I am interested in finding collaborators for a project involving getting a clear picture of the number of teachers who blog across the globe.
In my current research on using social software to support teacher professional development, I found myself asking, I wonder how many classroom educators (a) started a weblog and (b) continue to blog?
Turning to several academic databases as well as Google I found no evidence of any such data. I then turned to Technorati and searched under the following terms: teacher, teachers, teaching, and education.
I received the following results: teacher - 491,199 posts tagged teacher 5,940 blogs about teacher
teachers - 8,122 posts tagged teachers 2,378 blogs about teachers
teaching - 17,664 posts tagged teaching 5,899 blogs about teaching
education - 117,595 posts tagged education 23,723 blogs about education
[Search conducted on Technorati June 26, 2008 at 8.05 AM EST.]
While this data is intriguing, it does not answer my initial questions. I then went in search for some benchmarks, something to compare these numbers to in Technorati. Unfortunately, I could find no way to adjust my search to a specific time period within Technorati. (Is there a step I am missing?)
Further searching led me to an article from the Houston Chronicle dated January, 29, 2007. The reporter noted that "[t]he number of blogs about "teaching" or "teachers" tracked by Technorati.com" had increased 10 percent in less than six months to "nearly 950."" Unfortunately, it is not clear from the article what 950 represents. Does it mean there are a combined number of blogs about teachers and teaching? Is that an average? Or are both terms showing 950 instances?
Given this limited data set, we can see that since the end of January 2007 to the end of June 2008, the number of blogs about teachers and teaching has grown 2.5 to a little over 6 times larger in 18 months. (How long will this trend continue? What's driving it? Questions for another day....)
So what other data would be useful for thinking about teachers who blog?
According to the Upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007, there are 6.8 million teachers employed in the United States. The bulk of them (2.6 million) teach at the elementary and middle school level. The remainder include those teaching at the postsecondary, secondary and preschool and kindergarten levels.
Let's say for the sake of argument, of the 5,940 blogs about teachers, half of those are authored by teachers in the U.S. That would mean that there are around 3,000 teacher bloggers in the U.S. or approximately 1 blogger for every 2,000 teachers.
Does this sound right? Is there better data out there to make more informed estimates about teachers who blog?
Any thoughts or ideas on how to make this information more salient or reliable? Interested in collaborating? Let me know what you think.
Below is my response to this post/presentation by Stowe Boyd. Looking back, I feel my criticism is a bit pointed, but I guess I'm beginning to feel frustrated by conversations that layout the importance of new media for our collective future without providing any concrete steps that can lead us there.
Please understand, I think Stowe truly has his fingers on the pulse of Western culture. He is a keen observer of society and the associated intricacies and subtleties that impact they way we live and breath. I guess I just want expect pioneering thought leaders to do more. Let's stop talking about affordances, and instead show them. We've had plenty of time to assess the situation, the time is now for action.
Am I being off base here? Have I finally flipped? Am I just having a "bad day?" Perhaps. In the end, I feel that showing is often more important than telling -- especially for someone like myself who has heard this same story for many years.
I applaud your efforts and thank you for sharing your presentation.
I found the points presented to be on the mark, but you are focusing on new media affordances, on theoretical possibilities of a hyperconnected reality, and not as much on how to actualize said affordances. Perhaps that will be in the book, but so much of this has been said in so many different ways -- when are the social media heavy-hitters like yourself going to focus on practical applications, on social action, instead of talking about the need or possibility thereof?
I apologize if I appear to be overly pedantic. I guess I'm just tired of seeing the same ideas, the same promises, being replayed over and over for the past 10-15 years about the future and social software.
Your analysis is sharp and your observations are critical. I guess I'm also used to seeing citations for such statements as "We have learned that trust and reputation is personal, non-transferable." Who says this? What research are your referring to?
I teach educators and students how to decode new media, how to validate and evaluate information they find on the Web. I also teach people to understand that such skills are not individual, but cultural. So I think in many ways we are on the same page. I guess that's why I want to see not just a summary of where we are and where we need to go; but instead I want to see such an analysis with an accompanying road map for how to get there. What steps should we be taking to move ourselves in the prescribed direction? Should we be so prescriptive? Should we be constructing this new reality from the ground up? Or do we need help from the centroids, the hierarchies that are in place?
I offer this feedback as someone who recognizes your power and influence in new media markets. Since I am only reading your notes, I am sure there was much more presented in your talk that addresses some of my concerns.
