Trends in eLearning Reflection

This module was very interesting. I got to know more about the Horizon Report and Gartner Hype Cycle. It was interesting to see what the experts think about emerging technologies.

The format of the classes was different, we discussed different emergeant technologies each week. The first week I remembered Taylorism from my HR Degree days in which he broke down tasks into manageable systematic chunks. In the second week we discussed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and I was reminded of An Avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead (Baker et al 2013) and how universities need to look at how they offer course to keep competitive. I tried what I thought was a MOOC but through discussion agreed it was a training course, a very interesting one about Google Apps through Alison.com.

In the third week a discussion ensued about The Internet of Things and how in the future your fridge will be able to detect when you need milk and order it. This interested me as I chose Virtual Assistant for me module presentation. One article I read in the research was how smartphones are not that smart (Bajarin 2014). Gamification was also discussed and we tried a few games in the lab, I thought if we all had have been connected to the same game it would have worked better. As part of the prep for the day we were advised to view a YouTube video by Jane McGonigal (2010) called Gaming can make a better world, the main point I took from this video was that we should allow trainees/students make mistake so they can learn from them.

In the fourth week we discussed what everyone had chosen to present for their three minute presentation. As stated above I chose Virtual Assistant and how I was lookingat the real person as well as the digital assistant. Outsourcing memory was also discussed an this reminded of Carr’s (2013) article Is Google Making Us Stupid? in which he states that mobile devices are so handy we do not remember facts any more we just pick up our smartphone when we want to recall them.

The fifth week was presentation week and I presented my three minute video. I decided to do the video on Moovly which is a video presentation tool. It took a little while to get to grips with it but when I did I found it fantastic. I did the three minute, and kept it three minutes, presentation with a voice over. I had to revert back to what I knew, i.e. PowerPoint. I had decided to record the voice over separate but needed PowerPoint to work out the timings. When I had the presentation down to three minutes I used the PowerPoint slides to then record the voice over. When the voice over was done I used it and the slides print out to do the graphics in Moovly. After presenting the video I received good feedback and as a result decided to re-record the presentation, this time with out the voice over as my speech was very rushed. I enjoyed the second recording and it gave me more experience with Moovly.

Other areas I found interesting were Digital Literacy, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Learning analytics. I was intially toying with the idea of covering BYOD as in the Hype Cycle BYOD was to plateau in 2-5 years however mobile strategy would take 5-10 years which to seemed to be putting the horse before the cart. As delegates/student bring their own devices they will connect wirelessly so a mobile strategy is required to ensure network connection do not over load the system. We have been at conferences that advertise they will provide a wireless network but end up switching off the wireless and using the mobile network to Google thing the speaker has said.

All in all I found this module very interesting as the focus was on emerging technologies and how they can be utilised. There was a lot of focus on Higher Education, as most of the class are DIT lecturers, however ample time was allowed to discuss how they could be used in private sector and even in the training world. I read a lot of interesting articles about technology and how we are using it. I was particularly interest in Nicholas Carr’s articles and found them very interesting, however I found Jaron Lanier’s work hard going as he, in my opinion, doesn’t write but rant. Articles on how pedagogy needs to change (Barber et al 2013 & Contact North 2014) made me think, I looked at training in the Department and see a need to change the pedagogic approach. I am a big Star Trek fan I found Kaplin (2013) article on conversational user interfaces and how the replicators on the Enterprise were a look into the future. Prensky (2001) article really summarised how it is exposure to technology not when some one is born that dictates how they will accept it in education.

 

References

Barber M., Donnelly K., Rizvi S. (2013), An Avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead, http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2013/04/avalanche-is-coming_Mar2013_10432.pdf

Bajarin, B. (2014). Tech Finds Its Voice: The Future of Virtual Assistants. Time.com, 1-1.

Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Cover story). Atlantic Monthly (10727825), 302(1), 56-63.

Contact North/Contact Nord. (2014). A new pedagogy is emerging .. and online learning is a key contributing factor. Ontario Online Learning Portal for Faculty and Instructors.http://www.contactnorth.ca/trends-directions/evolving-pedagogy-0/new-pedagogy-emergingand-online-learning-key-contributing, accessed 17 February 2014

Kaplan, R. (2013). Beyond the GUI: It’s Time for a Conversational User Interface. WIRED.

McGonigal J. (2010), Gaming can make a better world, TED Talks, source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM

Prensky, Marc (2001). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. On the Horizon 9 (5): 1–6