20% Project Reflection 4
I stumbled upon an interesting facet of my research today, and that is adaptive hypertext and hypermedia. An interesting subject! Adaptive hypermedia can be used for a variety of different things, but it has very exciting future application for an educational setting. An adaptive hypermedia technology would be able to customize what the user sees based on their knowledge, goals, abilities, needs or even interests; it would do this by providing the hyperlinks that would be most relevant to the person using the technology—"the teaching tools 'adapt' to the learner."
One of the projects that is working with this idea is the InterBook, and it looks very promising. A paper on the subject called "Web-based education for all: a tool for development adaptive courseware" gave a ton of insight both into the project, and into the idea of adaptive hypermedia itself. The authors believe hypermedia is the best option for education, because "the hypermedia interface makes it theoretically possible for each student to find his or her own unique path through the hyperspace of learning material." They also mentioned three levels necessary to reaching the ideal adaptive hypermedia teaching tool. The first level would just be making a hypermedia-based course available that had all the necessary teaching material (explanations, definitions, examples, problems, quizzes, tests, etc.). However, they say this level is not enough on its own, because there are many inexperienced students out there who are less prepared to "cope with advanced hyperspaces" that are available on web-based applications. So, the second step is where the teacher comes in. The teacher will be able to mold generic courses to fit the needs of her classroom—and to the needs of her students—by choosing which topics to learn, and the order they should be learned in. This next part is where the adaptive part of adaptive hypermedia comes in! The authors state the goal for this technology in the third step, which is a very long quote, but I think it is important enough to put here in full: "The third step is to provide adaptive guidance mechanisms specially tailored to accommodate the current knowledge, learning goals, and information seeking tasks of that individual user. Guidance in this context addresses the problem of a users' unproductive wandering, refocusing them on their learning objectives, suggesting logical next steps to inform them about the knowledge structure of the hyperspace, or re-sequencing materials according to their demonstrated knowledge of content. In these cases, the knowledge implicit in the hypermedia is well defined and carefully structured, similar to that found in a textbook."
I found the idea of adaptive hypermedia extremely intriguing, and it made me very excited for the future of technology and education! I definitely want to mention this in my final presentation, perhaps as the next step in teaching with hypermedia, or the future of teaching with hypermedia.
One of the projects that is working with this idea is the InterBook, and it looks very promising. A paper on the subject called "Web-based education for all: a tool for development adaptive courseware" gave a ton of insight both into the project, and into the idea of adaptive hypermedia itself. The authors believe hypermedia is the best option for education, because "the hypermedia interface makes it theoretically possible for each student to find his or her own unique path through the hyperspace of learning material." They also mentioned three levels necessary to reaching the ideal adaptive hypermedia teaching tool. The first level would just be making a hypermedia-based course available that had all the necessary teaching material (explanations, definitions, examples, problems, quizzes, tests, etc.). However, they say this level is not enough on its own, because there are many inexperienced students out there who are less prepared to "cope with advanced hyperspaces" that are available on web-based applications. So, the second step is where the teacher comes in. The teacher will be able to mold generic courses to fit the needs of her classroom—and to the needs of her students—by choosing which topics to learn, and the order they should be learned in. This next part is where the adaptive part of adaptive hypermedia comes in! The authors state the goal for this technology in the third step, which is a very long quote, but I think it is important enough to put here in full: "The third step is to provide adaptive guidance mechanisms specially tailored to accommodate the current knowledge, learning goals, and information seeking tasks of that individual user. Guidance in this context addresses the problem of a users' unproductive wandering, refocusing them on their learning objectives, suggesting logical next steps to inform them about the knowledge structure of the hyperspace, or re-sequencing materials according to their demonstrated knowledge of content. In these cases, the knowledge implicit in the hypermedia is well defined and carefully structured, similar to that found in a textbook."
I found the idea of adaptive hypermedia extremely intriguing, and it made me very excited for the future of technology and education! I definitely want to mention this in my final presentation, perhaps as the next step in teaching with hypermedia, or the future of teaching with hypermedia.
Creativity and Innovation Project -- Final
We decided that BINGO was not the way to go for our lesson, and I am a little disappointed. I thought that would be a more fun way to represent our lesson - but I think the card exercise was probably more instructional. I am really disappointed in my performance though, and how I messed up my explanation of our lesson. I get really flustered when I am standing in front of people, and every thought in my head and everything I have prepared tends to fly out of my head! I feel like I let my group down in that respect, though I did help more than I thought I would be able to in the preparation of the project. So I am glad that I was able to help in that area! Overall, despite my gaffe, I think we did a good job. I think that we made a good use of our technology, but I am a little disappointed in the "fun" aspect of our lesson. I think our group dynamic was a little off, and there were some people who were doing more work than others, and that hindered us a little bit as well.
