledge and the global community: all of us working together, socially, collaboratively, in sharing and building upon the knowledge we individually possess. Our project TLP’s model for education is one in which we expanded on the old predetermined boundaries of teaching within a closed system/network (teacher to student) to one in which the teacher and the student are working together as well as working within a larger collaborative system, whereby opening up the knowledge base to a larger community/network. “The Cartesian perspective views knowledge as material that is constructed and transferred in linear deductive presentation, while the network perspective emphasizes the human interactions around which content is situated” (Brown, 2008). TLP’s hands on work has been to experiment with creating a central educational home base in an LMS called Moodle (a closed system), and then, opening up this closed network of information to the collective, collaborative, open forms available through online social media. Within this model, the teacher is also the student, and potentially, hopefully, the student is also the teacher. Moodle gives the teacher the availability to provide to the students enrolled within the closed educational/learning system:

• Assignments of different types
• Track ability and reports
• Controllability on when students access what organization
• Journals
• Quizzes
• Upload files to give to students
• Students can upload files
• Glossaries
• Databases
• Control over enrollment (even payment through paypal)
• Exporting options to open social platforms
• Importing option from other social platforms

The Social Media Catalyst

The catalyst for the development of networked knowledge construction is social media. Social Media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are connecting people and information, and creating new forms of knowledge construction by eliminating the transaction costs for the acquisition of information (Shirky, 2008). Free and open sources and social media platforms online provide the ability bridge the gap between the knowledge producers and the knowledge consumers. We used the above mentioned forms of free social media within TLP, as well as the additional, cost free social collaborative tools; Blogs, Wiki’s, Voicethread, Youtube and Storify. These tools were chosen by TLP because they facilitate one of the most critical contributions of social media to knowledge construction: weak-tie networks of communities of practice working and blending together with strong tie networks Sociologist Brian Uzzi found that networks with a mix of strong and weak ties foster greater innovation and discovery than weak- or strong-tie networks alone. This is because social media tools, which are predicated on finding and following others, make it easier for individuals in smaller communities of interest to connect with others in different communities of similar interest. These “small world” or weak-tie networks optimize knowledge creation. Social Media tools provide:

• Communication with small tie networks
• Collaboration and sharing
• Authority building knowledge bases
• Distribution
• Multi media venues
• Community building potentials
• Global engagement

Social Learning

Networked knowledge construction and social media are expanding traditional notions of learning to include social learning. Social learning is learning that is shaped, influenced, and directed by how we are connected to others. In this context, mastering a field of knowledge involves not only learning the subject matter but also how to participant in the construction of the knowledge of the given field. Within the TLP model, we have created the Moodle as the home base, the instigator if you will, for teacher to student transference of knowledge and insight, as well as incorporated into the model social outlets for the students to use, research, explore and expand the knowledge they have gained into a larger, global community of knowledge and work, whereby opening up knowledge and education from a closed circuit to the open current on the WWW.

Toward a Civic Intelligence

In social networks, knowledge is constructed from the interaction of people, information and ideas in a participatory culture. The ability to derive knowledge from this context requires an intelligence in addition to IQ intelligence and emotional intelligence that can be characterized as civic intelligence. Civic Intelligence connects what we know about how people learn and maintain knowledge in a network environment, and provides a framework for developing and assessing intelligence. Intelligence in a participatory culture is the recognition that individual intelligence is based on a person’s connection and contribution to the whole. It’s the ability to engage in multimedia discourse across multifaceted networks, and to construct knowledge from the interactions of people and ideas. These are the skills of the 21^st century and our education systems should promote and engage within them.

Conclusion

To teach and learn in the open is to make one’s intellectual projects and processes digitally visible. It also means to invite others to collaborate and to share all or parts of your work in the collective pursuit of knowledge. In this context, the emphasis of education changes from individual pursuit to social collaboration. TLP’s focus is not only for the current education of a particular class within this Moodle site, but also to incorporate a long-term goal: a Blog and Wiki. These sites will remain accessible, to the students and the public, after each class has ended. They are the social framework for an ongoing record of progress, contributions, participatory collaboration and the expansion of integrated knowledge.

