I am interested to know about your blogging experiences with others in your institution or in a previous educational experience. I’m trying to get a sense of how blogging evolves in educational environments. What are the triggering points that get people involved or turn them off? There are eight questions. Feel free to elaborate as much or as little as you feel. If you believe I am asking the wrong questions or that my questionnaire is too long, too short, or inadequate in some fashion, please let me know. If you would prefer to email me your results you can send them to csessums@gmail.com. If you prefer anonymity, please indicate as much or respond as a guest on this blog. And thank you for your time and effort!  Consultants are also encouraged to respond.

---

Does your institution support blogging or wikis? If so, how are these technologies employed?

In your institution, are instructional technologies such as blogs and wikis viewed as helpful or a hindrance?

Do educators in your institution have a choice as to whether they can adopt blogs and wikis in their classroom or professional development settings?

Are there incentives tied to adopting instructional technologies such as blogs or wikis? If so, please elaborate.

Do you blog with other educators in your institution? If so, what do you blog about?

For those of you who regularly work with educators who blog (or are one yourself), is blogging viewed as practical?

Is there a community outside of your institution that you are connected to via blogging?

Are there issues, concerns, ideas, about blogging that you feel are important to consider?

Collaboration and collegiality are crucial to a doctrine of change as well as critical strategies in promoting teacher professional development.

Collaboration and collegiality take teacher development beyond individual reflection, or reliance on external experts, to a point where educators can learn from one another, sharing and building expertise together.

Hargreaves (1994) argues that the confidence and self-assurance that comes with collegial sharing and support leads to a greater willingness for educators to experiment and take risks. Often, this same confidence leads to a commitment to continuous improvement and development among teachers as well as an acknowledged component of their professional obligation.

In a sense, collaboration and collegiality are an essential bridge between school improvement and teacher development. In studies of school effectiveness, those forms of collaboration and collegiality that incorporate factors such as shared decision-making and staff consultation correlate positively.

Collaboration and collegiality are the glue that holds teacher development and curriculum development together.

Yet the value of these two processes starts to degrade where collaboration and collegiality meet the reality of implementation.

Important questions that guide the effectiveness of collaboration and collegiality include:

• What is meant by collaboration and collegiality in terms of teacher professional development?
• How do we teach teachers to be collegial and collaborate?
• What structures (technical, managerial, environmental) can a school provide to make these things happen?
• Who guides and controls collaboration and collegiality?
• How do the patterns of relationships among teachers affect collaboration and collegiality?
• How do the sociopolitics of the educational setting, i.e., power and control concerns of administrators to achieve preferred outcomes, affect collaboration and collegiality?

Hargreaves’ research bears out a fundamental dichotomy between what might be called genuine collaboration and it’s counterpoint, contrived collegiality.

For Hargreaves, genuine collaboration and collegiality are noted for spontaneity, for being voluntary, that it is pervasive across time and space, unpredictable, and development-oriented.

Contrived collaboration and collegiality is noted for being administratively regulated, compulsory, fixed in time and space, and predictable.

According to Hargreaves (1994), mandated or contrived collegiality makes it difficult for programs to be adjusted to the purposes and practicalities of particular school and classroom settings. It overrides teacher professionalism and the discretionary judgment which comprises it. And it diverts teachers’ efforts and energies into simulated compliance with administrative demands that are inflexible and inappropriate for the settings in which they work (p. 208).

Can collaboration and collegiality be mandated effectively among teachers? Or will it delay, distract and demean them? What strategies can degree programs designed to foster teacher leadership for school improvement offer to be both meaningful, trusted, desirable, and effective for participants?

Sensitivity and flexibility are offered as two solutions for managing collaboration and collegiality by administrators and teacher educators. Ultimately it is a matter of empowerment. The question remains, are teacher educators, school system administrators, and politicians willing to bite that bullet?

Reference:
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern age. New York: Teachers College Press.

The computer provides us a wonderful opportunity to explore matters both in terms of the metaphysical and the psychological. The computer is not human and yet it is not completely inanimate. It stands somewhere between the physical and the psychological, between the animate and inanimate, creating order and disorder, provoking users to new levels of awareness.

Turkle’s work with children and computers provides many daring insights that explore the affects of computing. Because computers and computer programs beep and buzz, talk and squawk, younger children associate these expressions with emotions giving them reason to proclaim them to be alive.

Perhaps it is relatively easy to argue that computers have a life. Computers can have a programmed psychology but they lack an emotional life. Enter the blogosphere.

Blogging can be seen as a constructive and projective medium.
Blogging allows us to shape our feelings as to what kind of people we are. It becomes a mirror for us to look into (What am I thinking? How do I feel about teaching, learning and computing? Can I create or offer something meaningful?) Blogging allows me to look at myself in the reflection of the medium.

Turkle notes that computing can threaten our independence. In essence we can become hooked on it. Blogging as well as other online social network applications offer a certain kind of holding power. If we are feeling lonely or isolated, having a computer around gives us the feeling that somebody is always out there sharing their thoughts and feelings. We can simultaneously be alone and not feel alone.

Yet, blogging allows us to build a safe environment for ourselves where we can experiment with our identity; we can try on new thoughts and feelings, we can share this identity with others without the responsibility of having to actually deal with other people. (Really?)

When I talk with people about blogging who do not blog or consider themselves technically all thumbs, they want to know what it means in general, what it’s all about. They want to know who I am blogging to, what I’m blogging about, why do I do it, what is the value or practicality of it. Do I tell them I’m world-building?

Blogging serves many of us as both action and reflection. It becomes a process for sorting out thoughts and creating identity. It reflects back an image of who I am and who I want to be. It is a thinking, feeling, and organizing experience. When I blog I create my own rules. And yet these rules require that I take responsibility for them. If I am feeling spontaneous and share something shallow and baseless, then I must accept the consequences of my remarks. In this sense, blogging is an externalization, of my inner life.

Mirrors play an important part in our development. I believe blogs and blogging serve a similar role. When we look into a mirror we see a reflection of what others see. In this sense, blogging affords us the opportunity to reflect, support, and develop who we are and allows us to make changes based on internal feedback and from the feedback of others. Blogging does not have to be a means of constraint; it can serve as a catalyst for change, for thinking differently, for trying on something new.

Can blogs serve to soften the notion of computers as machines? When I turn on my computer and log into my Bloglines account, I feel I am doing more than reading news. I am checking on how my virtual colleagues and friends are doing. When I read another blog post I get a sense of the author’s voice, how they are feeling, what’s going on in their lives. My ideas are sparked by interaction with people and their ideas, not necessarily the machine. Perhaps since my blog is a lot like my mind, this makes analogies between my self and my blog possible and plausible. In this sense, blogging provides a means to changing the way I think, especially about myself.

---

Offline Reference:

Turkle, S. (2005). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Cambridge: MIT Press.

 

Online References:

Anne Davis here and here
Clarence Fisher here and here
Barbara Ganley here and here
Ulises Mejias here 
Will Richardson here and here
Joan Vinall-Cox here 

The following is an early draft of an article I am about to submit for formal publication. Yet before I do, I want to get some feedback from teachers, critcs, observers, and educational technologists. This is an extension of the EduGlu proposal made by D'Arcy a few months ago. Please let me know what you think.

---

Abstract

With the rapid development in educational technologies, educators and administrators are constantly being challenged to make decisions about appropriate technology for online teaching and learning (Bates & Poole, 2003, p. 73). A reasonable question to ask might be: What types of technologies best suits a particular learning context? Considering the early stages of the elearning industry, the functionality and reliability of many free-standing web-based teaching and learning applications was not adequate to meet users' needs. Thus many learning institutions opted to invest in costly proprietary solutions, i.e., learning management systems (LMS), in that an LMS allowed them to knit a host of applications together in an optimal way. Given the maturation of many component-based web applications, educational institutions and the elearning market are again presented with a variety of functional solutions. In this essay, we will discuss one such solution, the component-based learning environment, and its advantages and disadvantages as compared to a proprietary LMS. The authors believe a component-based learning environment (CBLE) offers great potential in managing and engaging learners in an online teaching and learning environment, yet it does so at a cost. In the end, we believe that the relative advantages and disadvantages are "contextualized and dependent on the perspective and need of individual and users (learners, teachers, technical support, and administrators)" (Anderson 2006).

---

Benefits of a learning management system

Given the growth of online learning and computer-mediated communications around the globe, several corporations responded by developing large-scale learning management systems (LMS) to assist educational institutions manage and deliver teaching and learning. These learning management systems provide a host of tools and services designed to support teaching and learning within a secure online environment. What makes a LMS attractive is that it provides a ready-made framework and set of tools to facilitate modular course development and management, e.g., a place to host assignments and discussions, a means to access useful Web resources and reading materials, a calendar, a grade book, an internal email system, as well as testing and quizzing features. Essentially a LMS can assist educators in organizing their content in a way that has a consistent look and feel and that is relatively easy to navigate. A LMS also offers a level of access security that conforms to federal copyright guidelines as long as educators adhere to these laws.

Disadvantages

Selecting a LMS has a significant impact on an educational institutions finances and infrastructure. One of the major disadvantages of an LMS is the substantial fiscal costs. A LMS requires the purchase of a software agreement or license. Additional database software may also be required to manage large numbers of student enrollments and a variety of file digital file formats (e.g., audio, video, graphics, and simulations) that might be used in courses. Hardware (i.e., servers) is required to host application and database software as well as provide a space to provide redundancy or digital copies (back-ups) of materials stored within the hardware.

In terms of infrastructure, personnel are needed to administer, maintain, secure, manage, train and provide help-desk assistance for all users. Physical space is required to house servers and support personal that also incur specific costs related to heating, lighting, cooling, and security measures.

Another challenge regards software updates. When a newer version of the licensed software is issued, upgrades may be required to the current operating system that can negate any modifications made by the users. As a result, managing this upgrade process can require both time and money.

The high cost associated with a LMS can quickly negate the benefits of technology. Schniederman (2003) suggests that “[s]uccessful technologies are those that in harmony with users’ needs. They must support relationships and activities that enrich the users’ experiences” (p. 2). In order to be successful, instructional technologies must avoid unnecessary complexity; they should center on increasing user satisfaction, expanding participation, and sustaining meaningful achievement. Educational institutions are complex organizations comprised of different sub-cultures that often operate semi-autonomously. What works well for one group may not work well for another group. Therefore, selecting a learning management system as a solution to supporting a variety of learning interests and needs can be viewed as prohibitive and counter-productive.

