Wow, finally I have time to blog again ;-)
Todays topic is Teaching and Learning. First of all I am watching the video of Salman Khan now, so hang on a bit... or check out the video for yourself :-)
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html
... I have to say I am impressed. I absolutely agree with Khans ideas about teaching. Students being able to work on the subjects on their own pace by watching videos and doing challenges online is a great way of improving the way students are learning things. I wish this kind of teaching had existed in my school when I was a kid. I guess I wouldn't have so many leaks in my math knowledge then ;-)
Being able to ask your teacher questions about the topics you have problems with in class is a great improvement, as in normal ways of learning the teachers only have limited time to offer real help to students.
So I really agree with Salman Khan and would love to turn back time and start school again with these new teaching methods :-)
I think all these tools like Podcasts, YouTube videos, Moodle, and any other platforms are helpful to make teaching and learning more interesting. Learning new things isn't always easy stuff, especially if a student is for example only interested in one part of the whole topic but has to know all parts to pass his exam. With those tools the student might be able to learn the things better because most of the students nowadays are interested in social media and all the tools and platforms around it.
Of course, in the end everybody has to decide on their own, how they want to learn their stuff.
I for myself like to use YouTube videos to understand better the topics that were discussed in class, especially when it is a course I am not so good at ;-)
Dienstag, 5. Juni 2012
Montag, 7. Mai 2012
24.4.12 - Assignments
1. Social Network Games
Hmm write about a social network game you have already played... well here we go.
The very first social network game I played was FarmVille by Zynga on Facebook.
I was pretty new on Facebook, it was summer holidays, everyone was on vacation except me and I was bored to death :D
So I started playing FarmVille which also was pretty new as it hat started only a few months ago.
For those who don't know what it's all about:
You as the player are a farmer with a very small farm at the beginning. You have to plant and harvest crops to earn money, buy farm animals to also earn money after a period of time after collecting from them, expand your farm and become a super farmer ;-)
After playing for a few weeks it was really fun because you had enough many and you could design your farm as you like. The first few months I really enjoyed playing FarmVille on a daily basis for about an hour split over the whole day or so.
I stayed on the game for about a year but I have to say the last half of that time was more a habit that really playing.
All in all I think these sort of games can be really fun and are great to spend some time if you have nothing else to do. But it shouldn't become an obsession or something ;-)
2. What makes Games successful
http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html
In 2010 Game designer Jesse Schell talked about Games.
I don't really know what to write about it, watch it for yourself it is really worth it because Jesse Schell has really a great way of presenting stuff...
"Moooooom can I have 6 bucks so I can be a payed member?" :D
3. MMORPG
I have no experience with MMORPG, I never played any game that can be called that.
Hmm write about a social network game you have already played... well here we go.
The very first social network game I played was FarmVille by Zynga on Facebook.
I was pretty new on Facebook, it was summer holidays, everyone was on vacation except me and I was bored to death :D
So I started playing FarmVille which also was pretty new as it hat started only a few months ago.
For those who don't know what it's all about:
You as the player are a farmer with a very small farm at the beginning. You have to plant and harvest crops to earn money, buy farm animals to also earn money after a period of time after collecting from them, expand your farm and become a super farmer ;-)
After playing for a few weeks it was really fun because you had enough many and you could design your farm as you like. The first few months I really enjoyed playing FarmVille on a daily basis for about an hour split over the whole day or so.
I stayed on the game for about a year but I have to say the last half of that time was more a habit that really playing.
All in all I think these sort of games can be really fun and are great to spend some time if you have nothing else to do. But it shouldn't become an obsession or something ;-)
2. What makes Games successful
http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html
In 2010 Game designer Jesse Schell talked about Games.
I don't really know what to write about it, watch it for yourself it is really worth it because Jesse Schell has really a great way of presenting stuff...
"Moooooom can I have 6 bucks so I can be a payed member?" :D
3. MMORPG
I have no experience with MMORPG, I never played any game that can be called that.
24.4.12 - Social Gaming
Todays lesson was really fun^^
Why? Because it was about Social Gaming. In the first about 30 minutes or so of the lesson we talked about Social Network Games such as Facebook Games like e.g. CityVille, The Sims Social or Bejeweled Blitz.
Then There was Second Life, a 3D virtual world which was very popular in 2007/2008 and still is.
And there are also MMORPG (= massively multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft.
The rest of the lesson was going over to the computer room and well... playing some social games ;-)
3.4.12 - Assignments
1. Social Networking Service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service
Well as all articles in Wikipedia it is not so funny to read and makes me unbelievable tired...
To summarize the article which contains 14 chapters I can divide it in 3 main chapters.
