Christopher D. Sessums : Weblog

Better Late Than Never?: A New Semester and The Fate of Overdue Assignments

Tue, 13 May 2008 04:04:14 GMT

A new semester begins...

I am teaching three courses over the next twelve weeks in educational technology. The first course is a (hybrid) sophomore level intro to ed tech that meets once a week for 75 minutes. The second course is an online graduate course titled Supervised Research that is designed as a culminating experience for students completing their educational specialist degree (Ed.S.). The final course is a hybrid course in instructional technology designed for Spanish language educators traveling through South America over the summer. [Ack!]

The good news is I have tremendous assistance from colleagues in the development of all of these courses. Each syllabus is an aggregation of activities and resources built on a set of communication and broadcast channels that should be rather appealing for both new and experienced users of information and communication technologies. My goal is to assist users/participants/students in leveraging the power of networks and social media to deepen their view of the world and to improve their personal and professional practices. (You know, real lightweight business; nothing substantive here....)

Course development and late assignments

The course development process has been a marvelous exercise in framing my own stance as an educator. It provides a chance to revisit what I think, what I know, and what I wonder.

During a recent team discussion on the undergraduate course, I brought up the notion of not allowing any assignments to be turned in late. In other words, turn your assignment in late, you get no grade, no points for the assignment. Students have three major activities and class time dedicated each week to completing them. I thought to minimize "issues*", we could eliminate the need for "late" grades.

* By "issues" I am referring to both the significant amount of time, energy, and attention expended in tracking and calculating late grades and the emotional/social fallout that occurs when a student attempts to turn in an assignment late with no reasonable excuse.

A handful of my colleagues think I will be in for a shitstorm the size of the women's gym....

I find that difficult to believe, but not unimaginable. It seems if students are reminded on a regular basis that no activities can be turned in late, they will understand and comply. Excused absences are the exception and will be handled on a case by case basis.

Am I missing something here?

Based on my colleagues' previous experiences, it seems turning in an assignment on time can be amazingly challenging for most people. Should a student be penalized for not being able to meet reasonable course deadlines? How might you handle the situation?

Thoughts?

Beginner's Mind Blogging: A Brief Reflection

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:17:01 GMT

I have not taken the time to reflect on blogging in quite a while. Writing for the Web has been on my mind lately, as has the act of writing with purpose and the latent networks and communities contained in each Web page.

Here's a video that sets the stage nicely--a set of fresh eyes, ears, and minds, sharing their reflections on blogging and their "business:"

Recently, Chris Brogan triggered a desire to rethink my blogging stance by posing an innocent enough question:

"How does your blog relate to your business?"

As a young educator-surveyor, I started my weblog as showcase for my writing--as a way to refine class assignments into something that could be shared with a general readership. Along the way, I have received invitations to present and publish my work based on the traffic I drew to my blog. I saw it as a value to cultivate my skills as a public intellectual, finding ways to translate my ideas into a more citizenly discourse that speaks across disciplinary boundaries and communicates with a diverse audience.

Ultimately, I see it as my business to blog. It permits me to circulate my research findings and those of others more broadly and to respond to contemporary issues in a thoughtful and timely manner.

So what are you blogging for? Why is it your business to blog? (Pssst... pass it on.)

Acknowledgments::

With much help from Henry Jenkins, Chris Brogan, Nigel Robertson, and Drew.

So You Want To Be An Educational Technologist

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:18:23 GMT

In mid-May I will be teaching a general education course, an introduction to educational technology. The audience is a mix of undergraduate students from across campus. While I am quite thrilled at this endeavor, I wanted to take a moment and tap into my learning ~~community~~ network. If you are, or consider yourself, an educational technologist, I need your help.

Can you provide a brief description of what an educational technologist is? I thought it would make sense to get a definition from people engaged in the practice on a daily basis.

So I put it to you:

1) What is an educational technologist?

2) What does an educational technologist do?

3) What are the social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology that you feel are important to consider?