My first experience with an LMS as a student was in 2008 while studying for an online MS in education at a small university in FLA, Full Sail University. At the time, I was planning on coming to the New School, but I was a little intimidated about taking on a Master’s program and a lot intimidated by studying online. Wasn’t sure if I could hack it. Plus, I was attempting to meld my media background with education, which I had never studied at that point.

What is interesting about Full Sail in terms of LMS, is that they actually opted to design their own LMS from the ground up. It is a unique LMS to be sure. One of the most user friendly, from the student’s perspective anyway, that I have seen to date. Much more graphic user interface, very streamlined in terms of functionality – very clean, no confusion. As a novice to such environments, I was able to jump into it and gain mastery very quickly. Some of my classmates had a little more difficulty. While at Full Sail, although we studied other LMSs from a theoretical approach and got to see them demo’d, much like this course, we didn’t really get to work in or design in an LMS.

By the time I graduated in 2009, the school where I teach had decided to adopt Moodle as a part of their lab support, with the eventual goal of integrating the online learning environment more fully with their in-class sessions. I was uniquely positioned to jump in on that process from the ground up. I am now the Moodle administrator at my school and have probably been in Moodle almost every day since 2009. And I am still learning stuff… My company is cheap – they will not pay for additional Moodle training for me, so I am self-taught – I figure out stuff as I go.

In my second year at the New School, I have now worked with Blackboard, both as a student and as a TA. I have come to this understanding of LMSs…

I compare them to what I know well and teach – video editing (I am an editor and Avid Certified Instructor and teach editing). Take three of the top video editing software applications: Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere. Each of these apps has slightly different functionality and features, different icons for tools, different lingo. But they all have to basically do the same thing, because they are all video editing apps. Learn one and you’ve essentially learned them all – although you might have to do a bit of mental translation while you learn the new app and the best way to use it.

Or even think of it in terms of gaming, like Second Life versus World of Warcraft. There are commonalities. Even though there are differences, once you learn one app, you have a knowledge and experience base to draw on and compare the two, which helps you learn the second app.

LMSs are no different. That said, each will, of course, have strengths and weaknesses. But to effectively compare these, we have to think about what LMSs are designed to do.

They are what they say they are: Learning Management Systems. Which is essentially content management systems that create a portal through which courses can be accessed by the student, instructors and admin. For the student they provide easy access to all assignments, grades, and a central hub of communication. For instructors and administration they provide the ability to re-use all course content and resources from course to course, flexibility in design and development, centralized organization and course management, and accountability and tracking. I can look to see which students logged on when and did what at the drop of a hat. Grades are tracked and reports can be pulled – admin likes that, but it is useful for tracking students engagement from the curriculum designer/instructor perspective as well

All of the LMSs I have worked with have these functions: the ability to upload audio, video, and text files (both instructors and students), the ability to embed links to outside sources, discussion forums, wikis, blogs, email, and usually IMs, the ability to configure and customize a homepage (to varying degrees), and a host of other tools for providing assignments, grading, tracking etc.

On a side note, most of the LMSs I have worked with allow an administrator to enable or disable most of the above tools and functions (and others too numerous to mention) in settings options. For example, I usually disable students ability to customize a course homepage because I need everyone to be seeing the same thing for trouble shooting purposes and to make sure EVERYONE can find the same resources based on the instruction notes I’ve written and made available.

In my experience, the limitations of an LMS in any given situation have less to do with the LMS and more to do with the user. Most instructors are poorly trained on their LMS and do not use all of the features, but instead figure out work arounds that may actually work against them and their students. Many instructors and students perceive LMSs as being too structured, yet often without that structure students are lost and confused. LMSs are also often perceived as lacking in interactivity – again, I think this is a misconception based on inadequate instruction on how to make LMSs more interactive and somewhat based on a misguided notion that interaction on multiple levels all the time equals good instruction. Focused and guided discovery learning works most effectively when there is an underlying structure and LMSs can provide that structure.

