Senior citizen LOL

I discovered something new today. I mean… yes, I know… I discover something new every day. But today, I discovered something that made my heart fuzzy and my eyes watery. It was so moving that I got back up out of bed, and came back downstairs to type this blog.

I was just about to sleep, when my iPhone pinged. True, I have a bad, bad habit of always checking my email, even in bed, even at 4am. But I am glad I checked it just now. It was my aging mother… who lives on the opposite side of the globe.

My mom lives with my stepdad. My dad died when I was a freshman in college. Nowadays, my mom is often left alone in the house, as my stepdad still travels frequently, as he is super active with charitable organizations, like the Rotary Club and such. So, my mom is really lonely, really bored, and really far, far away from her two kids. Neither my brother nor I live near her. In fact, I only get to see my mom once a year, and sometimes, only every other year, as it is too expensive to fly 10,000 miles too often.

I taught my mom how to use email many years ago. It was a very difficult process, as my mom is techno phobic. Plus, she believes that she is uneducated and incapable of learning. Born during the Southeast Asian Communist Insurgence Era, my mom had a childhood of poverty and short-lived education. Despite being bright with obvious potential, being the eldest sibling, she stopped schooling at an early age in order to work and support her family of 9 siblings. Hence, till today, she staunchly believes she is uneducated and incapable of learning. And, she insists on living up to it every time I try to teach her something new!

Anyway, I did manage to teach her how to email me – a very important skill indeed, when your family is spread out over the four corners of the world.

Recently, my mom learned (all on her own), how to click on links, and be able to read and see pictures on websites, and also watch videos online. Earlier today, she had emailed me, asking how I was, and what I had been up to. You know the typical questions that moms ask to their grown adult kids… “How are you? Haven’t heard from you in a long time. What is new in your life? How’s work?”

Being the lazy I’m-too-busy-to-write daughter that I am, instead of typing up an email to reply to her, I sent her a link to a video of an online panel discussion that I had recently participated in for my research project.

It was a long panel discussion. Slightly over an hour. I figured it would keep my mom busy for an hour watching it! LOL! (Laugh Out Loud) and LOL! (Learn On Line)… Talk about killing two birds with one stone! Clever, eh? Devious, but with good intent. After all, don’t all moms want to see their precious kids do well? I know that is what I do to my kids. When my older son was in High School, the moment his high school yearbook was published, I scanned every page, hoping to see my “baby”. LOL!

Back to the reason I’m writing this blog. After all, my blog theme is:

I want to Learn On Line.

So, here’s the core of my story…. Read on…

As predicted, my mom actually sat through the entire one hour video recording of the panel discussion. Then, she proceeded to email me questions, asking me to decipher the discussion topics. She understood parts of it, but could not make head or tail of some of the references made by the panelists. I thought to myself, of course she would not understand the specific acronyms or terminologies. Even I had to do my homework before the panel discussion, to make sure I was abreast with current issues. But yet, my mom, the lady who insists that she is uneducated and incapable of learning, was suddenly sparked to want to learn about all these new topics…

My brain started to race.

I pause here to remind you, that I was still in bed, teeth all brushed and ready to sleep. But I suddenly didn’t feel sleepy anymore. I propped my head up a bit higher on my pillow, and started to type feverishly with two fat thumbs on my tiny iPhone screen, squinting with my already squinty Asian eyes, since I wasn’t wearing my contact lenses.

I re-explained the concepts from the panel discussion to my mom in “normal” English, minus the verbose words that the panelists used. I re-described the same examples, minus the  highfalutin theoretical references. And I summarized the overall objectives of the panel discussion, minus the intermittent off-topic intellectual bantering that all panel discussions tend to fall prey to.

The result? An immediate back and forth email dialog with my mom.

Now remember, my mom lives on the other side of the globe. Hence, noon to her, is midnight to me. But by that time, I was already high on adrenaline and happily answering my mom’s questions.

An important background piece of info: All my life, I have NEVER been close to my mom. We tolerate each other. Love? Yes, of course. What mom doesn’t love her kids, and vice versa. But to engage in an intellectual dialog which revolved around the topic of open online learning? Never before. At least, not by typing with fat fingers on a tiny iPhone screen at 1am in the morning from my bed… This was definitely a first.

