quarta-feira, 27 de janeiro de 2010

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domingo, 24 de janeiro de 2010

G1 Tecnologia - NOTÍCIAS - Escola ensinará idiomas no Second Life

Foto: Divulgação

Divulgação
Avatares poderão ter aulas de inglês e espanhol em hotéis e bares, com interação. (Foto: Divulgação)

O aprendizado de um novo idioma feito de maneira imersiva, em um ambiente realista e com professores nativos logo estará disponível on-line, no mundo virtual Second Life. Em setembro, a escola de idiomas LanguageLab começa a oferecer aulas de inglês e espanhol virtuais, com custos parecidos com aqueles do mundo real. “Achamos que é muito melhor ensinar assim do que em um espaço físico, pois há muito mais o que se oferecer na web do que em uma sala de aula”, disse o fundador da empresa, David Kaskel.

Os estudantes e professores irão falar e escutar uns aos outros utilizando uma tecnologia VoIP (voz sobre IP) atualmente em testes e que deve ser lançada no Second Life em junho. Atualmente, os usuários que queiram falar com outros avatares devem ter um programa como o Skype instalado em suas máquinas. Agora, essa capacidade estará incluída no software do Second Life. O sistema alcança uma maior variedade de freqüências acústicas (de 50 a 14 mil hertz) que a telefonia normal, e irá beneficiar o aprendizado de idiomas -- algumas consoantes tem uma informação acústica que ocorre em freqüências mais altas que aquelas captadas por um telefone.

Kassel é um usuário veterano no Second Life, e sua idéia para a escola surgiu cerca de um ano e meio atrás. A LanguageLab, sediada em Londres, receberá os avatares dos estudantes em sua ilha no mundo virtual, onde uma cidade inteira foi construída. Os avatares devem se encontrar com seus professores para atividades nos hotéis, bares, clubes, escritórios e lojas detalhadamente realistas. As aulas terão cerca de 50 minutos, várias vezes durante a semana, e os estudantes deverão socializar com seus colegas e poderão se inscrever em cursos extras.


A voz no Second Life também será 3D, o que significa que o som dos avatares que estão perto irá parecer mais alto do que o daqueles que estão mais distantes. O sistema faz isso ao modificar o som de um usuário particular de acordo com a posição de seu avatar. Também há um modo que permitirá conferências e leituras.

  Reclamações

Quando as capacidades de som foram anunciadas em fevereiro, muitos usuários reclamaram. Para eles, escutar as vozes dos outros avatares e ter que falar quebraria a virtualidade do mundo, levando-os para aspectos da realidade não requeridos, com características reais como sexo, identidade e nacionalidade. “Ser forçado a utilizar a voz em um mundo virtual, algo que não é de minha escolha, contra minha vontade, parece um golpe final”, escreveu o usuário Prokofy Neva.

Ensinar línguas no Second Life tem uma vantagem sobre outros métodos baseados na web, de blogs e podcasts a conversas de texto, que impressionou professores de fora: o mundo virtual traz um sentido de lugar, trazendo ao aprendizado uma sensação mais humana, uma experiência melhor de socialização on-line.

A LanguageLab não é a primeira escola no mundo virtual: uma variedade de educadores já oferece diversos idiomas. Mas a empresa é a maior escola de idiomas privada a se aventurar e a primeira a ser construída com base nas capacidades de som. Kassel, seu fundador, espera oferecer aulas de outras línguas, e para isso pretende duplicar seu espaço inicial.

Posted via web from teresarafael's posterous

quinta-feira, 21 de janeiro de 2010

Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality by Christopher Hill in Distance Learning

Anotated Bibliography

In this articles, the author argues about several principles that can be very useful and perahps shoud be considered in order to promote transparency in online education. however the article focus is courses design.

In his oppinion "One of the requirements for implementing Transparency by Design is the development of a new set of best practices for participating institutions"


These short texts, refer that one factor of major importance for the sucess in online education is also a well designed course with the right attitude of those who work there.


