Online, offline... clashes and complements

"Students believe that Bebo is our site, our space to do what we wish to do, and they see commercial companies accessing Bebo as being invaded. It is an arena of contest."Universities are keen to use social networking sites as a means of marketing their university and connecting with students, but many academics think this may be playing with fire."Of course the state, universities and commercial organisation, are using social networking sites to access young people and of course social networking sites are actually run by commercial companies and are a commercial space, which has been colonised by students," said Atton. "They should understand it cuts both ways and they should see the small print that the outside world peers inside the subculture to observe what they're doing. They are open to surveillance. Then there is also the question about the free expression of the academy. As Noam Chomsky said, 'you can't just be in favour of free speech for the ideas that you like.'

When are online student comments free expression, and when are they harassment? | Students | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Interesting article... and something I've been mulling over for a while, both on an institutional and personal level.  I am always really careful about what I say online - I am aware of the little trail of electronic footprints which can be connected back to me at any point and I think it does affect the amount of thought I give to whatever I write.  I still have questions in my mind about the appropriateness of universities linking themselves to their students via social networking / other web 2.0 sites.  I wonder that even if the links are only invited inwards, i.e. please feel free to connect to our central hub to form your own personal learning environment... there are significant issues about boundaries and privacy of which both parties need a greater awareness.

Do we encourage the formation of online communities amongst educators and students, likening it to the equivalent of the staff room / student union... then pull the rug by going 'actually, we can hear you so you can't say that'?  I still feel that we're thinking in terms of old norms and conventions and the one can't be likened to the other in any meaningful way.  Digital literacy is not literacy literacy.  It's complex, it leaves great big marks everywhere you go... and until there's a global unsend feature, you put your online foot in it once, and it can haunt you for a hugely long time and on a scale you never imagined.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

My del.icio.us...

Links for 2008-07-15 [del.icio.us] Posted: 16 Jul 2008 12:00 AM CDT Idée Labs image search check for copies on the web retrievr - search by sketch / search by image track down similar images

Selective engagement and the switch-off factor

Have been having a mull about online tools  and connections for a while... and I'm going to try to get some of the thoughts that are trapped out onto virtual paper.

First - I finally saw the use of Twitter!  Okay, so it wasn't a lightbulb moment, but a creeping realisation that it did have some worth.  I've heard it being described as being like a virtual water cooler and to an extent I guess it is... but it's more (and less!) than that all at once.  You can opt out of it 100% and y'know, it doesn't seem to matter one tiny bit... then... when you have time, you can opt back in and the general flow of online activity bubbles around you as if nothing happened.  For me, it's been useful for finding online resources (Tony Hirst, it turns out, is uber-guru at knowing everything about everything... and being able to find it within seconds - THANK YOU!), hearing that there is life beyond these four walls (kinda important when you're working from home and fighting for head space from general domestic chaos) and a level of support equivalent to the smaller bits of day-to-day communication we use but which doesn't require the 'normal' conventions of phone calls / letters / e-mail.  There's beauty in the concise!

So... second realisation... there's a joy in feeling information sloshing around you.  RSS feeds delivering online interest.  Social networking sites making or confirming connections.  But, as with Twitter... it's an opt out world.  For the past few months life has been wa-a-a-ay too busy and generally 'interesting' (for interesting read: the equivalent of drowning in a bucket of treacle) and I just haven't time to check through feeds.  Check on the various sites and e-mail accounts I seem to have acquired.  Web 2.0 requires a fair bit of time investment and although one of the oft cited benefits is their collaboration and community-building nature... if you haven't got the time to engage with that and make a commitment to being part of that community... then... you might as well be Web 0.0.  Switching off completely is easier than frantically paddling in order to keep up.  For me, Second Life falls into that category.  I get why some people enjoy using it and find it a really valid tool... but bumping around in a slightly surreal fashion in a digital environment which eats into time I have to engage with 'real life', just doesn't work for me.  The time-investment factor is too great.

Final realisation.  It can be a lot easier to switch off than switch on when it comes to Web 2.0 and the use of technology in education.  If it's not a feature in your life anyway (think Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants and all that good stuff) then when other commitments become more pressing it can be easily side-lined and it really doesn't seem to matter that much.  When will technology in education become anything more than a bolt-on?  How can you bridge the gap?  Should it be bridged?  I tend to find that you get the most out of things when you engage with them as fully as you can.  But... sometimes you just can't... so what then?  Is time a big factor in terms of online exclusion and a reason why online communities don't always work when face-to-face communities would find a way of doing so?

Mull, mull, ponder, ponder...

