I strongly recommend that you watch (or listen) to this Triangulation interview with technologist Bill Atkinson. Leo Laporte does a great job interviewing Bill covering topics ranging from HyperCard, coding and authentic learning to Atkinson’s use of LSD.
Atkinson has long been a personal hero. I admit that I still miss HyperCard and credit this software for getting me into coding and authoring opportunities for students of all ages. Atkinson’s comments on the end of HyperCard and what he recommends as a replacement may be of interest to educators promoting student authoring. Brilliant insights based on his life experiences which remarkably predate the position of my present educational leaders. His way of describing these ideas seems more useful than most I encounter. These ideas were what initiated my own thinking about authoring to learn.
Sample from my NDWild clipart project (distributed as a Hypercard stack).
I work on two major writing projects. The first is our hybrid textbook combining a Kindle Primer with online resources. The second project is also a textbook of sorts, but has always been online and has always been available to anyone at no cost.
I first wrote Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web as a wiki. I then converted this resource to individual web pages so I could offer better multimedia. Now, I am converting the Participatory Web site from individual web pages to pages delivered by the WordPress “blogging” engine. The conversions each have taken a considerable amount of time, but the work provides enough experience I feel I can speak with some insight about each form of authoring.
The multiple web page version of the Participatory Web content was created with Dreamweaver. Working with CSS, templates, and a high end development environment is certainly the way to create sophisticated and attractive sites. I moved on because the sophistication of the tools was no longer necessary to generate the content I wanted to offer and because I prefer not to “lease” software (which is the present Adobe model).
WordPress is probably more known as a blogging platform, but it also allows the creation of “pages“. With the addition of specialized plugins (I am using Page Builder from SiteOrigin), it is possible to create a wide variety of page formats. The combination of the blogging platform with the page plugin has more than provided the flexibility I need to offer my “book”.
There are some interesting differences between building a site with a traditional web authoring tool and with a “blogging” tool. The traditional way to create a complex web site involves creating multiple pages stored as individual files. The page files may load a common CSS format file. In contrast, a blogging platform uses a database with content stored as “records” rather than multiple, independent files. With the traditional approach, the web authoring tool creates pages locally and then uploads the content to a server. With the blogging tool, the content is created within the online environment provided by a server using a conventional web browser. Working online requires different backup strategies. The traditional web page approach already leaves you with a copy on your personal development machine. The use of an online development platform does not and it is important to find a way to backup the database and media files you have uploaded. Of course, an advantage of the online approach is that your work does not require that you work from the same machine or purchase software for the multiple machines you might use/
If you are interested in this project, I encourage you to take a look. The WordPress version of our Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web book is partly finished and available for viewing. I would wait until the entire project has been completed, but I estimate that the conversion project will take another 20-30 hours because of the amount of content involved. I want to offer instructors and K-12 staff support personnel an opportunity to view what is done as soon as possible.
I am a fan of the general educational benefits of writing with a personal interest in writing or authoring to learn. I see authoring as a “go to” technique that can be helpful to learners with any content area and at any age. In addition, authoring offers the opportunity to write for others increasing the authentic feel of the experience and often incorporating the cognitive benefits involved in “teaching to learn”.
These interests result in a constant search for tools and environments that facilitate authentic authoring. I end up writing about my finds (writing and writing must be some kind of meta thing).
Write About is an online service implementing many of the ideas I value. Their mission statement (what I would call it) goes like this – “A community where students engage in high-interest writing for an authentic audience and teachers help students grow through the entire writing process”.
Write About offers a flexible environment offering support and guidance or the opportunity to be entirely self-directed. Among the features are the following:
Proposed topics within genres to serve as prompts
Commenting and feedback tools. For students, these include suggestions for what to avoid to comment or offer feedback effectively and comment and feedback stems.
Multiple methods for sharing products
Recognition of security and privacy concerns with control over multiple levels of sharing. Teacher and author sign off is required for truly public sharing. Participation of learners under the age of 13 is assumed to involve parental permission.