20% Project Reflection 3
I found
an amazing report that has looked into hypermedia being beneficial in
education, and in this report specifically, in teaching literature. The report
is "Hypermedia and Response-based Literature Teaching and
Learning: A Critical Review of Commercial Applications," written by Karen Swan
and Carla Meskill at the National Center for Research on Literature Teaching
and Learning, University at Albany. I have had all these great ideas concerning
the applications of hypermedia in teaching and education, and it was so
rewarding to see this report. It went over many of the possible advantages of
hypermedia in the report, including: (1) the student’s ability to learn
independently by controlling content (student-centered learning), (2) how
hypermedia supports cooperative learning, enhancing “socially mediated learning
processes,” (3) the student’s ability to learn by actively participating and
building up their knowledge database, which makes the student more likely to
internalize what they are being taught, (4) the ability to show different examples
of knowledge in a format that the student can control, so that they can move at
their own pace and in a way that makes sense to them, instead of in a linear
fashion, (5) being able to reach all the different kinds of learners, visual,
audial, and otherwise through various media, and (6), creating a stimulating,
interesting, and engaging atmosphere for students to learn. It’s nice to have
my ideas set into concrete points, and this source really helped me to do that.
I was having a hard time explaining what I was talking about, and why I believed
it could help, and this really helped me focus my thoughts on this project.
20% Project Reflection 2
While I
was researching this week, I came across a lot of articles with negative views
about technology immersion. The thing is, though, that most of these were
talking about our generation and future generations being too involved with
technology in general, and not the kind of technology immersion that I am
really talking about. But I didn’t just ignore these articles, because I wanted
to ponder what some arguments against my project might be. I wanted to see if
there were real problems with what I was suggesting and researching, and how
they could be overcome. However, I ended up concluding that these two things
weren’t really in the same ballpark. Using technology immersion in teaching and
for learning is not the same thing as immersing yourself in technology to the
exclusion of everything else. What I want to focus on is immersing a student in
a learning experience, and it just so happens that technology is the best
possible medium we could use to get this experience.
There are two types of technological immersion, transparent immersion and hypermediacy immersion. Transparent immersion is just like, if you are reading on an e-book, and you forget that you are using technology. But hypermediacy immersion is what I want to focus on—you don’t get drawn into the content because you forget about the medium, you get drawn into the content BECAUSE of the medium and all of the different things you are able to do with it. On this project, I want to be able to focus on hypermediacy immersion, and interaction with the content/subject matter through that immersion.
There are two types of technological immersion, transparent immersion and hypermediacy immersion. Transparent immersion is just like, if you are reading on an e-book, and you forget that you are using technology. But hypermediacy immersion is what I want to focus on—you don’t get drawn into the content because you forget about the medium, you get drawn into the content BECAUSE of the medium and all of the different things you are able to do with it. On this project, I want to be able to focus on hypermediacy immersion, and interaction with the content/subject matter through that immersion.
Creativity and Innovation Project -- Day 4
Our group REALLY could have used one more day in class to work on this project. We got a ton of work done today, with all of us contributing to the powerpoint through Google Docs. We got a lot done, but it would have really been nice to have another day to finish it completely. I am a little scared with this project, though. I came in to the group with them already having worked on it two days. I have been trying as hard as I can in order to catch up and also really contribute to the group, but it is hard going. I tried to get them to explain some of their ideas to me, but they would just gloss over their ideas, so I couldn't completely grasp what they wanted to do. I tried to ask a couple more times, but they just seemed irritated. They seem reluctant to assign me to do anything, and I don't really blame them, but I really want to contribute to the group, and help them out. I think I helped a lot in our last day of class in making the powerpoint, but when everyone was being assigned work to do on their own, I wasn't given anything to do. I kept asking about it, but they asked me to do something that I didn't understand (and when I tried to ask about it, they said there wasn't enough time to explain), and then they just said they would send out an email. I offered to do something that I knew I could do (make the BINGO cards) but they refused. I still haven't gotten an email, but I really want to help our group, so I tried to come up with something helpful on my own. I emailed them about an idea of creating special cards for a Go Fish type game. For example, a card might have the equation 4 x ? = 16, so the value of that card would be 4. The person who had it could ask if anyone had any 4s, and they would have to look through their own cards for an equation with the missing number 4 (but they would all be different equations, not just another 4 x ? = 16, so you have to solve different equations to get the card value). I know that I loved to play Go Fish when I was little, and I think this could be both really fun and good learning experience for kids. I haven't yet received an answer, and I just hope that this all turns out okay!
I'm sorry this is late, but I was hoping that I could get a little more information on what was going on before I posted.
I'm sorry this is late, but I was hoping that I could get a little more information on what was going on before I posted.
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