Given the level of complexity involved in choosing and supporting a learning management system, the question remains, is an LMS the most effective way to manage teaching and learning online? What options are available to educators and scholastic institutions outside of costly learning management systems?

Component-based systems

Ten years ago, there where a relatively few options for managing teaching and learning in an online environment. With the “explosion” of applications being developed for use over the Internet via the World Wide Web, a host of educational uses has evolved. Given this revolution in technology innovation, static solutions such as learning management systems need constant updates and patches to take advantage of this dynamic and fluid digital environment. Most formal learning management systems are not designed to allow for this type of flexibility. As such, the concept of a component-based system offers a fresh perspective as a means of managing online teaching and learning.

The component-based system approach allows the user to mix and match an array of web applications for a specific use (Ferdig, Mishra and Zhao, 2004). This solution allows educators “to easily and inexpensively develop complex, diverse, dynamic and pedagogically sound” online learning environments (Ferdig, Mishra and Zhao, 2004). What makes component-based systems an elegant solution is the notion of context independence, i.e., a component can be transferred from its development context to a variety of application contexts. Ferdig et al (2004) use the screw as a useful metaphor for illustrating this concept. For example, the screw is used in a large number of contexts. It is developed in a factory (development context) and is applied to a variety of specific contexts (application contexts) such as cars, ships, walls, desks, tables, chairs, toys, etc. What is also important to note is that the application can easily be replaced by other components with comparable attributes but with different or improved characteristics. This allows for a learning management solution to be functional, dynamic, and cost-effective.

Advantages of a component-based learning environment

“Given the complexity of software today it is difficult for any single developer to produce an excellent all-purpose piece of software” (Ferdig, Mishra and Zhao, 2004). A component-based learning management solution offers a number of benefits.

Expert solutions – selecting or designing a component that fits a specific need is more beneficial than selecting an application that was designed to do many things (i.e., “a master of one” vs. “a jack of all trades”).

Creativity and control – combining different applications puts the control in the hands of the educator and allows for more than one way to approach designing learning environments.

Flexibility – a component-based system affords expansion and alteration depending on the needs of the learning environment. Given the development of online applications such as social bookmarking tools, wikis, or RSS aggregators, a formal LMS must rewrite operating code to allow for the use of such applications. Such operations take time and money to debug and implement, thus delaying the eventual roll out to the users. A component based system offers the user a means to plug and play a variety of web applications immediately and at no cost.

Troubleshooting – a component-based system allows users a means to quickly identify and correct a software problem based on whether the selected application is operating properly or not. A solution involves replacing a malfunctioning application rather than parsing lines of software code.

Disadvantages

Teaching and learning with technology encompasses a number of advantages and disadvantages, each being undesirable if the instructor is not sufficiently skilled or if the environment is poorly constructed. As with any solution, there are typically trade-offs that must be accounted for. A component-based learning environment requires an educator or instructional designer to be up on the latest news involving application solutions and developments. To a large extent, purchasing a formal LMS relieves educators from such responsibility. Thus, supporters of component-based systems often belong to a community of interest wherein information, development news, and user experience is documented and shared. These communities exist in both face-to-face learning communities and on the World Wide Web in the form of web logs or blogs where participation is encouraged and a diversity of opinion is tolerated.

A major issue with a component-based solution involves student privacy and intellectual property concerns. Will management, security, privacy and intellectual property concerns be compromised by an open, flexible system? Will locking the system behind firewalls impact usability?

Another issue involves technology and student support. If the application chosen for a learning environment is overly complex, who is responsible for training students? Will students be able to get support from the institution’s help desk or will instructors be responsible? Again, learning environment design is critical if a component-based system is selected.

How to choose components

With so many software applications on the market, deciding which applications to choose can be a difficult task. From a learning environment design perspective, the task is rather straight-forward and consistent through out mediums: what do I want students to know; how will I measure their achievement; what applications/tools/techniques will be most effective in assisting students actively engage the content, the instructor, and each other (Merrill, 2002). In terms of using educational technologies, it is important to note, that the course objectives and pedagogical concerns should drive the technology and not the other way around. Choosing components how determining how they are employed in a learning environment is tantamount. Thus it makes sense if at all possible to keep it simple.

Rather than prescribing or recommending specific applications, it is important for educators and instructional designers to experience and become familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of applications for themselves. Ultimately, a component-based learning environment serves as an ecosystem or a point of aggregation for a variety of components. For example, a web log (or blog) can be used to pull together a variety of disaggregated content like images from a photosharing account (e.g., flickr), online bookmarks from a social bookmarking account (e.g., del.icio.us), documents from a collaborative online writing account (e.g., writely), brainstorming notes from a wiki (e.g., PBWiki), as well as audio recordings stored online (e.g., OurMedia). In this example of component architecture, the blog is more than just an online journal; it serves as a formal, dynamic learning environment.


Conclusions

At the beginning of this essay, we asked: What types of technologies best suits a particular learning context? To this end Bates & Poole (2003) offer six characteristics that can be used to frame a criteria for selecting and applying technology to the learning environment. These considerations have been adapted as follows:

• Will selected technologies work in a variety of learning contexts?
• How does it impact strategic, institutional level and tactical, instructional level decisions?
• Do the selected technologies provide equal attention to educational and operational issues?
• Will it take into consideration the affect of different media and technologies enabling an appropriate mix for a given context?
• Are the selected technologies user-friendly, practical, and cost-effective?
• Will the selected technologies be quickly out-dated, or will they be flexible and accommodate new developments?

