Building knowledge on Open Networked Learning (ONL211)
Reflections on leveraging 21st Century platforms to improve teaching and learning outcomes
I’m a Singaporean academic interested in empowering students as humane change agents as they adapt and live in the 21st Century. I see great potential in cutting edge philosophies and state of the art technology to achieve that purpose — I teach Systems Thinking to university students at Residential College 4 and am now researching asynchronous spaces for student collaboration and knowledge building.
Blog #1
In the Digital Age 21st century thinking and tools have overtaken traditional learning strategies and environments. While I research on modern technologies that can meet the demands of our present, I am also curious to know which methods will persist through time, which ones will become obsolete, and the reasons why.
Blog #2
Do you ever wonder if we’re too reliant on technology? When I was reading for my Master’s degree at Exeter University I came across ‘The Machine in the Garden’ by Leo Marx, which explored literary works featuring a pastoral ideal interrupted by the industrial revolution. Then there is H.G. Wells’ “The Machine Stops”, a dystopian short story of mankind in the throes of a tech nightmare. The film ‘The Matrix’ (1999) is yet another cautionary narrative in the same vein. I have yet to encounter, but perhaps I have not read enough, education research that warns us of the machine.
Blog #3
Scardamalia and Bereiter are known for their theory of Knowledge Building, and the 12 principles that are at its foundation. I’m currently in a Learning Community that is looking at how those principles might apply to different contexts of teaching and learning, mostly on asynchronous platforms. S&B created one such Knowledge Forum themselves— what they called CSILE. Some of my colleagues use Slack and Yellowdig as asynchronous discussion forums for their students, though CSILE is also available to us through our National Institute of Education. It’s an exciting space to research… one of the qualities that I like, and that is working also at ONL211, is the ability to collaborate easily beyond the confines of time and space that demarcate the physical classroom.
“Knowledge Building may be defined as the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a community, through means that increase the likelihood that what the community accomplishes will be greater than the sum of individual contributions and part of broader cultural efforts.”
Scardamalia and Bereiter (2003, p. 1371)
Latest from the Blog
What I am learning @ONL211
The Topic 5 Blog: Lessons learnt – future practice
This is the meme that my group, PBL5, created for the final artefact of Topic 5. And what a swim it has been. What I liked best about this journey was the community that we built. Meeting up twice a week certainly helped, as well as having like-minded team members who were experimental and adventurous…
The Topic 4 Blog: Design for online and blended learning
I’ve come across Marti Cleveland-Innes’ ‘Community of Inquiry’ model before in thinking of how students connect with each other on learning platforms — particularly where I am trying to develop knowledge building communities (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 2006). These two weeks the topic was aligned to how online learning is effectively designed, and Cleveland-Innes delivered a…
Lynette@ONL211 