elearning reflections

It has taken me a rather long time to get through the two Horizon Reports because of the new language that I had to learn and the numerous sites that I visited through links in the reports. I think that reading the reports followed on well from the Seely articles in terms of painting a comprehensive picture of technological developments of relevance to teaching and learning from the late 1990’s to 2014.

Firstly, I’d like to note that unlike the statement in the Aust-NZ Horizon Report “While it is striking that there is little overlap between these six topics and those in the global edition of the 2008 Horizon Report” (pg 5) I think that there is significant overlap in the 6 technologies identified in the report. The main difference, I thought, was the time-frame issue of when the technologies would have an impact. In both reports, cloud computing, geo everything and mobiles featured and deep tagging I think is linked to the idea of personal web and semantic aware applications. The geographic location in the Aust-NZ report and access to technological developments was definitely a factor distinguishing the two reports.

What I learned of most value from the reports was the extent of new technologies – that is their applicability into areas that I had not imagined. For example, I was not aware of the capacity if geo everything technology to facilitate learning in such a mulifaceted way – I really liked the Marco Polo Travels site where a goggle map was tagged at different locations and information provided under each tag either as text, visual or sound(http://idlethink.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/indulgence-sin/). The potential for experiential learning through these technologies and those that facilitate games is significant.

In terms of mobiles – I recently got an iPhone at work so I can work on the way to work. I am slowly dicovering the potential of this mobile device and my ability to be online eg UTS Online and listen to the Horizon podcast whilst on the train. If we apply that technology further as presented in the Horizon Report within a higher education setting, there is much potential to facilitate learning for today’s students who do not seem to spend much time at university learning f2f. I like the numerous applications available to mobile phones in term of music, art, and of course ability to tweeter if that is what you are into!

In terms of the trends and these technological developments I do not work in a context (university administration) where we use much technology to facilitate learning or even networking, so I do not feel as if I am part of the global community that is available through the web and I do not engage with the collective intelligence that is out there. It is only through my studies and in particular what I have read so far in this course that I am feeling more aware of what is out there and I am starting to re-think my conceptualization of knowledge, privacy, intellectual property, etc. It is also only now that I am excited by the use of the new technology to facilitate learning in my area of passion: social justice and human rights.

I like the thought that we could develop a game that people could play on their phones which allowed them to take roles in virtual situations geo located in places unknow to that learner, that might lead to a tranformation in attitudes or at least how they view the world and others – and all this available through cloud computing so that the capacity is not restricted by a personal computer.

The podcast of the report added examples to some of the technologies that I was still somewhat unsure of but I wised that I could see the slides they were referring to – that would be great an audio file with the powerpoint slides used by the presenters. It is probably possible with all the new technology at our finger tips.

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