Bates and Poole’s list provides a reasonable framework for educational organizations to be begin thinking about what types of technologies best suits a particular learning context. For formal educational institutions it is also important to address organizational management concerns, matters of student safety and privacy, reliability issues, as well as intellectual property laws.

Other implications for using components

Component-based learning environments (CBLE) utilizing a variety of social software are possible in completely online or hybrid courses. What makes a CBLE attractive is that is can be customized to particular learning needs. What makes CBLEs less desirable is the disruptive nature of technology and innovation itself.

Boundaries – Educational vs Personal / Formal vs. Informal use

Often courses built within a proprietary LMSs are inaccessible once the formal institutional term is complete. Given that learners have an existence and identity outside the formal school setting, component-based learning environments can be designed in such a way that when a formal course is "over," the learner has the ability to take their work with them.  Contributions to a CBLE by the students are owned by the learner and can be used and re-used as the owner deems appropriate.

There advantages/disadvantages to both a LMS model and a CBLE model. The CBLE model supports a more cognitively flexible approach to course design that places more emphasis on instructors thinking about what they are using technology for. My contention is that the better instructors understand the tools and why they're using them then the better the learning environment and instruction will be.


References:

Anderson, T. (2006). PLE's versus LMS: Are PLEs ready for prime time?  Retrieved 26 February 2006 from http://terrya.edublogs.org/2006/01/09/ples-versus-lms-are-ples-rea

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. Jossey-Bass.

Ferdig, R.E., Mishra, P., & Zhao, Y. (2004). Component architectures and web based learning environments. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 15(1), 75-90.

Merrill, M.D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43-59.

Schneiderman, B. (2003). Leonardo’s laptop: Human needs and the new computing technologies. MIT Press.

The Florida Free Culture group sponsored a speech by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, tonight on campus.

Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopedia written by thousands of volunteers in many languages. It is governed by four basic freedoms:

• Freedom to copy
• Freedom to modify
• Freedom to reproduce
• Freedom to redistribute modified versions

There are over 1 million  articles in the English version with over 5 billion page views each month. There are over 62,000 articles in Chinese even though it is blocked by the mainland Chinese government (The Great Firewall).

What intrigued me most about Wales’ speech was his perspectives on culture, technology, and business.

For Wales, the Internet revolution is not about technical innovation, it’s about social innovation. It’s about the free licensing of information, neutrality, and openness.

He spoke about how Wikipedia works comparing his community model versus an emergent model. He described the emergent model as requiring reputation mechanisms to operate successfully, where the users are “tiny,” and have no power per se. Wikipedia’s community model supports the notion that reputation is a natural outgrowth of human interactions, where users are powerful, and must be respected.

The power laws that govern Wikipedia are not a traditional 80/20 model (where 80% percent of the work is done by 20% of the participants). Instead, the actual numbers that edit Wikipedia are much tighter: More than 50% of all edits are done by 0.7% of all users (615 people). The most active 1.9% (1746 people) have done 72.8% of all the edits.

In terms of Wikipedia’s design principle, Wales argued that community based organizations should allow people the power to do good as opposed to creating a set of apriori controls (i.e., setting controls to prevent people from doing bad). He related this idea to the classic economic/criminology notion of the broken window concept, that is, a neighborhood that appears clean and neat is less likely to be one where crimes will be committed.

Wales also spoke about the notion of love in terms of a business practice not often evoked by technology companies. For Wales, the Wikipedia editorial modus operendi is one that promotes mutual respect among people, where editors are expected to be caring and compassionate until they become needlessly abused or ridiculed by rude and abrasive contributors.

Wikipedia strives for neutrality and reasonability. It strives for openness and trust. It works towards developing a business model of transparent accountability as opposed to a gatekeeper, black box model.

After listening to his speech, I began to reflect on how Siemen’s connectivism model of education or a Warlick Flat Classroom model is similar in nature to what Wales spoke about. All three models espouse the notion of openness, transparency, accountability, and the requisite social nature of learning. Too often schools operate in such a way that students are dangling off the bottom of the curriculum rather than living and working inside of it.

Imagine a school where learning  was governed by a confusing but workable mix of

• Consensus
• Democracy
• Aristocracy
• Monarchy

By this I want to suggest schools serve as a place (as part of a larger, institutional, socioeconomic structure) where knowledge is consensual, where teachers, students, administrators, parents, and politicians can agree to disagree within a culture based on love and trust; where democratic values of informed engagement lead to change and consensus; where aristocracy holds a certain amount of sway such that people who do good work over a long period of time are rewarded with more clout (which leads to a greater sense of responsibility for the entire learning community); where ultimately, at the end of the day, one person needs to be responsible for the entire organization similar to a constitutional monarchy (and not a benevolent dictator).

A radical notion perhaps, but one worth considering.