From my perspective as student, teacher, and curriculum designer, here’s my ideal scenario:

Use an LMS for what it is great at: organizing structure, tracking, content management – fully utilizing audio, video and text based files.

Use other web based 2.0 tools for heightened interactivity and user control of content: for example, most if not all of the tools we’ve explored in this class. All of which can be linked through the LMS course.

This is a model I attempt in my own work professionally, as well as what my team is attempting in our group project. A melding o the strengths of each environment – which effectively minimizes the weaknesses of both and allows for different types of learners (and teachers) to be satisfied with their experience.

I like to think of the LMS portal and course as a physical structure through which all course content can be accessed. That structure is more like a gazebo, rather than a house. Rather than being locked into four walls, you’ve got a roof and some pillars, but air (or resources) flows through.

As far as the LMSs we’ve looked at in class: Canvas seems very similar to Blackboard in terms of organization and structure, as well as functionality, with a more graphic user interface, and a little more media chops. Blackboard is the old guy in the room and has great functionality, but not a lot of personality. In many of my classes at the New School, either my classmates or profs have complained about Blackboard. I do not have a problem with it. It comes down to users and user perception to me. Those profs who have used Blackboard well and creatively have got a lot of mileage out of it and have been successful, those who didn’t understand it, typically not so much. I think this phenomenon extends to students.

But in learning and designing for users, perception counts for a whole helluva lot! As a designer, one cannot design for the most adaptable users. One has to make the DESIGN adapt to MOST of the users. And the consensus is that BB sucks…. (technical term there…).

Moodle – well, I am most familiar with this one. I work with it everyday and I have my own personal Moodle instance on my server. I like it because it is open source and fairly flexible, and easy to learn. It seems to not be as structured as either BB or Canvas, nor as graphic driven as Canvas – but it can be made to be so… I like the fact that you can download Moodle yourself as an individual and start your own online learning portal. I am using my Moodle instance as part of my thesis development and have linked it to my WP blog and my virtual media education center in SL.

We are also using my personal Moodle instance for our final project for this class.

Happy to let anyone from class jump into it and play around BTW – in between playing WoW of course…

anyways – my 2 cents…

I have to say first off that I very much was wary of taking any classes online this summer as this would be my first time.  And I am very much enjoying the experience surprisingly.  I am a very visual learner and being able to see and “touch” what I am learning is how I discovered the best way to learn for me.  Coming from a dance and performing arts background, not physically moving as a way of learning is difficult for me so I am surprised at how soon I have been able to adjust to this- even though for sure there are some kinks that I need to work out:)

I found that with the readings I very much was able to take notes and even have new ideas brought to me about what I might be able to encorporate into my own experiences, especially my experience as a teacher…

But the articles read, starting with Wellman and the question of “traditional community been lost?” brings about my biggest concern with online learning.  Can it replace human interaction?  And as will Robbin’s piece, what happens when that human interaction is recreated in a virtual environment where you can control and manipulate exactly how that interaction occurs, who it occurs with, and the role that you play within that occurrence.  Being able to create your avatars and change everything from your appearance to your way of relating and being related too is something that cannot be taken too lightly.

I do however, see a lot of relevance in using technology to learn.  And as Harasim discusses, there is a really appearance of community within and VLE that does in fact take away the “dominance by a few” and even though it does not get rid of it entirely is does allow for others to speak without that dominance being a hindrance and I do believe in that and agree very much with it.  It is something that I hadn’t considered before having never taken any classes online before.

I am totally in love with the idea of using a MOO for my students and really exploring VLE’s in this class.  I have been teaching for about 13 years and have always wanted to find ways to incorporate video gaming into the programming that I offer and I have never heard of Second Life until this class so I am very much looking forward to the projects to come…

The first online class I took was a Master’s course delivered on Blackboard. I didn’t like it. I liked the material, but I felt adrift in an alien world. All the live communication cues and real-time discussion and discovery I loved were lost in an asynchronous nether world in a machine. I’m now an online-only student, but I still feel a bit like a non-native speaker in a foreign country. However, the power and possibilities of networked scholarship have more than made up for my own challenges. It’s a different form of engagement requiring a different literacy and proficiency. The power of human development and imagination is that we can adapt to new technologies and forms of engagement to achieve new possibilities. Teaching and learning should be no different.

