If:book has a post on a procedure Larry Lessig used to update “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.” I have a copy of the original (published in 1999) buried somewhere on a shelf. The topics while still relevant required work because Lessig’s writing explores legal issues (laws change) and technology (change happens here too). After a time in print, Lessig released his book as a wiki and allowed readers to edit, comment, etc. Lessig then took this body of material and wrote Code V2. To be fair to contributors and also because he suggests that a copy of the new book would be cheaper than printing the wiki, the wiki version of the updated book is also available. Lessig is in a very different situation than many authors, but I really like the idea of building reader particiaption into the authoring process.
David Warlick has an article in EdTech:Focus on K12 that identifies 3 categories of teachers who blog (independent, professional, and instructional) and then proposes related practices schools might employ.
When I first read this piece, it struck me as a thesis or dissertation waiting to happen. One of the things I value about researchers is that they typically must offer their methodology for review and this requires that they move beyond generalities. In a situation such as this, they must operationalize what they propose should be counted as what!
Rather than identifying categories of teacher bloggers, I would guess the reality would be that teachers author posts falling into multiple categories. Many “tag” posts accordingly. Most of us who do not attach a blog to a specific class include professional development posts and personal posts when the mood strikes us. How would you classify this blog? Some posts are about pedagogy and some about educational tools. Some posts also address politics and other general topics as interpreted by someone whose vocation is that of educator.
Warlick’s comments are helpful and he makes the effort to point readers toward sites he feels provide relevant advice for each blogger category. However, and this may be the liberal in me talking, there seems to be a very cautionary tone that reminds me of the old days when expectations might imply that teachers should not be seen in the local pub. I like the advice “Don’t be stupid”.
In fact, if it is possible to identify a pool of teacher authored blogs, it would be interesting to know what proportion of posts reviewers feel are potentially inflammatory, contentious, etc. With some data in hand, we might then consider whether a serious problem exists. What rate of inappropriate comments or what proportion of hot heads is tolerable? How do attempts to set the rules for educators desiring to participate in the discussion of controversial issues influence the effectiveness of the web as an open forum?
I think teachers should be allowed to blog on any topic a radio talk show host or a television news celebrity is allowed to discuss.
I have commented on the topic of “net neutrality” several times. A recent post by David Warlick brings this topic up again and brought my attention to a Bill Moyer’s “Moyers on America” special “The Net@Risk“. This special covers related topics that concern the significance of an independent Internet and how equitable access and neutrality are being threatened.
The program is essentially about the telecoms’ interest in and lobbying for control of the Internet, and their apparent lack of interest inactually improving the Internet, to keep us in line with the serviceand cost enjoyed by many other industrial countries around the world. (Warlick)
The online video from the Moyers site and the Warlick post (summarizing a Learning and Leading article by Anita McAnear) are both informative and alarming.
The Moyer’s piece mentions of the work of North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan in attempting to bring attention to the issue of net neutrality. Perhaps because I work in North Dakota I have thought about why this issue would be something Senator Dorgan would take on as a cause. One explanation that occurs to me is that in very rural states citizens often have few options for high speed access and may be lucky if they have one option. One of factors that works against the abuse of ownership of the access point is the option of users to switch to another provider. When that option is not there, users are more vulnerable to whatever decisions the provider makes.
A few folks (also Warlick) have recently used their blogs to comment on “integrating technology.” We have used this term in our writing for the past dozen years or so and end up being attracted to posts that focus on some of our key “memes.” After reading the recent posts I came away very disappointed.
Here’s the thing: If we’re only trying to integrate technology, then we’re using it for the sake of using it. In that case, the goal is job training, which is an absolutely inane idea because schools will never be able to keep up with broader society and businesses driven by markets and money. Inevitably, schools will be left wallowing, desperately struggling to keep their “integration” relevant (from “Integration – the term of the enemy” – Teacher’s Writes which I admit is nearly as clever a blog title as Learning Aloud).
It is not that I do not agree with the underlying sentiment of these posts. I would argue that the key variable is what students do with technology not what teachers do. However, this distinction (teacher use vs. student use) seems to have nearly opposite meaning for how these linked bloggers and I interpret the meaning of technologyintegration.
We all attach our own meaning to words – it is a constructivist thing I suppose. In our work, we use integration in a different way – Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning, Integrating the Internet for Meaningful Learning. Integration implies a process and the keys for interpretation are undefined – what is integrated by whom within what? Our focus is on what students do with technology and we assume students can use technology to meaningfully learn the content topics they have previously been required to address in other ways. The assumption in some of the other posts is that students are being asked to develop tech literacy (not a bad thing, but not the same thing as applying technology tools to understanding more traditional content) or that instructors are using technology tools to do their own personal work (also not a bad thing).
I would hate to have folks out there ganging up on a defenseless word so I felt the need to step in and defend “integration’s” good name. 😉
The idea for Swivel sounds very cool – people upload data sets and allow others to explore. Simple analyses can be valuable learning experiences – plot two variables in order to determine if similar trends are evident, calculate correlations.
The downside – individuals are already contributing data sets that may be inappropriate for younger student use (e.g., beer consumption and hate comments). Too bad. This may end up as another opportunity that will be avoided because it will be possible to find something that will offend someone.
My occupation requires that I constantly review resources (journal articles, book chapters, sometimes web sites), create some meaningful personal account of these sources, and then store these accounts in a form that will be useful to me later. Sometimes later is next week when I attempt to integrate the results of a literature review in writing the Introduction to an article and sometimes later means 30 years later when I am attempting to locate an article I think I read in graduate school because that article may address an issue my younger colleagues now think is original. I have experimented with this challenge throughout my career – note cards, copies of xeroxed and highlighted articles stored in file cabinets, free form storage and search systems built in Hypercard, online social bookmarking systems, etc. I admit at this point that I spend far more time experimenting with such systems than I spend applying any given system to actual work. Total time expenditure considered, I would probably still be better off with a box of index cards and my file cabinets full of journal articles. However, I keep telling myself someone has to experiment to offer suggestions to others.
Recently, I have been exploring a free open source product called Zotero. Zotero is a Firefox extension developed at George Mason University. Zotero can function like social bookmarking sites that store a “snapshot” of a web site (something like FURL). Zotero can also save citations and notes for old school resources (articles, chapters and books). When possible, I now store the pdfs for the journal articles I read and annotate (see previous post describing YEP). Within Zotero, I can attach the files stored within YEP to Zotero citations. Zotero allows collections of citations to be created (perhaps temporarily) and then exported as a reference list (see image below).
The screen capture appearing below offers a glimpse of Zotero – this three pane system can be opened at the bottom of your browser window when needed.
I worry a bit about the complexity of this system. If I invest heavily in using it for real work, I am also going to have to consider carefully how I will backup the material I create. This is not one of those systems that stores resources on a remote server maintained by folks who back up religiously. This is a tool I would have to understand better and take responsibility for the maintenance issues.
The folks at Zotero have big plans for the future and intend to move their product from an interesting browser plugin to something with greater power. I am not ready to commit to this resource to the exclusion of others I use, but I would feel comfortable using this tool as I work on a future project. If you use Firefox, take a look and see what you think.
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