These two weeks I have been working on my course project for another pedagogisk course in higher education and was not possible to update my thinking about open learning. Finally I can slow down, bake some rimbo rolls, drink some tea, and reflect on what I learned from topic two.

When i first read the scenario, sharing has given me a deep impression, because I have benefited a lot from the sharing of other Chinese teachers all over the world. I am in some online communities of Chinese teaching. Some of Facebook groups and some are Wechat groups (Wechat is like Whatsapp or Facebook that we use in western countries, but Wechat has more functions, from payment to booking flights, and moreover, have personal blog on Wechat.). In these groups, group members share their teaching ideas and materials, they can also ask for suggestions or solutions to teaching problem they have encourntered.

Here is an example from Wechat group. The first teacher wrote an article on her teaching method and published in her personal blog on Wechat.

This is the front page of a Facebook group I join. From the name we can already feel the atmosphere of sharing and openness. I want to explain the Chinese characters on the left hand side: 你的 我的 大家的. Those characters means yours, mine, everyone’s, so it means your resources, my resources, after we share with each other, the resources become ours. As David Wiley says, “openness is the only means of doing education, and education is a relationship of sharing between two or more people.” Through sharing, people from different background and locations can learn from each other, and new media/technology offers us a great opportunity for openness/learning/sharing, at the same time, it also enables us to be open.

However, through the discussion of PBL Group 8 by using SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) , to analyze three different online methods (blog, twitter and open course materials), we found out that there are always strengths, opportunities as well as weaknesses and threats when we use online tools.

Here my personal experience is that we should choose a network tool that suits your teaching style and teaching method is very important. Our PBL group also came up to a conclusion that online network learning requires a shift in mindset towards openness, combined with choosing the right network tool to suite your teaching context.

 

Reference

Wiley, David. Short TED-talk Open education and the future.