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From the list below:
- a learning management system
- a blog
- online collaborative learning
- virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life)
- a podcast
- an open textbook
1. Determine which is a medium and which a technology, or which could be both, and under what conditions.
| learning management system | either: technology as software, medium when used for course delivery |
| blog | medium (WordPress or other blog software is the technology) |
| online collaborative learning | medium |
| either, but mainly a medium | |
| Virtual worlds | medium |
| podcast | medium |
| open textbook | medium |
2. Decide where, from your experience, each medium or technology should be placed on Figure 6.4.3. Write down why.
3. Which were easy to categorize and which difficult?
Difficult:
- online collaborative learning, because it is highly communicative but the teacher has a good deal of control over the medium
- Twitter, because it is definitely under the control of the learner, but it is also as much a broadcast as a communicative medium.
With both these, I gave more importance to the broadcast/communicative dimension compared with the control dimension.
4. How useful?
Understanding where different media are likely to fit on the broadcast/communicative dimension will help in choosing media, depending on my epistemological position. If I want a high level of student activity and interaction I would tend toward more communicative media. If I am more concerned with information transmission and comprehension, I would tend to use more broadcast media. However, in most cases I would want a mix of both. Knowing where each medium ‘fits’ on this dimension is one component I could use in my decision-making.
