December 2014 – Learning Aloud

My 2014 blog data

I have blogged since 2002. In recent years, I have split my attention across three WordPress blogs. My blogs are hosted on my site (not the Word.Press hosted site), but I can use analytic tools provided by WordPress. This has been the case for the past few years.

My views has declined recently and I have been trying to figure out why. I thought the issue was a user switch from RSS feeds to Twitter (I do not work hard at developing a large Twitter following which would receive notifications of new posts), but it seems more a decline in posts being located in searches. I do not understand why this would happen unless there has been some change in how near the top of search results my content appears.

The major decline has been associated with my main blog (learningaloud). My post numbers are down a bit because I now post to several sites. but this would not totally explain this sharp drop. The Curmudgeon Speaks blog is up in numbers. Do folks want funny over serious?

Be the bridge

Howard Rheingold’s NetSmart offers an interesting analysis of the potential benefits of online networks. As I understand his analysis, there might be a couple of issues anyone hoping to learn from an online community might overlook.

The first is “the power of weak ties”. A tendency of those new to the network might be to motivate friends to convene for online discussions. I am reminded of the “edchat” phenomenon when bringing up this issue. In comparison to those we know, “weak ties” bring something new to a conversation – different ideas and perhaps challenges to existing ways of thinking. The value in advancing thinking is to experience different perspectives and challenges to existing personal views.

Given that “echo chamber” networks are likely most common (my comment), members of a given network who bridge to other networks (networks with different perspectives) are particularly valuable. Such participants may not be the most prominent within a given network, but add the diversity that encourages a deeper examination of topics.

It might be helpful to examine what you consider your personal learning network in this fashion. Are you a bridge? Does your network involve those who serve as bridges? Do administrators participate with classroom teachers? Do researchers participate with practitioners?

These analyses offer a description of what types of learning groups are most productive, but not necessarily how to develop a productive group. I have a thing with those who use the phrase “from what we know about learning”. I would prefer that something specific follow this phrase rather than assuming any position taken has been magically justified. Here is one thing I think we know about learning (from Piaget and other constructivists, conceptual change research, etc.) – models of the world mature when existing models are challenged. Being willing to maintain an open mind and to seek diversity are important characteristics in learning individuals and learning groups. So, one place to begin in generating a more productive learning group might be to define the diversity in the existing organization and consider how this diversity might be increased. It would seem quite practical to examine the transcripts from past discussions and look for indicators of variety and even contradiction.

The participatory continuum

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.

Snippefy

I read many Kindle books to assist in my writing activities. The highlighting and annotation that I do as part of the reading process is what fuels my future efforts. There are advantages to working digitally rather than highlighting hard copy or taking notes, but I fear few have a work flow that takes advantage of the digital advantages. Here is a new app I have been using.

Snippefy downloads Kindle notes and highlights to your iPad and if you make an in-app purchase will upload these data to Evernote or DropBox. One could then share this content socially. I understand there are other ways to get at and download this content from Amazon, but Snippefy makes the process very easy.

One issue you might want to consider if you decide to try this app is that you must enter your Amazon login info to gain access. I assume you can trust the company responsible for the app, but some worry others might gain access to you login info. Note this login is the means by which you connect to Amazon to make purchases. I can only bring this potential issue to your attention – I am not certain how else you could gain access unless Amazon offered an API. Update: Snippify contacted me (my posts generate Tweets) to indicate that their app stores your personal information on your iPad and not on their servers.

The two images that appear below show the app access to your books (first image) and the downloaded annotations from a given book (second image).

P.S. – I continued my search for a way to efficiently download notes and highlights after learning that Snippefy requires you use your Amazon credentials to sign in. MyClippings.io is a web based service that does approximately the same thing. This approach either requires that you connect your Kindle to your computer using a USB cable or by using a Chrome extension. The direct connect can only access the content available on your Kindle. The Chrome approach sounds great, but the extension must be rented for $2 a month. I prefer to pay and own my software so this approach is not a favorite.

I am still searching for an ideal approach.

Holiday reading recommendations

If you are looking to find a good read for the holiday season, allow me to make several recommendations. Each of us likely has a somewhat unique way of thinking about what makes a quality read. I look for interesting ideas and some depth offered in support of the ideas. These suggestions all offer these characteristics.

H. Rheingold – Netsmart: How to thrive online

d. boyd – It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens

D. Goldstein – The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession

D. Ravitch – Reign of error

S. Martinez & G. Stager – Invent to learn: Making, tinkering and engineering in the classroom

I can save Clearly now

Sometimes you pick up an idea for a creative use you have not discovered because there has been no need to consider a situation in a different way. This is called “functional fixedness” if I remember my Intro Psych lecture on problem solving. I have used Evernote Clearly as a way to save web content I wanted to use in a future writing task to Evernote. This is the way the “extension” (I use it in the Chrome browser) is intended to work. The extension removes the clutter from a web page so that the core article is easier to read and cleaner to save for personal research (contrast the two images that appear at the bottom of this post).

I attended a session at TIES presented by a librarian and the presenter suggested that Clearly be used to save content to Google Docs. Acknowledging that this was not the intended purpose, he suggested schools using Google for Education would likely prefer that students work within the Google environment. Rather than saving content to Evernote, he had students use Clearly to isolate research material from a page and then suggested students copy and paste the content they wanted to save for later writing tasks to Google docs. I am not certain how the Evernote folks would evaluate this approach, but it does work.