We ended the dialog with me promising to email her more video links. She now wants to watch more videos of panel discussions, where education leaders come together to talk about the current trends of education, and specifically the current focus on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Well, I’ll be darned… I would have never guessed that my mom, the lady who believes that she is uneducated and incapable of learning, would be open about learning online, about the topic of open online learning.

So, I guess the moral of the story is:

(1) Senior citizens want to LOL (Learn On Line) too

AND

(2) The desire to understand their adult children’s lives/jobs could be a powerful motivator for elderly learners to want to learn online learning skills.

I wonder how many people take the time to find out if their parents want to LOL?

I want to Learn On Line

DO IT WELL

I love acronyms…
This is yet another one of my early-morning 5am concoctions…

Democratization Of Internet and Technology-based Worldwide Education, Learning and Literacy a.k.a. DO IT WELL

This blog was triggered by an experience I had yesterday. No, it was not entirely “new”, as I have experienced similar discomfort in my life, many times. When one has a last name that resembles certain ethnic-racial-religious individuals, who are world renowned for acts-of-crime-against-humanity, it is inevitable that one would face all sorts of difficult situations in life.

I recall my first encounter with such situations. It was 1990. A certain country was being invaded by a certain individual, whose last name happened to rhyme with my last name. Needless to say, I experienced the same immature and unfair verbal hazing “game” that I remember enduring way back in elementary school – the type of teasing you get when kids make fun of your name. Only at that point, in 1990, I was not in elementary school, the people who chastised me were not kids, and the topic was not funny.

Yes, I know, everyone gets teased about stuff like that. And we all learn to shrug these things off, and eventually laugh about it, 40+ years down the road.

Or do we?

There was a period of my career as an educator when I was traveling extensively to various countries, including underdeveloped and less-than-stable regions of the world. My passport was quite colorful, filled with entry and exit stamps from all sorts of places, containing records of my movements in all forms of languages. At the time, I thought that was cool – having such a passport. Unfortunately, I learned later, that such records worked against me, as it made it hard for me to gain access to some other countries – those that have beef with certain other countries.

This was my second wake up call. Prejudice goes beyond a namesake. I learned that even governments play the same elementary school “game”.

Then yesterday, I woke up to a message that I received in my email. It was one of those automated G+ notifications that you receive when someone +’s your name into a post. FYI, ever since I began my G+ “binge learning” experiment 8 weeks ago, I have had a steady flow of incoming push-notifications. Although I had already begun to learn how to not let the barrage of incoming email overwhelm me, this particular incoming notification was one that I was not prepared for.

It was a post from an acquaintance (or should I say online-colleague) whom I had read about in one of the many MOOCs that I had participated in the past 9 months. The content was heartfelt, sincere, and full of enthusiasm. My initial reaction was – Wow! Good for this person. What enthusiasm and sincerity this person has for lifelong-learning and self-development. I admired the passion and innocence of the post.

Then, minutes later, I received a follow up email. Someone had reacted to that initial post, and since I was on the list, I had I received a push-notification. An hour later, I received another response-post, and through the day, I saw quite a number of subsequent follow-up messages, circulating in cyberspace. Unfortunately, since I had set my email to auto-receive push-notifications, my poor work-email inbox was inundated with an avalanche that day. This would have been fine if all the posts were “appropriate”, but unfortunately, one of the push-notification emails happened to pop up on my computer screen, right at a time when I was giving a demo at work. Needless to say, it was quite uncomfortable.

You see, the “innocent” post included certain cultural religious content. Based on the language structure and message, I was able to immediately see that English Language and contextual understanding were barriers in this situation. The person posting was from another culture and totally unfamiliar with the “social norms” that dictate what (we in) the Western “developed” world consider to be academically “appropriate”. Having had extensive experience traveling to many regions of similar cultures, I knew that the “innocent” post was truly “innocent”. But I also knew that great damage and potential problems could occur if such “innocent” posts were seen out of context and/or misconstrued.

THIS is the crux of my blog today.

I know… tl:dr… too long, didn’t read.