Wellman points out that “research has shown that computer-mediated communication supports a range of instrumental, informational, social and emotional exchanges.” The challenge in creating VLEs is to find ways to facilitate as many of these exchanges as possible. For knowledge to be complete, it needs to embody a range of experiences. We have transcended the limits of geographic groups and created fantastic scholarly networks of practice, but we still have to consider the multifarious forms of interaction that constitute knowing.

Hello again everyone!

My experience with learning management systems (LMSs), online learning, & virtual learning environments was non-existent as of 2008. My background both educationally and professionally is old school filmmaking – as in film and video. I started working in feature film and TV editorial after having been a film camera assistant in the early to mid 1990s. The first few feature films I worked as an assistant editor were actually cutting on film. By the mid to late 1990s, editorial was going digital. So I learned Avid editing systems and started working in TV. Along the way I went back to school and got an MFA in Editing from the American Film Institute. After that, I started teaching editing and became an Avid Certified Instructor. I’ve taught at the undergraduate and graduate level – mostly film production and editing. By 2008, I was realizing that my skills were becoming outdated and that I really needed to be more digital new media and web savvy. When I was young, I learned to make things big – for theatrical film release. I needed to learn how to make things small for the web. I also realized that teaching was becoming my thing, and that I had never studied teaching – I just went on instinct. And I became very interested in online learning and teaching. I thought the best way to learn how to teach online was to be an online student. Put all of those ideas together – and I decided to go for an online degree in education – specifically an MS in Educational Media Design & Technology. In my studies I learned about learning theories, LMSs, and VLEs. At the same time, the school I work for started looking into developing online courses to supplement their in class sessions. So I started taking the lead on that project. Now I teach in class session still, and design and teach in the Moodle LMS environment, and I’m here at the New School as a student and as a TA working in Blackboard. I feel very comfortable in LMS environments. In the MA in Media Studies program here, I am focusing my studies on interactive media, learning web design, blogging, amongst other things.  I have also built an online media learning center in Second Life and my own Moodle learning portal in preparation for my New School thesis project. This felt like the perfect class to continue my studies, so I jumped at the opportunity. I hope to go on to a PhD program in interactive media and education at USC.

As a student, prior to taking online classes, it was the interaction between myself and my teachers that made learning click for me. I was worried that I wouldn’t do as well online. I have to say that although the experiences are different, I have had some of my most rewarding learning experiences in virtual environments. I actually think I’ve made better connections with my professors through online means – I feel like I am less shy and more likely to interact and receive more effective feedback.

As a teacher, I have always been most effective in the classroom in person. Not bragging or trying to blow my own horn (I am actually quite humble and just feel like I teach on instinct and have been lucky) – but I’m damn good at what I do. I read people well in person, I’m good at getting what people are or are not getting when I’m trying to teach them something. I can be incredibly patient and nurturing. I create a safe space for people to just be and speak their mind – and this creates an open dialog – which is the only place deep learning can come from. I am a storyteller and I get others to share their stories. I love that – it feeds my soul. My goal is to re-create that experience in virtual environments. While I have experienced it as an online student, I don’t think I’m there yet as a curriculum designer and teacher.

Based on my personal experience as a traditional student and teacher, and as an online student and teacher (including my TA positions here at the New School), in online learning environments both teachers and students actually have to work harder. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The dangers are that technology becomes a barrier, instead of the solution. This occurs when students aren’t as tech savvy as they could be or if they are not self-motivated and autonomous learners. Or if they’re just overwhelmed by either the technology or the material. That’s when they just do the bare minimum. And I think quite meaningful dialog can occur – again, it just takes a concerted effort and a willingness to be authentic and maybe go balls out and take risks, if you’ll pardon my being a little crass. For online learning to work, you have to go the extra mile, where in an inclass session, just showing up can allow you to skate through.

