Frontline (PBS) had an hour program entitled “Growing Up Online” that aired this evening. The program explores a wide variety of topics (cheating, social networking dangers, generational differences). You can view the program and related material at the PBS site. These resources would be quite useful in a pre-service teacher ed tech class.
I learned of this program from other blogs and it appeared some felt the program would play up negative issues and this would result in an overly negative public reaction to services that have value. While the focus was probably more on “concerns” than opportunities, in areas in which I have read some of the research (e.g., danger from online predators), I thought the program raised the issues I felt were necessary to present an accurate picture (e.g., level of solicitation from strangers is rare, adolescents are aware of dangers, risky behavior has multiple causes). I did not feel the program focused on fear mongering.
ABC saw fit to run a spot on the evening news defending North Dakota against the dark, but supposedly artistic portrayal offered by National Geographic (remember that the short days of winter are offset by longer days in summer). Pretty funny stuff – the ABC video I mean.
Those of involved in promoting participatory web applications in education must look for justifications. I think this should be true for the sake of credibility, but also for our peace of mind. For example, my approach has been to point to the research on “writing to learn” to support classroom time spent on blogs and wikis. Instead of pointing to research on a practice, we attempt to use another type of research involving an activity similar to the behavior of interest and involve ourselves in “kinda like” thinking.
The characteristics of participatory web applications in education (education 2.0 or whatever the selected buzzword happens to be) go beyond similarities to writing to learn so I continue to be on the lookout for original research or similar research. In the last few days, the online preview of Educause Review (January/February) has become available. Check out the article by John Seeley Brown and Richard Adler (pdf available) entitled Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail and Learning 2.0. Among the topics covered is reference to the productivity of self-organized study groups among college students. I assume the “kinda like” thinking here is that the discussion of topics among bloggers is something like the discussion of course topics that happens within study groups. The references are to the book of Harvard educator Richard Light (Making the Most of College) and to the text of a presentation by Uri Treisman (Studying Students Studying Calculus). Whether or not college students involve themselves in study groups was found to be among the best predictors of academic success. I immediately tried to locate the sources Brown and Adler cite. Making The Most of College seems to have mysteriously disappeared within the UND library. I hate when that happens. I did read the Treisman paper. Interesting, but it was a speech that mentioned research but including no references pointing to full descriptions of the studies. I will have to do a little more digging.
Anyway, another aspect of participatory web experience that may benefit learners may be “collaborative study”. I think the key to the utility of this perspective will be finding ways to move beyond the sharing of ideas and perspectives among motivated individuals with a common interest to classroom situations where many students may be unmotivated in general and/or not intensely interested in some of skills or information they are expected to acquire. Perhaps this is a good argument for personal learning, but less so for mandated learning.
Perhaps too much has been made of generational difference in the way technology has been used. And, perhaps there is a confusion between comfort level and productivity.
The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.
The group responsible for this study intends to track individuals longitudinally. The group also seems to contend that bad scholarship is like a disease – the rest of us are catching it from our students (I made the part about the disease model up – the group says no such thing, but they do observe that similar patterns are emerging across generations).
(pdf explaining the research and intent of the group is available to those in which the problem has not progressed past the point of no return – read while you still can) 😉
BTW- the details in the pdf are a little sparse. This is more of an issue piece, but the issues are interesting and linked to some research.
This is follow-up to yesterday’s post considering how social networks might more usefully advance general understanding.
Have you been following the NYTimes debate between Rick Cotton and Tim Wu considering copyright in the digital era? I like the debate format (with side reader comments) as one approach that may make productive use of social networks. At least with the debate format you must consider active opposition to arguments. This is better than allowing one group backing one position to explain the arguments of the hypothetical opposition. It is important to consider “both sides of the story” (with a nod to Phil Collins).
Back in June, I read “Cult of the Amateur” and made the prediction that this book would set off a heated commentary from some of the visible supporters of educational blogging. The book did not generate the level of response that I expected. Perhaps the individuals I had expected to respond chose to ignore the book in the hopes the issues raised would go away. In October, I offered my own analysis, partly based on some positions I was familiar from social psychology. I think the book is still sitting in one of the piles on my desk, but I had pretty much forgotten the issue.
Out of the blue this week, I read a post from Andy Carvin bringing the topic back into focus. Andy offers a nice summary, links to others who have commented (perhaps I ignored these posts), AND links to a new blog – Why we like web 2.0 … promising a more positive and negative evaluation of web 2.0 apps and activities (we will see). So far, I do not see much pro and con type analysis.
It is the give and take on issues, including the value of “web 2.0” learning, I was encouraging in my analysis. As I argued in my earlier post (I should have titled it CNN or FOX), if we read more and more of the same arguments we are not necessarily improving our understanding, we are typically just radicalizing our positions. This is what I would call a digital literacy issue.
BTW, in my earlier posts on this topic, I note that the debate format may have some value. The example I offer is a debate hosted by The Economist. I see that the Economist has another currently active debate on the value of social networking in education. Funny how these convenient examples just pop up.
I have been experimenting with an online service called OpenDNS. I must give credit to a Leo Laporte’s podcast for bringing this service to my attention.
Most tech folks are probably familiar with the role played by a DNS server. As I understand the purpose of the DNS server, it functions to translate the web address we enter into the IP of the server. The IP number directs the query to the needed machine.
My understanding of how OpenDNS works is that the DNS server could perform functions between this translation. It could check the request against self selected filter options and tell you that you really don’t want to go to the site you have requested. It could also record information about your Internet use. It might seem that these are sinister functions, but you may want to impose well defined types of filtering on your own activity (e.g., don’t let me go to known phishing sites) and you may be interested in your patterns of Internet use. I am guessing my service provider (the University of North Dakota) at this moment has a record of the activity originating from the IP of the computer I am using anyway. Perhaps the issue is – who do you trust?
The filtering options in OpenDNS are quite specific (phishing is the only one I apply) and may be of interest to institutions/businesses who feel the need to apply filtering. The thing I found most interesting about examining the log of my “activity” was the number of connections I was making to services without my awareness. All of the services my browsers activate without recent purposeful action were there on the list. As far as I know, these were all connections I asked my browser to make by adding plugins and using a wide variety of online interactive services, but it is informative to see just how many different servers you connect to.
The process of making use of OpenDNS is fairly simple. You add the OpenDNS IP as your preferred DNS. You create an account on OpenDNS and set preferences regarding what type of filtering you prefer and whether or not you want to log your activity.
The one thing I worry about is what happens if OpenDNS goes away. It might create one of those weird problems I have so much difficulty trouble shooting. What are the odds that two months from now I will remember that I am using this unique service as my designated DNS. Maybe the operating system just defaults to something else, but probably not unless I maintain multiple DNS listings (it was my impression that my system was skipping OpenDNS when I did this, but I may be wrong). This is one problem with experimenting with so many different tools and services. I simply cannot keep track of what I have done over time. I guess if the feel the need to experiment, the message is? – Back up often and be prepared to reinstall??
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