"The keys are disclosure, transparency, the ability to interact with students easily and the quality of the curriculum. So that we know what we’re trying to achieve and we regularly
measure it.”
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Hill, Christopher, Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality,October 20, 2009 in http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/principles-for-improving-online-transparency-quality/ viewed in 28/12/09

Hill, Christopher, More Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality,October 2, 2009 in http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/more-principles-for-improving-online-transparency-quality/ viewed in 28/12/09
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An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency in Online Education Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org

Annotated Bibliography

finding, studying and sharing materials related to transparency in online education

In this interview and answering about what he meant when he argue that transparency improves quality in online education, Professor Paulsen tell us that transparency is important specially because of tree positive effects on quality:

Preventive quality improvement - obtained essentially by the access to others works and from the others to our own;

Constructive quality improvement - come from the learning from others when accessing to their work;

Reactive quality improvement – obtained by the feedback that others give us when they access our work;

Another positive aspect is that with transparency the low quality of courses or the teachers work, do not have very much chances of survival.

Asked about his believes about the propriety of transparency on promoting cooperation in online education, Professor Paulsen explained that it is s much easier to cooperate when we know the work of others.

Furthermore, he thinks that transparency is also fundamental in social networking because “the starting point is the individual or personal which does not happens with discussion forums. Having a personal page and profile that can be modified and developed, one can always being an individual and a member of a community.“In other words, actions within a social networking site are transparent. This creates a kind of indirect or passive form of communication and sharing.”

Replying to the question “Have you publish other recent articles on transparency in on-line education?” Paulsen enumerate some of his last publications and referred some interesting experiences with students.

In order to be even more “transparent” about transparency, Paulsen underlines that “it’s not only information provided by instructors that could be transparent”

As an example he pointed the Universidade Aberta’s where: “all the students have public blogs where you can read the annotated bibliographies and see the learning objects they develop for the course”

In his opinion it’s precisely this “extreme transparency of work-in-progress allows that the students to get feedback not only from their classmates, but from everybody on the internet as a part of their learning experience.” Even in more elementary levels and mostly in the case of families that live abroad, transparency can also be very useful and give very good results.

Paulsen believes also that transparency could improve quality even in evaluation what is underlined when he sates that “ relevant information should be available to the various user groups so that they can learn from the results and understand that they are members of a larger learning community” .

This can be confirmed in the work of NKI where writtings that: Students could see a report showing qualitative statistics of interest to students in their course." underlines that "Teachers could see the same report as the students with additional teacher information from certain parts of the questionnaire or from data related to other courses." and also assigning some importance to the presence of the administrative staff he says that they could see comparative reports showing responses from all user groups and questionnaires. This could also for example be used to identify teachers who receive excellent evaluations or courses that receive worrying evaluations. ”

Pausen nevertheless refers one weekness in these evaluation systems dispite the “NKI quality barometer” when he wrights that “they are not meant for continuous evaluation”, meaning that these types of evaluation should be used only scarcely.

In a kind of conclusion Paulsen remember that an ethical and moral challenge is present to find the right balance between transparency and privacy.

__________________

References:

[1] Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org; An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency in Online Education; in http://www.moodle.univ-ab.pt/moodle/course/view.php?id=4098#Scene_1 Visited in 26/12/09

Transparency in Cooperative Online Education by Chritian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen

Activity 1 - Annotated Bibliography
Analysis of an article

The abstract of this article shows clearly the subject, starting that
The purpose of this article is to discuss the following question: What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education? ”

One is also clarified by the authors that they are going to demonstrate their argument “that transparency is a unique feature of social networking services. ”

The text argues that transparency and social networks can be used in cooperative online education in a certain way. In fact the authors believe that social networks and transparency are fundamental to increase ability among students.


