Day 3

Today, we started off with a Vula Evaluation activity, which I found rather interesting. Instead of doing something that seems overly administrative, I was really happy about the opportunity to express some of the strengths and weaknesses about Vula. This will not only help refine our learning experience in the future but it will also help me understand some of the user experiences I need to consider with my learning design, in which I am also using an LMS.

Nicola really did set the ball rolling when discussing affordances, how do people learn and tools. I really needed this after grappling with the idea of focusing in on my LO, realising that my topic was too broad, so expect a bit of a change to the Learning Design Plan although the context is very similar. It was great to have Nicola describe the affordances by noting that authors have attempted to describe (unique attributes, features, functionality) in whihch Gibson mentions affordances as what it offers, what it provides or furnishes for good or bad. It refers to the environment and the user, implies complementarity of user and environment. “… for technology to be used effectively in any learning process it must be highly visible as a learning tool but at the same time highly invisible as a mediating technology” (John & Sutherland 2005: 408)

There was also an explanation of task and learner experience: “As designers for learning, we need to make choices about technologies in a way that takes account both of how they support the learning task (design features) andhow they will be experienced by individual learners – the different ‘possible relationships’ between task and learner they might mediate” (Beetham 2007:34). All about matching the requirements of our specific teaching and learning task with the affordances of appropriate educational technologies. This was HUGELY insightful for my design!

I loved the paper plate, scissors and straw exercise although I couldn’t make it back in time to present my ideas so felt slightly marginalised but it was fun. Nicola really did play it nicely by distinguishing that Gibson – Inherent property is utility and Norman – focus on the perceived properties of the ‘object’, its usability.

Again, what I found helpful to my design was the topic on the types of gaps in Blooms digital taxonomy. Seems to me that the main authors or researchers are Light, Calkins and Cox and they have 5 gaps mentioned and that all gaps have to succumb to accessibility.

What I did struggle with today, what trying to understand if mapping affordances is enough? It took it all out of me to consider the very real constraints or features in my learning environment such as issues in digital literacies; accessibility; funding; ownership; support; size of class; bandwidth. This completely put me into the darkness in which I was brought back to life by Cheryl and our group consultations in which we also got to hear and critique our peers designs.

It was eye opening for me to realise designing needs to start at task then context then considering what pedagogic strategies, what tool/s will be used? Considering the task questions:

I would need to make use of videos, embedded self-made instructional video on how to build an identity online using Edmdo, a LMS to host and distribute the learning material. I really could see tools such as Google Docs, Email or a LMS to work over tools like Whatsapp or Twitter as this will afford the right platform for the participants to create an ACADEMIC online identity which is very different to an online identity in a social context.

I feel I owe Cheryl a bunch of flowers after our group consultation in which she highlighted the risk of being too technology determinist and that’s a big problem I have not being a teacher, is that I look for the tech and the affordances rather than starting with context and suitable learning theories.

My contextual affordance analysis map: