Reflective Post #2

Massive Open Online Courses & BYOD initiatives

MOOCs is for Massive Open Online Courses in which are defined by Wikipedia as “an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web”.  MOOCs provide “interactive user forums to support community interactions between students, professors, and teaching assistants”.  MOOCs were first introduced in 2008.

The article “Will the future of Education be Online, Open and Massive?” discusses MOOCs as well.  In this article, MOOCs are defined as “forms of online learning that offer high quality education that is free and open to the public”.  It also talks about why they were developed and different providers such as Udacity, Coursera, and edX.  The article talks about the benefits of the education which include possible cost reductions.  However, they also talk about drawbacks.  These include no proven business model along with if you have to pay for it, would it still be considered open.  Other drawbacks include, possibility of cheating, grading, and the way universities partner will share revenue streams with professors who develop and teach the classes.  The article goes on to say that it isn’t sure if MOOCs will actually show progress in how the students are learning.  I feel that, as I will explain later, MOOCs will not be the future of all education.

            The second article and video pertaining to BYOD, Bring Your Own device, is defined by Wikipedia as “the policy of permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smart phones) to their workplace and to use those devices to access privileged company information and applications”.  Wikipedia shows certain companies believe that brining your own device can help the employees be more productive and others say “it increases employee morale and convenience by using their own devises and makes the company look like a flexible and attractive employer”.  Wikipedia also mentions disadvantages of being able to bring your own device to work.  Some disadvantages include ensuring information does not end up in the wrong hands, security risk and serious violations of personal mobile devise use.  By companies who utilize BYOD, they can develop a policy that outlines exactly what information needs to be protected and what employees will have access to.

            The article “Technology in Education: BYOD & Equitable Access” also talks about BYOD.  This article talks about the use of students bringing in their own devices to school.  With this in place, the article talks about cost-effectiveness opportunities to integrate technology into the curriculum.  Students bringing in their own devices helps eliminate cost from the school because the school is not having to purchase the devises.  However, the school will need to make sure it doesn’t lead to a digital divide between those students that have access to devises and those that do not.  The school I teach at has implemented a BYOD policy into effect.  The students and parents sign a BYOD contract that explains and outlines the guidelines.  With the policy in place, I have noticed many teachers using “Green Zones” for where technology of their own is allowed and I have also noticed a few “Red Zones”.  These zones depend on the teacher and the grade level as well.  With our BYOD policy, the students that have devises and bring them to school are not required to only use those certain devices which helps eliminate the “haves” and “have-not’s”.  The school also has other technology devises available for those that do not have a device of their own.

After reading the articles and going through the edX demo, I thought that MOOC in education would be interesting.  MOOCs in education could be beneficial to certain students.  Looking deeper into MOOCs, I do not believe that MOOCs are the future of learning.  I feel that it is a good tool to help certain learners advance their knowledge or understanding of a topic.  However, this will only attract certain learners.  I believe MOOCs will only benefit someone who have the desire to advance their learning and have to be willing to complete the course.

Individual students would benefit from MOOCs if they are willing to advance their learning.  The students must be disciplined enough to complete the course.  This would also benefit students who would like to study a certain subject or content that is not offered at their school.  The student could take this extra course for their own learning, but again, must be disciplined enough to complete the course.  Those who would be harmed from a MOOC would be any students struggling to keep up as well as elementary/younger learners.  From what I understand, the classes available are at a higher level.  Therefore, students who are struggling to keep up and younger learners could be harmed form this type of learning.  Last, those who would also be harmed from this type of learning would be those families that cannot afford access to technology, such as purchasing a computer or Internet access.  I know for myself, I do not have Internet access at home.  This is a struggle for me, especially with the start to this week as to not being able to go to school because of the weather, which is where I access the web for my class work.  I am lucky enough to have my in-laws live 1.5 miles down the road to be able to use their Internet, if I can get there.

Eventually, I believe this class work will be done in K-12 environments, however I feel that some classes, like physical education and music/band for example, as well as other classes are important for students to interact in person.  Not just with classes, but student face-to-face interaction is important at well.  MOOCs would be good for students who are looking at taking a refresher course or a course to learn more about different subject along with what they are receiving at a public school.  As for elementary students, the content offered would need to be changed for those students to learn.  I definitely think they would be able to navigate through the course though on the web.

I thought edX was easy to sign up and register for as well as navigate through the different pages.  It was also nice that the videos also showed the dialect off to the side so if you did miss something that was said or didn’t understand the speaker, it was right there.  I feel that MOOCs should not be the replacement for education.  However, it could be good for those willing to advance their learning along with regular public education.  I always think of physical education, in which I teach, and how a MOOC would work.  Like stated above, I feel that there are certain classes that could not replace attending public school.