Lauren C's EME 6414 Blog

As pointed out in Kim et al.'s reading for this week "Effects of Group Reflection Variations in Project-Based Learning Integrated in a Web 2.0 Learning Space," participants for their study consisted of young adults who were very familiar with Web 2.0 tools, but conceded that conducting the same study with certain age groups - namely older adults and very young children - may have yielded very different results. This caused me to wonder - as instructors, to what extent should programs that rely extensively on Web 2.0 tools and technology be tailored to specific age groups? While children may not be expected to engage with an extensive amount of interactive web-based tools, the skills of older adults are likely to be much more varied.  With that in mind, how can we accommodate those with more experience without losing the interest of or overwhelming older adults that may not have much experience? It seems like it would be a delicate balancing act to account for the needs of...

So, when thinking about networked knowledge activities and the tools used to facilitate them, I can't help but think back to my Master's program (which was completely online) and the amount of team work we were required to do. Obviously, in a situation where each member may be located in different parts of the country, if not the world, we had to find a way to collaborate with each other taking into account each person's schedule, time zone, etc. I was fortunate to be in groups with individuals that had advanced knowledge of different communication systems and platforms that were extremely helpful to us as a group in overcoming what we initially felt would be onerous logistical difficulties. First, with regard to communication, we set up a Google Hangouts account which allowed each member to stay updated on pertinent communication if they had to miss our scheduled weekly meetings. A group email could have potentially served the same purpose, but by activating the notificati...

 Hi all,  So, I thought I'd complete my reflection post first this week since I've been giving a lot of thought to the upcoming assignment. First, while I do think I have the hang of it and can create an adequate deliverable, I'm a little disappointed in the response/engagement rate. To provide just a bit of information about my project: I am curating a list of books that have been part of the ALA's Top Ten Most Challenged Books List. I have 22 books total; I'm posting two per day and I've increased the tags from one to two. Before I get to the end of the list I intend on having a total of four tags (which will hopefully boost engagement). I wanted to use our class tag last (#eme6414) last because I felt like including it earlier might artificially boost the engagement rate and I was curious as to what the rate for each tweet would be on its own merits.  Turns out - not much. Which is fine, I started this account for the purposes of this class and therefore any ...

Reflection Post Tried two new sites this week (Goodreads and futureme, yay! I've never been a huge tech person, but I'm really starting to get over much of the anxiety that comes with attempting new tools. Some, I think, are more useful than others - I spent a good bit of time on Goodreads - and being a voracious reader, I'm sure I'll be using it well into the future. I was surprised about the group feature, although I suppose I shouldn't be given that it's technically a social media site (duh), I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that there were other people to connect with that enjoy the same types of literature as I do. To me, that's one of the most valuable things I'm gaining from this course - the new discoveries that happen when I move out of my comfort zone and explore new things. I'm certainly looking forward to more!

A point in the Dennen, et al. (2020) article that I found very interesting discussed the difficulty in determining the intent of acknowledgments on social media. As the authors state: "Distinguishing among users who click on these indicators to say “I saw this,” “I like this,” and “I want to save this so I can find it later,” can be difficult if there are not corresponding linguistic cues in a comment that explain the user’s intent" (Dennen, et al., 2020). I'll bet we've all come across this issue at some point in our social media journeys. Some social media sites have addressed this issue by adding a wider range of emoticons that allow a wider variety of expressions than simply 'like' or 'not like.'  Facebook, for instance, allows for more expression these days, but Twitter only allows one option for those that prefer non-textual acknowledgments. So, when someone tweets something understood to be negative or upsetting, the only non-verbal option would...

Hi all,  So, in light of our upcoming assignment and consistent with a few of our readings for this week, I've been giving a bit of thought to the idea of collection versus curation. If I understand it correctly, collection suggests gathering together a group of materials or objects that have some type of similar theme whereas curation would be isolating specific elements from the overall corpus of materials based on predetermined characteristics.  For example, when thinking about the upcoming knowledge sharing project, I was thinking about gathering together a collection of YA novels that have been challenged the most according to statistics provided by the ALA. This would be a collection. However, if I wanted to focus on novels that were challenged due to a specific rationale - that would be curation. There are a number of reasons given for why certain books are challenged - so for instance, if I wanted to feature books that were challenged for violent themes, profanity, uns...