How would a service like this be different than say Google Docs within the Google Apps for Education environment? I would suggest that you could likely accomplish most of the same things, but the Write About environment is designed to be a teaching/learning environment (with prompts, feedback stems, built-in sharing opportunities). Google docs would have superior multimedia capabilities.
What about cost? Writing About offers multiple plans with features and the amount of use varying by plan. I would suggest that the free plan is mostly useful for experimentation and it is probably more practical to purchase by the month or year for serious application.
I have found the time to read some of the writers that got me most enthused about teacher and student authoring (Howard Rheingold, Henry Jenkins, Dan Gillmor). Making and coding seem to dominate recent conversations, but I still believe that writing can be more easily generalized as a learning activity. The authors I list were and continue to be promoters of what has come to be called web 2.0, the read/write web, or my preference – the participatory web. I intend to visit this topic several times when I have time to write during the holiday season.
My preference for the phrase “participatory web” as an educational construct comes from the focus on participation. Learners not only receive information, but cognitively act on information. This is the core idea in constructivism (note cognitive activity and not physical activity is key). What came with web 2.0 tools were the opportunities to contribute.
Jenkins writes about the many ways in which individuals contribute to benefit others on the Internet. He notes that there are quick and easy ways to contribute. The easy options include liking, +ing, retweeting, tagging. Folks who engage in such activities for personal benefit improve the potential of online content for the entire community.
However, I think it is important to recognize that participatory activities can be positioned along a continuum. More demanding activities offer greater learning benefits to those who invest more in creating content and also provide greater value to the community. If no one creates content, there is nothing to tag, curate, or pass on to others. In other words, creating content has the greatest personal and collective value.
My concern is that with the focus on “easy” socialization and microblogging we are missing this point regarding the value of participation at the more demanding end of the continuum. My point is that educators consider the positioning of activities along the participatory continuum personally and in terms of the activities they encourage in their students.
The PEW Internet and American Life Project has released another report on Teens and Social Media. The report released just a few days ago is based on data collected in 2006 and allows comparisons with similar surveys from 2004 and 2000.The report indicates:
93% of adolescents report using the Internet (hence the data reported on “Internet users” need be adjusted downward only a bit to reflect general adolescent use)
64% of 12-17 year olds participate in at least one content-creation activity
39% share artistic creations (including photos)
28% have created a blog
27% maintain a personal web page
55% have a profile on a social networking site (mostly MySpace)
In general, participation has increased since 2004 (see chart)
One of the points the authors argue is that content creation is often a way to start conversations. Teens report a high proportion of their media receive comments.With the exception of video, girls are more likely to produce content (e.g., 35% vs. 20% for blogs).There is some evidence of an awareness of safety issues. For example, uploaded photos are offered to only some potential observers (restricted access) most or some of the time (77%).
There are data on contact with strangers in a separate document describing the survey and offering question by question data. If PEW keeps to past practices, there will be a later report on online safety.
I found some of the data in available in the description of the questionnaire to be of interest. Here are a couple of items not included in the report.
Location of access:
I find this variable of interest partly in reaction to filtering that often occurs in schools. If students access from locations outside of schools, it might be argued that filtering access within schools ignores issues students are likely to encounter elsewhere.
Access at any time:
89% from home
75% from school
70% from home of friend or relative
50% from library
It seems strange that 25% claim not to access the Internet at school (this % has increased since 2004 – school is less likely to be an access point).
Location of most frequent access:
77% from home
18% from school
I wish someone was doing general studies of school technology use like Becker did a decade ago. The PEW data are very general and leave many of my questions unanswered.Issues raised the data cannot answer:Very little really provided about educational use.
Was access from school related to a class assignment or is it more likely the school provides access used to meet nonacademic needs?
How frequently was access from home related to a school task?
What proportion of the content creation was related to school assignments/activities?
It is reported that blog activity is quite common.
What is the post frequency?
How frequently is blog activity located within a social networking site.
What topics do adolescents address in their blogs?
Lenhart, Amanda, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, and Aaron Smith. “Teens and Social Media.” PEW Internet & American Life Project.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
You must be logged in to post a comment.