I should also mention at this point that I am and have been for many years, a serious MMORPG gamer (massive multi-player online role-playing game for those not into the acronym lingo). The reason I think this is relevant is that my computer tech background (digital editing and graphics packages), coupled with my gaming experience, has taught me how to figure things out on my own. My gaming experience has also taught me social interaction and cooperation through online gaming groups. I think these experiences have contributed to my success in online learning.

Because of my professional experiences teaching in the classroom and the positive results I see there and my own positive experiences as a student online, I am very interested in blended or integrated learning. How can we develop a complimentary approach to teaching and learning that maximizes the strengths of both environments and minimizes their weaknesses?

I am enjoying this weeks readings – but I’m still digesting them. One thing I find difficult in online learning is the speed at which students are required to assimilate information and then formulate an opinion. As I believe Sasha mentioned, sometimes it’s easy to get sucked into the notion that you just have to post something. That’s a bit of a challenge for me – I need to work through things and think through things a bit. Maybe it’s just cause I’m old and slow!

One thing I haven’t worked with much that I’m looking forward to learning in this class is wikis! And I also need to develop my social networking skills as well – all stuff I hope to get better at in this class.

I’ll add my contact info in our class wiki, but in the meantime, if anyone wants to check out my Second Life Media Gallery and Education Center here’s the SLURL:

http://snipr.com/27ughb

My SL avatar is Odette Wibault

Looking forward to studying and learning with you all this term!

Our objective for this assignment was to to create a richer learning experience for high school students by combining entertainment, games, virtuality and education on an easily accessible browser-based platform. Ultimately, we developed Fractor World to be a collaborative learning hub on the Metaplace platform that exposes students age 13+ to social, political and economic issues and encourages action on their behalf through a confluence of Fractor newsfeeds, games, videos and other multimedia.

As a brief overview of our project, Fractor World is designed for use by high school teachers and their students. Games embedded within the Fractor World learning environment are suitable for age 11+, while the Metaplace platform is navigable for age 13+. Overall, the Fractor World community is a “gamelike” environment that allows educators to aggregate appropriate topics and activist opportunities for students age 11+.

While the site is game-oriented, it is carefully structured and organized based on the topics and activist opportunities Fractor hopes to advertise and encourage. Primary emphasis is placed on learning from playing, and supplemental information is available on both The Playground and The library in the forms of RSS feeds, instructional videos, relevant websites, and articles of interest. As a functional platform, one of our main goals for Fractor World was to create a sense of community and interactivity within Fractor. Interactivity is present through the nature of the 3-D virtual worlds and chat settings, and through the game-like nature of such environments (chat, avatar, world-building, games). Additionally, Fractor World features a rich sampling of RSS feeds, videos, images, and web links, which all make integrating Fractor World into classrooms simple and effective; it’s easily adaptable for the needs of the students and educators, and makes learning more fun and dynamic than only following lesson plans by the textbook.

Fractor World Playground

By design, Fractor World is more interactive than Moodle and Blackboard, although it is a somewhat unconventional LMS platform. For some educators chiefly concerned about storage capacity, Fractor World may be used as a supplementary learning tool and one that is easily embeddable on a class blog or within other LMS platforms like Moodle. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10275758-2.html. For educators who wish to use Fractor World as a primary LMS, surveys, quizzes, and lesson plans may be easily incorporated throughout the platform. Additionally, depending on the educator’s abilities, new worlds can represent new lesson plans allowing for easy chronological transition through course curriculum.

As primary administrator of Metaplace/Fractor, educators have the option to tailor RSS feeds, videos, and games for their particular curriculum. Additionally, educators have the authority to serve as content managers, space-designers, and overall administrators of site, bringing creativity into education and tailoring lesson plans as necessary. To facilitate educator’s module building, Fractor should distribute a complete functionality – topic, links, RSS Feeds, and games list – so educators can maximize Fractor World’s potential. Overall, Fractor should consider Fractor World a central hub through which it can partner with teachers and schools to increase awareness, organize fund raisers, and create community outreach programs. Fractor specific newsfeeds, “action” feeds, and games can be used by teachers to promote social action and build enthusiasm for the issues that Fractor identifies as critical problems in need of attention.