Finally, I was truly tickled when Wales spoke about quality control at Wikipedia. He cited an example of an entry about a film, Twisted Issues, that caused some debate among the editors. The entry was ultimately verified and now appears provincially in Wikipedia. What makes this particular story endearing to me is that I co-wrote and played guitar on a song that appeared on the soundtrack to this patently obscure psycho-splatter, no-budget, comedy-horror film that was made by a friend, Charles Pinion, back in the late Eighties. Although the audience at tonight’s speech was relatively young, there were a few old-timers in the audience that picked up on the reference. I was left wondering if Wales knew that this film was made here in Gainesville and included it just for us. I guess I’ll write him and find out!

 

 

Find out what Firefox thinks of its competition.

 

 

 

 

The following post represents the results of a blogging questionnaire I submitted for your consideration. A total of 10 edubloggers responded to the questionnaire wherein the following concepts were represented. Although the number of questionnaires returned was rather small, the following results serve as a starting point for further research and discussion.

In general, the use of social software such as blogs and wikis is determined by the individual user. Respondents report that their institution may provide minimal support (i.e., server space or an occasional workshop) yet nothing on the level of support offered for a learning management system. The bottom line appears to be that, in a majority of cases, educators have a choice as to whether they use blogs and wikis or not.

No institutional incentives are offered for those who adopt technologies such as blogs or wikis. Incentives or compensation plans designed to reward the accomplishment of specific tasks or results are often tied to other professional activities for teachers (e.g., teaching additional courses or attending appropriate workshops), employing blogs or wikis reportedly incurs no additional recognition.

[Question -- Should educators who employ social software to enhance learning and student engagement receive additional compensation?]

Blogs and wikis present a challenge to many educators. There are no hard and fast rules that frame the use of blogs or wikis besides suggested netiquette-type guidelines. It is most likely safe to say that there is limited understanding of their potential. What can a blog or wiki be used for? What is the most effective way to use them? Will time and energy spent using them benefit student achievement? For many professional educators, the issue often boils down to a what’s in it for me? perspective.

[Note: This challenge, i.e., how or why should I use technology to support teaching and learning, is what drew me to distance teaching and learning in the first place. Based on my experience in the classroom, I watched many colleagues doing the same thing year after year. Was what they were doing effective? Were their students engaged? Were educators themselves engaged or on auto-pilot? Distance teaching and learning provided a wonderful opportunity to re-think, to re-vision, teaching and learning on the whole. It isn’t about the technology, I argued. It’s about people discovering new ways to interact and learn from one another. But, I am preaching to the choir.]

One survey respondent, Bill Fitzgerald, put it this way:

Blogs and wikis are not fully understood by many of the faculty members here. Faculty members are open to learning new strategies, but they need to be shown specific uses that are immediately applicable to classroom instruction.

In the Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid (2002) note that “when information takes center stage and lights dim on the periphery, it’s easy to forget [the]… necessary intermediaries” (p. 6). Similarly, it is easy for me to preach the wonderful possibilities of blogs and wikis for educational and self-discovery purposes, yet there are a number of intermediaries, i.e., individuals, that must be involved for these possibilities to become a reality. The way forward then is not to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, but to look around our selves to see what social resources are available to make our visions realized. Easier said than done, no?

Blogs can serve as a form of professional development. Whether or not such professional development is recognized as valid or sufficient is another question. Jeff Utecht writes about his 25% professional development on his Thinking Stick blog. This idea rubs upon the notion of how informal learning can be just as viable as formal learning.

Blogging among colleagues within an institution is limited. Perhaps the idea of simply getting together is easier or makes more sense. Connecting to and blogging with colleagues at other institutions who hold a similar position is regularly practiced. This notion might explain part of the growth of the blogosphere in general. For many who stumbled onto blogs and were curious (and patient) enough to stick with it, suggest that finding a community online that reflected their thoughts and ideas, a place where they could connect and share, in turn allowed them to grow and learn in an informal setting. This idea of blogging with colleagues fits nicely with the next observation:

Blogging is practical (i.e., useful) for professional educators for a number of reasons. For many educators, blogging serves as both a connective space and a reflective space. Blogs can serve as a place where an educator can reflect on the work they are doing and as a place to discuss how to improve what he or she does in the classroom. As a connective space, blogs can allow educators an increased ability to communicate with their students and their peers. Blogs open channels for many voices to be heard; they plant the seeds of possibilities.

Moreover, participants report that blogging relates specifically to putting ideas into practice. In other words, blogging is often guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory. In this sense, blogs become a place where praxis takes root. Blogging is a complex activity where individuals create culture and society, and can become critically conscious human beings. Praxis comprises a cycle of action-reflection-action that is central to what Freire describes as a liberatory education. Characteristics of praxis include self-determination (as opposed to coercion), intentionality (as opposed to reaction), creativity (as opposed to homogeneity), and rationality (as opposed to chance) [1]. Although, there are many opportunities for chance thoughts and meetings to occur online, a blog can serve as a space to consider the results of chance and reflect logically (or illogically) on them.

Other issues and concerns mentioned by respondents

Clarence Fisher notes that as educator/professional blogging

requires an independent voice not afraid to take criticism from others. Blogging professionally can be a glass house. But it is also a huge opportunity to gain the perspective and the wisdom of others. Blogging with kids requires a lot of lessons about appropriate posts and comments.

In this regard, blogging provides a teachable moment for educators; it serves as a means for delving deeper into critical areas such as media and technology literacy.

Fisher also argues that “[i]t takes a lot of time and effort to build a community and support the learning that happens in it. It is not something that magically happens on its own. It takes time, effort, a change in instructional priorities and an understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.”

