Educational blogging

Stephen refutes blogging being stereotyped as personal comments and observation by describing origin of blogging. I was surprise to find out that 9/11 was one of the turning point for blogging history. 9/11 event influenced many people's life and they used blogging to personalize this event.

Example of Harvard student Derek Slater's blog and lawsuit following the content of his blog, brings out a very good point. Where does the freedom of speech cross the line of defamation?

How do we get away from obligatory blogging from students and engage students to have "passionate" conversations and discussions? What is the teacher's learning objective for students where learning environment is set in blogging? Some topics or subjects are not suitable for blogging. Just because you have the learning tool, doesn't mean you are required to use it. Or instructors/teachers should use it creatively. I can't image students having a blog about derivatives.

Is blogging a delivery of learning content or a medium for discovering learning process? Both

Stephen's Educational blogging article was informative and engaging, and echoed questions.

Connectivism

I had difficult time reading this article. I have tried five times. I thought it was the size of the font so I got the word document printed. However I still had problem reading this article. So I skimmed through it. George Siemen attempts to answer Verhagen's criticisms about Siemen's earlier article. I was expecting Sieman's response to following questions and still puzzled. I am giving another try and we'll see if I understand it.

21st century learning skills

This article seems very optimistic about current school system especially about the No Child Left Behind Act. I had only heard negative things about the Act. I heard that teachers are planning curriculum around the test and administrators focus on high test scores. Schools are rated on test scores. Article stated that there is a financial constraints in current school system and that will "subside", however I am doubtful. I went to read more about No Child Left Behind Act's ICT Literacy http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.435c0b5cc7bd0ae7015d9510c3921509/?vgnextoid=b8a246f1674f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD
because the article mentioned ICT Literacy and how the act requires students to be proficient in ICT Literacy by the eighth grade. Also what I heard about the Act and the tone of this article was very different.

I do agree with the point about teaching context that are relevant to student's life, bringing global issues and working in a group setting with real life situational projects.

This article have some important points about learning methods and changes required to meet the changes in working environment for 21st century but I think it was written by people who supported No Child Left Behind Act.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is social network supported by internet technology and driven by users with common interest. Users actively contribute and create dynamic content for discussions or exchange ideas. Users share their idea through rich mediums of audio, video, photos, images, and text. That’s all I know about Web 2.0 and by the way this is my second blog.

I expect to learn more about Web 2.0 from this class.