Apparently...

I have an OU Moodle-based blog for my student account...

... but no-one actually told me, I just spotted a link to it, tucked away under Tools...

Just looked again at "MyStuff" - still a baffling bunch of fields, forms, tick boxes, features that have no apparent affordances... and the word 'stuff' appearing all over the place.  "Stuff" being a useful shorthand for 'really not sure what people are supposed to be putting in here'

Notice that some kind of hints and tips section is routinely titled "MyStuff bites".  Yes.  It does.

Don't mean to post a stream of negativity, but there's a constant clash of 'shiny new technology' vs. 'meaningful implementation' which I can't make sense of.  When are the disconnections going to be connected?

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Content control

Have just been looking at the new Open University Student Home Page. It's had a 'fresh, clean' redesign and kindly they've "placed the information most important to you in prominent places".

Here's an idea though...

How do 'they' know what's most important to me??

Why can't I move any of the items around? PageFlakes, iGoogle, Facebook and the like... they're all big enough to let me choose my own content on my portal page... why can't the university do that? Here's an example... their messages are placed in the central column of the page. They take up far more width than any other section. My course websites, e-mail and links to useful documents etc... they're all squashed to the side. Apparently, the boring admin / advertorial style messages which I normally happily ignore (and having been an OU student for 9 or so years I haven't fallen into any kind of educational abyss by doing so)... are now in my face. Every... time... I... go... to... the... page. The stuff, as a student, I use all the time - my e-mail, my course conferences and websites. They're not as important according to whoever designed the site. And more importantly... I can't make them more important. The age of Web 2.0 and users having a voice in what they want to see is STILL a long way off.

Is that the sound of someone taking one step forwards and two steps back?

*sigh*

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Always something there to remind you

Been framed
Originally uploaded by Maddy Lou

Here's my cheesy link to this image... there's always something new lurking beyond the thing that's old and crumbling.

I just watched, belatedly, a video put together by Tony Hirst and it struck me what a cool world we live in right now. Sure, there's stuff that's bad. Stuff that's complicated. Stuff that feels like it's going to drown you. But... isn't it just the most interesting time? Old ways of 'doing' do seem to be crumbling (saw a story only today which said that students' most important possessions were a laptop and a mobile phone - books not up there then!) and new ways seem to rush towards us all the time.

Another thing from today... I've been trying to reflect on my role in a certain project... the example I thought of happened just about a year ago... and it's amazing to think how much my thinking has evolved since then. Swoosh and a whole load more technologies have appeared, but it's the way in which I look at the slightly older ones and think about integrating things that's most exciting. I have so many more experiences and understandings to draw on now. It's not that I wouldn't make the same mistakes again, but that they weren't really mistakes... just part of a journey.

The adoption of technology seems to come in three phases. First phase - oooooooh! LOOK at that!!! I could really get some use out of that!!! Second phase - hmmmm... how could I use it properly... the first way I tried didn't work out exactly as I thought it would. Third phase - cool... I don't even notice I'm using it now! Okay, so maybe stage three is a bit of fantasy, but I remember struggling to find my blogging 'voice' a few years ago... tried a few ways of blogging... didn't succeed... found the way that suited me... now don't even really think about issues of 'style', just write. In lots of ways I can't wait for so many things to be at that 'natural use' stage.

One of my favourite quotes is "Technology, a sage once observed, is stuff that doesn't work yet"... I love it when technology ceases to be technology and it just starts being part of what it means for me to get things done.

Small talk leads to big things?

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 'Nice day today, isn't it?': "The weather is a good ice-breaker because in the UK it's so unpredictable and it's common to all of us, says Ros Taylor, who works with companies to encourage people to talk to each other. If you're stuck, look around you - if you're in a queue then talk about queues.

'We often imagine that conversations have to be clever and witty and shattering in their perceptiveness but all we want to do is bond and have a chat and make the time pass more quickly.'"

Hmmmm... interesting stuff! Well, interesting in a 'yeah, I knew that... but it's nice to hear someone else say that' kinda way.

