Open education, problem based learning, life long learning

Last week was the Open Education Conference here at USU. It was a good conference, and I learned about many different areas that open education is focusing on right now. (I know I should have written about this last week, but I must refer you to my most recent post on brain function and say I am feeling more together this week than I was last week). It was great to listen about open education resources, localization, grant funding from the Mellon Foundation, and to meet many different people. Since the last three weeks of one of my classes has focused on open education, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. There are so many places this area can take you. I enjoy the access to resources, whether that's through the computer or other means, being able to reach information is so critical. But just as important as the information you can get is how you learn to use it and apply it in your own life. This takes me back to basic principles of learning.

I have also been learning about problem based learning and find it fascinating. I still have so much to learn, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to be working with Dr. Andrew Walker on it. It falls into line with my interests in constructivism and life long learning. Which takes me to life long learning, how can this concept be taught so that the open educational resources can be used more fully? Right now I don't have an answer to that question. My program of school will certainly help me know how to answer it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clarifying face to face class meeting

I need to clarify what I had written in a previous post . David had made a comment to me that my question showed, "a pretty pervasive bias toward knowing "like we do offline", and that knowing should always be like that. I think we should recognize the legitimacy of completely online relationships...". After reading his comment I realized that I had not written or conveyed in my writing very well what I was really thinking. I do that so much. So, I am trying to redeem myself in some ways because I love online learning and interactions, and I guess I don't want people who read my blog to think that I believe online interactions and learning should be like face-to-face. I realize it is different, and I actually appreciate the difference. In my personal experience with online vs. face-to-face I have noticed though that the online relationship changes some once you've met face-to-face. That change usually isn't bad. So back to my original post about the ...
Read more

Moo Y'all

I have mixed feelings about this weeks assignment. I really enjoyed the time I spent in Zork playing. I remember my older brothers playing games like this when I was younder. I would watch them type in commands and then map out on paper where they were. It was fascinating. The hours of playing in Zork were fun. I found that for that sort of game I loved to explore the world and try to map out where I had been, like I had seen my brothers do. I found it hard to navigate the game without mapping. LambdaMoo was a different story. I never had problems connecting with the server, but I had problems once inside the world. It took me quite a bit of time to grasp the commands. In the mean time the other people in the rooms with me laughed at me, jeered. At one time someone had mentioned that they were new (like me) and that they were a student. Someone who obviously was well known to the world said, "No one is holding class here. We're a small community that really resents untrain...
Read more

Open Ed - Week 2

The reading this week Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources brought out some good points for me. This is certainly something I'm going to need to read a couple of times to pull out all the useful information for myself and my work. The first point that caught my eye said, "OER projects can expand access to learning for everyone, but most of all for non-traditional groups of students, and thus widen participation in higher education. They can be an efficient way of promoting lifelong learning, both for individuals and for government, and can bridge the gap between non-formal, informal, and formal learning." I hadn't really thought of OER's doing all of that. Of course I knew that an OER is great for expanding dissemination of a resource and/or the information in that resource, but the lifelong learning point hits home to me since that area of research interests me and fits right into an idea I am researching at this moment, problem...
Read more