But for those of you readers who have made it down to this point…

the point that I am trying to make here is…

I realize today, that leveling the playing field in education will take MORE than just pedagogical strategies and instructional design innovation. MOOCs, OERs, social networks, or any other online methods… NONE of this will be successful, unless we find a way to calibrate and bridge the cultural-syntax divide. Great wars have erupted from similar misconceptions. Language and literacy goes BEYOND just communicating an idea. It is amazing, incredible, and dangerous that simple things such as a person’s name, or a cultural greeting, can incite so much prejudice, or be misconstrued as a representation of opposing beliefs.

In conclusion, in my quest to “binge-learn” and “discovery learn” in this new Connectivist (Siemens, 2008) culture, I truly am now truly curious to see how this will all pan out…

and… I sincerely hope that we will DO IT WELL…

From Rookie to MOOCie

NOTE: This blog is in response to an earlier post in my G+ space, which was a response to this original article:

Early Days of Videotaped Lectures by Audrey Watters

Quote from original article:
* * *

I watched the videos of “Introduction to Statistics” alone. (Paused, rewound, and replayed.) There was no way for me to stop the lecture to ask the professor a question. There were no office hours. There were no classmates with whom I could study.

But there was the Internet. There was the Web.

Yes, even decades ago there were bulletin boards and forums and chat rooms that (conceivably) I could have turned to for assistance. (“Help! I don’t understand this question about standard deviation!”)

But I didn’t. I watched the videos alone. I struggled. I paused, rewound, and replayed. I learned alone.

* * *

I understand Audrey.

I think, perhaps, not everybody suffers the same inhibitions.

Perhaps, most people don’t.

But I know I did.

I too experienced similar feelings.

I had never participated in online discussions,

even though the technology was available.

That is…

…until I had my first-virgin MOOC experience a few months ago…

I was “awakened” in DNLE, the first MOOC that I ever took…

…and I’ve not been the same since.

* * *

NOTE: short detour to quote an online friend in the same boat who responded to my post – “At first (when I started MOOCing) it felt uncomfortable not knowing what I was doing, but now, I’m beginning to enjoy the daily little discoveries that I encounter”. Her reply – “I agree… I am completely hooked”…

Hence, the term, from Rookie to MOOCie.

* * *

FYI, I have been studying this phenomena for more than a decade now, both formally, as part of my (small & humble) research effort, as well as for my own (personal) inquiry. I believe the answer lies somewhere in between the theories of Learner Readiness (Bruner,1957), Motivation Attribution (Weiner, 1985), Human Needs (Maslow, 1943), and Affordance Theory (Gibson, 1977).

The reason we are recently seeing an increasing number of people voicing such “awakenings” is not necessarily that there has been a rise in such phenomena. These things have been happening since the initial days of Socratic Inquiry, by Socrates himself!

Instead, what we are seeing is, that the same technological advances that are enabling these “awakenings” to occur, is the same technology that is allowing us (the public in general) to be “awakened” ourselves, to be able to SEE that such phenomena exists.

MOOCs and the Connectivist culture that permeates the online world today is definitely a huge part of this hype. However, as many educationists would point out, Connectivism per se is NOT new. The publicity that it has proliferated in recent months, however, IS.

It came with a bang, with the rise of the MOOCs.

And with this publicity, came the avalanche of public blogs and posts, many of which contain personal open declarations of “awakenings”.

The “awakenings” themselves, also, are not new.
The mode and magnitude of public awareness of these “awakenings”, IS.

When I started typing this post, it began as a reply to someone’s post. But as I continued typing, I realized 3 paragraphs in to it, that my reply post had morphed into a mini thesis. (grin!) Anyway, since I was on my iPad, and since I didn’t want to lose this train of thought, I figured I’d just wing it and keep going. I told myself that I should copy paste this post into my blog website later, and that is exactly what I am doing now.

Then…

…halfway through the copy-paste process,

I heard that familiar “ding-Ding-pause-DING”.

My iPhone was the first “ding”.

My iPad, next to my iPhone, was the second slightly louder “Ding”.

And my PC desktop, with the pair of Harman-Kardon speakers that I bought at last year’s garage sale for $1, was the loudest third “DING”, which came only after a slight pause.