In other words, blogging is not for the impatient educator. It requires patience and thoughtfulness wherein time and effort is needed to make lessons and assignments develop appropriately.

Other concerns include privacy and student safety. James F. suggests:

I make sure that I talk about public-ness of blogging. This permits the opportunity to discuss the amazing possibilities of connecting with the whose who [are] of your field/interest but also that "bad guys" can also access your posts so there needs to be a balance of honesty, skepticism, and concern for personal privacy brought to interactions. When I am talking with students I also mention that employers have incorporated person[al] blog content in employment and retention decisions.

This is an important point in terms of consequences of uninformed decisions. A colleague recently shared that she initiated a search of the term “drunk” with her students who have Facebook accounts. The number of students who popped up with references to drunkness on their sites were beyond belief. Thus the notion of discussing what students post to their blog seems worth the effort.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who participated in this survey. I hope the results give educators something meaningful to think about and discuss with others. Those of us who use blogs and wikis to support our own development and the development of others recognize that the many advantages of social software often outweigh the disadvantages. We must therefore be careful in how we carry the message forward. Technology like blogs and wikis can easily create as many problems as they solve. The key is for all of us to pay attention to what we say, do, and create. In this heavily designed world in which we live, Brown and Duguid (2002) suggest that it is important for us to “understand the strengths and the limitations of the designs offered to us. In particular, we all need to be able to deal with the hype that accompanies new technological designs…. We are all, to some extent, designers now. Many questions about design are thus becoming questions for all of us. It is important, then, to understand our own limitations as designers, too, and to know where to look for resources” (p. 4). Therefore, I turn to you for your thoughts and comments.


Off-line reference:

Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. (2002) The social life of information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

 

I have always had a problem with the concept of learning styles. Some people claim to prefer visuals, others claim they learn best by listening. The reality is, people learn best by doing, by getting their proverbial feet wet and hands dirty.

To account for the differences in the way individuals learn, perhaps it might be more helpful to consider personality types.

When I spend time with teachers introducing them to the notion of blogs, wikis, and other social software, I have found that their level of acceptance of new ways of seeing has much more to do with their personality rather than a particular learning style or learning preference.

Metaphors are a useful way to reflect on personality types. Roger Schank offers the following types to consider:

There's the diver. She wants no explanations. She wants to jump right in and figure it out.

There's the questioner. He wants to see all the possibilities before jumping in. He's uncomfortable getting started until he gets an answer to every possible question he can think of.

There's the explorer. She is a combination of the diver and the questioner. She doesn’t commit as quickly as the diver; she prefers to move cautiously, seeing what’s possible before committing. The explorer prefers a certain degree of hand-holding or guidance each step of the way.

There’s the little brother. You gently guide him along to point where he has to do something, then you stand back and gently encourage him along. He takes a bit of nudging to get him to act.

These personality types offer us a simple illustration to organize our thinking as it relates to working with others. There are many more personality types that you have probably encountered in working with others in a teaching/learning capacity; these examples merely serve as a place to initiate further reflection and discussion.

To get educators to adopt new ways of seeing, does it matter how information or ideas are presented? Or is it a matter of their personality type? If an educator is close-minded and feels they know all they need to know, does it really matter if they are a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner?

Kenneth Tobin argues that to get educators to change their actions, it is helpful to get them to “reconceptualize the manner in which they make sense of their salient roles” (Tobin, 1993, p. 216). He goes on to suggest that teacher education programs “ought to focus on identification of the beliefs, metaphors, and metonymic models on which suggested activities have been built” (Tobin, 1993, p. 217). In other words, it is important for educators to be able to reflect about what they do and why they do it. If they can do this, then perhaps they will be open to looking at different ways of seeing. This notion suggests that how an educator sees him or her self greatly impacts how they work with others.

To a large extent, learning is about disambiguation, i.e., the process of resolving ambiguity. It involves trying, and failing, and trying again.

It seems that being open to this idea of trying and failing has more to do with personality type than it does with learning style. Failure is such a taboo concept in the culture of teaching. But what does it mean to fail? Does it mean one is no good? Does it mean one hasn’t tried hard enough? Or does it mean one doesn’t have solid control over his or her experience?

I once saw Laurie Anderson talk about the difference between one and zero:

Zero, one, zero, one; nobody wants to be a zero, everybody wants to be number one!

In this sense, zero is failure; number one equates with success. But notice the relatively small space in between those two numbers. It’s both a tiny space and an infinite amount of space, depending on how you look at it.

Depending on how you look at it

Educators put curriculum into practice in a manner that makes sense to them. So how do we determine what’s the best way to do this? Research, theory, best practice, all means what to an educator working with a swarm of pre-teens? Doesn’t it boil down to personal belief and the culture of teaching? Is there a relationship, a meaningful correlation, between how a teacher teaches and how they learn or view themselves as learners? Is this a matter of learning style or personality type or both?

What if we were able to devise an instrument that measured pedagogical forethought and afterthought in educators after conducting lessons and activities aimed at introducing new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. What might this instrument look like? What might this instrument show us?

When I think about this proposition, I cannot help but thinking about employing a blogs and having the participants actively reflect on their learning process. It seems the choice of topics, the metaphors, the style of writing, the words and ideas said and unsaid, uncovers participants’ forethoughts and afterthoughts in a rich and resonant way no Likert scale can.

Using blogs in this manner can give researchers like myself an idea of how learning style or personality type combine to form an individual educator. The trick, if we want to call it that, is getting the individual participants to see themselves developing from this process.

How will they see themselves? As ones or zeros or somewhere comfortably in between?

---

Off-line references:

Schank, R. C. (2002). Designing world-class e-learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Tobin, K. (1993). Constructivist perspectives on teacher learning. In K. Tobin (Ed.) The practice of constructivism in science education (pp. 215-226). Washington, D.C.: AAAS Press.

© 2006 Zits Partnership.

I am a huge fan of Jeremy, the teen-aged protagonist of the comic strip Zits. Today's feature has Jeremy interrupting his father at the dinner table as he is about to relate something that happened to him at his workplace.

This illustration brings together several interesting observations about blogs and blogging.

Blogs can serve as a place to share stories (see Warlick's New Story wiki), a space where people often share intimate experiences and thoughts, one's sometimes reserved for close friends or family. Judging by a number of posts I have seen on MySpace, some teens feel they can share what one might call private personal details that may not seem appropriate to many. This raises an interesting set of questions regarding what is and isn't appropriate to share online and the possible effects of said material. Do new technological affordances mean we need new rules to guide and define what is appropriate?

Blogs are like an interlocutor, i.e., a voice, a relay, that is in between an individual and others. Blogs are not the individual but the relay between the individual and the outside world (as Ulises noted in a previous post, not the moon, but a finger pointing at the moon).

Finally, Jeremy notes, he hates to see people waste "perfectly good blog material" by describing life experiences out loud. An innocent comment, but perhaps Jeremy represents the digital native perspective; a person existing in two worlds simultaneously who sees life events via a cyberview and a meatspace view. Given such a perspective, it would seem life becomes a series of negotiated events between a world online and a world offline. Are digital natives like Jeremey conscious of this duality? Or is it unconscious, part of a natural rhythm?

Okay, never mind. It's none of my business. Sorry. Do whatever you want.

No, I’m not talking about Woody Guthrie’s guitar. I am actually speaking of teaching, learning, and computing.

In his latest post George Siemens notes:

Learning, as probably the most critical human activity for the development of better (defined as low crime, available health care, standard of living) societies is the structures of learning. The challenge we face is that our approaches to learning (as I've often said) is that our structures don't meet our needs, our society, or our global world. Learning, perceived as an activity outside of the structure of daily living, is simply not working. Learning happens continually (as natural as breathing, as constant as a beating heart). We need a new vision for learning. I've tackled it from the end of connectivism, but it is depressing to see that so many organizations continue to see learning as an add-on, not an enabler to better functioning on every level of life and business. One message that is coming through, in health care (and I would posit in education), is that the technology is at a sufficient level to make huge changes and transformations. Potential and capacity are not the missing elements - vision and will are the bottlenecks.

From a critical pedagogical perspective, Siemens’ thoughts strike a chord in me.

Vision and will. Both involve a great deal of imagination.

At a micro, meso, and macro level, education is a value proposition. A good education opens social, cultural, political and economic doors. In today’s world (i.e., the one I am most familiar with), a good education grants one access to a club where membership is limited to serve the will of those holding power. In this sense, those who hold power, the people Freire dubs “oppressors,” are unconscious of their domineering behavior; it is simply the way of the world, the way things are, like it or not.

Look at the employee roster of the top companies in Forbes magazine. Look at the highest levels of government. Read through the resumes of those in charge in the U.S. and abroad. I am willing to bet you will see in each of them a clear pattern of social capital and continuous educational grooming.

Nietzsche posited a will to power, in which living things are not just driven by the mere need to stay alive, but by a greater need to wield and use power, to dominate others, and to make them weaker. Nietzsche believed this will was the basic, instinctual driving force of nature through which all livings things interpret the world.

Although Dylan Thomas never spoke of a will to power directly, it lays at the heart of the poem The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. This will runs through our veins, dries the mouth of streams, blasts the roots of trees, and ultimately is both our creator and destroyer.

Normally I am not so pessimistic. I try to temper my natural optimism with a dose of realism. And like Siemens, I will continue to work towards empowering others to think, act, reflect and become in a Freirian sense. And like Siemens, I believe we, as individuals, as communities, as nations, need to wrest control back from those who serve to abuse it.

I regularly dream of a massive teacher boycott -- an On the Waterfront stance where a community of teachers refuses to work until adequate conditions are granted for students, teachers, and staff. This revolution needs to be one where we do not simply change who is in charge and go back to business as usual. Freire calls this a fear of freedom. Siemens calls it the bottleneck of imagination.

To surmount oppression, people must critically recognize its causes, so that by transformative action they can create a new situation, one that is built upon the pursuit of a fuller humanity. (Freire, 1993, p. 29.)

  While I agree with Siemens that what is needed is vision and will, I believe we need a few more ingredients to over come the tragic dilemma that is limiting learning opportunities. One such additional ingredient is the ability for people like you and me to take a risk. As Arthur O'Shaughnessy writes in his famous Ode:

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

As educators, we are all music makers. And the struggle for freedom from oppression requires taking a risk, risking something new and never before experienced. This, in and of itself, creates fear. Yet without risk, without a belief in something better, history is destined to repeat. It is a matter of becoming, a re-birthing. And as long as the oppressed remain unconscious of the tendency to take on the role of their oppressor, liberation is impossible.

