Week 4: Account Reflections, Developing Classes, and Learning 2.0

Week four was busy!!! To piggyback on my week 3 assignment of setting up social networking accounts, this week, I set up classes in Ning, Facebook, and PBWorks and had to give the pros and cons of each. I found that PBWorks was a much better environment for a learning event because there were minimal distractions. Ning and Facebook are, to me, primarily social and gives a learner too many distractions. PBWorks seems to be geared more toward learning and collaboration.

I developed a "class" of sorts in PBWorks to create a Frequently Asked Questions document for a work process. I felt totally inadequate when I saw the assignment, but, once I got started, I found it to be pretty simple. I even added an avatar with a message for the participants. I'm pretty proud of myself (maybe I should wait for my grade before I get all puffed up!).

I also had to decide if I felt Ning, Facebook, or PBWorks could replace Blackboard, Moodle or any other Learning Management System (LMS) Of the three, I thought PBWorks could come close. Of course, after reading some of my classmates' posts, I have to agree with them that none of the options could truly replace an LMS. I believe they could play a decent role in learning, but the LMS would still be necessary for posting grades and submitting dropbox assignments.

Lastly, I read an article, Minds on Fire: Open Source, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler. The article describes a different learning environment that I experienced. Learners are able to participate in learning events all over the world through virtual environments like Second Life. There is access to information on the law, the arts, and, of course, up and coming technologies available without enrolling in a brick and mortar university. The article predicts a shortage of universities within the next decade that makes virtual learning (synchronous and asynchronous) necessary to educate everyone who desires a college education.

The article refers to this outside-the-box learning as Learning 2.0. This alludes to the fact that the internet started out as a unidirectional learning tool. The experts published, and the learners read. This is the first phase, or 1.0. Today, the internet is a collaborative tool that allows contributors of all levels of expertise to work together. This is the second phase of the internet, from which the phrase, Learning 2.0, was coined.

Again, I am excited about what I'm learning. I used PBWorks to create folders for meeting agendas and meeting minutes for my church's finance team, and, for me, it seems like a great use for the tool. I will continue to use it in this way and also look for additional finance team uses for this workspace. I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes me.

Chat with you next week!