I always wondered why the iPhone “ding” came first, quickly followed by my iPad “Ding”, and then later the desktop “DING” — which is the only item connected by land-line Ethernet, and yet, it is the slowest DING. I knew the loudness of the DING is due to the speakers being set on high, but the speed of DING-delivery (or lack of speed)? That still baffles me. I should ask my hardware techno-savvy buddies at work.

But I digress… back to my ding-Ding-pause-DING story.

My reply post had received a +1 from someone…yay!

And a quick ding-Ding-pause-DING later, I found out that I also received a nice reply-post…. whippee!

The reply to my reply-post made my day!
The simple thrill of making someone feel enjoyment,
simply because we are stating a self-observation the way we see it,
is a wonderful experience…
…and THAT…
…is the “awakening” that Audrey (in the article), and I, and MANY others _feel_.

THAT is what never existed before the rise of the MOOC…

Some people are lucky to have mentors early in life who gave them a heads up into this Connectivist world… mentors who taught them the art of harnessing-motivation from others around you.

I consider myself lucky too, as I have recently (less than 3 months) met so many amazing people in G+, right after my first-virgin MOOC exposure, all willing to share their experiences, and to give their time and guidance, openly online. Yesterday, someone posted in my G+ space, “I would never have known that you are a (two month) rookie!” in response to a post I made about being the “new kid on the block”. To me, that was like receiving a graduation scroll!!!

And even more amazing (to me), is the fact that I realize that I am not alone, and that I am not the epitome of abnormality. Even though I consider my “awakening” to be a “late-starter”, occurring only after I have gone through more than 25 years of working as an adult, I am amazed that I have also met MANY others who are even OLDER than I am… grandma’s and grandpa’s who have now become invigorated and energized to Learn On Line (my version of “LOL“). And so, whenever I find them, I cheer them on.

So, I dedicate this blog post today, to ALL the “late-bloomers”… to all Rookies who have now become MOOCies 🙂

And I also thank ALL the people who spare their time to +1 and post replies to others. Such kindness in replying to posts, is certainly the reason why there are so many publicly known “awakenings” of recent.

May we all be generous with our +1’s and reply-posts…
…because in this Connectivist world…
…we never know who we might inspire next (wink!).

Rhizomatic Learning

Learned another new interesting thing today.

Textbox editors of “traditional” LMS’s do not automatically convert URL’s into links.

However, G+ and many other current online open platforms do.

When I first learned how to post in an LMS, I had to consciously remind myself to click on the link button to embed a hyperlink when I pasted a URL. Then, when I started using G+, I had to unlearn that step, as it was not necessary, and I didn’t want to waste time. Then, as I toggled back and forth in various MOOCs which are run on various platforms, I had to re-learn how to embed URL’s, depending on the platform I was on.

This is yet another “skill” relevant to online learning… as technology evolves, our skills evolve… but in this new world of open online learning, the rate of evolution for learning skills is not linear… Sometimes, we learn in this direction, sometimes we need to regress and move backward in the direction we came from.

Rhizomatic Learning (Cormier, 2008) … interesting, isn’t it?

Links to discussions on G+:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117219403239374562288/posts/SqTausVBNhv

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111474406259561102151/posts/7NQQvSA7ype

Discovery Learning

I spent the past half hour typing a really good blog,

and in a split second,

I lost everything.

Stupid browser crash.

.

Cliche.

Heard that.

Done that.

Nothing new.

.

My immediate reaction – screw this. Not going to retype. Too many other things to do. Blogs are a waste of time anyway. Sour grape. Just forget it.

My logical sense said – note this. Golden opportunity. Second iteration yields higher quality. Incorporate reflection, metacognition, refinement.

.

OK. Here goes nothing.

….

….

This morning I woke up at 5am.

I had a revelation.

….

WAIT A MINUTE… I just noticed something in the corner of my eye. At the bottom of the textbox editor, was a small automated text. It said, “Draft saved at 2:06:56 pm. Last edited by rozhussin on March 31, 2013 at 1:53 pm”.

OMG!

I didn’t lose my blog??

What a bonus!

OK. But where is the draft saved? This is my first blog site ever. How the heck would I know how to retrieve the auto saved draft?

OK. Going to go find it. Will come back to this paragraph in a bit.

…….

…….