Of course, any other insights you might want to provide are clearly welcome and encouraged.

Resistance is fertile: Toward a definition of community

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:17:28 GMT

Occasionally, the associations of a particular word become more powerful than its meaning. For me and many others studying social media, the word community is just such an example. In general, the word community is a sociological term; it is used in reference to the study and classification of human socities. The term dates back to the 14th century from the Old French communité, from the Latin communitatem/communitas meaning "fellowship" and a "community of relations or feelings," which is also directly connected to the term communis, meaning "common, public, general, shared by all or many" (see common).

It's a large, umbrella-like term that can range in scale from groups of people to groups of nations. It can refer to a society at large, a common character (as in a community of interest), and as a social activity (see community of practice). Groups sizes and participation within communities ranges from small to large, with many large communities being sustained by the efforts of a small groups residing within in them. Again, this simple illustration points to the complexity inherent in the term.

What threads together the wide range of definitions of community is the notion of likeness, a shared commonality, a tie that binds people or groups of people together.

In her article Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project, Anita Blanchard cites a definition of virtual community that seeks to differentiate a virtual community from a virtual settlements from a sense of community (Blanchard, 2004). Several of Blanchard's sources for the definition of a virtual community try to affix them with the same characteristics as concrete ones, ignoring the affordances of social software (which, to be fair, was still in early stages of development when they were probably conducting their research in the mid-to-late 1990s).

With the ridiculously easy group forming capabilities ushered in by the Read/Write Web, the use of the term community has spread even wider and farther. The term is used so broadly that it sometimes feels like it can apply to practically any group or grouping of people. But that's not quite right either. For example, Shirky (2008) notes, "an audience isn't just a big community; it can be more anonymous, with many fewer ties among users. A community isn't just a small audience either; it has a social density that audiences lack" (p.85). On the Web, however, the elasticity of our handy term is once again put to test.

Now here's where things get a bit dicy. Shirky (2008) points out that Read/Write tools provide a platform that makes every webpage a "latent community" (p 102). He elaborates:

"Each page collects the attention of people interested in its contents, and those people might well be interested in conversing with one another, too. In almost all cases the community will remain latent, either because the potential ties are too weak (any two users of Google are not likely to have much else in common) or because the people looking at the page are separated by too wide a gulf of time, and so on" (p. 102).

This is quite a peculiar, yet equally intriguing notion of community. Each webpage serves as a virtual space that can potentially unite people by serving a common interest. In essence, the Read/Write Web provides a new space for people to settle, commune, share, and cooperate.

What this suggests is that more people now have the ability to communicate and tie into to one another than ever before. We are witnessing the restructuring of organizational structures and the management of information on a scale never before heard of. As Shirky (2008) again points out,"any radical change in our ability to communicate with one another changes society" (p. 106). But here's the part that Shirky adds that also allows us to see things differently:

"Communication tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring" (p. 105).

In other words, it's not the invention of the tool that holds value; it's the tool's ubiquitousness that contains the value which ultimately leads to profound social changes.

Similarly, the tools that support virtual communities probably won't be very interesting until they become invisible, everyday components in our lives. For some, this is already the case and as such we are beginning to see new and powerful means to share, commune, and identify with one another. For example, I have found a simple tool like Twitter has allowed to both collapse and expand my professional and personal networks whether I am at work, on a plane, at my desk, or on the beach. Such a powerful little application that limits my choices but by doing so allows me a tremendous amount of freedom to connect, share, and cooperate within its boundaries.

So while I pretended to desire a limited use of the term community, in reality, I like the fact that the term resists fixity. To paraphrase Victor Hugo, when a language becomes fixed, the human intellect also becomes fixed. While there are degrees of fixedness in language which allows us to function in a state of seeming normalcy, the dividing line between elasticity and fixity in a language is never usually easy to determine. Likewise, the need to limit our current definition of virtual community could potentially limit its potential range of meaning and applicability.