PS  Isn't it always funny how I find time to write reflective stuff when I'm in the middle of writing an assignment?  :o)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Marking

Why is it that so much of course material from the Open University is delivered online... but that as soon as students have submitted their assignments the people marking the work get buried under paperwork???

I've got about five different systems to deal with for marking.  Paperwork explaining the marking guide.  Paperwork to be completed for each student.  Software to be installed to assist with marking.  Website to be referred to to double check course concepts are being applied etc.  Online forums where I can discuss marking issues.

Flip, flip, flippety flip...

I want a marking system, the equivalent of a VLE, where everything lives under a nice little roof and I don't have to faff and flip between system.  Here endeth today's moaning.  :o)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Random confused musing about elearning

I've just been reading "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and a thought struck me about the nature of innovation and education. I was looking at the Social:Learn project stuff the other day and aside from me going 'rats, I was thinking that… I just didn't look at your stuff along the way' it has made me wonder if so much of the time we're headed in the wrong direction with elearning. We're tapping into technologies that so called 'Digital Natives' (Prensky, 2001) are already using and going 'oooooooh, a new technology… how could that be used in education'… but the links aren't right. We're attempting to take the technologies to students that students are already using. We're looking like old duffers who are going 'hey hip cats, look at this groovy new technolololology I just found' and all the while the native group are rolling their eyes and going 'yeah, yeah… whatever'. We're teaching our grandkids to suck eggs when they been there, done that all of their own accord…

So, if we're to tap into people who can bring these technologies into the educational mainstream then we need to look not just at how we can use them in education, but how students are already using them. Find the innovators from outside… and feed their discoveries inwards. However, it's all very well finding innovators, but there still remains a chasm which needs to be crossed. Not from us (educators) to them (students)… but from 'us' to the sub-groups within 'us' who don't get this stuff and who don't think it has any real worth. If we don't educate the educators and find ways to create an educational tipping point (*there's* the link to the start of this random musing you were waiting for!) for elearning, then we'll continue to reach feebly outwards with no real conviction… and fail to convince anyone to engage with these technologies and break free from constrained thinking.

There's got to be a point at which we stop feeling like immigrants and start acting like natives who have the confidence just to use these things. How can you get students to use blogs, wikis, microblogging, mobile technologies etc in an educationally sound, purposeful way if you shy away from them yourself? When are we going to stop worrying about how students will get on with learning to use them and start learning to really use them ourselves? I can't even get into double digits if I were to count the number of tutors on the course 'T175 - Networked Living' who actively blog or use other web 2.0 technologies… and that's a course which teaches students about web 2.0. If we're not using them and I mean really and truly using them rather than dabbling… then we'll continue to follow and never get to a point where we're properly conversing with our students. I wonder how we can really get to the point where Social:Learn will create a 'new, dynamic and engaging learning environment for tomorrow's students' (Walton et al, 2008) if we're only ever playing lip service to it. It's all very well the innovators happily 'Twittering', blogging and having a jolly old web 2.0 time of it all. It doesn't seem to mean a great deal to a large number of educators 'out there'. How to e-educate the educated?

The Distractability Factor and the joy of m-learning

Well, very low tech m-learning that is.

Our books (and the rest of our possessions) have just arrived back from Australia and oh boy how much I LOVE having them back!  There really is nothing quite so beautifully portable as a book.  It's light.  It's accessible.  It's portable.  It's user-friendly.  It's joyous!

I must admit that I do scurry between book and computer as I note down quotes or ideas which emerge from reading, but oh how I love having my beloved books back!

Current reads are going to sound very dull ('The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell and re-reading 'The Long Tail' by Chris Anderson), but my head is far more full of ideas than it has been for a long time and part of that is in no small part down to the diminished distractability factor.  With a book you engage with the book.  You don't go 'ooooh, there's another book over there, I'll just go investigate that and be back to this in a bit'.  It's you and the page.  The words don't link anywhere.  Don't animate.  Don't do anything fancy.  Don't overheat and shut down at inappropriate moments (glares pointedly at laptop).  But I'm struck by how much we push forwards with new technologies and leave behind technologies which are perfectly adequate, beautiful in their simplicity and may well do an even better job at helping you make mental connections.

Simplicity of material delivery up = Distractability factor down?

So... given the irony that I put down my book, came to the computer, wrote a blog entry and stopped reading to communicate this thought to anyone other than the inside of my skull... I return to my book with pleasure!

