Hi Everyone,
I hope you had a great weekend, and that you enjoyed doing some background research on people who have had an influence on the field. It is now time to turn our attention to Unit 2!
Before we do, just a reminder that Assignment 1 was due last night. If you haven’t yet submitted it to the Assignment 1 Moodle dropbox and your blog, please do so as soon as you can. It may be on your blog but not in the A1 dropbox so if you could just put the link in the A1 dropbox as well, that would be great. Thank you.
Book Club Update: Many thanks to those of you who took up the invitation to have a book club conversation on your own. I hope that your meet ups were interesting and engaging and that you had fun connecting. In case you have not yet found it in our course, the recording of our Sept 8th book club session can be found here. You can get to it in the Moodle companion shell for LRNT 523 under Zoom recordings. Our next one focused on the Great Media Debate is scheduled for Tuesday Sept 22nd 4:30 – 6pm pacific time.
A few themes came out of the conversations this week and I had mentioned I will try to line up some guest speakers re: VR and AR simulation in healthcare for our Oct session. I serendipitously came across this podcast featuring Chris Olah re: what is going on inside neutral networks that might be interesting to some of you and here is a great podcast re: learning and neural that you might find interesting. Last but not least, here is a link to the OTESSA journal and organization – you can find out more about them here. It is a great addition to the Canadian Society for the Study of Education
Now, on to Unit 2: First of all, many thanks for Asma who flagged for me that I had uploaded the earlier version of the Unit 2 overview video. It is always humbling that no matter how many eyes are on your course before it goes live there, something like this comes up. I have fixed it now and all should be well, or at least accurate ;) Thank you for your patience.
Every field has debates and researchers who disagree with one another and negotiate their understanding of how the world works. Science is iterative, and it changes over time, as we learn more, as cultures change, as technology changes, as our understanding of people and the natural world changes. Some debates are resolved, and new ones arise. Others continue.
In some cases, while debates are resolved, there may be individuals who believe otherwise, who either intentionally or unintentionally continue on supporting unsubstantiated claims and myths. But what does all this have to do with a nice and solution-oriented field like educational technology? Nice fields have debates, disagreements, quarrels, and myths too. Come to think of it, we have our fair share of them! In this unit, we'll explore a few of those, and we will start with the great media debate.
Please review the unit description, and identify a partner to work with for the next 3 weeks. Many of you have already done this – thank you. I have added a column so you can also highlight what date works for you to do the live “Film makers Cut” synchronous session. If you could identify the date that works for your pair then I will make up the schedule and send it out. As a reminder, here is the link google doc sign up sheet.
Please also review Assignment 2. To add some flexibility to the course and allow for exploration of personal topics of interest, I integrated our exploration of debates and myths into this assignment. Weeks 5 and 6 are essentially be "work weeks" where you will be engaging with Assignment 2.
I hope you have a great rest of the week - let's see who is right, who is wrong, who is somewhat right/wrong, and try to figure out if our field has myths and ideas that are plain wrong but – like zombies - refuse to die. Enjoy and have a great week!
Ciao, Elizabeth
P.S. one little gem to share:
1. The book that I was mentioning re: what do we choose to bring forward/leave behind at times of transition is titled,
a. The End of Absence; reclaiming what we have lost in a world of constant connection by Michael Harris. You can find a e book or a text copy here in the RRU library if you are interested.