Fractor World Library

While we hope that our presentation reflected a relatively polished product, we encountered a number of social/collaborative and technical challenges developing Fractor World. In terms of our social/collaborative challenges, one big factor was geographical separation and time differences. To build a successful project, we all needed to organize and keep each other up to date on goals despite significant time differences. Furthermore, coming to a consensus about project goals and methods proved to be difficult, but ultimately beneficial. Individual ideas, while duly recognized, had to be set aside to allow for a mutually agreed-upon consensus about the overall direction of the project. Also, ensuring all edits and additions to the site remained fluid and consistent with the work of the rest of the group was a priority as we needed the end result to be as cohesive as possible. As such, organizing all of our efforts to create a specific “look” and “feel” for the site, and assigning roles and responsibilities to each member to ensure that every topic was sufficiently covered and no gaps were left in our work were top priorities.

We also had a number of technical challenges as our group members have varying technical training and experience with computers/programming/internet navigation. What’s more, Metaplace itself is a relatively new platform and we experienced a few major issues. One was when Metaplace lost our site for over a day and we had to rebuild everything we had created. Smaller, but equally substancial challenges we faced were: access to well-made, good looking objects that suited our needs, functionality issues when assigning behaviors to objects (Youtube videos didn’t always work, and some external links would cause Metaplace to freeze), and site consistency when inserting objects and organizing our World (objects didn’t always stay where they were supposed to, and landscaping and other terrain building functions were unreliable and hard to work with). Over all the biggest challenge was that we had very specific ideas and goals for the project which needed to be adjusted because team members lacked the technical understanding to accomplish them. In many instances, Metaplace lacked the functionality to allow us to realize many of our ideas, and especially so in relation to game-creation.

Moving forward, we envision many important applications for Fractor World for teachers, students, and the general population. While Fractor World is currently somewhat limited by the ongoing development of its Metaplace platform, we believe Fractor World might be considered for the following uses:

Games: “The Activist”, “The Paper Boy”

Mobile: Josephine’s suggestion of mobile apps/collaborative play on mobile devices.

Geotagging: The user’s ability to click an area in the world and see what non-profit groups exist in that specific region.

For a better view of our project and to see some relevant screenshots, supplemental videos, and game descriptions, please visit: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?docid=0AZ_UMkdL1leRZGdwcXNxN21fNzAyZGI0bTNoZg&hl=en&invite=CLzmqtUE

Critical Foundations for Fractoplace

The response process models the responsiveness, cooperation, and content-relevant communication between the learner and the group. (Chang/Lim) 9The base of our project was created out of the ideas of shared creation and information transfer. Both Fractor and Metaplace are based on the idea of sharing information and relevant action and therefore support a “game” model that allows for exploration, cooperation and communication.

Much social organization no longer fits a group-centric model of society. Work, community, and domesticity have moved from hierarchically arranged, densely knit, bounded groups to social networks. (Hunsinger) Internet communications have given rise to a new tribalization of society, based on interests and on individual concerns, but because humanity is social by nature, individuals gravitate towards others with similar interests in lieu of space and family.

Research has shown that computer-mediated communication supports a range of instrumental, informational, social, and emotional exchanges in work and leisure contexts (e.g., Baym, 1995; 1997; Rice et aI., 1998; Wellman & Gulia, 1999; Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2004; 2005). There is little need to argue that the Internet is both a colossal waster of time and the biggest resource for information ever conceived by mankind. Fractorplace echoes the world of the internet—a user can walk around, see some sights, have a conversation, take in the news, etc. It allows for exploration, gathering of information and a platform to share it. True feedback loops may occur here. …A more complex form of play; the game which is constructed not upon the premise “This is play” but rather around the question “Is this play?” And this type of interaction also has it’s ritual forms… (Bateson)Fractorplace blurs the idea that research and exploration are boring, partially just through the medium, but also through the ways in which students can explore in the world. For example, they can learn about SlowFood through a hot dog stand!