PS  I've also just started to get back into film photography alongside digital - I could eulogize about that too.  But I'll save that for another day.  :o)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Serendipity and the art of being unoriginal

serendipity/serrndippiti/ • noun the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

AskOxford: serendipity

I'm busy trying to write an assignment.  I come up with what I think is an idea that might work.  I spend ages researching it and finding a justification for what I've been thinking.  Looked into the pedagogy.  Tried to understand the situation from multiple perspectives.  Finally start to shape my ideas into something meaningful.

Then... I get told by someone that what my idea is occurring elsewhere and is "almost exactly as you are describing!"... and my brain goes 'flurp'.  I read a paper on it and there it is.  Exactly what I'd been proposing.  But better.  If only I'd had my head out of the packing boxes for the past couple of months and been paying proper attention I'd have known it.  But I didn't.  And now my head's feeling marginally more empty than a biography of a glamour model.

So - hello SocialLearn (who, it turned out were thinking what I was thinking, only better) and thank you for my moment of serendipity when I realised that a) I wasn't coming up with something totally stupid and b) that I'm so far off writing this stuff properly that I've still more than loads to learn about the basics of this whole elearning malarky.

Deadline's today and it's back to the drawing board for me.  At least I know now that I've really got to nail down my thinking and stay more abreast of current developments than I have been doing of late.  Moment's of serendipity.  Gotta love 'em.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Generation Y - interesting little article

Generation Y - Welcome To Their World - ReadWriteWeb: "the world of Generation Y eludes a lot of the previous generations. Generation Y is absorbed in a world made possible through technology. This is a key factor that is left out of the misconceptions made about Gen Y. Here's a glimpse into the world of Gen Y and how they're using technology."

Worth a trot through this article... if nothing else but to dispel a whole load of myths and concerns people often come out with when it comes to considering this age group.

"They don't just adopt these technologies just because they're out there. They adopt them because of what they can do with them." - isn't that just a lesson for everyone? Especially those using technology within eduction.

Our online selves

Just updated my blogger profile because it was no longer correct and having done that (the things you find time to do when you've 'real' stuff to be getting on with, huh?)... I had a little browse at some other people's profiles and a thought occurred to me.  I wonder how much we really consider how we'll come across in these little snippets of our lives?

Here are a selection of some of my favourite interests from people's profiles:

"sports.specially ball and field games , music of all types..kinda. , inventing CODENAMES , being an obssessive person"

"I love to study history Telling people about the Lord Reaching out to the 500,000 here in England"

"Taking one of my 3 dogs to Agility, Looking for craft bargains on the net, & of course crafting in my room"

"Frugal living, reading, sewing , knitting & crochet"

"251 year old female Capricorn"

What do these say about the writers?  What do they think they want them to say?  Should writing an online profile be given as much thought as writing a CV?  I've often heard it said that to speak effectively for five minutes takes much more preparation than to speak for an hour - and I wonder if the same isn't true of these online snippets?  Does personal presentation extend beyond the obvious these days and online literacy needs to encompass all those things we might not think matter... but might end up mattering a great deal?  Next time want to employ an obsessive person who enjoys inventing code names... then just look on the internet and you're bound to find them... even if they never imagined you would...

Public vs. private facades.  The lines between them are ever blurring.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Why Online "Noise" is Good For You - or not

Why Online "Noise" is Good For You - ReadWriteWeb: "Quiet time, time off-line, deep thoughts and long books are all beautiful things - essential to a healthy intellectual, psychological and social life. We argue, though, that the opposite of all those things - online social media noise, is also a great opportunity that deserves to have its worth recognized at a time in history when many of us are struggling to deal with it.

So take some time for yourself when you can, find a nice place to sit with a cup of tea and blow through a few hundred items in your RSS reader. If you can relax into it, it'll help you remember some of the reasons why you love the internet."

What a relevant little article!! It's an interesting read and I do understand what they're getting at. I quite like to have a browse through my RSS feeds and generally watch the world rushing by, dipping in a toe as I can. However, in the last month I've been so busy with other 'stuff' that the sense of being overwhelmed by the online chat, chat, chat of news, articles, blogs and general communication became too much. I switched off. And you know what? The world didn't disappear without me. Online social noise is good. It can make you think. Can switch you on to new ideas. Can give new perspectives. But let's not overstate its importance here. It's not an all or nothing world out there.

Tuning out can be just as healthy as tuning in.

Oh, and hello blog again! It's been a while! Last month we moved five times (one move around the world), I started working on two courses, had assignments due on two courses I'm studying, had no internet connection for some of the time, had to buy cars, furniture, general household possessions... and all the while look after my two little people. When real life brings in overload, online life can definitely take a back seat.