Trends

Online learning is exciting in and of itself, but new trends are even more exciting. It's very difficult for many people to think in new ways. Or at least think of old things in new ways. In psychology we have what's called "functional fixedness." Yes, a strange word, but psychologists can be strange birds. Do you remember the candle problem from psych 101? If not, look it up, I'm not doing your work for you. Functional fixedness is when we find it difficult to look at an object and find new ways to use it. A person may look at a cell phone and fail to think of how it could change. They are so used to how it is that something new doesn't occur to them. There are many examples of this and the internet is bringing on even more. For instance, the newspaper industry. The internet comes along and absolutely trashes the entire industry. What do they do when they see the internet will butt into their news territory? They take their news and put it online, for free. Ok, nothing has really changed except instead of paper it's electronic and the free part, of course. For them to compete they need to shake things up drastically and do something completely differnt. And here, I bring up Steve Jobs and Apple computer. Jobs took something that was already on the market (a cell phone) and changed it to be something different, not totally different, but different enough to be new, fresh, and exciting and makes you jump up and holler, I want one!" And indeed, millions did jump and holler. Education is at the crossroads, too. When online learning became the rage many school took their curriculum and plopped it online. Ok, it's the same stuff only it's online instead of in a classroom. To be truly revolutionary and effective online education needs to change the way it presents material. It's interesting that the online revolution in education will no doubt change all of education even the face-to-face classes. In fact. I think it already is changing face-to-face. When students and teachers) understand how much better active learning, collaboration, and a non lecture format is they will switch over. They will have to, because students will demand it. I think trends will be not only a shake-up of online learning, but a shake-up of face-to-face.

Two Weeks Down

Welcome and thanks for reading this blog post. This blog will be my record of the IM 554 course with a sprinkling of the IM 555 course. I named this blog Facenook because last week I typed Facenook instead of Facebook. I thought it was an amusing typo. The name brings to mind both a place to be and a person. This is me the person at this little nook the blog.

I am two weeks into the semester and so far, so good. I know about theories because I teach a counseling theories course, but I was surprised to find that the theories of education and learning are taken from psychology and I am very familiar with those. It seems psychology is an important part of education and business which are two topics I enjoy very much. Maybe that's why I enjoy them because both are grounded in psychological research and psychology is something I know very well. I like how the theories can be laid down as the foundation for instructional design strategies. The material to be taught will drive how it will be presented in the classroom.

I liked the asynchronous meeting we had, although the technology leaves something to be desired My mic went out about half way through and it was difficult to type all my thoughts. I thought later that if I would have exited the classroom and reentered it might have started working again. I will try that if it happens again. I would prefer the class be more progressive or not so much like a regular classroom where the teacher is in the front and students are in the audience. That teaching style is not effective in person or online. I think the time is better used in break-out sessions or round-table discussions with students solving problems or collaborating on other ways. There is a lot of education and experience in the classroom and it's a shame not to use it fully. The asynchronous discussions were good and while the theories were familiar I got new ideas from reading other student's posts and from writing my own.