OK. I’m back. Found it. Feel stupid. This stuff isn’t rocket science. It just requires diligence, and a little dose of curiosity. Anyway, I copy-pasted the auto-save version below. All is good. I learned a lot today.

….

….

Original blog:

I woke up this morning at 5am.

I had a revelation.

Nothing big. Just a sudden clarity.

I had been struggling with keeping up with my many MOOCs, blogs, G+ posts, etc. As always, my method of immersion-learning (a.k.a. “binge learning”) is often a double edged sword.

Jump in. Dive deep. Immerse. Take it all in. Bring it on. It’s the fastest way to explore all possibilities, surest route to making the most mistakes, and quickest path to learning the hard way. And that is exactly what I have been experiencing the past 3 months. A whirlwind of learning. A tornado of enlightenment.

I loved it!

My brain was alive!

But now, I was drowning in a pool of wet aftermath.

My thoughts are scattered all over the place. Some in blogs. Some in G+. Some in comments on other people’s blogs, other people’s G+ spaces, and other places I can’t even remember. It felt wonderful to share. But maybe I’m not as benevolent as I thought I am. Now, I want to retrieve those thoughts I poured out. I want to re-read my own inner revelations. But I can’t. Why?

Because for the life of me, I honestly can’t recall where the heck I typed whatever it is that I typed!

Damn it!

I wondered how other people do this. Surely there is a science to this madness? This must be a skill that people acquire. A competency for survival in this online Connectivist (Siemens, 2008) world. A competency that, obviously, I do not yet have. Someone should make a Mozilla badge for this skill!

Last night I went to bed, once again, like I had in the past 3 months, feeling totally invigorated after having read and contributed to at least a dozen dialogs online. Be it a simple +1 on G+, or a heart and gut wrenching story I typed out in a spurt of creative vomit. My brain felt alive as I was settling in under my cozy comforter.

But almost immediately after that, the sine curve switched polarity, and I was on the down slope, slipping past the zero, into the negative zone of despair. I suddenly realized that by morning, I would have totally forgotten where I had posted, who I had posted to, or how to get back to where I had posted at.

Darn it!

Why did I not know this competency? What does it take to learn this? Who can I learn it from?

How come I’ve never seen discussions online about this strand of knowledge? After all, it IS a form of “knowledge”. The ability to be autonomous yet accountable for one’s contributions to this new semantic online world.

I went to bed with a virtual grey cloud over my pillow. It poured virtual pellets of hail onto my already pounding head all night long. Needless to say, I probably didn’t get my full night’s worth of REM sleep.

Then at 5am, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, when the first ray of sun squeezed through my window blinds, I suddenly had an epiphany.

Nothing big. Just a sudden clarity.

It’s all about sequence.

It’s all about hyperlinks.

1. Self first. Post in personal blog. Pour out. Vomit thoughts. Don’t edit. Just document.
2. Then share. Copy blog URL. Share in public space. Perhaps G+, MOOC forum, whatever, wherever. If needed, overlay with explanation. Contextualize. Make it meaningful to the community space in which this shared link will “live” in. Remember to subscribe. Remember to set push notification.
3. Then wait. Let the seed germinate. If the share was meaningful in context, responses will follow. If not, then, lesson learned. Repeat steps one and two with more refined effort. Or… not. Who cares anyway? Depending on topic, maybe some posts never need responses. Rhetoric is beautiful in itself. Sometimes, silence is more powerful than noise.
4. Lastly, when that little voice comes back, days later. Trying to remember what was said before. Then, there’s the original blog to reminisce on, plus, there’s a systematic array of received notifications to reference to.

Epilogue:

This blog is my first experiment of the above method. I’m going to post this in my G+ space and a few MOOC forums/spaces. I wonder how it will turn out?

