In my two schools PCVO Het Perspectief and College OLV Ten Doorn I encountered a number of Technology Enabled/Enhanced Learning Environments – (TELEs).
I experienced all of them as a teacher and some of the TELEs I helped implementing (Google Apps).
Here is an overview of the TELEs used:
In previous post for Wiki Task 2 I ended up with the following scheme.
You’ve worked on a number of assignments, you have been developing some kind of (digital) product … And after some days, or after having seen twelve interesting tweets on the subject, you start doubting your work of a few days before? Not that is is per se bad or entirely wrong, but there is so many information out there. Consequence of the information overload, I guess.
Anyway, in this post I wrote about some criteria for evaluating a technology learning environment. I found it important to build upon the definition of p21.org. My line of thought was that a good definition should automatically point towards the criteria.
Then I came across this (pragmatic and elaborate) list of criteria for online courses. It was actually sitting in my Diigo library for some time. Waiting for the right time to pop up. Couldn’t it have popped up a week or two earlier? :-)
http://elearning.typepad.com/thelearnedman/ID/evaluatingcourses.pdf
It is actually an extension of what I was thinking about in the previous post and diagram. So I added the more pragmatic criteria to the diagram.
In Wiki Task 1 - here and here - we looked at what Technology Enabled (Enhanced) Learning Environments (TELEs) are. The next step is to look at criteria for evaluating if and when a technology is a good TELE. Criteria are one of the most fundamental elements of making a high quality decision. Simply put, criteria are the way that you define success for a specific decision.1
Considering my definition in previous post, “Technology Learning environments are digital structures, tools, and communities where students and educators find inspiration and draw upon resources to make sense out of things, where they connect and construct meaningful solutions to problems in the 21st century.” the criteria by which TELEs can be evaluated, are/should be included in this definition.
My first post for Wiki task 1 was very fruitful. The process of getting into it was meaningful. But I am not entirely satisfied with the answer on ‘What are technology learning environments?’. It was good to write about the different terms that are in use, and the different perspectives of how people talk about learning environments. So, it brought clarity. I even added something about TELE. Koen pointed me out that this wasn’t so clear.
I investigated some further and found this interesting paper. I fully agree that an increased interest in the notion of learning environments has emerged. It explores some of the ways in which technology-based learning environments may act potentially as trojan horses and, as such, drastically alter the educational landscape. 1@zelfstudie technology enabled or enhanced learning environments. Though is also bit general term ... Should I add that in the blogpost?
— Bram Bruggeman (@brambruggeman) 11 november 2013
Wiki formative task 1 is:
What are technology learning environments? Create hyperlinked pages that outline the types, characteristics, terminology, application and uses of TEL environments.
This seemed easy at first and I started gathering resources from my network enthousiastically. I googled, collected, curated. After selection, it boiled down to the following diigo list.
https://www.diigo.com/list/brambruggeman/TEL2/2qk3yrbr4
But when I was trying to put this together in a blog post, I got more and more confused.
I struggled to putting this in a coherent blogpost. At first I thought it was simply not clear to me, but then I realised that a lot of these articles, notions, terms are being used with different and mixed interpretations and perceptions. On top of that it is not always clear if people mean ‘learning’ or ‘pedagogy’ or ‘instruction’ or even ‘education’. So, a clear notion about the use of terms is important before going any further. Take blended learning for example. Blended learning is the integrated combination of traditional learning with web-based online approaches. (Whitelock & Jelfs, 2003)