Perfect E-Storm

Image accessed 3/31/12  from Dreamstime.com

The year 2004 marked a time in our nation when online learning had gained momentum and wasn't going anywhere except full speed ahead. Dr. Curtis J. Bonk described factors taking place in higher education to create a Perfect Storm, in this case a perfect E-storm, and he goes on to describe 30 of the top technologies that he believed would impact the direction and course of the storm. The storm is actually composed of 4 separate storms (Bonk, page 2):

1) Emerging Technology: dozens of innovative learning technologies to cloud the online learning landscape.

2) Enormous Learner Demand: thousands of learners enrolling in online courses at many universities around the globe.
3) Enhanced Pedagogy: a plethora of collaborative and interactive techniques to engage online learners in both synchronous and asynchronous environments
4) Erased Pedagogy: extensive cutbacks in budgets for these technologies, learners, and pedagogical ideas

All four of these storms seem to impact education today as it did in 2004. Interestingly, we can look back over the past 8 years and see which technologies have made it to the "eye of the storm". Here are a few that stand out to me:

1. Blogs: clearly blogs are being used as a means of assessment. This blog you are reading is a requirement for a course. The blog acts as a reflective journal that students write in each week. Various free blogs include: blogger.com through Google (you're looking at it); Wordpress.com; Edublogs; Our Story, Live Journal. To find out the difference between a Wiki and a Blog go here and click the "Wiki vs. Blog link.

2. Collaborative and Work Team Support Tools: There are so many Web 2.0 technologies for collaborative/group work: Wiggio, Ning, Glogster, Voicethread, and Delicious.

3. iPads, iPods, and Mobile Devices: How students access learning resources and lectures is moving to mobile devices (e.g. podcasts on iPod, using a portable iPad or smartphone to access course materials, using SMS to get alerts). Additional there are many apps for these devices that can be used to for assessment or learning activities.
4. Electronic Books: With Nook, Kindle, and apps for iPad and other tablets, there are many ways to access E-books. Even libraries are carrying books for these devices so you don't have to physically go to the library and check it out. Now you can access them on your device.
5. Digital Portfolios, or E-Portfolios, are an important means of assessment because it is a collection of a student's work from which instructors (and future employers) can gain insight into learner  progress, self-awareness, strengths, risk taking. Some E-portfolio hosting sites are: Taskstream, Wikispaces. Also here is a collection of E-Portfolio resources from UW-Stout.
6. Learning Management Systems: Some common LMSs used in higher education are BlackBoard, Vista, D2L, E-College, Angel, and more.They are great for hosting student coursework and providing a place for teachers to manage grades, access to materials, discussions, etc. There are high costs associated with purchasing LMS's for higher ed institutions, however.  Some of the open access ones like Moodle and Canvas may provide a way to combat high costs.

Bonk, Curtis J. (2004). The Perfect E-Storm: emerging technology, enormous learner demand, enhanced pedagogy, and erased budgets. The Observatory on borderless higher education. pp 1-33.

Week 2: Implementing a Blog

 After reading Robyn MacBrice and April Luehmann's research, "Classroom Blogging in the Service of Student-Centered Pedagogy: Two High School Teachers' Use of Blogs", I am inspired to start using blogs in hopes of benefiting students and their learning. I do not teach; however, I am an educational coordinator for some graduate level classes and a summer research program for undergraduates, where the undergrads work in a science lab for a summer to gain research experience. For the time being,  I am starting to consider how a blog might be useful to students in the summer research program. 

Students keep a weekly log of their lab experience: My initial thought is that since blogs are "Web-logs", or diaries, it will be a valuable resource for our undergraduates to revisit when they start applying to medical and graduate school. In 1-2 years, they might not remember much about their research experience, the names of faculty whose lectures they attended, the scientific procedures they performed, etc, but they won't have to... They can just go visit their blog, which has captured all the information they will need. To do this, I am considering having them make one post per week. In this post, they can choose to write about one of the following: 

1) briefly summarize their week's research 
2) discuss one concept or lab procedure that was useful
3) discuss a problem they ran into in the lab 
4) discuss an "aha" moment they may have had
5) share one thing that they learned that they didn't know before.

Each student will post once and comment on 2 other students' postings.


A Scribe highlights important points of each lecture: Each week, our students attend a lecture given by some of university's top researchers. At the end of the summer, the students walk away with just a piece of paper- the lecture schedule with their names. Wouldn't it be great if they could walk away with a summary of each lecture? This idea stems from what Mr. K did- he had a scribe write the highlights of each class and post it online. This would allow the students to practice scientific discourse. It would be written in the students' voices instead of an experts voice. Doing this would force them to clearly state what they learned from the lecture and do the best they can to describe things that they might not completely understand yet. After one person (the scribe) posts lecture highlights, others can post comments in order to help clarify meaning or provide additional information. I am thinking the requirement would be to:

1) highlight important points made in lecture 
2) describe important concepts
3) if there are any points or concepts that don't entirely make sense, have them describe what they do know and what doesn't make sense 
4) describe tidbits that they may have found particularly interesting. 

And again, I think having a log of these summaries might provide useful down the road when they are studying for MCAT's or applying to graduate programs.


Click here to go listen to an interview between Robyn MacBride (researcher) and Darren Kuropatwa, or Mr. K, the high school teacher using a blog in calculus and pre-calculus classes, titled, "My Classroom has Glass Walls". Approx. 1hr 18mins.

The image was obtained from Dreamstime.com on March 19, 2012.