Whew, so this has been a very hectic week! For my reflective post this week, I'd like to echo the sentiments expressed by Beth Kanupp on her blog. Sometimes life does get in the way. For example, I'm TA'ing in another course and my professor asked me to cover the class next week - which, since there was nothing prepared beyond a basic theme, took me days to complete the research and draft the PowerPoint, script and activity for the class - I'm exhausted.  Coincidentally, the topic I'm covering is IP, ethics, copyright, so I don't feel like I missed too much. But like Beth, I'm also ready to get back into it next week and I agree that the freebies we do get in this class are life-savers! I did have a chance to review a lot of my classmates' blogs as well and like always, they were super informative and illuminating!

In our 'tools' section for this week is a link to Creative Commons, which I just so happen to be working with for another course right now. This is an awesome resource, especially for educators! It does take some familiarity with the different types of licenses you can use and their commensurate attribution requirements, but once you understand that, you can be confident that you'll be able to find and use all kinds of cool images for assignments, presentations, performances, and any other eventuality where sprucing up your content with an image can transform a good project into a great one! If you need a creative commons image in a hurry, I've found this shortcut particularly useful: Google<Google Images<Settings<Advanced Image Search<Scroll Down to “Usage Rights”<Choose from drop-down menu Then, simply type in your query, choose an image, and click on the image to view its usage requirements. This has been enormously helpful to me in my program when cre...

 Hi everyone! Keeping in mind this week's theme of intellectual property, I'd like to share a link to an article that discusses how Disney has prevented Mickey Mouse from becoming public domain since the 1980s. It's a fascinating read, and it covers important points and counterpoints regarding the purpose of copyright law, what stakeholders in popular properties (like Mickey) stand to lose when IP enters the public domain and what the public may lose through indefinite extensions proposed by lawmakers who are, in turn, funded by powerful corporations. What do you think? Are corporations correct in their assertion that the loss of prominent IP would drastically harm their businesses, potentially causing harm to the broader economy? Or is the public losing out on creativity by stifling creativity and minimizing competition? Incidentally, I felt the author made an important observation by noting that more books from the 1800s are available on Amazon.com than the 20th century -...

We've covered so many tools in this class so far, and though I doubt I will end up using most of them following completion of this course, there are some that I've found especially helpful and intend to explore further in the future. For example, I'm really enjoying Reddit right now, both for the multitude of different topics available and the breadth and depth of responses to questions or thoughts that people post. Likewise, I'm finding a lot of useful information and functionality on Twitter that I was heretofore unaware of. I can definitely see myself using both of these tools well after the completion of this class. Conversely, some tools, don't really speak to me. Instagram for instance appears to be based around images and I'm more of a wordy gal. Still, I'm glad I'm aware of it and the potential it has to reach a specific audience. I'm curious, what tools do you see yourself using/not using beyond this course, and why?

Hi all,  So as I was completing the readings for this week, I had a few more questions about crowdsourcing, specifically, how it is done in a practical sense and examples of real-life benefits. To that end, I began searching articles related to past crowdsourcing efforts, leaning towards the ones that highlighted major successes or failures. I was able to find several, but I'd like to share one in particular because it illuminates how successful crowdsourcing efforts have affected our everyday lives. Have you ever wondered how Netflix knows what to recommend you, or how collective knowledge about public wi-fi has come about? It's all right here! What crowdsourcing efforts are you aware of that affect our daily lives? 5 Radically Different, Real-Life Examples of Crowdsourcing Success

One of the articles I read for this week was Randall and West's 'Who Cares about Open Badges? An examination of Principal's Perceptions of the Usefulness of Teacher Open Badges in the United States.' Essentially, the study described in this article sought to discover principal's (or another personnel agent) attitudes regarding badges when making hiring decisions. A mixed-methods study, the qualitative portion was highly illuminating and revealed a diversity of opinion about their perceptions of the merit of including badges on resumes. Some felt they would be very helpful, at least in allowing them to identify applicants that have attained certain skills. Others felt that the hiring process is arduous enough and adding another layer would simply slow down the process for those under a time-crunch to make informed hiring decisions. For example, one participant articulated their view by stating "why are we making it more difficult for candidates (teachers) when t...