Please know that as an edgling, I am one with you and all of the other edglings trying to make an impact on the centroids (that's why I am dedicated to working with the centroids' children and their children's teachers). But we need more maps, more sharing of what is working in addition to our understanding of what is possible.
I have been listening in to several conversations of late that have been pondering our collective fate in light of new social media affordances. It's not just politics or education or celebrity news that's driving this train. It seems the potential to organize, act, and solve problems has never been greater given new social media applications. And given the relative trajectory of social media adoption across the globe, things appear to be potentially getting brighter.
Since we have the ability to organize in a ridiculously easy fashion (Paquet, 2002), the next step involves developing new forms of group leadership. Managing people, activity, and information is no small feat; thus, while new social tools are re-vising the way we do our work, new organizational models are required that, for the most part, have yet to be invented. I look forward to reading the research that examines how to best manage and leverage new media applications for social action in profit and non-profit arenas. However, with the pace of new application development and deployment being what it is, it seems difficult in many cases to stay on top of rigorously assessing these new media applications, hence functional research is often years off.
A different solution might be turning social media research over to the users themselves. This is precisely how the notion of action research evolved. Imagine having school children studying the effects/affects, and impacts of social media in mathematics, biology, economics, in literature, as well as the communities within which they participate. Imagine K-12 school children using social media to study social media and the world they live in. Of course, teaching children how to set up, validate, and evaluate experiments with rigor and aplomb requires teachers to be capable of doing such, as well. So the reality there points back to the caliber and quality of educational professionals and what we are doing as a country to ensure that we are providing our youth the best education possible (and not simply what they can afford). As such, it is my belief that school curricula need to be re-written to allow learners and educators to become researchers of, as well as producers of knowledge and information, and not just consumers thereof.
So, if this is something you believe in, you might ask yourself: What am I going to do to alter this reality?
What are your expectations? How are you going to make these changes happen? Who do you need to better educate? What's is your timeline? What resources will you need?
Somewhere in the distance, I can hear John Henry's hammer ring.... Just don't swing yourself too hard and I look forward to reading your results.
I admit it. I like reading poetry. (Occassionally, you will find ink running from the corners of my mouth -- that's when I've been damn busy eating poetry). In Symbolist sense, I could not resist drawing connections to the U.S.'s current Middle East situation and the one depicted in Yeats' The Second Coming. While I normally shy away from voicing my political views in public (aren't they obvious?), I couldn't resist drawing connections.
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Without stretching allusions too far, Yeats draws a picture of the best of times, and the worst of times, all centering on the moment at hand.
So what is our job? What are we the reader to do? Are we inspired to go along with a fighting spirit? How should we choose to face the anarchy and passions that surround us?
What if our passions are misguided?
Perhaps there is a plan in Yeats' work. A plan that sits beneath the surface awaiting its turn. Perhaps the plan is located somewhere in the Spiritus Mundi, our universal consciousness, somewhere before the mind's eye, passing from generation to generation. Similarly, the U.S. may have a plan to resolve tensions in the Middle East, but they are not apparent, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."
My favorite lines that I believe best captures the current executive branch's throes:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
What happens when our passions are misguided -- when things fall apart?
Surely some revelation is at hand. Could that revelation/revolution be tied to the many pieces loosely joining across the Web? Religious connotations aside, the "Second Coming," the next historical cycle that is upon us, is built upon more than a set of tools. Perhaps this shift is more representative of a "coming together," of people joining together, sharing, and conversing across time and space.
While I have only given Yeats' work a brief, post-positivist rub, his poem leaves much to consider. As always, your thoughts are welcome.
Reference: The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War. It can be found in: Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.) Retrieved 16 June 2008 from http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html.
Below are the notes for a 15 minute presentation about my research in social software and teacher professional development. Please let me know if you have any questions or areas you would like clarified. -c-
Christopher D. Sessums Adjunct Faculty/PhD candidate in Curriculum & Instruction with an emphasis in Educational Technology School of Teaching and Learning/Educational Technology email: csessums@coe.ufl.edu
Using social software to support teacher professional development
Keywords: social software, school-based professional development, inquiry, action research, professional learning communities, online learning communities, professional networks, teacher professional development, educational technology, weblogs, Read/Write Web, networking
1. The Problem: Given the promise of action research to transform educators’ practices and improve schools, coupled with advances in thinking about professional learning communities, it is reasonable to wonder about the role of a facilitated, computer-mediated learning environment and how participation in such a focused community fosters educators’ critical understandings of their practice.
