Technology Guide for Distance and Digital Learning Tools

This page will serve as a home page and directory for the portfolio project for Learning Technologies (OTL542), which will be completed in several stages according to the Critical Thinking assignment guidelines for modules 4-8. For the earlier module 2 Critical Thinking assignment, I created a mock wiki focused on Virginia history; the portfolio project will expand on this wiki to produce a technology guide for distance and digital learning tools. Since this project will be completed as a wiki, it will stay as close to the form and functionality of this tool. As such, all hyperlinks are active and interconnected where appropriate, and while there is not likely to be much traffic, they are fully editable by the general public. The content for each section, therefore, is split among several pages that require some navigation to access.

Web 3.0 Technologies for Learning
Web 3.0 is a term intended to distinguish the current state of web application development from earlier predecessors. Unlike Web 1.0, which enabled users only to passively access information on static HTML pages, and Web 2.0, which provided enhanced interactivity through the use of databases, server-side processing, forms, and social media, Web 3.0 takes greater advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning to leverage peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies like blockchain, open-source software, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Education providers have been adapting to the internet and digital technologies for decades now, and the advent of Web 3.0 applications must prompt a new phase in this co-evolution. Web 3.0 offers the promise of personalized content through the optimization of intelligent agents, semantic annotations, computer-understandable data and knowledge management. Online learning that takes advantage of Web 3.0 technologies enables students to filter the enormous informational resources that exist on the internet into manageable clusters of reusable knowledge. Web 3.0 tools further enhance opportunities for interaction and collaboration, strengthening the relationships that students can establish online with their peers and their instructors.

The category Web 3.0 encompasses countless tools and applications, many of which can be useful in an educational setting. The three tools described in this section are wiki, blog, and learning management system (LMS).

Social Media Collaborative Learning
Social media is a ubiquitous part of the contemporary media landscape, and it is probably unavoidable that it will continue to become increasingly intertwined with educational technologies and practices in the coming years. As distance learning has gained in popularity, a process that has been greatly intensified by the current coronavirus pandemic, social media has provided a model for creating a virtual learning community on the internet. From networking classmates to organizing group projects and sharing educational materials, social media promises to expand the horizons of what can be accomplished in the digital classroom.

The theoretical basis for incorporating social media in online learning is grounded in the social learning theory proposed by Albert Bandura, who emphasized the social context in which learning takes place. Long before the internet age, learning has happened through the processed of observation, interaction, and modeling of behavior by ones peers and mentors. The challenge for contemporary educators is how to direct these processes in a new and ever-changing media environment that poses a unique set of challenges, including but not limited to cyber-bullying, hate- and fear-mongering, deliberate misinformation campaigns, and serious privacy concerns.

Many LMS platforms, including Blackboard and Canvas, both of which are commonly used by major universities and public school systems, have begun to emulate important features of social media platforms. However, this section will examine the educational applications of more widespread social media sites, namely Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Mobile Learning
Mobile learning strategies are those that utilize wireless communications technologies, especially smart phones and tablets, in the learning process. The ubiquity of mobile devices, their compact size and portability, and their relatively low cost are all important drivers of the growing trend toward mobile learning in higher education. Smart phones (and the many apps they support) are especially popular with younger generations in both developed and developing countries. While e-learning generally has meant that education can exist independent of the formal classroom setting, mobile learning (m-learning) adds an even greater degree of portability.

The benefits of mobile learning are primarily that its accessibility and its utilization of tools that the average student interacts with regularly, often for multiple hours a day. In short, mobile learning is an attempt to "meet students where they are," to bring educational content to where it may be most convenient for students to interact with. However, mobile learning comes with many trade-offs that have been theorized and documented in research. The theory of multimedia learning proposes that the mind processes information through both visual and verbal channels simultaneously. When these channels reinforce one another with complementary information, learning outcomes are improved and deeper understanding is possible. On the other hand, cognitive load theory suggests that short-term memory is vulnerable to constraints that long-term memory is not. In a cognitive overload scenario, short-term memory is overtaxed by fleeting stimuli and cannot send meaningful information to long-term memory stores, resulting in poor learning outcomes.

