Month: August 2021

After I read all of the assigned readings, I have learned about what a good passphrase should looks like, how government and organizations cares about privacy, what are the ethical challenges, the critical digital pedagogy and the blended learning etc. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss about the concepts that I agree and my “Aha” moment  while reading those papers.

Firstly, I was surprised to see that there are actually websites for us to use to make or manage a strong passphrase. The only time I considered about making a strong password is when the website said my password is not strong enough and I cannot create an account using weak password. However, I got my first Aha moment when I read about the possible website we can use to manage our password like KeePass or the Secure Passphrase Page which is from Uvic, and its suggesting us to make a guest account to avoid possible password leakage. I was totally impressed by the University systems phishing awareness training that Uvic provided, I think it’s a great tool for students to practice in order to avoid giving their password away to strangers. 

Then I start to read the other article about privacy named Ethical challenges of edtech, bigdata and personalized learning: twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. In here I was surprised by how government and school’s cares about students’ privacy. In the article, the author showed a data about 503 bills addressing the privacy and security of education between 2013-2017, and 90% school distinct were investigating about personalized learning. By reading these data, it gives me a clearer view of how important privacy is especially facing the trend of personalized learning. During my last course in Uvic which ended about a week ago, we mainly discussed about personal learning network (PLN) and tried to build our own PLN by using all sorts of online platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Back then, before I read this article, I did not take my passphrase or some personal information that serious, but after reading this, I realized that as the article said personalized learning software is slipping through the policy framework. While the Universities and organizations trying to make investigations about personalized learning and deal with ethical challenges, the best thing we can do is to make a strong passphrase and using the Secure passphrase page and University systems phishing awareness training to protect us. Also, my another Aha moment is when I read about the blended learning, which talks about the integration of face to face and online learning activates, and I have a strong feeling of this blended learning will be the future because sometimes online platforms could be a convenient tool and face to face can help the teachers better determine the status of their students.

After reading these two assigned readings, I have noticed terms like course structure, decentralized pathway, distributed pathway, massive open online course (MOOCs), E-learning online education, etc. Among all these terms, MOOCs is the term that interests me the most, and it was the term discussed in both the assigned readings. I first read about it in the assigned reading named Teaching online – A guide to theory research and practice. In this reading, I learned that Dave Cormier called MOOCs, and MOOCs are part of the open learning pathway. Then I learned more about MOOCs in the reading named Openness and Education, a beginner’s guide.
By reading this paper about teaching online, I also learned the difference between close and open courses and defining whether I am taking a close or open course. For example, EDCI339 started with our school website (bright space), which only opens to registered students and staff, and we can only get to EDCI339’s page by early registration, and this makes EDCI339 a close learning pathway. However, when we switch everything on social platforms like WordPress, mattermost, EDCI339 becomes an open learning pathway which means everyone with adequate facilities and refined skills to use the internet can access our class and learn.
However, I am still struggling about whether classes like EDCI339 could count as MOOCs. Firstly, I know that EDCI 339 must be a distributed pathway because there is no course center, and it is open because everyone can get into our class. Then, MOOCs talks about the massive online open course, which means course materials will be entirely online, and anyone can get access to them. So, in my conclusion, courses like EDCI339 are MOOCs courses.
By the benefits of taking MOOCs courses, I think the first one is that we can get inspiring support from the people in society who joined our course through the internet. I remembered that there was an example about MOOCs courses that talk about inspiring support. There was a boy who was participating in an online open course online, and he encouraged the online classroom by using his guitar to play a song. This reminded me about what I can do outside of the University. I sometimes get into some online open courses, but I never participate in any conversations because I thought I might not be very helpful. But after reading about this example, it reminds me that I don’t have to be correct on everything, sometimes a good chat is also inspiring. Also, if I am a teacher, I would prefer to make my class a MOOC because my students are getting new ideas from their peers; they can also be inspired by people who are participating in the course through the internet.