2. Study Objectives: Design a case study to better understand how an online learning community supports a network of practitioners coaching action research. The three main questions that guide this research examine the ways in which an online learning community, as an organizational structure, facilitates participants ability to (1) deepen their understanding of the action research process; (2) deepen their understanding of coaching action research; and (3) deepen their understanding of their own evolving stance toward their professional practice.
3. Perspectives: A phenomenological approach is used in this study focusing on the meaning participants make of their own experiences as revealed by their speaking, writing, and behaviors.
4. Modes of Inquiry: An exploratory case study approach is used to examine participant activity associated with the online learning community over a nine month period. A modified social network analysis protocol will be used to analyze the relationships between participants, and narrative analysis will be used to examine site postings and participant interviews.
5. Data Sources: (1) Facilitator generated prompts and participant responses, (2) participant initiated discussion, (3) technical data associated with facilitator and participant activity in the online learning community site, (4) participant interviews, and (5) field notes.
6. The Workshop: The CSI PDC workshop consisted of three face-to-face meetings (September, November, January) before the final Showcase in May 2008 with the majority of communication and interaction occuring online through the CSI blog site. Participants were provided a text and instructional protocols for coaching action research. During the face-to-face meetings participants were shown how to employ textual materials and protocols as a means of coaching other teachers through the teacher inquiry/action research process. In the online learning community, the facilitator created an organizational structure to provide spaces for both her and the coaches to share coaching experiences, strategies, critical reflections, and receive updates and announcements associated with organizing the Showcase. The facilitator posted regularly to the site modeling an inquiry stance prompting other participants to reply or post in kind. As such it was our hopes that through such prompting, the coaches would be able to develop a sense of community and share experiences, tools, ideas, lessons, rubrics, protocols, recruiting letters, and other specific documentation in supporting both the coaching of and the teacher inquiry process.
7. Participants: This study focuses on the experiences of 11 educators, one facilitator/workshop coordinator, and one technical support person. Educators' experience ranged from 3 to 19 years in the classroom full-time, 180 days a year. All participants had at least one year's experience conducting formal action research/teacher inquiry projects. Not all participants considered themselves technically savvy, but they all could use email and access World Wide Web pages either at home or at work via an Internet connection.
8. Results/Conclusions: My goal was to examine the ways in which an online learning community, as an organizational structure, facilitates participants ability to (1) deepen their understanding of the action research process; (2) deepen their understanding of coaching action research; and (3) deepen their understanding of their own evolving stance toward their professional practice.
While analysis of the interviews, site postings and interactions, and technical site data is still ongoing, preliminary findings include:
recognition that time, effort, and attention are clear costs of participation
the desire for emotional commitment by participants
evidence of legitimate peripheral participation and a community of practice ontology which aided newcomers in entering and acquiring the sociocultural practices of the community
the recognition of a participant epistemological stance and its impact on levels of participation
participants valued the ability to post questions and receive responses from peers and facilitator
participants spent more time observing each other online than actually interacting online i.e., writing back and forth, posting, commenting.
all participants report that the site allowed them to deepen heir understanding of the AR process, coaching AR, and their own evolving stance by allowing them to observe their peers and make comparisons of their own responses and activity to that of their peers.
9. Educational import of the study: This study provides an exploration of ways school-based professionals can participate, enhance, and expand their professional learning, work toward school improvement goals, and tap in to extended professional networks afforded by social software adoption and use.
10. Intended audience: Education professionals, educational technologists, teacher educators, professional learning communities, educational leadership and administration.
As part of the course I'm teaching exploring with undergraduate students this summer, I have compiled several resources related to Internet safety.
I find safety to be a particularly fun word. The term safe itself connotes such ideas as freedom from danger, risk, or harm. And in general, I think we can all agree that it's a concept we can all identify with. Wouldn't you rather feel safe than sorry? Safety also connotes comfort which, under certain conditions, can lead to the types of unintended consequences (e.g., complacency) that fosters the need to question what we are indeed making ourselves safe from.
As I cast about the Web looking at various safety-related resources, I am finding that the notion of Internet safety is regularly tied to topics such as personal and national security as well as civil liberties. One of the major issues related to safety and the Internet is who and what are we making safe and what are the consequences of such decisions?
Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 This link to Wikipedia's entry provides a well-rounded overview of a congressional bill introduced in 2006 that would require schools and libraries that receive government funding to protect minors from online predators in the absence of parental supervision when using commercial social networking websites (e.g., MySpace, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.) and chat rooms. The bill would therefore prohibit schools and libraries from providing these types of websites to minors.
The good news is, the bill died in a Senate committee. The bad news is, several states created their own version to be implemented within their borders. So do one or two apples spoil the whole bunch? Certain congresspeople believe so, but luckily not the majority. The bottomline--the bill will not delete online predators, but it will make legitimate content unavailable to libraries and schools.
Just The facts About Online Youth Victimization danah boyd posts the video/audio and transcripts from a May 3, 2007 panel presentation for the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Forum entitled Just the Facts about Online Youth Victimization (the complete list of videos can be found here). The speakers collected provide thoughtful and reasoned responses to the potentials for abuse afforded by the open nature of the Web. Rather than locking people and resources down, the speakers advocate more dialogue, more research, and more intimacy between parents and their children.
The bottom line--victimization can be more than sexual--it's time to for parents to step up and get to really know your kids and what they are doing online and offline. [Here is another associated story/link entitled MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia located on Stephanie Booth's Climb to the Stars website.]
While this video was designed to promote awareness of cyclists, the message itself feels far more important. If only a tiny fraction of all the information going into our brains enters our consciousness, this "test" demonstrates how little we truly see. Thus by overzealously trying to protect our youth from becoming victimized online, our inattention blindness could possibly explain our inability to see the whole picture quite so clearly.
Net Dangers Over-rated Over at tech.blorge, David Cassel posted the following article on August 7, 2007 titled Schoolboards: net dangers over-rated; bring social networks to school. He links to a National School Board Association study (also blogged here) that "warns that many fears about the internet are just overblown."
“School district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report,” the study reports. For example, more than half the districts think sharing personal information has been “a significant problem” in their schools — “yet only 3% of students say they’ve ever given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names or other personal information to strangers.”
The report cited by Cassel goes on to note that,
In fact, 76% of parents expect social networking will improve their children’s reading and writing skills, or help them express themselves more clearly, according to the study, and parents and communities “expect schools to take advantage of potentially powerful educational tools, including new technology.”
The bottomline--while the link to the actual report seems to be no longer working, it is clear that what parents and school officials sometimes say and what they actually do-- do not clearly correlate. This then leads us back to the making rash decisions before we, as an informed society, have all the facts before us.
FBI Pairs With Website Collecting Kid Info To Make Kids Safer This article (file under: before irony was invented) published by Wired Magazine talks about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation has set up a site to help kids learn how to use the Internet safely. However, the author, Ryan Singel, points out that the site where kids are ultimately steered to test their Internet safety knowledge does not comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act which mandates "that any commercial site collecting personal information on a child under the age of 13 must get verifiable consent from a parent."
The bottomline--another case of good intentions gone bad. Too often people seem to be in too much of a hurry in trying to do the right thing. I believe this is a natural consequence of a vastly complex communication system inside and outside our governments. Over time perhaps these issues will be rectified.
To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)
The bottomline--To a large degree, parents need to be able to control their children's Internet access and usage.
“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.” But later that day, he seemed to start changing his mind, if only slightly.
Cyberbullying While cyberbullying http://cyberbullying.us/resources.php is growing in terms of becoming a real social issue for teens and the Internet, I have decided not to focus on the topic for this particular discussion. More more can be found here.
5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do Finally, I thought it would be fun to take a different perspective on safety. To this end I give you Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School. In his 2007 TED presentation, Gever shares 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. While the presentation title might appear disturbing to some, the presentation itself is really about safety. Gever shows us some simple things we can do to raise our kids to be creative, confident, and in control of the environment around them. Ultimately, safety becomes a matter of knowing. If you are aware of the dangers inherent in the world around, you stand a better chance to make more appropriate decisions about the decisions you make and the paths you take.
All learners need an opportunity to "play with fire." They need to see what fire can do, its benefits, as well as its dangers. If we simply tell kids "fire is dangerous--stay away" then what happens when a child is invited to play with matches with a friend? Should we spend our time time telling kids what they cannot do, or spend more time telling and showing them what they can do?
The bottomline--there are no short cuts when it comes to really understanding the worlds around us. We all need opportunities to experiment, to play, to share, and to learn and reflect. It is therefore incumbent upon us, as teachers, as parents, as brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, to be actively involved in the teaching and learning process of our children. While schools provide assistance in helping children form the social norms that make up our culture, they are not enough. Internet safety and the safety of us all is a cultural responsibility--we're all in this together. Research will always be needed to help us better understand how we can lead safe and healthy lives whether we're online or off. Internet safety is not about technology--it's about people.
I am teaching three courses over the next twelve weeks in educational technology. The first course is a (hybrid) sophomore level intro to ed tech that meets once a week for 75 minutes. The second course is an online graduate course titled Supervised Research that is designed as a culminating experience for students completing their educational specialist degree (Ed.S.). The final course is a hybrid course in instructional technology designed for Spanish language educators traveling through South America over the summer. [Ack!]
The good news is I have tremendous assistance from colleagues in the development of all of these courses. Each syllabus is an aggregation of activities and resources built on a set of communication and broadcast channels that should be rather appealing for both new and experienced users of information and communication technologies. My goal is to assist users/participants/students in leveraging the power of networks and social media to deepen their view of the world and to improve their personal and professional practices. (You know, real lightweight business; nothing substantive here....)
Course development and late assignments
The course development process has been a marvelous exercise in framing my own stance as an educator. It provides a chance to revisit what I think, what I know, and what I wonder.
During a recent team discussion on the undergraduate course, I brought up the notion of not allowing any assignments to be turned in late. In other words, turn your assignment in late, you get no grade, no points for the assignment. Students have three major activities and class time dedicated each week to completing them. I thought to minimize "issues*", we could eliminate the need for "late" grades.
* By "issues" I am referring to both the significant amount of time, energy, and attention expended in tracking and calculating late grades and the emotional/social fallout that occurs when a student attempts to turn in an assignment late with no reasonable excuse.
A handful of my colleagues think I will be in for a shitstorm the size of the women's gym....
I find that difficult to believe, but not unimaginable. It seems if students are reminded on a regular basis that no activities can be turned in late, they will understand and comply. Excused absences are the exception and will be handled on a case by case basis.
Am I missing something here?
Based on my colleagues' previous experiences, it seems turning in an assignment on time can be amazingly challenging for most people. Should a student be penalized for not being able to meet reasonable course deadlines? How might you handle the situation?
I have not taken the time to reflect on blogging in quite a while. Writing for the Web has been on my mind lately, as has the act of writing with purpose and the latent networks and communities contained in each Web page.
Here's a video that sets the stage nicely--a set of fresh eyes, ears, and minds, sharing their reflections on blogging and their "business:"
Recently, Chris Brogan triggered a desire to rethink my blogging stance by posing an innocent enough question:
"How does your blog relate to your business?"
As a young educator-surveyor, I started my weblog as showcase for my writing--as a way to refine class assignments into something that could be shared with a general readership. Along the way, I have received invitations to present and publish my work based on the traffic I drew to my blog. I saw it as a value to cultivate my skills as a public intellectual, finding ways to translate my ideas into a more citizenly discourse that speaks across disciplinary boundaries and communicates with a diverse audience.
Ultimately, I see it as my business to blog. It permits me to circulate my research findings and those of others more broadly and to respond to contemporary issues in a thoughtful and timely manner.
So what are you blogging for? Why is it your business to blog? (Pssst... pass it on.)
Below is my response to this 
I have been listening in to several conversations of late that have been pondering our collective fate in light of new social media affordances. It's not just politics or education or celebrity news that's driving this train. It seems the potential to organize, act, and solve problems has never been greater given new social media applications. And given the relative trajectory of social media adoption across the globe, things appear to be potentially getting brighter. 
Without stretching allusions too far, Yeats draws a picture of the best of times, and the worst of times, all centering on the moment at hand.
6. The Workshop: The CSI PDC workshop consisted of three face-to-face meetings (September, November, January) before the final 
8. Results/Conclusions: My goal was to examine the ways in which an online learning community, as an organizational structure, facilitates participants ability to (1) deepen their understanding of the action research process; (2) deepen their understanding of coaching action research; and (3) deepen their understanding of their own evolving stance toward their professional practice.
As part of the course I'm 
FBI Pairs With Website Collecting Kid Info To Make Kids Safer
All learners need an opportunity to "play with fire." They need to see what fire can do, its benefits, as well as its dangers. If we simply tell kids "fire is dangerous--stay away" then what happens when a child is invited to play with matches with a friend? Should we spend our time time telling kids what they cannot do, or spend more time telling and showing them what they can do? 
I am teaching three courses over the next twelve weeks in educational technology. The first course is a (hybrid) sophomore level intro to ed tech that meets once a week for 75 minutes. The second course is an online graduate course titled Supervised Research that is designed as a culminating experience for students completing their educational specialist degree (Ed.S.). The final course is a hybrid course in instructional technology designed for Spanish language educators traveling through South America over the summer. [Ack!]
Ultimately, I see it as my business to blog. It permits me to circulate my research findings and those of others more broadly and to respond to contemporary issues in a thoughtful and timely manner. 
