Learning Management Systems (LMS)/(CMS) vs. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).

This post is dedicated to LMS and PLE. I have watched the video posted (LMS vs PLE) as a source for general information about these two topics and explored a little bit in Edmondo.


Well, first of all, it is very important to structure your own understanding of any learning system and basically to have definitions which are understandable for everyone. So I can call myself now one integrated into the family people who distinguish LMS and PLE.

The video itself was just great as it gave me very quick and manageable definition of these two items. Although in my personal opinion it is impossible to stay away from any Learning Management Systems nowadays. However, knowing that centralized and decentralized systems exist is important, to be able to choose where you want to belong to. However, I believe we all started with LMS, then maybe at some point turned to Personal Learning Environment. But this is also arguable, as a learner cannot be totally out of any society and even a facebook link can lead him to at least one Learning Management system and here you are, involved in LMS.

With all the opportunities that we are provided today, with all the technology and available sources we really do not need to go somewhere to learn something. We just open the browser and find whatever information we need. So, I personally think that even if you are not enrolled in any LMS such as Moodle or any discussion forum, or anything else, you will still any information you need online.

Explore some information about the topic following these links:

articles on LMS
some more

Distance learning: Student self management and motivation

In both articles by Cynthia White Distance or E-learning has been discussed and the information was really useful. The main finding for me was that Distance Learning field has already been researched and actually is still being researched as something arguable and contrasting with the traditional teaching methods. However, most of the ideas explored in the articles I share and I wanted to point out some important ideas I noticed.

As it is mentioned in the articles, the role of the teacher changes in the terms of Distance Learning. Teachers' role is different from their colleagues who are working in a class. First of all most of teachers involved in Distance Learning work part time and at some point their role can be undervalued by the learners. Secondly not all the teachers even experienced ones can be teaching on distance. Specific skills are required for it and they must be trained before involvement in such a project.
Third, most of the people usually acquire foreign language in a face-to face interaction, learning in groups and getting immediate and ongoing feedback from their peers and teachers. Thus the role of distance teacher is huge and small at the same time. concrete techniques should be applied to get some kind of authority, control and be able to give feedback to the learners. And finally, most of the teacher in distance learning projects are not involved in the course development which itself decreases their involvement in the course.

Below are several points that the teachers should take into consideration. These are that Cynthia White et al. pointed out.

Professional Skills and Responsibilities of distance teaching tutors as per Cynthia White, et al. 

• Know the course materials well
• Keep up with the administration
• Receive and respond appropriately to students’ feedback on all aspects of
tuition
• Advise students on what they can do locally to improve their learning
experience
• Help/facilitate/inform about self-directed learning
• Judge when to refer a problem on to other support services
• Mediate between ‘powers-that-be’ and students
• Get students to review their ways of learning as appropriate
• Be aware of different learning styles

According to Cynthia White the ability of each learner to identify, participate in and manage learning experiences, which match their individual learning needs, is essential to fully benefit from the opportunities available in distance learning. In my view it is the development and exercise of this ability, the hallmark of learner participation in independent language learning environments, which may be supported by, but not always directly mediated by, language teachers. "In particular learners need to develop awareness of what it means to be a distance language learner and what is required of them (their identity), and what is available to them within the wider learning context (the context of delivery) as they seek to adjust to a new learning environment". (Cynthia J White, 2004)

I would also draw attention to the maxims that are highlighted by the author which I consider important:

1. Maxim of empowerment: teachers in distance learning should encourage the learners to ensure them that they will learn the material.
2. Maxim of appropriateness: learners should get appropriate help with grammar.
3. Maxim of honesty: teachers should build supportive relations with the learners.
4. Maxim of openness: learners should feel that they can approach their teacher anytime.

In any case, I truly believe and the experience of work also shows that the learners in distance learning should be highly motivated to learn. Especially in case of free courses the level of responsibility decreases in case if the learners don't understand why they are taking this or that course, or when they are just assigned by the manager or encouraged by friends. The role of self-motivation and self management is absolutely important in distance learning.

The author has mentioned 4 main factors that can be affecting the process of distance learning:
1. Immediate demand of the course: the learners are in an isolated study context and self-motivation is rather important.
2. Teacher is remote: this may lead to not appropriate or not enough feedback to the learners.
3. Awareness on the part of learners: The learners should clearly understand what they are doing and why, and be confident in the necessity of the course for their development or growth.
4. New technology boarders: learners may face problems with all the opportunities that distance learning provides, and simply get lost in the technologies. This may burden their learning process.
5. Independent learning: the distance learnign course should be designed and constructed to have maximum learner-context interface. Not to mislead or confuse the learners everything should be clear to the learner, tutorials or documentation guides should be available to guide the learners through

the course.

Nowadays, when we cannot imagine our life with new technologies we also get thousands of opportunities to learn new languages, professions, get new skills. However, it is learners choice if they want to develop themselves or not. Our role as teachers in my view is to encourage our students, friends, acquaintances to benefit from the new technologies and get as much as we can whether it is related to their professional growth, language learning, etc. Even if we feel the interest towards a certain course from the learner but we also see hesitation on whether to take it or not, we should do our best to encourage them to go for it. As it is never late to learn, the things is to clearly define what is useful for us at this or another point of our lives.