The problem identified by the authors is to find in what measure the increasing of the ability can be done and how social networks can support cooperative online learning and how can they be used to innovate and also to increase student motivation. Web2.0 tools i.e. Weblogs, social networking sites, micro-blogging, and social presence tools) can provide the means to do the work and most of all they can stimulate the creativity of the student. Moreover, one of the network characteristics is that people share, ask, give teach and exchange as the authors state.
“People can cooperate only if they know about each other and have access to some common information and services ”

Being very skilled in network (social or not) collaboration and cooperation can perfectly be used as an added value to online (cooperative) education. But foremost transparency is the biggest added value brought to online education as the authors underlinecentral characteristic of social networking is the potential to facilitate transparency between students. The basic assumption is that transparency is important to cooperative online education. ”

Transparency – what’s that?


Transparency means that you and your doings are visible to fellow students and teachers within a learning environment. ”

Following the work of the other students and even that of the teachers doesn’t mean appropriation or steeling. It is under the other way around: in online education it can mean specially a big help and a stimulus for innovation and “an idea for new ideas” as the authors suggest. As put it “The purpose of transparency is to enable students and teachers to see and follow the work of fellow students and teachers within a learning environment and in that sense to make participants available to each other as resources for their learning activities.”

Besides, for those that dislike “group work” that don’t allow individual performances and feel the need of exchanging ideas, cooperative learning is the best way to learn specially in distance education.
“A central aspect of cooperative learning is to enable students to make use of each other while at the same time maintaining individual freedom ”


Social Networking and Cooperative Learning


Since we live a communication Age it’s natural that networks become quite a must in people’s life and also for students. But communication is not necessarily collaboration and the authors of this article consider mandatory to define what and in what measure social networks are important to cooperative learning and how and in what can they be used as pedagogical tools “ Networks are loosely organized structures (Dron & Anderson 2007) in which people do not necessarily collaborate or communicate directly. However, the question is what role networks play in relation to learning (….) more questions arises: What kind of relations supports learning, and, specifically, how do networks support learning?

Morevover “ it is necessary to clarify how different kinds of social relations support learning. Thus, it is necessary to make a connection between learning and types of social relations”.


Because of that it is also necessary to clarify the difference between the concepts of “cooperative” and “collaborative” “We make a distinction between „collaborative‟ versus „cooperative‟ problem solving. Cooperative work is accomplished by the division of labour among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving. We focus on collaboration as the mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together. (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995, p. 70) ”

To collaborate means in general that there is a participation in a learning community and that there are limits for individual flexibility. The Cooperative approach put the emphasis in the encouragement of both individual flexibility and affinity to a learning community: “Another way to distinguish between the three terms is to claim that individual learning is conducted alone, collaborative learning depends on groups, and cooperative learning takes place in networks. ”

In fact, learning is considered as an active process and social relations are central to learning in a socio-cultural approach. But an individual doesn’t have to “disappear” in the community work that must be constituted as a “group of individuals”
“The objective is not community-building or collaboration but increased awareness. ”


Transparency and Cooperative Learning

“We will argue that transparency is a dominant feature of social networking”

Philosophy of cooperative learning is directly related with one of the most important aspect of social networks in wish “the starting point is the individual or personal”. In opposition to the discussion forums, an individual always own is only personal page. So Individuality is always present. And it is as an individual that one share.
“In a discussion forum you are represented by your posts only, whereas you are always “present” in a social network through your personal page. ”

Transparency is particularly relevant within cooperative learning, where students are working on related projects or assignments but are not collaborating. Within cooperative online learning a central challenge is to enable students to follow the work of their colleagues. If students are unaware of the activities of fellow students, they might not make use of each other. This problem is reinforced within online education, where students do not meet face-to-face (Paulsen, 2008). ”

Furthermore, like in a network community, collaboration and cooperation are voluntary. Requiring transparency and using social networks as an attractive pedagogical tool, in cooperative learning student share and use community and individual awareness. “Cooperation will benefit when general and personal information related to the learning and the learners is available directly or indirectly to the learning community.”

Through transparency, quality is promoted because one is always seeking for better performances and “seeing and being seen it is much more easy and stimulating”.