Was just thinking about how this relates to education in general. I think so often that people worry about the academic worth of things and the need to say the right thing at the right time etc... but I also think that if you don't give people the chance to just start talking, then you're never going to be able to move into those deeper areas of discussion. I suppose this is why things like Twitter and other services like that have value. They allow you to have a presence without needing to make your presence felt (if that makes sense). If you've never publicly shared any piece of writing, telling someone they need to participate in a group wiki or post reflective blog entries is a massive barrier to engagement... and I think that sometimes we concentrate too much on the possible benefits once people are on board and forget about how to get them there in the first place.

Here's an example: I read a newsletter today on the progress of an institutional VLE... and the only mention of any real use by end users, i.e. students and tutors came in a short section on the back page. It's as if we've forgotten that it's wonderful to have all of these opportunities available, but unless we open the door properly to let people use them (and understand their use) then they're just trinkets behind a glass window. Lovely to look at, but never touched. Lots and lots of talk about the possibilities for collaboration, the offline and online capabilities, the new opportunity for the other, the this... the that. But... where's the voice of the users?? Hardly the stuff of Wisdom of Crowds if we're only ever listening to the exerts and don't hear a diversity of opinions.

Now, I know this was an in-house newsletter... but if I'm A.N.Other Tutor sitting at home thinking 'VLE? Who cares? I just want to get on with my teaching'... this sort of thing seems no more than a meaningless technological pat on the back. Where are the case studies? Where's the information which guides people to effective practice? Where's the evidence of real, tangible benefit other than administrative monitoring capacity?

Opening the conversation small can lead to big things. Start with big messages about all the capabilities, capacities and affordances a system can have... and the small, but vitally important, voices will be lost.

Here endeth the rambles of the 'should be doing something else' mind... :o)

Twitter is Not a Micro-Blogging Tool

If anything, as a blogger I find it insulting that Twitter is even considered to be in the same field as blogs or even micro-blogs. The idea that someone can send a 140 character twitpitch or let the world know where about in some city street they are is considered to be blogging is stupid and devalues the hard work that most bloggers do everyday.

Twitter is Not a Micro-Blogging Tool

Wonder why this guy is so angry or making such sweeping generalisations?  "hard work that most bloggers do everyday"???  What's that about?  Every so often I have a random wander through the Blogger blogs that live near mine - and I tell you what, there really aren't that many who would fit into his description of blogging.  They can be trivial, they can be dusty and abandoned, they can be personal, they can be... they can be anything, to be honest.  Yes, some are of a journalistic quality or serve to link colleagues / create communities - but there really isn't some benchmark that blogs attain which something like Twitter can't.  So, people use Twitter for some stuff which has a fairly low level of academic quality / worth... so what?  One could argue that it's about building community and securing a place in an online world just as blogs or social networking can afford that possibility etc.

I know I've been really dismissive of Twitter in the past, but it's strange to hear people applying quality standards to the thing they like (blogging) and dismissing as worthless the thing they don't.  Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur" springs to mind on reading this article...

PS  Have now signed up for Tumblr as a result of reading this article.  Wonder what use I'll find for it...

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The happy hypocrite...

Internetelligence?

PS  I hate it when people make up words like this.

PPS  Tum te tum te tum  ;o)

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Internetelligence?

Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Is Google Making Us Stupid?


Not really much to comment on with this article... more a 'note to self' to read it when I've got time.  I do have to say that I don't really relate to the above.  Only the other day I wrote about the joy of reading books and the lack of the 'distractability factor'... however, my experience seems to be the opposite of the one above.  Internet - yes... much more of a 'staccato quality'.  But books have their place and I adore reading them and allowing myself to be immersed in them.  Is the above a bit of a knee-jerk reaction?  Is it what happens if we let ourselves become overwhelmed by a changing world and consider it to be 'all or nothing'?

Right - off to skim read my head off for a bit.  All hard copy stuff and no change because of the internet... time pressures dictate that all I can do is skim, so rather than wringing my hands and worrying about whether I've lost the ability to 'deep read'... I'm just using a particular set of tools in a way that fits the circumstances.  Or something along those lines.  :o)

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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.

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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)

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