The primary means of disseminating mobile learning is through applications, or apps, which are optimized to run on mobile devices. The present technology guide will offer a closer look at three apps with explicit educational uses: Kindle, Schoox, and Canvas Student.

Professional Reflection
I began this term with mixed experience and feelings about online learning and incorporating the latest technology and media in education. I understand that these tools offer incredible potential for expanding the kinds of activities that can be undertaken and enhancing accessibility to students who cannot physically be present in the classroom. I must acknowledge that it's very unlikely that I would be taking classes right now toward a second master's degree, something that does not present with particular urgency but that I am undoubtedly benefiting from, if I had to commute to a campus and attend class in person according to a set schedule. And that is not even taking into account the present coronavirus pandemic or the fact that I am attending school from across the country, either of which would, on its own, present an impossible barrier to pursuing this education.

Still, as an instructor, I have found the challenge of actually incorporating these new technologies daunting and, frankly, distracting from the core responsibility of teaching in my field (history), which I understand to be critical thinking through dialogue. I have had the opportunity to teach online in the past; while working as an adjunct instructor for Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, I regularly taught a mix of in-person and asynchronous online classes. Even after I transitioned to teaching at the Community College of Denver, I kept a single online class in modern world history at Front Range every semester. My experience of this was not especially positive, although I did find some aspects of the work that I enjoyed. I found that my role in developing the online class was more that of curator rather than teacher. I was able to present my students with a wider range of learning materials, including images, videos, and a greater volume of text-based primary and secondary sources than I would typically be able to cover in an hour and change in the classroom. But what I was missing was a clear voice, which in the classroom I could develop through lecture and discussion, and a way to know what students actually took in. There were weekly discussion forums, to be sure, but I found it did not come naturally to most of my students, or myself, to really dig in deep with the material in that format.

This experience is largely why I have found the present project so eye-opening and really enjoyable. To begin with, I feel strongly that I made a good choice at the beginning of the term when I decided to develop a wiki for this technology guide project, even though I didn't understand at the time what the final product would look like. I had considered developing a blog instead, even though the only real point in its favor was that it would presumably be easy. I'm glad that I did not succumb to the temptation to go the easy route because the experience I gained creating this wiki has sparked my creativity. I am not actively teaching these days, which is probably for the better given the current environment, but I do see myself returning to the profession at some point, likely in a part-time role again. When I do, I would seriously consider incorporating the wiki as a collaborative (not to say group) project, whether the class is in person or online.

When I first created this wiki for the preliminary development stage of this project (module 2), I went with a theme of Virginia history that is still evident in the web address for this technology guide. If I had read far enough ahead in the portfolio project guidelines, I may have simply created the wiki as a technology guide to begin with. Perhaps by accident then, this decision opened my mind to the possibilities of using the wiki format in the history classroom. The strengths of the wiki format, explained in more detail elsewhere in this project, include its collaborative nature and its ability to slowly construct an intricate, interconnected network of informative pages. In a hypothetical semester, I can envision assigning multiple tasks involving the wiki--starting with evaluating and editing existing pages from prior classes, then determining where to add content and creating new pages to fill in gaps in the resource. This would all take place on a private wiki like this one, where only students in the class would know where to access the content. Every student would create their own login so their contributions could be readily tracked and assessed. And as an added benefit, it would prompt students to be more reflective about the relative strengths and limitations of sites like Wikipedia, which are often accessed and utilized uncritically, even by myself. I believe this would give them a greater appreciation for the efforts behind a developed wiki network like Wikipedia, while also acknowledging the points at which such a site is vulnerable to inaccuracies or even deliberate misinformation.

Regarding the other technology tools that I explored through this project, I see less opportunity for using most of them (e.g., Facebook, Kindle, etc.). Perhaps this would be different if I had spent an equivalent amount of time developing this guide on one of those platforms instead. The greatest opportunity for improvement with this project, and for continued growth once it has been submitted, is to devote additional energy to building out the secondary pages further, that is, those that focus on individual e-learning tools. Until that extra effort has been undertaken, I would be reluctant to share this technology guide with others as a finished product. On the other hand, in the collaborative spirit of the wiki format, I would be willing to share this guide with fellow students and/or colleagues who could collaborate in building out the infrastructure with more detailed entries on technology and media tools that interest them, and for which they can envision novel educational uses.