Transparency implies that users to a certain extent can see and be seen, but it is important to find a suitable transparency level. Transparency is also an important driver for improved quality. It has the following three positive effects on quality
  • Preventive quality improvement -We are prone to provide better quality when we know that others have access to the information and contributions we provide.
  • Constructive quality improvement - We may learn from others when we have access to their data and contributions.
  • Reactive quality improvement - We may receive feedback from others when they have access to our data and contributions. ”
Web2.0 social software alows to increase performances on online education. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, RSS, and social bookmarking become compelling tools in online education. In fact, now “users produce, share, and refine information of mutual interest and benefit for all community members”. Based in the “visibility “and “accessibility” all the productions are transparent and so shared and “cooperative”. And this cooperation can have the size that one can find appropriate. The same happens for evaluation “In cooperative learning environments, the findings and results should be reasonably transparent, and relevant information should be available to the appropriate user groups so that they can learn from the results and understand that they are members of a larger learning community. ”



Transparency: Potential for Online Education


One of the most related problems of Distance Education is the isolation of the student with all the consequences that are inherent to that.

Cooperative learning permits a conjugation of some ideal factors: A student does not have to abandon his individuality to belong, share and participate in a learning community. “This kind of sharing can provide students with insights into the workings of other students, and, thus, give them an increased consciousness and awareness of the activities of other students.”

Despite not being “new learning management systems”, Web 2.0 tools and social networks have become a pedagogical added value to on line learning. For the authors of this article, lying in “transparency and the ability to create awareness among students (…) social networking should be considered as a supplement to other tools”

In a sort of conclusion one can say these authors consider that the pedagogical potential of transparency lies within developing social networks in which students’ activities are visible to other students without denying them their individuality.
Cooperative learning and a socio-cultural approach provide a strong motive for support of transparency between student

----------------------------------------------------
References:
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• Christian Dalsgaard ,Morten Flate Paulsen; Transparency in Cooperative Online Education; International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning; Volume 10, Number 3; ISSN: 1492-3831 In http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267 Visited in 26/12/09

• Christian Dalsgaard, Social networking sites: Transparency in online education; Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N,Denmark,http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf%20%20 visited in 26/12/2009

• Morten F. Paulsen; Profiling Online Students in EDEN President’s Blog, Weblog of Alan W. Tait President of EDEN in collaboration with the Executive Committee http://www.eden-online.org/blog/2008/10/01/profiling-online-students/ visited in 26/12/2009



segunda-feira, 18 de janeiro de 2010

Médias sociaux Il y a une vie après Twitter (heu… laquelle déjà ?)

O seu a seu dono: Por lapso a autoria deste artigo não ficou devidamente identificada. Agora que a normalidade foi reposta o meu pedido de desculpas.

Teresa Rafael


Voilà c’est la rentrée, et comme à chaque rentrée je vous propose d’adopter une bonne résolution de rentrée : trouver un remplaçant à Twitter. Pourquoi cela ? Parce que ça fait bien trop longtemps que l’on en parle et que de nombreux signaux nous montrent que la roue est en train de tourner. Attention ne vous méprenez pas : Twitter est et reste un authentique phénomène de société (surtout dans les pays anglo-saxons) qui a révolutionné la façon de publier, consommer et propager de l’info (notamment grâce à sa simplicité et à la dimension quasi-temps réel).

Oui mais voilà toute les bonnes choses ont une fin et la blogosphère est en train de se chercher une nouvelle coqueluche. Pourquoi ? Parce que les médias sont ainsi fait : ils ont besoin de nouveauté et les blogs ne font pas exception, d’autant plus que les poids lourds de la blogosphère ont une organisation et un fonctionnement beaucoup plus proche d’un journal que d’un bloggeur indépendant (avec régie publicitaire et comité de rédaction). Est-ce important ce que la blogosphère pense ? Oui car qu’on le veuille ou non, la masse de blogueurs “spécialisés” dans les médias sociaux influence les agences qui à leur tour influence les annonceurs. Bref, il y a des phénomène de mode (souvenez-vous de Second Life) et elle est en train de changer.