For the most part, it is fair to say communities exist in some form or another across societies, and that they all share such similarities as membership, boundaries, norms, forms of exchange, and often shared emotional connections (Blanchard, 2004). With the introduction of social media, the term community now equals a mix of social and technological factors that should continue to evolve and adapt over time.

References:

Blanchard, A. (2004). Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project. In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. Retrieved 28 April 2008 from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Losing Our Minds: Web 2.0 & The Between Years

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:00:31 GMT

In Dragons of Eden, Dr. Carl Sagan postulates actual mutations in the brain itself and sees evidence of positive mutations all around us. Sagan says that the the incredible intellectual and social conflicts of our era arise from a basic evolution or mutation in our brains, that we are leaving what he regards as the childhood of our species and entering adulthood.

Think of this particular period in which we currently reside as our techno-social 'tween years or our period of adolescence. This era is marked by physical, psychological, and social/moral/ethical transitions associated with the movement from a state of childhood to a state of adulthood. This period is also marked by an intensified pre-occupation with issues of identity and autonomy. Read any informed article on Web 2.0 and net neutrality and these are the issues (identity, autonomy, accessibility) we are working on.

What are the conditions necessary for the brain (and our collective being) to make this great leap, to break free of a narrow set of beliefs to a larger set of universal opportunities in living and computing? Sagan quotes Bertrand Russell who notes that the development of such a mind requires a period with little or no demands for conformity--a time when one is encouraged to develop and pursue one's interests, no matter how strange or useless.

Of course, this situation is clearly ideal. Instead, most of us have been subjected to repressive systems of conformity and encouraged to follow "normal," or sanctioned interests, to become who we are told to be. Similarly, most computer applications are designed to replace an older form of doing things with a new one, rather than re-visioning how we work, how we live, and how could be. As a result, it becomes practically impossible to use our repressively programmed brains to free ourselves. Such possibilities were never entered as data.

The problem here again is that the defensive belief systems of the brain will deny that possibilities outside the ones we already know exist. Thus, we are constrained by our self-imposed limitations. This applies to not only computer users, but to computer programmers, politicians, educators, pundits, etc., as well.

So how do we break beyond these limitations? How do we successfully move from a social/digital childhood to an adulthood? How do we, in essence, uncouple our brains from outmoded ways of thinking, seeing, and behaving, and move to a more mature era?

Clearly we are standing at a threshold of amazing changes in our culture and society, from the way we interact with friends and colleagues, to the way we shop and seek medical advice. Futurist/Inventor/Researcher Ray Kurzweil suggests that we, as a society, are heading toward a moment of singularity when machines will become self-aware, with unpredictable consequences. Yet, for such a moment of singularity to occur, we are still in a position as a society where a number of adolescent needs must be met before we are physically, mentally, socially and ethically prepared to handle such an event.

What other changes need to take place to allow ourselves as a society to sufficiently develop before we are ready for the next phase of our existence?

It is also easy to point to theory and say, "theoretically," these things are possible; however, practically, there are a number of factors (political, economic, social, spiritual) that are still being worked through that will either permit us to grow or stunt us permanently.

It is important to recognize that whatever model we adopt, whatever methods we use, is truly unimportant. We must recognize that our beliefs are what convince us that we are who we think we are, not who we might become.

Perhaps then the way to develop our brains and our human capacity is to perform a bit of brain surgery to prevent ourselves from continually clinging to outmoded beliefs. Who we are supposed to be and who we are told to be need to be removed to make room for our full uniqueness and original fearlessness. Without this effort, are we not destined to keep repeating ourselves and remain in a state of perpetual adolescence?

Fritz Perls is quoted as once saying, "We have to lose our minds to come to our senses." An important question then becomes: Are you afraid to lose your mind that is caught up in the static, the white noise of society; a mind that has been programmed, hypnotized, addicted, conditioned into a preconceived sense of normality and sleep-like submission?

Come on! What do we have to lose?

Confronting these ideas can propel us beyond belief to a place that, for many people, is terribly unsettling. Writer Mel Ash suggests that we "use beliefs as tools... But never confuse them with the real work at hand." In other words, we cannot allow ourselves to be afraid of putting them down when they no longer serve us or become destructive. Our belief systems are not life preservers; they are often anchors limiting us to one point of view, one range of experiences. Perhaps then we need to be able to move to a system of disbelief which takes us down a path of what might be as opposed to a path leading toward what we think we already know. Disbelief is not the death of meaning; it is an opportunity to hold our thoughts at bay while we consider the possibilities.

In the end, who we might might become and how social software enhances our lives is entirely up to us. While we might currently reside in a house dominated by fear and anxiety over growth and change, we ultimately have the power to change our individual and collective futures. But only if we allow ourselves the opportunity to do so.

[Note: Many of the ideas in this post were generated from a recent re-reading of Mel Ash's text Shaving The Inside of Your Skull: Crazy Wisdom for Discovering Who You Really Are: A User's Guide to Psyche, Self & Transformation. Ash's text is loaded with many ideas and exercises for transforming who we are to who we want to be. But be warned-- the text's goal is to shake your foundations loose. Dogmatists beware!]

Blogging, Social Networks, and Wiki for Every Class: Notes on Two Recent Presentations

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:34:20 GMT

Here are the slides associated with two talks I gave yesterday on Blogging and Social Networking for the University of Florida Libraries Technology Expo 2008.

The turn out was greater than I expected (around 25). My goal was to talk on topic for about 10 minutes (15 max) and then open the floor to discussion and conversation. With this size of a group, this format proved to be quite fun and engaging, allowing for local expertise to shared and acknowledged.

Two items that are connected to the Social Networking presentation that I would like to point your attention to:

1) Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship by danah m. boyd and Nicole B. Ellison -- a terrific primer for framing a definition of social networks and encapsulating early research associated with social network sites.

2) Why do people participate in social applications? by Josh Bernoff -- a blog post based on associated findings by the people at Forrester Research. Not as academic as the boyd & Ellison piece, but equally compelling in terms of thinking about what motivates people to participate in online social communities.

Other highlights:

At the end of my Social Networks talk, I asked participants what they would like to see in a social networking application. A young undergraduate student promptly raised his hand and said (I am paraphrasing),

I would like to be able to belong to a university network where each course had a socially managed website where students could upload their notes for a particular class, engage in discussions, share resources, collaborate on assignments.

The student was not satisfied that the university's current learning management system was adequate for such student-centered activity. He went on:

This site would be a resource hub, provided to the students by the university, and would be accessible to all students so they can get a sense of what kind of work is associated with a particular course or instructor.

I admit, the smile on my face crossed two county lines! I was amazed at the suggestion and the cooperative and participatory ethos engendered by the student's comment. Responses from other participants in the audience to his suggestion ranged from potential intellectual property issues, issues with the student honor code, as well as student privacy issues. Nevertheless, I imagine there could be a set of norms or ground rules developed outlining what participants in such a system could and could not do.

We're essentially talking about creating and organizing a wiki for each course on campus that could be sorted, viewed, and connected to a larger online social hub for students.

QUESTION:
Is anybody familiar with a similar service? Does this idea ring any bells with you? Your thoughts are dearly encouraged.

Social Networking Applications as a Fashion Industry

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:55:28 GMT

If fashion refers to styles which are current at any given time, the social networking application industry will be in business for a long, long time.

Inherent in the term social networking tools is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole. The terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" are used to describe whether an application is quickly adopted potentially "enhancing" popular modes of interaction.

From Wikipedia: The term fashion is frequently used in a positive sense, as a synonym for glamor, beauty and style. In this sense, fashions are a sort of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty and goodness.

In this sense, social networking applications are a representation of a larger ethos, with each user a contributing factor within the the greater gestalt. I like how the Wikipedia authors relate the term fashion to the idea of an agreed upon communal art where notions of beauty and propriety are further explored literally, in this case, in a materialistic mode.

