Social Issues

From WikiEducator

< DeAnza College | CIS2 | Fall 2009

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Strategy

This section will explain who we are targeting in our presentation and how we will be persuading them to join the Wikieducator initiative.

Who is our audience?

Wikieducator provides a great amount of freedom when it comes to being able to express certain ideas and teachings to a general or targeted audience. That is why teachers and instructors would find Wikieducator to be an invaluable teaching tool.

What are OERs?

To start, let's get to know a little bit about WikiEducator and the OER foundation: -Open Educational Resources (OERs) are educational materials which are licensed in ways that provide permissions for individuals and institutions to reuse, adapt and modify the materials for their own use. (Information that can be used by the masses that is educational, licensed and certified).

-OERs are created by everyone and are okay to be shared. This feature makes OERs a free, dynamic, and pleasant environment for people to spread their ideas, creations, knowledge and experience,... or to learn those from others.

-OERs are the inspiration and the core of action of WikiEducator. For more general information about OERs and their categories of resources, please go to

What is OER?

What is the significance of Open Education and the WikiEducator Project?

-The WikiEducator community is improving access to education globally by radically expanding the availability of free learning content using a mass-collaboration model of OER development. (It is a vessel and tool for OER's)

Who is the WikiEducator community?

-WikiEducator is an international community of teachers, lecturers and trainers creating OER and sharing their experiences in using OER to improve teaching and learning around the world.

Some basic headlines about WikiEducator that will shine some light on the organization

Dr. Robin Day busy at work.

The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation was officially launched on 17 September 2009 by Dr. Robin Day, Chair of the board of Directors of the OER Foundation to coincide with Software Freedom Day. The OER Foundation is a new not-for-profit organization that will assist education institutions in New Zealand and around the world to reduce costs through open education resources. These are materials which educators are free to reuse, adapt and modify without restriction.

Yesterday, Dr Robin Day, Chair of the Board of Directors and Deputy Chief Executive of Otago Polytechnic, signed the Cape Town Open Education Declaration on behalf of the OER Foundation marking the official launch of this new entity headquartered in Dunedin, Otago. “In education, we shouldn't lead from behind”, said Dr Day. “The OER Foundation is an open collaboration and we invite all education institutions to join us in this exciting endeavour which will produce tangible returns for all involved.”

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Funds The OER Foundation To Support WikiEducator

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, award the OER Foundation $200,000 to support WikiEducator to improve content interoperability and further support for training through the Learning4Content project. As quoted by the Hewlett Foundation, "The World Wide Web presents an extraordinary opportunity for people and institutions everywhere to create, share, and use valuable educational materials. Open Educational Resources, as these free tools and content are called, can include full courses, textbooks, streaming videos, exams, software, and any other materials or techniques supporting learning. With the Hewlett Foundation's help, the field of Open Educational Resources has become a worldwide movement. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers materials from 1,800 courses online. European SchoolNet, an international partnership of more than thirty European ministries of education, brings together K-12 materials from many of its organizations. OER Commons allows teachers and professors from around the world to collaborate. Open Educational Resources are well suited to transform teaching and learning. The Education Program makes grants to continue to develop networks for sharing these free, high-quality educational materials. The Program and its grantees also work toward creating more flexible copyright and licensing systems to make more information available to the public. Additionally, the Program makes grants to organizations working on creative ways to use Open Educational Resources to improve learning, such as educational games and open textbooks. Grantees also continue to research and evaluate these methods of education.

Why choose Wikieducator?

WikiEducator was conceived as a website for educators to develop free educational content that anyone can use, modify and distribute. As the WikiEducator community has evolved, distinct uses of the site have emerged:

  * Free Content development - these are the actual content pages;
  * Planning pages for Projects developing free educational content;
  * Community Network nodes which facilitate a range of free content activities;
  * Research projects hosted on WikiEducator

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation award the OER Foundation $200 000 for WikiEducator's Learning4Content. WikiEducator is building capacity among teachers/educators to develop free content for learning, and prioritize wiki skills training in developing countries.

Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me, and I'll understand.

The Learning4Content project is inspired by this meaningful native North American proverb. We are building capacity among teachers/educators to develop free content for learning, and prioritize wiki skills training in developing countries.

Outcomes/Results
The Learning4Content project is likely the world's largest attempt to develop wiki skills for education. Launched in January 2008, by 30 June 2009 WikiEducator had facilitated 86 workshops training 3,001 educators from 113 different countries.

Testimony of an Educator

Vincent Kizza, Uganda

“I consider my coming to WikiEducator as one of the great things that have come my way...” My Name is Vincent Kizza , a science educator from Uganda, East Africa. Just before the Elearning Africa 2007 conference in Accra, Ghana, I authored an article in their online magazine entitled Towards a different ICT pedagogy for Africa, that elicited considerable reaction. Among them, was Günther, a renowned WikiEducator practitioner and science teacher based in Germany who invited me to WikiEducator. I have never looked back since then. The idea of participating in authoring open education resources appealed to me greatly and I still see it as a very crucial step in developing not only my country but also the whole of Africa at large. The work already in place was so inspiring that one could not fail to perceive the selfless and countless man hours invested in developing them. Today, I coordinate the activities on the Ugandan node and I am passionately involved in a project with Ugandan and German educators to create and develop an OER project supporting innovative physics teaching in Uganda among others. I have convened and facilitated three Learning4Content workshops in Uganda. WikiEducator is also a forum for me to keep in touch with latest elearning technologies as I keenly follow discussions on the different threads, not to mention personal development through the marvellously crafted resources such as Phil Bartle’s community development course. I now use these materials to empower my own community where I live. I find Phil's materials, handy, practical and down to earth. I could never have imagined becoming a "community organizer" without paying through the nose... and I have discovered the marvels of community governance being elected to WikiEducator Community Council. Bravo WikiEducator! What better way to pay back than devoting my entire life to WikiEducator activities!

