jojoo thinks

at the moment im not concerned with e-learning. i feel, i've said everything, there is to say in my bachelor thesis.

i signed up in facebook, after some years of advocacy against social networks, especially studivz.
it began when i met ehassan dariany, the founder of studivz. i continued, doing presentations in seminars in university against studivz or at least the responsible usage.

why do i use it now? well, i've met some people where i think that keeping in touch without facebook would be complicated. as jakob said he thinks about joining, i admitted that i was thining the same. he will also cover his "experi_ence/ment" in his blog (german)

i will use facebook carefully, which means that i dont use it much, that i strictly control the content which is posted there. all my activities should be on a level that i like a future employer to know.

yes, right: i don't want to "blacklist" content that would maybe make a bad impression, instead i want to produce content that will make a good impression.
does that mean my activities there will be fake and not reflect the real me? without being to philosophic and discussing the whole "identity in virtual areas" i think: it's just one facet of me, but in virtual rooms you usually dont see all facets of a person. just be aware wich of my facets is presentet at facebook.

this entry is not 100% science relevant, but it reflects my personal envolvement in web2.0 from a reflected point (i hope)  that's why i'm posting it here.

Yesterday, Holger Hünermund defended his PhD thesis about virtual learning in school and university. Congratulations!

The talk was very interesting and covered also the Media Litracy Theory of Baacke as well as the learning theory "Cognitivism". I like both. He also mentioned the eEducation Masterplan wich describes IT competences from Teachers. I should have known this earlyer when i started my exploration about attitudes of future Teachers towards e-Learning2.0. 

In the disputation later, Mr. Ernst von Kahdorf posed the question if new learning tools go side by side with a new learning culture.

(you can see this also as an addition to my last post) My point of view is that new tools have the power to promote new learning cultures. (I share my point of view with a bunch of other people for an Example with Peter Baumgartner who wrote an article about "Karriereplaner E-Portfolio –
Katalysator für eine neue Lernkultur" [Career planning Tool E-Portfolio. Catalyst for a new learning culture"])

But i also think, that some of the new tools may strengthen the old, "fear based" (quote by Ernst von Kahdorf) learning culture.

A good example for this is the comparision with wikis and schoolboards versus cms and display cases done from Beat Doebeli Honegger.
While wikis provoke participartion, cms/lms supress it. While wikis promote authority free learning, lms' and cms' incoroorate the roles in the software.

Yesterday i talked to Frank J. about moodle, wikis and what has to be changed in moodle to promote it to a platform which is acceptable for  learning "in cooperation with one another  within a shared curriculum" (Feuser) mainly in primary schools.


i'm not writing this to have the last word, but i'm writing this to fixitate our discussion because i think we have spotted some interesting issues:

Frank J. mentioned that Tag-Support is missing in Moodle and that this would make it easyer to create content for different skills. He also said, that teachers need roles (in terms of differencing between "teacher users" and "pupil users") and structures. if the structures are well planned, they will induce another kind of learning, which is what we (all) want.

My Point was, that it's already possible to do such things with wikis. I have to admit, that it's difficult to create good structures (in terms of cooperation withing a shared curriculum). The product then, won't be very different from a enhanced lms.

But it will provide more freedom for both, pupils and teachers, even if they don't use  it. My opinion is that we have a repressive school system with very much authority and rigid structures. I think that this is a problem. Establishing lms that transport theese problems to the cyberspace is not a good idea.

My consequence is, that i have to work on cool structures for wikis. A first beginning is my participation in the planning of a  (university wide) OWL (offensives wissen durch lernen, the program which employs me) Gender Wiki. Also i'm currently working on a (german) article which discribes the power and the use of wikis in paedagogic projects and in e-portfolios. More from both later here.

Jakob told me about a new research tool: Zotero screencast
Even this is quite cool, i'm still a bit... scared of the possibilitys. Also i think, that it does'nt perform well(XUL-Shit). Besides, i don't think that such a mission critical application like my reference-Tool should be in my Browser, which i use on all (maybe even malicious) sites. Think of all the Bugs...

But the second half of the video shows an interesting perspective where e-learning2.0 and my research interest kicks in *g*. I hope Zotero can (or will) support references in mediaWiki, as they are quite tricky.