So what are the next steps in uncorking this revolution?

First, the oppressed and those representing the oppressed must unveil the world of domination politics (i.e., become conscious) and through praxis commit ourselves to its transformation. If the blogosphere can serve to raise Howard Dean to prominent political heights, it surely can serve educators in their call for a new vision of teaching and learning.

Second, once the reality of oppression is transformed, this pedagogy no longer belongs to the oppressed; it becomes a pedagogy of all people. In this way the culture of domination is confronted and replaced.

What edubloggers must do is to continue to engage in critical dialogue, reflect, and communicate with those around us. We must be the ones who stand up and take responsibility for the struggle (If not us, then Who?). We must reflect and act together in a way that offers a new story, a new vision of education can be. Start by looking in the mirror: Meet the new boss; you’re not the same as the old boss….

And just for fun, let’s let Pete Townsend tell his version:

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!

I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the party on the left
Is now the party on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

During class the other night I had an interesting conversation with a young undergraduate student about Facebook.

I was standing in front of my poster presentation/demonstration about blogs/blogging and teacher professional development when this young woman began inquiring about my project.

"Do you have a blog?" I asked.

"What’s a blog? I’m on Facebook, does that count?"

"Facebook!" I erupted. "What do you use Facebook for?"

She told me all about how she stays connected to her friends through her Facebook account. She told me how she located childhood friends, people she has not seen in 10 to 15 years by searching via Facebook accounts.

At this point, my professor strolled up and picked up the thread of the young woman’s conversation.

He asked, "How many friends do you have on Facebook?"

"You mean college friends or other friends?"

"Both," said Rick.

"About five hundred."

"Five hundred?! Hmmm. Is that all?"

Rick asked, "How would describe yourself as a high school student? Were you a jock? A cheerleader? A nerd? A band geek? An out cast, part of the cool kid popular crowd?"

"Well," she said, "I played lacrosse…. I guess I was part of the popular kids, the cool kids."

Rick, my prof, has a theory about Facebook. He calls it the high school-ization of college. By that he means, Facebook is all about being in the cool crowd and showing how hip, how cool, how poular you are based on the number of friends you have via your account. In this light, one might infer that you can legitimize your coolness factor based on the number of friends you acquire.

Now, this theory opens several worm cans, yet it is an interesting one to think about.

I can count the number of friends I have on one hand. These are people I am willing to share my innermost thoughts, people I trust and love most. There are literally hundreds of people I would dub acquaintances, people I work with, people I meet, people I know via the Internet. It’s hard for me to classify these relationships as friends. They are friendly, but not necessarily as intimate.

The young undergraduate in this story described using her Facebook account as a means of capitalizing on her social network, as a way of finding out what professors to take, what professors to avoid, what movies she might like, who’s having a party tonight, etc. She described in detail the positive aspects of connecting to long lost friends and learning about people, places, and other items/issues related to her daily life, how Facebook made this all possible. For her, Facebook serves both as a consumptive model and a community model of the Internet. She can gather news and information as well as connect and interact with others. She is a part of what could be called Life 2.0, a life enhanced by the affordances of social software.

One final observation she made also caught my attention. She described herself as being lazy, too lazy to send her friends birthday cards or too lazy to call them on the phone. She described how the Internet and Facebook help facilitate this laziness by making it easy for her to just dash off a quick note wishing a friend happy birthday rather than picking up the phone or going the store to pick out a birthday card and drop it in the mail.

Is this really laziness I asked her? She said it was because the Internet and Facebook are so convenient and that anything so easy only contributes to a greater sense of luxury and lethargy. She can accomplish so much more without having to work too hard at it.

So, do we infer that social software encourages laziness? Does convenience trivialize things of social importance? Is sending a greeting card via the Internet less valued than sending one via the postal service?

Social software is changing the way we interact, the way we communicate, and the way we conduct ourselves and our lives. We are living in an amazing epoch, a day and age I want to call Life 2.0.

I think writer/columnist Rich Karlgaard meant something else by the term. Life on the Web is a place too. It allows us to connect and interact with others around the globe. Thus the notion of place is multifaceted and more distributed. Ulises Mejias writes about this sense of being connected and disconnected, this sense of ambiguity and disambiguation, of being in the moment and in many places at the same time much better than I can.

Without so many online social connections, would the young woman I have been speaking of feel less important, less relevant? (Is this even the right question?) Can we say social software such as Facebook allows us to transcend the dichotomy of the far and the near by offering a new form of social connectivity, social glue, not as easily duplicated face to face?

Borrowing from Ulises, “the argument presented here is not meant to rationalize our online experiences so that we can feel good about the time we spend online. It is meant to challenge us to seek meaning in those experiences by forcing us to look for connections between them and what we do (or not do) in the rest of our interactions with the world.”

Questions of identity and the value of relationships are only cursorily discussed here. My intent is to bring these ideas to light for further discussion and reflection.  Your thoughts and ideas are more than welcome.

Reference:

Mejias, U. A. (2005). Re–approaching nearness: Online communication and its place in praxis. First Monday, 10 (3). Retrieved 26 April 2006 from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_3/mejias/index.html