SOCIAL ISSUES:

THE EFFECTS OF COMPUTERS ON CHILDREN

General view

Nowadays when computers are present in almost every households, it's not exaggerating to consider them as family's "extra members". Thus, whether we like it or not, sooner or later children will make contact with these 'members' while they are growing up. So with that's being the case, what would computers bring to our children and what effect would they have on children by doing so?

Well, computers affect children profoundly on many perspectives of life which are education, entertainment,early social relationship and morality. The outcomes of the relationship between children and computers go to two opposite categories, either positive or negative. Therefore, let's take a look at the effects of computers on children, both good and bad on different categories:

Positive:

1) Education:

_Computers provide great applications to help children learn vocabulary,colors, math, logical thinking, and

typing,... easier and faster than many other traditional methods such as textbooks or oral lectures.

_Computers also change the way children are being educated at school. They receive more homework and

assignments online. In many computerized classes, they have homepages to ask question or receive answers from

either friends or teachers. They also use the Internet at extra sources beside their textbooks for research.

_Children who used computers and the Internet at their early ages have the tendency to do better in class than

others who don't because basic computers skills are becoming great assets nowadays for successful learning since schools are

quickly adopting computers into their programs.

2) Entertainment:

_ A lot of computer games are very helpful to children to learn language, math, logical thinking and many other skills.

A well designed games for children can replace common teaching methods such as textbooks and lectures.

_ Most children love to play more than studying. However, they have no problem learning from playing video games because

they're usually too attracted to the games to notice that they're actually learning at the same time.

_ More educational games are being developed for children of all ages and are available at reasonable price.

3) Social relationship:

_ Computers and the Internet bring great tools and environment for children to introduce themselves and make friends online.

Web- applications such as E-mail, AIM, Facebook, and MySpace are actually well- known and vastly used among children

these days.

_ Children learn to express and accept ideas, demonstrate their talents, as well as share their knowledge and

experience to the world online with applications such as YouTube, MySpace or even Wikipedia.

_ Computers prepare children to work with people on the Internet in the future. With the dynamic growth of technology, soon enough

work environments with network interaction will become extremely common. Hence, it's necessary for children

to get familiar with computers and the Internet as soon as possible.

4) Morality:

Negative

The introduction of the computer and the internet has had a profound effect on the lives of our children. As with any new technology, this comes with both positive and negative effects. As educators, it is our duty to maximize positive and minimize the negative. Wikieducator provides numerous sources to help us with this.

Without the proper guidance, children may suffer physical, social, and psychological effects from prolonged, unmonitored computer use. Extended computer use deprives children of physical activity, increasing their risk of obesity. Furthermore, children run the same physical risks that adults do with regards to excessive computer use, namely carpal tunnel syndrome, back problems, and eye strain. Though studies on this subject using children have been limited, the findings are expected to be similar to that of the adults. Another problem is with social development. There have been concerns that excessive computers use may stunt the development of social skills and interpersonal relationships. Though the use of social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter have made these concerns largely irrelevant, children need guidance to make sure they get the proper experience. Due to the sheer amount of information available on the internet and the number of people using it, letting children use this technology unsupervised can negatively impact their psychological health. The internet gives people access to multi-user domains (MUDS), which are virtual worlds where strangers can interact together. Examples include multi-user chat rooms and multi-player games. Studies have found that extended use of MUDS can be linked to increased loneliness, depression, and may blur a child’s ability to tell reality from simulation. As video games increase in popularity, there is a risk of children being exposed to extreme violence. Some studies have linked violent video games with children being desensitized to violence, as well as increased hostility and aggression.

Despite these drawbacks, the use of technology has the potential to greatly improve our lives. The sheer wealth of information available makes the internet an invaluable source of education. Computer will continue to have large role on our society, thus increasing the importance of teaching children computer literacy. As educators, we have the power to shape the experience children receive from technology. The negative effects associated with computer use can be largely eliminated through proper supervision of computer use. Thus, it is important that educators, parents, and other adults who work with children become computer literate and understand ways to guide children to make good choices with regards to computer use. WikiEducator has the resources to aid adults with this.

                 _(to be continued)

Final Project Important Information

CIS 2 Computers and the Internet in Society FALL 2009 Final Projects Project communication, draft document sharing, revision, final submission preparation and publication.

To edit press the edit tab up top. Feel free to add and/or expand on what I have already started.

SCHEDULE

' Final Project Due Date: November 28, 2009'

November 25th 11pm: Individual section completes to collaborate work.

November 26th 11pm: Introduction and conclusion due.

November 27th 11pm: Editor’s final review and edit presentation and outline.

November 28th 11:30pm: Finalizes and submit project.

Group Members

Danielle Azevedo

Danielle Fee

Bao Ha

Kristina Kenna

Austin Lam

Yan Lei

Lida Sutachan

Alexander Town