Encore une fois je ne suis pas en train de prédire le déclin de Twitter, mais plutôt le déclin de sa couverture médiatique, un cercle vicieux qui fait que les gros blogs en parlent donc les petits blogs en parlent donc les journaux en parlent donc la TV en parle donc les gros blogs en reparlent… Oui mais là, ça commence à faire beaucoup (cf. Vers une overdose de Twitter). Pourquoi un tel raz-de-marée médiatique ? Parce que Twitter occupe une position ultra-dominante sur le créneau des outils de microblog. Ce service se caractérise par sa simplicité et son ouverture, ce que ne propose pas Facebook par exemple qui a plus fait le choix de l’agrégation sociale (mais j’aurais l’occasion de revenir là-dessus).

Bref, plutôt que de vous demander quel est l’avenir de Twitter, poser-vous plutôt la question de savoir si le microblog à de l’avenir. La réponse est oui, autant que le SMS (une technologie rudimentaire avec de très nombreuses contraintes mais dont le caractère protéiforme et la simplicité à aider les utilisateurs à se l’approprier). Plus qu’un service, Twitter est maintenant en train d’évoluer vers un standard de communication, un protocole autour duquel gravite un écosystème de services et applications. Il y a quelques années je comparais Twitter à la CB du web, maintenant je le compare plus volontiers à la ligne de commande du web (j’aurais l’occasion de revenir là-dessus). Malgré ce que l’on peut en dire, il y a un très gros potentiel derrière ce service et je rejoint l’avis de Robert Scoble : Why Twitter is underhyped and is probably worth five to 10 billion dollars.

Le problème c’est que Twitter est maintenant devenu un phénomène de masse (Twitter a-t-il atteint le point de bascule ?), surtout dans les pays anglo-saxons, et vous savez bien que là où il y a la masse, il n’y a plus le hype. Pire : la moyenne d’âge est plutôt élevé et même s’ils l’utilisent un peu, les “jeunes” préfèrent d’autres services où ils se retrouvent entre eux (Why Don’t Teens Tweet? We Asked Over 10,000 of Them).

Attendez-vous donc à un phénomène de report vers des plateformes plus intimistes : des services ouverts comme identi.ca et Jaiku Engine, ou des services hybrides comme TumblR ou Posterous. Encore une fois je ne parle pas d’un abandon de Twitter par ces utilisateurs, mais plutôt une défection de la part des adopteurs précoces et autres leaders d’opinions (cf. Comment le microblog a bouleversé les pratiques de blog) qui vont entrainer dans leur sillage d’autres utilisateurs.

Mais revenons à nos moutons : la nouvelle coqueluche de la blogosphère. Autant je suis persuadé que l’on a assez parlé de Twitter (ou pour être plus exacte : assez “sur-parlé” de Twitter), autant je constate un intérêt très marqué pour les applications mobiles de nouvelles génération : les plateformes sociales locales à la FourSquare (toujours pas disponible pour Paris) et les applications de réalité augmentée en situation de mobilité (Réalité augmentée, le nouvel eldorado des smartphones).

Le saint Graal de ce nouvel engouement ira très certainement à celui qui parviendra à marier plateforme sociale locale avec terminaux mobiles et réalité augmentée (Augmented reality gets social networking touch with Brightkite Layar). C’est en quelque sorte une plateforme sociale “squared” (façon Web²).

Publié par Fréderic Cavazza le 2 Septembre 2009 dans Analyse

Visitado em: http://www.mediassociaux.com/2009/09/02/il-y-a-une-vie-apres-twitter-heu-laquelle-deja/ em 17/01/2010

FredCavazza.net Web Squared, transition vers le web 3.0 ou nouveau paradigme ?

sábado, 9 de janeiro de 2010

Imaginative Classes in Second Life

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e-Learning e Mundos Virtuais

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Avaliação em contexto online