Hi all!
To be honest, I am still kind of overwhelmed by the amount of concurrent activities and things to do for EME6414. I am trying to check them off from the list of things to do provided by Dr Dennen i.e. creating accounts for Twitter and Blogger, go through the voice threads, read through the syllabus and stuff. Based on the schedules, I think it will be pretty intense as compared to Web Analytics because we are looking across various applications and platforms (not just Blackboard itself) to learn and discuss various ideas and concepts related to the course. However, I think it will be fun!
After going through the Web 2.0 Introduction voice thread, initially I thought it was really interesting to note that people who used Facebook for more than a year had better test scores in verbal ability, spelling and working memory as compared to those who used it for a shorter period of time. After thinking more about it and recalling what I have learned from the Learning Theories and Cognition course, it wasn't actually surprising at all. In the social media environment, there are a lot of social interactions (Constructivisim!!) going on and we learn from one another through these platforms by sharing our knowledge, experiences and ideas, which is also a form of informal learning. As we all know, most of the Facebook activities require the users to type short phrases, sentences, paragraphs or even an essay that are carefully thought through. Through these continuous interactions i.e. posting of statuses, commenting and reading how others comment or write their posts, will help to improve an individual's verbal abilities, spelling and working memory. Personally, when I post a status, reply to someone or comment on others' statuses on Facebook, I will usually read out loud to make sure that what I have typed make sense and is grammatically correct with no spelling error. It feels like I am practicing English language through writing and verbalizing the things that I wrote, in an actual near real-time conversation. Basically, we are just putting our thoughts into words and writing them out on these platforms.
At first I thought Web 2.0 is a tool and I am really glad that Dr Dennen pointed out in the voice thread that Web 2.0 is a philosophy, where users collaborate and interact with one another to create content of a particular subject. I thought Wikipedia itself has a pretty good description of what Web 2.0 is all about and here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 . Like Wikipedia itself, users are allowed to create or edit content.
I have had some blogging experience before, I kept a personal Blog for about 3 years but I stopped maintaining it because of the various changes and also restrictions due to privacy issues. This is my second Blog and I am trying to make it a bit more fun, less academic and a little bit more personal. I am just trying to play around it!
I LOVE the checklist! I usually do that on my own (create a checklist of the weekly activities), but to have a checklist already created? Yay! What a wonderful help! It is very overwhelming to see everything, but broken up into chunks (there's that theory and cognition again that you mentioned!), it makes it so much easier to work through.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned practicing your English through social media. That's really great! I hadn't thought of it that way, but when I was taking Spanish in undergrad our professor asked us to meet at coffee shops and just talk to each other in Spanish. Well, that was a great concept, but I found that we would slip up...a lot. And, since we were all first and second year foreign language students, we weren't sure if we were right or not. For example, we spoke a lot of French in my house growing up and I had a bad tendency to translate in French and not Spanish. Now, I'm wondering how many poor souls I led down the wrong path with my Franish (French/Spanish?). But, a few years ago, I started volunteering with a group that was helping people learn English in social settings. A couple of times a month, we met in the library and I had "assignments" for them that we talked about. Once, over the holidays, I asked them tell us all about their favorite holiday tradition from their home country (in English). It was a wonderfully social way to work through their lessons. That's sort of similar to you working on your English in a blog or on Facebook (although a bit more one-sided). Kudos to you for finding a new lesson in what's already a very large one! :)
P.S. Who was singing that version of The Rose? It was really beautiful!
Hi Mary, thanks for reading my blog post! Yes, the checklist is really helpful! During my high school, one of my English teacher told a group of us over coffee that in order to learn a language more effectively, the best way is to talk to people using that language and engage in conversations. haha! I am pretty sure they have been corrected along the way as they meet different people and engage in conversations using French or Spanish! It is pretty much like informal learning.
DeleteWestlife! haha they have really good voices!
This week is definitely the most confusing one, as we get started with the course and sort out why we're all here. By week 3 (if not 2), everyone starts to own their own learning processes and there are fewer prescriptive "must do" activities. The checklists get shorter. It all works out, promise :)
ReplyDeletehaha! I am still trying to figure things out here and there, reading through the guidelines over and over again just to make sure that I am doing what I am required to do.
DeleteHello Ernest! This BGM is so great :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Taehyeong! And thanks for visiting my blog too!!
DeleteThank you for the Wikipedia link, it helped me pin some developments to a timeline. I lived through these events, working with early adopter amateurs, but the developments tend to puddle together...
ReplyDeleteThank you for the Wikipedia link, it helped me pin some developments to a timeline. I lived through these events, working with early adopter amateurs, but the developments tend to puddle together...
ReplyDelete