Similarly, fashion can denote a sense of trendiness, or of little or passing value -- passe or non-sustainable. Most people do not want to be associated with such a way of being or doing things, thus, like social networking tools themselves, fashions ultimately exist based on our need to explore, refine, represent, and expand our vision and understanding of our selves.

Artwork: My heroine, Maira Kalman.

Exploring Organizational Structures and Social Software

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:44:53 GMT

The most common organizational structures we have today are simply the least bad fit for group action in an environment of high transaction costs (Shirky, 2008, p. 46).

This quote can apply to government, institutions, companies, schools, hospitals, baseball teams, or any type of large group where the coordination of group activity is required. Similarly, it points to the notion of how difficult it is to know what you're missing if you unaware of the possibilities.

Shirky's text looks deeper into how social software is creating new ways to leverage old behaviors. I am only two chapters in, and I am looking forward to seeing what other insights he has to offer.

One idea that has immediately struck me is classic theory to practice conundrum. In theory, social software, i.e., communication tools, offer a platform for people "to share, cooperate with one another, and to take collect action all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations" (Shirky, 2008, p. 21). Yet there are still anumber of complexities that keep people from adopting them more widely. There are fears of the unkown, fear of the new, fear of anything different than the way we've always done it.

So, in many ways, it makes sense that the theory, the promise of social software, has not caught up to practice in a wider sense of adoption.The good news is, as you are clearly aware, changes have begun. We're watching the first waves of new applications, new ways to share, cooperate, collaborate, roll in. We're experimenting like crazy, exploring ways to harness these new powers.

Reading Shirky's text, I feel good about where we are and where we are going. I look forward to reading and digesting more of his insights.

Be sure to check out the weblog for the book.

Reference:

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: The Penguin Press.

Always Beta: An Educator's Motto

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:55:30 GMT

Just a brief post announcing my new position...

Starting April 24th, 2008 I will be working for the School of Teaching and Learning's Educational Technology department as an adjunct instructor/program coordinator in the University of Florida's College of Education.

This move is beneficial for several reasons:

1) I will have more time to complete my dissertation research and support the research endeavors of the Educational Technology department;

2) I will have the opportunity to teach and learn from graduate and undergraduate teachers in both online and face-to-face formats;

3) I will be able to assist the Educational Technology department manage, recruit, and retain quality graduate students; and

4) I will be able to assist in the design and revision of online, face-to-face, and blended courses and e-communities.

Needless to say, I am standing beside myself with happiness at the moment. Serving the last seven years as a full-time administrator has been an amazingly enlightening experience. While the fiscal rewards were significant, I found myself feeling discontent and disconnected from the teaching and learning experience which is the reason I entered the field of education in the first place.

So its back to my roots, back to beta, back to where I belong. I like the notion of defining my work as beta in that it is always unfolding, transforming, and never quite "complete." This allows me room to grow, learn, and make the necessary adjustments to fit particular needs and contexts. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you as they unfold, perplex, and amaze me.

[Thank you Terry for the inspiration and the spectacular metaphor! -c-]

The Read/Write Web as Poetry

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:48:15 GMT

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

From Walt Whitman's Songs of Myself, I, II, VI, & LII.

In honor of National Poetry Month here in the U.S., I offer you a slice of poesy.

Walt Whitman's poems read like blog posts to me now. His style is candid and self-aware. His poems reflect a desire to sing the body electric, to share his understanding, his love of the world and all who occupy it, great and small.

The Read/Write Web is reflected in Whitman's poetry not in the sense that any one could leave a comment on his poem, rather, his poem serves as a comment on the world, on the state of things from his perspective. Poets still do this. Bloggers do it too.

Similarly, poetry requires time -- time to prepare, time to read, and time to reflect and share. Poems, like blog posts and comments, serve as sacred offerings, small tokens of human affection.

Take time to enjoy posting, commenting, and re-reading a poem or two. Start this month and make it a habit.

It does a heart and mind good.