Boundaries between play and production, work and leisure…are increasingly blurring. (Pearce) Metaplace provides an avatar for each user and through that avatar one experiences a secondary life that also is linked to our first lives through our minds’ connections. It looks as though a conversation is a game if a person takes part in it with one set of emotions or ideas—but not a game if his ideas or emotions are different. (Bateson)For students, it is important to blur this line because the work-learn paradigm in education is failing due to information and media saturation.

More Shots of Fractor World Playground

A space of mixed collaborations provides variety in play experience and flexibility in learning. Our findings suggest that lightweight collaborations can be enjoyable and enlightening and need not be negatively valued. (Nardi) Fractorplace provides these abilities to collaborate and to play—with enough customizable flexibility on behalf of the development team to create something worldly. The ability of some communication technologies to support simultaneous feed- back can signal listenership and turn-taking during the learning process. (McLaughlin) The ability to move around in Fractorplace allows for this asynchronous learning model to take root. The teacher and student are on a level playing field, thus allowing for true explorative and project based learning, with enough options to garner the attention of myriad groups.

The response process of asynchronous learning will encourage higher degree of response with media having higher social presence than with media having lower social presence during cross-cultural communication. (Chang/Lim 15) By setting up the form factors in Fractorplace, the Fractor community can help students to be active members in their society in ways that interest them, and it gives them the ability to research what actually interests them!

Polysynchronous environments are defined as virtual spaces that closely approximate real life environments. People..communicating polysynchronously not only talk synchronously (in real time), but also create temporal objects such as mail messages, newsgroup messages, as well as objects that can be experienced by others. This form of virtual reality has potential as a dynamic learning environment. (Robins)The ability to interact with each other, as well as with almost every object in Fractorplace provides a depth and a breadth of experience for the user, teacher and student alike.

E-Iearning has become an integral, valuable, and highly valued component of education, and standard-bearer for state-of-the-art learning and teaching as we advance into the 21 st century. (Harasim)

Hi everyone,

So it seems that our work is finally coming together! I added about 6 slides tonight and made some minor edits on a few others.  I plan to have all my slides completed by tomorrow night so I can spend the remainder of our time making edits and polishing the presentation.  It seems that our initial slides were created using lower-case for all words except for proper nouns with the Courier New font.  I used this formatting for the slides that I created to keep things consistent – does this work for everyone else too? I think it looks kinda cool and jives with the flow of our project, so kudos and thanks to whoever started it.  I’m assuming that we’re just working on the slides that we signed up for, correct?  If any presenters are swamped and need me to post their slides for them I’m happy to do so – just let me know!

Are we all meeting at 8:00 tomorrow?  I think it would be great to touch base before we head into the final stretch.  All in all, we’re on the right track and things are coming together well.  My only question is on videos.  Have we decided who is going to create them?  I can make one if we need another; I’m just a little confused as to who’s doing what in this regard.

See you  tomorrow!

We have some excellent ideas in our outline to answer the second question:
How does your project leverage and create a richer learning experience for your specific target population?

Considering the time constraints for our project and the importance of contributing sufficient detail to each bullet, I think we should begin focusing on how we can begin translating our ideas into a media presentation.  How will we organize our efforts? Perhaps we should begin signing up to address the topics that need coverage.  We can always have multiple submissions for each topic, but it’s important that all the topics are covered by at least one person.  I’ll sign up tonight for the ones I want to work on.  Also, I think we’ll need one person who is good at compiling slides, videos, and content to tie together our various efforts into one cohesive presentation.  Obviously that is a big job, so that could just be someone’s sole role in the final project.  I’d say that we should divy up this responsibility, but unfortunately I think it’s a one person job.  Do you guys agree?  I guess a big question is - who wants to be the person to compile our individual efforts into one fluid presentation?  Does anyone have a lot of experience with this?  Once it’s all put together, I think the process is that we’re supposed to submit it to Josephine in a Quicktime format.

Does anyone have anything process related to add or change?

I just want to say again how much of a pleasure it has been to work with all of you on the project.  This group is by far the most responsive, fun, and intelligent I’ve ever had the opportunity to do work with.  Thanks again!

 I thought this was an interesting article for a librarians perspective on VLE.

Library Journal article