Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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A critical analysis of Hamilton, E., and Friesen, N. (2013)
One of the key aspects Hamilton and Friesen (2013) argue is that studies into the potential of technologies, and the pedagogical value of these, are limited by the approach often used in the conduct of the research. This echoes studies by McDougall & Jones, 2006 and Roblyer, 2005, that research into this area has “struggled…
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Skype chat – a reflection
Today I hit a bit of a dip. I’m sure it happens to most participants at some stage, but all of a sudden the reality of what I’ve got myself into dawned on me. After struggling but persevering through the readings from week 2 (some of them I found more accessible than others, namely the Gert…
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The automated teaching assistant aka ‘teacherbot’
The developing potential in it was clear to see in Sian Bayne’s paper (Bayne S. (2015) Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching. Teaching in Higher Education. 20(4):455-467) on the ‘teacherbot’ developed by a team at the University of Edinburgh, and used in an earlier MOOC. The twitterbot examples we’d found as a collective were by their very nature…
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@the_ephemerides
Having come towards the end of week 2, it’s been interesting to see what twitterbots have been highlighted by the other course participants. Forgetting the bots that simply provide alerts on new events or information for now, it’s evident there’s a real richness in some of them. My own particular favourite is @the_ephemerides. Harking back…
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Twitterbots – something more than just scale
I’ve got to admit, I’d always assumed twitterbots were just the platform’s version of spam. I’ve used twitter fairly regularly over the past 2-3 years so, while no expert, would assume I’m one of their more savvy users. Sure, I’d had the occasional tweet from a ‘bimbot’, but assumed bots were being used for little…
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Week 1 takeaways
So week 1 is already over! Wow that went quick. The case studies on ‘constructing community’ have provoked some real food for thought, particularly given the polarised situations in the examples. A few key points and thoughts from the first week: Whether the student environment is online or offline, the complexity of community doesn’t really…
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Feeling swamped – MOOC perspectives
We’ve been posed some very interesting scenarios this week on the topic of ‘constructing community’, and it’s been fascinating to read the different takes from fellow students on these on the forums. I was particularly intrigued by some of the points raised about the sense of feeling ‘swamped’ in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)…
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Constructing community and the workplace
Week 1 on the IDEL course is all about ‘constructing community’. Naturally the discussions around this will help us forge our own community as part of the course. This is one of the key reasons why I embarked on the MSc, it’s very much ‘learning by doing’. I think one of the key things to…
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Week 0 – quick thoughts
I imagine it’s a rarity to have a blog post summarises key thoughts when the course hasn’t actually started, but best to start as I mean to go on… There’s an awful lot of learning environments, both within the Uni of Edinburgh circles and outside of this (e.g. Minecraft) that are going to be used…
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“The ledger”
So we aren’t even at week 1 of the IDEL course, and the University of Edinburgh team are already serving up some real food for thought. We were given some links to video content to peruse – I’m guessing as a way of getting the juices flowing and priming us for some of the content…
Got any book recommendations?