Link to discussions:

• https://plus.google.com/u/0/117219403239374562288/posts/ZxGBUKibkHb
• https://plus.google.com/u/0/117219403239374562288/posts/S8siWFxysx7
• http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=75

Link to similar reflections blog at E-Learning Provocateur :

• http://ryan2point0.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/10-hot-tips-for-moocers/#comment-4800

Link to interesting relevant comment in response to published article (see comment by stevecovello :

• http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/stanford-u-and-edx-will-jointly-build-open-source-software-to-deliver-moocs/43301

Link to discussions on “binge learning”:

• https://plus.google.com/u/0/117219403239374562288/posts/dt75NiaMnKw
• https://plus.google.com/u/0/117219403239374562288/posts/fkfqaqLXeDh
• https://plus.google.com/u/0/114911896336915116400/posts/fb9owy3GTBn

Reflection on MOOC benefits

One of the MOOCs I’m taking is the H817 by OU-UK.

Point to note – I’m simply “lurking” and “dropping-in” (refer  terminology by Phil Hill http://mfeldstein.com/emerging_student_patterns_in_moocs_graphical_view/) However, despite my minimal “participation”, I occasionally document  interesting observations and/or discussions.

This post is an example.

The navigation user-friendliness of MOOCs (and of all online courses in general) are dependent on the platform they live on. Some LMS are more intuitive, and some, can be cumbersome.

In this example, one student had voiced frustration that the MOOC platform was not user friendly for mobile device users. The nested force-linear navigation, coupled with the multi-column webpage format, makes  it tedious to reach a particular page.  As a counter measure, this student decided to find an alternative solution which would make her navigation easier.

Driven by frustration, she found a solution – a site-map page (http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/course/view.php?id=929) – which she then shared in the course blog. SHARING. This is one benefit of MOOCs.

Right after that forum message was shared, yet another student posted a different solution – a customized app ( http://alexlittle.net/blog/2013/03/12/open-education-course-offline-mobile-version/ ) – which conveniently allows students to download the entire MOOC content onto a mobile device. INNOVATION and EXPERTISE. Two more amazing benefits from MOOCs.

#h817open – Intro Blog

#H817 Open Course on Open Education by Open University UK

My reasons for taking this #H817 course:

Intro – I found out about another OU course, the OLDS MOOC, on the very last day of the MOOC, but I did manage to watch the finale convergence session video recording. At that point, I realized that I had missed out on some pretty well designed learning opportunities, so, when I heard about Martin Weller’s #H817, I jumped on the bandwagon!

Aim – I am currently working on an action research project that would benefit greatly from the potential learning that I would gain from this #H817. So, there is personal investment in my participation. I’ll probably blog more on this project as the course progresses.

Intent – For now, I plan to jump in and actively participate in this #H817. However, as I am also working full time, lurking in 3 other MOOCs, writing 2 articles,  and preparing for 3 conference presentations in the next 5 months, plus still trying to be a decent mom, so, I sincerely hope I don’t fall off the cliff halfway!

Work – My current job is as an Instructional Design Technology Specialist (IDTS) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in the United States. Much of my work involves online learning, although of late, I’ve been doing a lot of blended / hybrid / flipped instructional design. I’m a bit radical with my methods, as I did not start my career from the education side, so, I’ve never really had a box to think out of to begin with. I hope that this #H817 experimental course will add to my already unorthodox repertoire of skills.

Personal trivia – absolutely useless but potentially entertaining random information about myself:

My name is ROZ and I pronounce it like the way the flower “rose” is pronounced in English. It’s not my legal name, but I’ve had this nickname since the 80’s when I occasionally freelanced cartoons in the Malaysian chapter of MAD Magazine. I was also one of the founding members of MAAD – Malaysian Architects with American Degrees in the early 90’s.

My parents told me that I was almost born on a plane between Tokyo and KL, after which, I was soon transported to and raised in metropolitan London. Years later, my dad shipped my mom, baby brother, and I to a small sleepy town called Ipoh, where I was placed in a strict Catholic school (no, I’m not Catholic). But I ran away at 17 and found my way to New York, eventually graduating with an architecture degree from Cornell University.

Fast forward some years, I then worked in the corporate world, wandered into higher ed teaching, dove into higher ed administration, graduated again from higher ed (but this time as a post grad “ed” major), jet set all over the world, climbed the rat race ladder till I hit the ceiling, then totally crashed off the grid for 6 years. Just came out of hiding last Fall 2012, when I took my first MOOC – Designing a New Learning Environment (DNLE) from Stanford University, and have been hooked ever since 🙂

The following is a fun quiz I often give my students / trainees: