As a class exercise last night, we, the class as a whole, attempted to define critical pedagogy. Here's what we came up with:

“CP questions how cultural immersion limits possibilities of what is and what can be. It challenges the role of the powerful versus the powerless by critiquing underlying assumptions of the current value system.

“CP allows us to analyze culture and the assumptions that underlie it. CP empowers human beings to see and challenge the status quo and redefine themselves.

“CP recognizes that knowledge is a matter of human interpretation formed through a constructivist approach. It challenges basic assumptions and examines multiple perspectives to empower the individual.

“CP involves the multiple processes of bringing conscious and unconscious assumptions or beliefs to our awareness for reflection and action for justice, democracy and immanence.”

This exercise was actually fun and led to a variety of issues and complexities. Since everything we do in the classroom is value laden, critical pedagogy becomes a way to ask questions about power. It is a way to wrestle with change in our culture, our institutions, our profession.

To what end do we question authority?
Is one way of seeing more valuable than another? How can we tell?

Is it serving all? Is it valuing consensus? Is it keeping the dialog going?

I always love it when I leave class with more questions than answers!

Sal Cooke and Stephen Downes shook up the attendees at the opening plenary session at ALT-C by tossing out critical comments (constructively so) about the state and nature of implementation and collaboration in e-learning. Stephen went on to comment how the nature of collaboration might even be "misguided," i.e. do things that do not normally go together need to be forced to do so? Great question.

This begs the question: what should be the parameters for collaboration?

How do we know when two great "tastes" go together?

Intellectualizing about what should go together is fun, but limited. Putting ideas to the test, conjoining differing ideas, is also fun but I guess it's really a pragmatic issue. Maybe even a matter of taste.

Oleg Liber provided another keen statement in his plenary address regarding Architecture and Infrastructure: Don't leave design to the techies. Amen, Oleg, amen!

more to follow soon...

Exploring the physical frontiers of e-learning: the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) in outreach centers.

David Sugden did a nice job showcasing his use of PDAs to deliver content to local Islamic and Sure Start Centres. David suggested that PDA use was only a supplemental application to classroom teaching. His demo showed that the content offered appeared well thought out and practical, i.e. he wasn't trying to do too much but providing reviewable content to folks learning basic tasks (e.g., counting back change properly using flash animations, video clip examples of reading to young children, & pdfs).

Design for multimedia m-learning: lessons from two case studies.

Richard Haynes and Claire Bradley offered an example of using PDAs to provide onsite information resources on a tour of specific historic sites in London. Richard described it as a "verticle history model" as opposed to a horizontal model that allowed users to dig deeper into the history of the area. His example provides users with a "sensory richness" and multiple narratives that extend the users understanding of the place/site being studied. Luckily, London is relatively grey outside, so I guess folks didn't have a problem seeing their PDAs in the daylight....

Innovative practice with mobile and wireless technologies -- how can these newer technologies make a difference to teaching and learning?

David Sugden presented again, nothing really different. Dan Corlett from CETADL showed a clip from his center where students were employing PC tablets and e-portfolios. The portfolio demonstrated connected to the course management system, MS Word & PPT, an IM system, and Google. Pretty impressive. However, I kept hearing echoes of George Siemens in the back of my head, i.e., what happens after school is finished? All your portfolio contents are where? I wanted to suggest using blogs, an rss aggregator, wikis, etc. wherein students could "take it with them," as it were. It seems a lot of people are spending a lot of time building systems that are static and non-transferable outside of the school context.

Speaking of George, he and Stephen would have really *loved* the presentation on Developing and using a learning design toolkit. Talk about a taxonomy! I know the lead developers have spent many untold hours on this project which, in addition, has NSF grant money behind it. I understand that there is a place for taxonomies, but I have trouble with them. Once you carve something in stone, it's often difficult (if not impossible) to make any changes. What I objected to most was that users cannot go in and make any modifications (like with wikis). The developers seemed content controlling every aspect of this model which lacked any place for learner self reflection. I suggested making this application/model open source which went over like a lead balloon (or a hackneyed cliche!).
Oh well. That's my take anyway.

Boy... the jet lag is really catching up with me!

Met up Tuesday night with Scott Wilson, Stephen Downes, Josie Fraser, Juliette White and Theresa Welch at Lass O'Gowerie for an edublogger meet up. We minded our collective p's and q's and had good time discussing events and such. A couple of other folks came and went but I didn't catch their names (much apologies).

I had a family meet up in York on Wednesday but was back in Manchester for Thursday's sessions.

Researching the cognitive cultures of e-learning was a fantastic presentation by Drew Whitworth. He discussed how the nature of e-learning innovations were failure-prone. (Say what!?! cried several audience members.) That is, given the environmental culture of higher education institutions and their resistance to change and self-reflection, e-learning will regularly suffer to capture the hearts and minds of many faculty and administrators. He spoke of how institutions (like other environments) shape our world view and how the increased divisions of labor and the increased pace of change and competition reduces the amount of time researchers have to study and analyze e-learning (as well as the values embedded within our learning environments). Drew suggested that the research agenda should take a critical approach to looking at these underlying assumptions present in all forms of teaching and learning, perhaps even from a political/organizational perspective. (His ppt can be found here.)

Carol Russell presented a paper on Disciplinary patterns in adoption of educational technologies where she likened higher educational institutions to borgs! Her research analyzed how different organizational stakeholders view teaching and learning quality and the innovative use of technology. She cited the work of Becher & Trowler on Academic Tribes and Territories which provided a helpful way to frame the perspectives of how different disciplines within the academy view teaching/learning/technology. Carroll concluded with the notions that one type of educational design does not fit all disciplines and that the balance of disciplines in an institution could influence what support is best developed and centralized. In other words, if engineering or business is bringing all the money for the university, then those departments might be the one's dictating how much and what kind of support will be available for elearning. (A ppt version of Carol's presentation is available here.)

Stephen really knows how to shake things up! Which is why I really enjoy listening to and reading his ideas. Without attempting to recreate his comments, I will summarize with a few quotes and ideas I found triggering:

Why do we think collaboration is a good idea?

Is there a technology of collaboration? (i.e. an ordered method of doing something.)

Would we be collaborating if we weren’t monetarily incentivized?

Should collaboration be reduced to filling out fields in forms?

Can collaboration be reduced to a mechanical process?

Is there a collaborative gene? Is there a collective “style” that determines what collaboration is possible?

Do monolithic projects require monolithic methodologies?

Is there an essence of collaboration that can be thought of independently of the players, the technology?

Collaboration is a question of governance.

Perhaps a parallel can be drawn between collaboration theories and political theories with descriptions ranging from authoritarian to anarchic.

The lecture format offers maximum freedom to the audience, i.e., the freedom to leave, the freedom to stay. Many professors favor it because it preserves this freedom.

Forcing learners to break in to groups forces a structure that may not be conducive to a person’s individual learning style.

Two theories of collaboration:
1) The Essentialist Theory — collaboration based on some sort of sameness: same values, same outcomes, same tools, same funding body. Motivation to collaborate in this regard is most often external.
2) The Exchange Theory – collaboration in this regard is based on autonomous and diverse entities. Motivation to collaborate is intrinsic, voluntary.

Would collaboration occur if we did nothing? If so, is collaboration the objective of collaborative theory?

Are participants aware of power structures within collaboration? If so, how are they addressed?

Is Collaboration a Cold Cure? – i.e., is it like an advertised remedy guaranteed to take care of all of your pain and suffering within five days?

________

Although I’m leaving out a great many details, Stephen recorded his presentation which he will probably post some time soon.

One final observation (aka your moment of Zen):
Human beings are mechanisms that allow plows to reproduce.

Don’t think too hard about that one. You had to be there.

I have developed a keen interest in thinking about what an effective e-learning course might look like.

As I review the literature surrounding effective learning (i.e., acquiring expertise) and learning design, the ability to extend what is learned in one context to a new context (transfer) can be improved by helping learners become more aware of themselves as learners (Bransford et al., 2000 p. 67). Perhaps it might be useful to examine how and why self-awareness is important in terms of teaching and learning design.

The idea of self-awareness is an ancient one most notably attributed to Aristotle (i.e., “know thyself”). To know one’s self means to be cognitively aware of your desires, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. This form of metacognition has a significant impact on a learner’s ability to transfer knowledge from context to context.

Research (Schraw 2002) suggests that self awareness (metacognitive regulation) improves learning performance in the following ways:
• Better use of attention
• Better use of existing strategies
• A greater awareness of comprehension breakdowns

Learner’s who posses a sense of self-knowledge are able to focus their time and attention on a task, choose and evaluate strategies and techniques to comprehend and apply new or existing knowledge, and monitor their ability to understand and use or not use new information (i.e., actively check for feedback).

Therefore, as learning designers, we might ask: How can learning environment designers and instructors build courses that foster learner expertise and self-awareness?

According to Bransford et al (2000, p.77), learners are motivated to spend time learning complex subjects and solve problems they find interesting. If the learner perceives what he/she is being asked to do is important to him/her, then the more likely he/she will be motivated to actively engage in the learning process (Kaplan, 2003). Bransford et al. (2000, p.78) also suggests that frequent feedback is critical for learners to monitor their understanding and actively evaluate their learning strategies as well as their current levels of comprehension.

Therefore, we might say learning designers needs to consider creating “guideposts” for learning, not simply prescribing one particular path over another. Learning designers must be able to construct environments that give learners options that address their own self-interests as well as allowing for learner’s to participate in the process of setting their own learning objectives.

In his essay entitled “Learning Development Cycle: Bridging Learning Design and Modern Knowledge Needs” George Siemens (2004) suggests that to better reflect the central role of learners, learning designers need to create environments that permit learners to form their own connections, which, in essence, is more reflective of how learning functions in real life. Siemens suggests that “informal and life-experience learning are such a significant aspect of an individual’s learning that they cannot be left to chance.” He goes on to state, “instead of seeing instruction as the only object of design, a designer’s perspective can be enlarged by seeing the environment, availability of resources, and learner capacity for reflection, as potential objects of a design process and methodology.”

New technologies make possible new kinds of relationships and interactions that affect not just individuals, but the entire reach of civilization. The promise and challenge of education is to invent a pedagogy that moves from an instructor-centered construct into a format that is more indicative of today’s work environment. Many courses that exist in learning institutions largely seek to convey what an instructor believes a learner should know. Learner-centered design concentrates on providing the learner the ability to determine what he/she feels is most important and relevant. This design approach is more reflective of the types of scenarios individuals will encounter when learning through experience and other informal, “real life” situations (e.g. reciprocal teaching, situated and problem-based learning). Self-knowledge, or knowledge of our surroundings, our needs and our abilities, is an important feature in our ability to acquire expertise and apply it directly.

Clay Shirky notes that, “In the real world, we are usually operating with partial, inconclusive or context-sensitive information. When we have to make a decision based on this information, we guess, extrapolate, intuit, we do what we did last time, we do what we think our friends would do or what Jesus or Joan Jett would have done, we do all of those things and more, but we almost never use actual deductive logic.” As learning designers we need to keep these comments in mind and center our design environments on pragmatic, practical applications for learning and knowledge transfer.


References:

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Mind, brain, experience and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Shirky, C. Comments retrieved from Jay Cross’ Internet Time Blog. Retrieved 11 September 2005 from http://metatime.blogspot.com/2005/09/another-way-of-looking-at.html


Kaplan, Diane S., 2003. Self awareness of past learning and development as motivation for continued learning: the application of a general model to specific categories of literacy learning for preservice reading teachers. Reading Psychology 24 (1) pgs 1-24. Retrieved on 11 September 2005 from http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/app/home/content.asp?wasp=e184a2a934324


Schraw, G. (2002). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Metacognition. In J.H. Hartman (Ed.), Learning and Instruction (p.3-4). Springer. Retrieved 11 September 2005 from http://print.google.com/print?id=l7tWaKaIUcQC&lpg=PA3&pg=PA4&si


Siemens, G. (2004) Learning Development Cycle:
Bridging Learning Design and Modern Knowledge Needs. Retrieved 02 August 2005 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/ldc.htm.

I have always been fascinated by maps. As a child, I remember sitting on the couch in our living room with a world atlas in my lap. I would open it to a specific country or region and my mother would ask me to find a location ("Find Santa Fe, New Mexico.") I could never get enough of this type of play.

Mind mapping and semantic networks

Recently I posted on the idea of self knowledge as it pertains to learning design. Thanks to a couple of replies, I have become enlightened to the notion of mind mapping and semantic networks.

Joanna Howard notes:

I've always found it useful to provide frameworks for thinking which may help them determine. For real-life stuff like management, I've used Critical Incident Analysis, Life-Story approaches, "Mapping the Field" as exercises that help a person sort what they want or need to learn.

With this information at hand, I googled around to learn more about “mapping the field.” Terry Wassell cited a reference to Buzan which I did not recognize. Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the so-called inventor of Mind Maps.

Gossip aside, I find the idea of mapping one's idea of one's self fascinating. By graphically depicting my desires and interests, likes and dislikes, I imagine I would come up with a veritable Middle Earth-like depiction of myself.

My colleague Greg Ulmer uses narrative maps with his students under the heading of a mystoriography. A mystory is to "map one's location in a discourse network." A good example is Roland Barthes’ A Lover's Discourse, which serves as both an affirmation and a mode of inquiry. The mystory works from a "middle voice--based on the reflexive, self-conscious nature of modernist writing that claimed to be a knowledge only of language, not life itself." In this voice, the effect of writing is self-discovery -- the revealing of one's identity as a social construction (after all, you are what you see, feel, touch, taste, smell, think & feel).

Now, how does all of this pertain to learning design, you might ask.

By asking learners/students to construct a map of themselves (choose your form), there exists an opportunity for self-reflection. The map can be used to show relationships and connections between objects and events. Since maps embody a collection of values with each marker or point representing an array of implicit and explicit meanings, they can allow us to orient ourselves in time and space; they can aid us in interpreting ourselves and the environment that surrounds us.

I believe this exercise would be useful in learning design as it relates to whatever topic you are responsible for sharing with learners.

My own interests are in the areas of teacher education and learning design wherein a number of teacher candidates or designers come to learn too late that they are in the "wrong field." This can be an expensive lesson to say the least. Perhaps if an exercise in self-mapping were conducted early within their program of study, they might be able to see if they are indeed cut out for the teaching/learning design profession.

How might the learning environment be constructed to provide a personalized curriculum for each learner/student given their different and unique interests?

Is such a curriculum possible in a large, public university?

What if education and curricula were designed to be topic-based wherein the primary mode of educational delivery is not teaching but managing learning (Downes 1998)?

________

I posed these questions to a number of colleagues last night and was met with numerous blank expressions.

I elaborated an online gaming-based model argued by Downes in 1998(!) wherein a menu of topics could be presented to a student based on the student's demonstrated prior learning and their intended personal goals.

This model suggests that students/players of different abilities, having different motivations, and operating at different levels, are presented with a variety of “quests” to complete. As players choose a quest, they are joined by fellow-players attempting the same mission/quest. [Not to bore you with the details here, I did go into greater detail in class.]

In her essay “Willing to be disturbed,” Margaret Wheatley (2002), notes that today’s schools are in a crisis situation. She suggests that in order ”to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally – our willingness to be disturbed.”

Freire (1970) called upon educators and intellectuals to awaken to the dynamics of our environment and become conscious of taken-for-granted constructs in which we live and operate. To be conscious at this critical level, higher education institutions need to reexamine their roles and missions as well as the populations they serve and how they serve them.

______

Now I realize in this forum, I am preaching to the choir.

As Hinchey (2005 p. 137) suggests “[u]ntil teachers can find new ways to explore what has previously seemed unthinkable, little will change in schools.”

Speaking as a university administrator and learning designer, Hinchey’s comment serves an omen. It is a call for change, from learning being viewed as a vertical relationship between an instructor and a learner, to a horizontal peer-to-peer relationship of give and take; from learning as “curriculum” to learning as a “journey of the self (Wenger 2005).” Technology can allow us to connect to the world in new and creative ways.

In a course that focuses on critical consciousness or conscientization, should I be suprised that thinking about alternative means of education goes over like a lead balloon for many of my peers?

Perhaps my comfort level with change and technology are coloring my vision.

Drexel University in Philadelphia has introduced a series of brief podcasts "designed to address the unique issues and circumstances that new online students encounter and to offer advice on successfully earning a degree online."

Am curious to see how students respond to these.

The article does not mention if the casts and their impact will be evaluated (typical researcher question, huh?).

I have to admit a growing fondness for certain podcasts, that is, one's where I find the subject or speaker personally interesting.

When the topic is a bit too didactic, as in "Earning your college degree online," I think I might have trouble paying attention....

I do applaud Drexel's initiative. The cast I listened to sounds a bit like an infomercial, but from an administrative perspective, it could have the potential to be a great marketing/recruiting device.

Does it make sense to design a learning experience one way for Bob and a different way for Sally?

Roger Schank does not belive so. In Designing World-Class E-learning: How IBM, GE, Harvard Business School, & Columbia University are succeeding at E-Learning, he insists that people do not have different learning styles, but they do have different personalities.

Schank's dictum: figure it out yourself or get help.

He claims "repeated practice is necessary to embed new rules and replace the ones that have failed. All people learn through failure and practice no matter what type of personality or style they possess"(81).

Schank suggests that designers take personality differences into account when designing a learning environment. "Some people learn to swim by being thrown in the lake, and others learn by being gently held. Nevertheless, the learning is the same"(81).

"A good e-learning system must present the learner with options that allow the learner to learn in his or her own way and own time. A learner who is in control of his or her own experience is likely to learn the most"(81).

Based on a cursory review of learning style literature, the key seems to be that indeed differences do exist and need to be accounted for in the learning environment.

Is this issue one of poor preparation of learning materials or differences in learning styles? Is this an issue concerning pedagogy, i.e., teacher/instructor preparation. Perhaps it is simply a case of "know your audience," as my writing instructors used to insist.

Boud and Griffin (1987) suggest that much of what passes for e-learning is text-based and therefore tied to the development of our rational thinking processes and ergo to the exclusion of our other capabilities, e.g., our emotional, relational, physical, metaphorical, & spiritual capacities.

The question becomes: Do we risk losing our students if we don't pay attention to these other dimensions?

Palloff & Pratt (2003) suggest that in order to foster learning and develop community online, designers should focus on building courses that utilize collaborative activities as a means for touching on all six learning capacities. To me, this begs the question about learning styles in general: i.e., what if I don't want to collaborate; what if that's not my style? Isn't collaboration really a governance issue or a Cold Cure?

Ultimately, e-learning design should attempt to re-create the work environment and problems faced by your audience. If practice is the sine qua non of learning, then the question of learning styles seems somewhat irrelevant.

Or is it?

Dave Warlick provides an interesting commentary on weblogging as a social cell. He suggests that as a tool for continuing education, the blogworld provides endless opportunities (or perhaps "undulating" opportunities) for collaboration and knowledge building, which for me, occurs regularly here in the elgg community.

It is the organic nature of web logs that I am particularly intrigued with. Unlike traditional online courses (I can't believe I'm saying that) where content and interactivity is orchestrated and managed by a leader (instructor), the blogosphere is wide open and you, the individual, are in control of what you read and the ideas you choose to prescribe and respond to. A course management system has its place; it is afterall a management tool. Can it be used in concert with other social software to allow people to personalize their learning? Why not?

I wonder if there are unintended consequences of closed communities? Does there need to be a distinction between formal and informal education? Is one more valuable than the other? Or is this a false dichotomy; that both worlds can interact seemlessly?

In my own experience, I find I learn a lot more about the subjects I find interesting on my own, rather than in a formal class setting. I try to combine the two worlds as much as possible, but in an instructor centered environment, I often am forced to choose between course demands and my own.

I also must admit that I have learned a great deal researching topics not of my choosing which I feel has allowed me to grow and expand in ways I would have not thought possible. So I want to argue that there is some value in looking and working outside my own cell.

Perhaps a balance between personal and instructor-based interest is the best of many worlds. A purely personalized education model might be too constricting to serve the best interests of the person and the community.

Things that make you go "hhhmmmmmm...."

Dave Pollard's latest weblog entry is a good one: The Psychology of Information, or Why We Don't Share Stuff.

I plan on spending a little more time going over his analysis and seeing how his ideas connect to teaching and learning environments.

More soon.

Can weblogs be used formally to get e-learning students to share more information than in a standard course management system?

Notice I am trying to "get" students to do something I perceive that they are not doing in the formal class environment.

Can you get students to do anything without attaching a grade or mark to it?

Is this argument similar to leading a horse to water?

If a majority of what we learn is within an informal setting, how do we as educators get students to utilize techniques/softwares that foster this type of learning?

Or do students need to come to this decision on their own?

Recently ran across this article regarding the Internet and our cognitive abilities.

According to the author, given the increasing ability for computers to perform the abstract reasoning we currently do (i.e., "the triumph of technology"), we humans will need to find some means to keep our brains in shape. (Sounds like a sci-fi scenario. Right Hal...?")

Regarding the influence of the web, Merzenich states:

The Internet is just one of those things that contemporary humans can spend millions of "practice" events at, that the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure--but so, too, by reading, by television, by video games, by modern electronics, by contemporary music, by contemporary "tools," etc.

I like the notion of the internet as a place where "practice events" are facilitated. I also like how Merzenich includes reading and contemporary music as contributors to brain elasticity. (Does that mean Mozart is passe?)

So in essense, the article/author suggests that the internet is not making us any smarter (i.e., increasing our cognitive abilities), but it does provide us a new tool that can be used to foster our cognitivity.

Does our dependence on technology makes us "dumber?" I would venture to say that that depends of course on how many hours you find yourself battling trolls vs spending quality time with your significant other or how much money you've lost playing Texas No Hold Em.

In my continuing effort to whittle down ideas for my dissertation... I came across an article about using weblogs to encourage reflective practice among preservice teachers.

I found this article interesting because it might be a link between formal and informal e-learning environments that I have been searching for.

In this sense, requiring learners to use weblogs as a place to critically self-relect seems very realistic and scholastically positive. It also appears to be a good stepping stone or gateway to encourage the use of technology in a connectivistic (Siemens) fashion.

The article cited above uses research conducted by Zeichner and Liston (1996) to frame how reflection can be used in teacher education. The authors suggest that a reflective instructor:

a) examines, frames and attempts to solve the dilemmas of classroom practice;

b) is aware of and questions the assumptions and values he or she brings to the classroom;

c) is attentive to the institutional and cultural contexts in which he or she teaches;

d) takes responsibility for his or her own professional development.

In this manner, weblogs can provide a place to document reflection, make an instructors views/values transparent, and encourage feedback from others.

Am I finally on to something, or am I reinventing the wheel?

Are weblogs a viable technology for improving teachers’ ability to critically reflect on their teaching practice?

Can weblogs facilitate deep learning and a greater sense of critical consciousness among perspective teachers?

In How Students Learn (1998), Barbara McCombs notes in her chapter on Integrating metacognition, affect, and motivation in improving teacher education that research is needed regarding strategies that promote self-assessment and reflection:

Although current staff development models emphasize teachers’ taking increased responsibility for their own professional development and advocate self-assessment and reflection strategies as well as learning through inquiry, tools do not currently exist for teachers to engage in a continual, ongoing, respectful, non-threatening, supportive, and self-directed process of assessing and changing their practices to increase their instructional effectiveness with individual students. (McCombs 1998, p. 405).

Today, educational technologists and learning designers have a growing set of tools, technological and otherwise, that can be used to promote reflective and critical thinking. Journaling has been serving language arts classrooms for years, allowing learners to analyze themselves and their metacognitive systems (Atwell, 1987; Calkins, 1986). Currently, weblogs can provide an electronic means of composing one’s thoughts as well as critically reflecting on them. Weblogs also offer a means that allow others to reflect on an individual’s original thoughts and provide meaningful feedback. Weblogs that are a part of a networked learning environment can facilitate a community of practice by "connecting" with others in a constructive and/or critical-thinking manner, allowing participants to share ideas, discuss differences, and collaborate across physical and psychological barriers.

Methodological questions:

What strategies and techniques can be used to elicit reflection in a weblog environment?

What are the best ways to document and measure what people gain/learn from critical reflection on weblogs?

What are the best ways to document and assess the ways that instructors transfer knowledge from weblogs in ways that prepare them for them future teaching and learning scenarios?

What are effective prompts for getting instructors to reflect critically on their weblogs?

How do we create an online environment that is safe, non-threatening, and supportive of those participating (i.e., within the community of practice)?

---

Reference:

Lambert, N.M. & McCombs, B.L. (Eds.) (1998) How Students Learn: Reforming schools through learner-centered education. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

MIT's $100 laptop

"One notable feature is a hand crank for providing power in places where electricity is undependable or unavailable."

__________________

What do teens want from their online environment? They want to socialize.

__________________

So we can afford to get conneted. We have the tools to allow interaction. Now if we can just get people connected to the internet easily. That's the news article I'm waiting to read.

Perhaps advertisers/large companies will sponsor localized wifi connections. Of course, this will come with an everpresent plug from Coca-Cola, but perhaps the trade-offs are worth it....

Here's an article by Steven D. Krause about blogs as a teaching tool in academia I ran across in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The author is clearly doubtful about the use of weblogs as a means of discussion and interaction. He talks about his own experience of assigning students to use weblogs in his classroom as an "open-ended" collaborative forum to discuss topics presented in class. He reports that he didn't want his use of weblogs to be too prescriptive and thus let students experiment without much guidance. As a result his blogging experiment was viewed as too vague by students and interactivity was minimal.

Krause then goes on to compare discussion boards within a VLE to weblogs and class email lists, noting the improved interactivity and idea exchange via the email lists as compared to the weblogs.

The author notes:

The lack of interaction in my course's so-called collaborative blog wasn't significantly different from what I see in most other blogs, including academic ones. Although academic blogs are interactive and dynamic in the sense that there is metaphoric discussion and dialogue between bloggers and their texts, it isn't the same as the literal interaction that takes place via e-mail or in bulletin-board discussions. There are exceptions, of course, but comment spaces on most blogs are blank, and generally, the comments that appear are reactions to the writer's original post rather than efforts to engage in the sort of conversation that characterizes most e-mail and bulletin-board discussions.

As a journal, the blog was cited as being more effective, which makes sense to a large degree. What I find myself questioning is how the author designed his experiment with weblogs. This leads me to think about the debate centered around allowing students to design their learning objectives versus the instructor designing them. Might the students have provided more feedback/comments on their peers weblogs had they been given more direction? We'll never know.

Without knowing the author's level of expertise in teaching or learning design it's hard to analyze why his experiment did not work. The author does admit that he knows colleagues who have designed innovative uses of weblog space but he still seems sour about his use of them in the classroom in terms of a place where dialog and critical exchange can occur.

His argument reminds of one that I have made around campus many times: most professors in higher education have never taken a course in how to design learning spaces much less a course in basic pedagogy, and hence, the pathetic nature of most higher education coursework. Perhaps many university professors are not interested in teaching and learning per se, thus their lack of interest in developing engaging learning environments. Who's to say?

[heavy sigh]

The author does end on a more positive note, suggesting that "it is not just changes in the tool that alter the possibilities of blogs; it is new teachers with fresh perspectives as well."

I believe it's not just new teachers that have a lot to offer; it is truly a matter of your teaching perspective (not your "newness") that invites innovation.

With that in mind, blog on old timers, blog on!