Task 10: Applying activity theory into practice

Components of “PLENK2010” course

Set up

Like mentioned in their website the course idea is to learn not from theory but from the activities one will complete, which different among individuals. The tasks involve activities around all web by creating one’s own web pages or going through some others.

There is used a daily newsletter “The Daily” which give an overview of activities needed to be done and highlight most important topics other course members have pointed out. This load of information eases participants to make choices among the topics of their interest and focus on exploring these ideas.

The course has facilitators who work as coordinators of the project by sharing content posted by the participants and adding something extra.

Interactions

Weekly activities involve:

- Daily newsletter, which will have reflections of students blogs, twitter tweeds and discussions in moodle.

- Course wiki can be edited by the participants

- Moodle discussion forum with other participants of the course and response by course faciliators

- On Sunday readings and resources will be posted to the wiki

- Wednesdays Elluminate session, usually with a guess speaker

- Fridays Elluminate session, as a week review with course faciliators

“This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.”

The subjects of the course post have been related to different topics:

- Online participation

- Personal learning environments

- Learning theories

- Evaluating learning

- Personal knowledge management

Subjects

Every person is free to join the courses.

Rules

Each of the content has to have source. But the ideas is taking the existing content any trying to add your own “flavours” and thought to it. The content is not important but the idea is to use online tools and learn from practicing with them. The facilitators of the course will give examples of how to use the tools and participants will learn from these posts to make their own.

The participants are suggested to keep documentation about the content they have gone trough. Most probably the best way is to share it online that the other participants could see and learn from it but one could also work without sharing.

Participants can join in or dismiss themselves from the course when every they feel like.

Instruments

There are given few ways to the participants to share their content:

- Make a blog in either blogger, wordpress platform or any other blogging service.

- Create account in del.icio.us for making bookmarks on the things you have read.

- Participate in Moodle discussions and make posts about the accessed content.

- Tweet with Twitter

- Also one can share the content within any other envoronment: Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube

For sharing there should be used a webtag called: “#PLENK2010”

Components of NIE course

As we all are very familiar with the NIE course I will just make a short review about it according to activity theory.

Instruments

During the course one could have used only the course Flashmeeting tool, course blog to get the assignments and pdf readers to read articles. A blog account is also needed to post the assignments and get feedback.

The other tools depend on the participants. Some they may have used Skype to communicate with course mates, Pirate pad for one not mandatory assignment, RSS to get the assignments to e-mails and UML software to create diagrams.

Rules

Tasks will be published in NIE course blog and participants should check the site in regular basics.

Mostly tasks are carried out each week with a deadline. Each will have 10 points wich means there will be 10 tasks all together. Every 24hours that the task is posted after the deadline will give 2 points less. Early tasks would give the participants a chance to get a personal feedback. The course is a pass or fail. 70% of the points should be collected to pass the course.

Subject

Students of TLU make the most of the course participants.

Interactions

Depends on the assignments but mostly there needs to be written blog posts about the read articles.

Comparison of NIE and PLENK2010 courses

In PLENK2010 there are used more tools to get the participants involved to the course and share each other’s work. Especially the Moodle that has option to have discussions with each other helps to get to know topics more in dept. In NIE we mostly use our blogs to post the assignments and that is it.

With PLENK 2010 the schedule and the assignments are clearly pointed out. NIE program and assignments are not know much in advance which makes it hard to organize our time and get most out of topics.

It seems to me that almost no possibility of the physical contact of lecturer and student makes learning of course much harder. Both of the parties my understand the tasks differently so the outcome may vary a lot.