1. The history of social networks and its development regarding emerging trends
2. The issues that come up with social networks like e.g. privacy
3. Applications, coming from the government, enterprises or schools
2. Try another Network
I hope its ok but i'd rather prefer not to become a member of another social network... I am already member in Facebook, StudiVZ (yes my account is still existing^^ but unused) and Xing (unused as well)
and I really don't want to try Google+ or any other of the existing social networks. I had accounts in some other social networks as well but I deleted all of them (e.g. Lokalisten, SchuelerVZ, mySpace).
3. Small World Experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment
Well what can I say, the Small World Experiment by Stanley Milgram is social networking in the 1960s.
That means the idea of social networking was developed long before it was as easy as today with the use of the internet.
4. Web 2.0 vs Social Media
This is the Google trends graph about the popularity change of "Web 2.0":
And this is the graph of "Social Media":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service
Well as all articles in Wikipedia it is not so funny to read and makes me unbelievable tired...
To summarize the article which contains 14 chapters I can divide it in 3 main chapters.
1. The history of social networks and its development regarding emerging trends
2. The issues that come up with social networks like e.g. privacy
3. Applications, coming from the government, enterprises or schools
2. Try another Network
I hope its ok but i'd rather prefer not to become a member of another social network... I am already member in Facebook, StudiVZ (yes my account is still existing^^ but unused) and Xing (unused as well)
and I really don't want to try Google+ or any other of the existing social networks. I had accounts in some other social networks as well but I deleted all of them (e.g. Lokalisten, SchuelerVZ, mySpace).
3. Small World Experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment
Well what can I say, the Small World Experiment by Stanley Milgram is social networking in the 1960s.
That means the idea of social networking was developed long before it was as easy as today with the use of the internet.
4. Web 2.0 vs Social Media
This is the Google trends graph about the popularity change of "Web 2.0":
And this is the graph of "Social Media":
As you can see, the graph of "Web 2.0" had its peak in 2007 and is decreasing constantly since then.
Whereas the graph of "Social Media" has been constantly rising since 2008.
3.4.12 - Social Networks
Today in class we had the topic Social Networks. I guess in todays world, most of the people know what Social Networks are... (*start irony) Thank you Facebook... (*stop irony)
At first we heard a wikipedia definition of social networks in general, I don't want to rewrite it so check it out for yourself:
At first we heard a wikipedia definition of social networks in general, I don't want to rewrite it so check it out for yourself:
As a next step we had to answer following questions:
1. Which social networks do you use?
2. How much time do you spend in each one?
3. What do you do there?
The answers to the first question wasn't really surprising, almost everyone is using Facebook.
More interesting was the answer to the second question. Most of us claimed to use Facebook only 1-2 hours a day, well I guess some might say the truth but I think a few among us didn't want to admit how many hours they really spend on Facebook, or they don't want to admit it to themselves :D
As to the last question, mostly it was posting pics or communicating with friends or relatives (especially ones who are not in Germany).
The next step in our lesson today was the popularity changes in social networks.
Do you remember studivz? Or even schuelervz? Yeeees those were the social networks BEFORE Facebook :D
As you can see, social networks have a big problem in common: it is hard to keep the users happy.
As soon as the user isn't happy anymore it is only a meaning of time till he goes over to the new trend in social networks.
I for myself was in studivz for a period of time, even after Facebook came up I still didn't just move over to Facebook (as FB for me was not so promising^^) but after most of my friends moved to Facebook I didn't really have any choices left...
The last part of the lesson was about a site called "Google Flu" which is a web site that predicts flu epidemics based on the search terms the people enter in their browser.
I thought that was very funny, as I would never search "flu" when I have a flu, but apparently lots of people do, and the predictions weren't even that far away from the truth :D
We also watched a video about how social networks predict epidemics by Nicholas Christakis:
Well thats it for this lesson. Have fun reading :)
27.3.12 - Blogs, Microblogs & Podcasts / Collaboration
FINALLY I found the time to blog about last weeks lesson :)
I know it's kinda late, as the next lesson is tomorrow, but anyways, here we go.
Well at the beginning of the lesson we heard some general knowledge about blogs, microblogs and podcasts.
Blogs are some kind of journal or diary but they are not in private but published on the WWW.
As to microblogs, the most popular one is Twitter. They are called microblogs because in the sent messages only 140 characters are possible.
And least we have podcasts. Podcasts are blogs made out of videos and audio. A significant percentage of audio podcasts are also used for getting information about a specific topic or learning.
That was the short overview about blogs and so on. As an assignment we had to find podcasts that interest us and write about our favorite one.
That was not very easy for me, as there are many topics I find interesting and i haven't listened to podcasts before :)
I must say that after looking around for about an hour I couldn't really find a podcast that I would list as my favorite. I will blog about that at a later time, when I can find anything interesting about podcasts :)
So, now we reached the next part of last weeks lesson: Collaboration
In the following I want to name the topics and write a little about them.
Group Sizes
Groups can consist of 3-20 people. 5 or less members are called primary groups and 6-20 individuals are called secondary groups.
Small groups are more like few people pairing up in teams, but their advantage is that their structure is defined faster so they can start working after only a little amount of time.
Stages of Group Development
Groups that consist of 6 or more members need to pass some stages of group development so they can start working on whatever they have to work on.
In 1965 Bruce Tuckman was the first to propose a model of group development - the "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model" - which became the most accepted model and the basis for models that were made later on.
Group Members
Basically there may form different role types in a team, but the team can control wether these roles are allowed or not in the different states the group is in.
Those role types can be for example: "der Redselige", "der Ablehnende" or "der Clown".
Hierarchy in Groups
Members of groups can often have certain roles as for example the leader. Raoul Schindler developed a theory about these roles and calls them Alpha, Gamma, Omega and Beta.
Alpha:
As the name anticipates, the Alpha is the leader of the group and is the one who wants to fulfill the goal of the group the most. In every group there is an Alpha.
Gamma:
These are other team members who support the Alpha. But Gammas are the decision makers.
Omega:
This kind of group member is not interested in the common goal of the group. It could even happen, that the Omega sympathizes with the "enemy". There is an Omega in every group.
Beta:
A Beta is the expert in the group. He knows everything about the goal. There is not always a Beta in the group.
It is interesting that the Alpha can possibly turn into an Omega and the other way round.
Teambuilding
Building teams is the first step to work together on one goal. As we reached this point of the lessen, we had some activity going on in class.
MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE
In our teams we had the goal to build the tallest freestanding structure. That sounded interesting at the beginning...and it also went on very interesting ;)
We got 20 pieces of spaghetti, a marshmallow, 1m of tape and a long piece of yarn.
The rules were that the structure had to stand without falling off and the marshmallow piece had to be on top.
The winner of the challenge, that means the group with the tallest structure, was promised the rest of the marshmallows in the bag as a prize, so our motivation was very high :)
Here is the result of our group:
I know it's kinda late, as the next lesson is tomorrow, but anyways, here we go.
Well at the beginning of the lesson we heard some general knowledge about blogs, microblogs and podcasts.
Blogs are some kind of journal or diary but they are not in private but published on the WWW.
As to microblogs, the most popular one is Twitter. They are called microblogs because in the sent messages only 140 characters are possible.
And least we have podcasts. Podcasts are blogs made out of videos and audio. A significant percentage of audio podcasts are also used for getting information about a specific topic or learning.
That was the short overview about blogs and so on. As an assignment we had to find podcasts that interest us and write about our favorite one.
That was not very easy for me, as there are many topics I find interesting and i haven't listened to podcasts before :)
I must say that after looking around for about an hour I couldn't really find a podcast that I would list as my favorite. I will blog about that at a later time, when I can find anything interesting about podcasts :)
So, now we reached the next part of last weeks lesson: Collaboration
In the following I want to name the topics and write a little about them.
Group Sizes
Groups can consist of 3-20 people. 5 or less members are called primary groups and 6-20 individuals are called secondary groups.
Small groups are more like few people pairing up in teams, but their advantage is that their structure is defined faster so they can start working after only a little amount of time.
Stages of Group Development
Groups that consist of 6 or more members need to pass some stages of group development so they can start working on whatever they have to work on.
In 1965 Bruce Tuckman was the first to propose a model of group development - the "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model" - which became the most accepted model and the basis for models that were made later on.
Group Members
Basically there may form different role types in a team, but the team can control wether these roles are allowed or not in the different states the group is in.
Those role types can be for example: "der Redselige", "der Ablehnende" or "der Clown".
Hierarchy in Groups
Members of groups can often have certain roles as for example the leader. Raoul Schindler developed a theory about these roles and calls them Alpha, Gamma, Omega and Beta.
Alpha:
As the name anticipates, the Alpha is the leader of the group and is the one who wants to fulfill the goal of the group the most. In every group there is an Alpha.
Gamma:
These are other team members who support the Alpha. But Gammas are the decision makers.
Omega:
This kind of group member is not interested in the common goal of the group. It could even happen, that the Omega sympathizes with the "enemy". There is an Omega in every group.
Beta:
A Beta is the expert in the group. He knows everything about the goal. There is not always a Beta in the group.
It is interesting that the Alpha can possibly turn into an Omega and the other way round.
Teambuilding
Building teams is the first step to work together on one goal. As we reached this point of the lessen, we had some activity going on in class.
MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE
In our teams we had the goal to build the tallest freestanding structure. That sounded interesting at the beginning...and it also went on very interesting ;)
We got 20 pieces of spaghetti, a marshmallow, 1m of tape and a long piece of yarn.