Open Educational Resources

As Gerry Bayne, EDUCAUSE Blogger states in his blog, The availability of and interest in open educational resources (OER) haveincreased dramatically over the past decade. 

The increased availability of OER raises questions about the effect they are having on student learning and about models and policies for sustaining current efforts. The Internet has also fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs. The most visible impact of the Internet on education to date has been the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has provided free access to a wide range of courses and other educational materials to anyone who wants to use them. The movement began in 2001 when the William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which today provides open access to undergraduate and graduate-level materials and modules from more than 1,700 courses (covering virtually all of MIT’s curriculum). 


What do we mean by “social learning”? As stated in the article by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding
The article Minds on Fire, states that there is this Cartesian perspective,  which assumes that knowledge is a kind
This can become a living or dynamic infrastructure—itself a reflective practicum. An example of such a practicum is
I will totally agree, that tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation (e.g., creating, re-mixing)
All the above mentioned is a piece of information I found important for myself, that's why i included it in my blog post, and I will get back to it from time to time to reinforce learned information. In my opinion, and as it is stated in the above mentioned article, technologies and open resources are of huge importance in our life. However, I assume that all the technologies should be used with a great understanding of why they are used in TEFL classroom, and what we want to receive from our students. Teacher should prepare perfectly before implementing them into the classroom, develop tools for moderating and at the same time control, as well as motivating the students. Otherwise the resources can be used in a way, which will not benefit the learning process and will only grab time from the students learning timeframe. 

of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions,
especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning. 
I can remember the times when i was fulfilling my first degree we often times used to work together on our homework assignments  as it was easier for us to understand what is expected from us. Although we have never been assigned group projects, doing homework or working on lectures was more useful and motivating. Also it was fun as we spent time with peers and were not ashamed to ask questions which we couldn't ask the lecturer. 

of substance and that pedagogy concerns the best way to transfer this substance from teachers to students. By  contrast, instead of starting from the Cartesian premise of “I think, therefore I am,” and from the assumption that knowledge is something that is transferred to the student via various pedagogical strategies, the social view of learning
says, “We participate, therefore we are.” We need to construct shared, distributed, reflective practicums in which experiences are collected, vetted, clustered, commented on, and tried out in new contexts. One might call this “learning about learning,” a bootstrapping operation in which educators, along with students, are learning among and between themselves.

the online Teaching and Learning Commons (http://commons.carnegie foundation.org/) launched earlier this
year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The Commons is essentially an open version
of the Foundation’s Gallery of Teaching and Learning (http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/), which has been operating for the past nine years. The Gallery provides an online showcase for case studies of successful teaching and learning projects that have been supported by the Foundation, along with a set of web-based tools (the KEEP Toolkit) for creating these case studies (http://www.cfkeep.org). The Commons is an open forum where instructors at all levels (and from around the world) can post their own examples and can participate in an ongoing conversation about effective
teaching practices, as a means of supporting a process of “creating/using/re-mixing (or creating/sharing/using).”

over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs (often written in a less technical, public
vernacular) rather than traditional publication, and that facilitates innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings that often form the basis of a situated understanding emerging from action, not passivity.
We now need a new approach to learning—one characterized by a demandpull rather than the traditional supply-push
mode of building up an inventory of knowledge in students’ heads. Demandpull learning shifts the focus to enabling
participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on “learning to be” through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning. The demand-pull approach is based on providing students with access to rich (sometimes virtual) learning communities built around a practice. It is passion-based learning, motivated by the student either wanting to become a member of a particular community of practice or just wanting to learn about, make, or perform something.

However, reading such articles give me a path to think and develop some procedures and my own technologies for future career as a teacher. 

MALL in TEFL

Nowadays it is simply impossible to imagine our life without mobile phones and smartphones. The smartphones are used not only for calling, but also for exploring internet, using social network, blogging, and in some cases for language learning. For me personally it is not crucial and cristal clear why we, teachers should use the usage of smartphones and mobile phones in the learning process. However, it is obvious that in order to follow the modern technologies and motivate our students wee need to use the technology. Well, in my mind the mobiles and smartphones can be used first of all for listening comprehension. They can be used in order to assign the students to listen to or watch some tv programs, podcast, radio, all the the target language. This will develop the students abilities to understand the speakers who speak the target language as a mother tongue.  

Students can also use their smartphones or mobile phones to record themselves or their conversations outside the classroom for further discussion with the teacher for example. 

However, i personally think that use of smartphones especially with the presence of internet connection in the classroom will easily draw the students' attention to anything else except the lesson. Thus it is necessary to use the modern technologies in a very limited amount and under direct supervision of the teacher. IT is not easy to do, however, the teacher must be perfectly prepared for the lesson, including strict and clear instructions for the students when using such technologies, the step-by-step lesson plan and available feedback options.  

And the most important thing is to limit the use of mobile phones or smartphones to adults, and try not to implement them in a classroom with teenagers or children. Firstly because these groups are more difficult to control or moderate during the class and its quite easy to loose their attention during the class.