Amanda ONL blog

Some 12 weeks ago the ONL course started, and the first topic was about digital literacies. I reflected on that by putting together a graph over my own digital literacies – strengths and short-comings. Now it is time to revisit that graph and see what has happened during these weeks. I thought by doing this I would have seen a marvelous development and increased skills, but it turns out it is quite the same or less than before. Why? Have I failed? Of course one have to consider that this is a subjective self-evaluation, still, why do I think that I know less,   and have fewer skills now than before? The draw-backs are seen in communication and collaboration (i.e. participating in digital networks for learning and research), career and identity management (promoting myself in digital media) and ICT literacy (i.e.to adopt, adapt and use digital tools and applications). Well, I think it is the classic case of ‘the more you learn the less you know’. You come to realize that

Designing a course is not only about creating realistic course goals and matching learning activities to those. A major part is to attract and maintain the students’ interest. There has to be something thrilling that awakens their curiosity, a bit like the Angler-fish who lurks with his light in the great depths of sea.  Excitement and curiosity are emotions that push us forward, make us explore uncharted waters, and the consideration of emotions could be useful in course designing. Research has shown that emotions affect learning through mediation of memory, attention, decision-making, motivation, self-regulation, social interaction, higher-order thinking and creativity (Park & Lim, 2019). It seems that if we could promote certain emotions, we could facilitate student engagement and learning. Özhan and Kocadere (2020) describe that positive emotions such as excitement, happiness or joy in students indicate that they are more engaged and social interactive, which in turn dec

In this blog post I would like to focus on my own Personal Learning Networks – what they look like and how they could be taken further. A network could be described as a group, of varying size, and the group members all have different characters. In real life I often tend to take the role of a team-player in groups, trying to make sure that everyone is feeling acknowledged and valuable. But when it comes to online networks, I am one of the Hattifnattarna. Hattifnattar (Hattivatti) are creatures in the tales of the Moomin trolls (by Tove Jansson), and occurs almost exclusively in groups. They are small, white ghost-like creatures that can neither speak nor hear but have very good sensibility. Hattifnattarna are constantly traveling in their boats, staring wide-eyed at the distance, hoping that their goals will manifest themselves, so that the journey finally ends, something that unfortunately never happens. During the journey they never talk to each other; it is at all questionable

In this theme we have explored the concept of openness. Open education is about the conviction that everyone should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources. It’s about sharing, producing and building knowledge together ( https://opensource.com ). Weller (2014) continues that openness comes from an altruistic viewpoint and a belief that education is of public good. Openness has become a natural part of everyday life and a lot of the open movements have come from universities, enabling sharing of knowledge (Weller, 2014). Despite those altruistic ideas, today the majority of open learners are already experienced learners, most of them with university degrees (Weller, 2014). Students are encouraged to take responsibility for their learning, to become autonomous, strategic, self-regulated and reflective learners (Fraser & Deane 1997), which favors those with experience. Furthermore, openness is only a reality for those with access

Digital literacy is not one single skill, but rather a whole bunch of them. Lucky me! They could be described in various ways and every inventory ends up with a different number of literacies (JICS, Belshaw) so it is not that obvious how to talk about them or describe them. I chose to go with the set of seven literacies described by the JICS. I mapped all literacies in a chart ranging from 0 (no skill what so ever) to 10 (complete expert) and then tried to map myself on to it all. This was quite good, because I lack confidence in my digital skills. Separating into different aspects showed me that I’m not a total lost case in all aspects, just a few, and I do have some strengths as well. As a consequence, it also became clear what I need to improve.  About me and the digital world; as a rule of thumb, I like to reveal as little about myself on the internet as possible (which could hamper the development of digital skills). For that reason, I refrain of using social media and

Hi! This is me and this is my blog! I look forward to this ONL course and to learn about new tools and new ways to use ICT in teaching and learning. So far, we've just had the introduction of the course, BUT I have already started to explore new ways of communicating - such as blogging :-) This is great!