The rules were that the structure had to stand without falling off and the marshmallow piece had to be on top.
The winner of the challenge, that means the group with the tallest structure, was promised the rest of the marshmallows in the bag as a prize, so our motivation was very high :)
Here is the result of our group:
Unfortunately we didn't win, but our 47cm tall structure was second ranked :)
And all in all it was a very fun challenge and we learned how it is to work as a group especially with the pressure of time (we had 20 minutes).
As to the assignments of last weeks lesson, I will continue in the next post, this one is long enough I think. :)
Montag, 2. April 2012
27.3.12 - Assignments
Now lets go, here are the assignments we had to do, and what I want to write about them ;)
1. Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing
Forming:
This is the first stage of teams. It is all about organizing meetings, discuss who does what and information is being gathered. This is the most comfortable stage but also the one in which only little is being done.
But still the forming stage is very important as the members meet, get to know each other and make new friends.
Storming:
This is the stage where the team members have different ideas and a competition is starting. Problems to be solved, functioning together and independently and the leadership model are discussed.
This stage can either be resolved quickly and the team can grow, or the team is stuck and will never get out of this stage.
Norming:
In this stage the team manages to concentrate on the common goal even if that means that some of the individuals have to give up their own ideas and agree with the ideas of the others.
Performing:
Some teams reach this stage and can deliver a high performance on their own without the need for external supervision. The team members work as a unit and find an effective way to work without conflicts.
As for my own experience with groups, I can say that it is very important to stay motivated throughout every stage. It is very hard to work together with other team members who don't invest as much time as needed, or are not interested in working together or even working for that matter.
2. Group Dynamics
It is too early for me to identify the Alpha, Gamma, Omega and Beta in our team. Fortunately it seems that, although the theory states that there is always an Omega we have none.
That makes me think about this theory. I think it is in general like described and that it is a good way to get a group working, but I think this cannot be applied on all groups.
For example when the group members know each other before they form a group it is more likely to be different. When the members know each other, most of the time there is no Omega who opposes to the goals of the group. There can be a leader but doesn't have to be as the team members can work together like in a democracy with every member having the equal rights.
I think this theory works better in groups that don't know each other before they start working together.
3. Team Building
Well it looks like I have to write about this assignment later on as we haven't tried one of the activities mentioned in Teampedia or at the Sandstone website.
4. Creative Commons
At the moment there are 6 different types of creative commons licenses, I think their names show what they are about, in every license the name of the copied text or whatever has to be mentioned. In other licenses it is declared if the copied things can be given to third parties with the same conditions, that it cannot be edited or used for commercial stuff.
1. Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing
Forming:
This is the first stage of teams. It is all about organizing meetings, discuss who does what and information is being gathered. This is the most comfortable stage but also the one in which only little is being done.
But still the forming stage is very important as the members meet, get to know each other and make new friends.
Storming:
This is the stage where the team members have different ideas and a competition is starting. Problems to be solved, functioning together and independently and the leadership model are discussed.
This stage can either be resolved quickly and the team can grow, or the team is stuck and will never get out of this stage.
Norming:
In this stage the team manages to concentrate on the common goal even if that means that some of the individuals have to give up their own ideas and agree with the ideas of the others.
Performing:
Some teams reach this stage and can deliver a high performance on their own without the need for external supervision. The team members work as a unit and find an effective way to work without conflicts.
As for my own experience with groups, I can say that it is very important to stay motivated throughout every stage. It is very hard to work together with other team members who don't invest as much time as needed, or are not interested in working together or even working for that matter.
2. Group Dynamics
It is too early for me to identify the Alpha, Gamma, Omega and Beta in our team. Fortunately it seems that, although the theory states that there is always an Omega we have none.
That makes me think about this theory. I think it is in general like described and that it is a good way to get a group working, but I think this cannot be applied on all groups.
For example when the group members know each other before they form a group it is more likely to be different. When the members know each other, most of the time there is no Omega who opposes to the goals of the group. There can be a leader but doesn't have to be as the team members can work together like in a democracy with every member having the equal rights.
I think this theory works better in groups that don't know each other before they start working together.
3. Team Building
Well it looks like I have to write about this assignment later on as we haven't tried one of the activities mentioned in Teampedia or at the Sandstone website.
4. Creative Commons
At the moment there are 6 different types of creative commons licenses, I think their names show what they are about, in every license the name of the copied text or whatever has to be mentioned. In other licenses it is declared if the copied things can be given to third parties with the same conditions, that it cannot be edited or used for commercial stuff.
1. Namensnennung
2. Namensnennung, Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen
3. Namensnennung, keine Bearbeitung
4. Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell
5. Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen
6. Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitung
Alright, this is enough from me for today, have fun reading, I hope its not too boring :)
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