So today was an extra day off, and I spent it catching up with “the web.”  Since “the web” is such a close, personal friend. Regardless, making this blog happen (bear with me IE users, while I fix that bugginess, or better yet, just pull the content to an aggregator). I have twittered from time to time, and the recent publicity from Dave Parry caused me to give it a second chance. I can definitely see the potential of twitter, though from an academic standpoint, I could understand where there might be skepticism since there is no room for flowery description.

What I had not been aware of, in regards to twitter, is the gaming taking place. I had noticed that quite a few users have references to “red team” and “plaid team.” When I had only noticed red teamers, I assumed it was a linux thing. (Maybe it is a linux thing?). Thank goodness someone else had already been sleuthing, and this explanation should have been enough. However, there is an official call for participation for Color Wars 2008. It reminds me a little bit of summer camp, but on a much bigger scale. It also speaks to the motivation that people have to participate in community, competition, creativity, and interactivity.

“Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.” -From A Cyborg Manifesto

What are people learning when they engage in activity, interaction, and communication in Second Life? Beyond the question of whether there is a demand for learning English in SL, there is a larger question of how the tool, in this case a complex virtual world, and an understanding of a way of being within the context of the use of that tool, is an important question when we embark down this path.

What are our “historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies” when we start to engage with each other in virtual, increasingly multi-dimensional worlds? In the physical world, we have histories, individual and communal, that underlie our interactions. We have the ability to formulate abstract communications with each other, disembodied interactions, through written language. With the development of communications technologies we have been able to modify to more “bodied” exchanges, where the nuance of tone, pitch, and articulation in a voiced interaction convey more embodiment than words on a page, but less than an interaction with the whole person.

The development of information communication technology, the ability to digitize both written text and spoken information has fractured our sense of “distance” and “presence.” Whereas these were previously, at least colloquially, measures of space and time, we can be both distant and present with others across physical space and chronological time. But how is this new “enforced meaning” changing our communication? How does a shift from a visual online world (how I will loosely label our text/image-based internet) to a tactile online world (borrowing from McLuhan’s definition whereby “tactility is the interplay of the senses, rather than the isolated contact of skin and object“)?
One question in regards to teaching and learning in Second Life specifically is, how does the culture of that virtual world impacts the communicative process? Another question I would ask is how participation in a virtual world such as SL changes the participant, and is the way the participant is changed– the way they are forced to confront their identity and engage in communicative action– something that should be imposed on someone in the same manner we are all required to be participants in the physical world? What kind of disclaimer should be provided for learners who are required through coursework to join these burgeoning and wholly immersive tactile worlds?

I bring up this issue for several reasons:

1) Because much of the research and exploration of using virtual worlds such as SL for teaching and learning appears predicated on a wholly technologically deterministic approach whereby it has been created for us, so we must use it. Or from a technological utopianistic view that online we can explore these new identities in a wonderful way that doesn’t need to be critiqued. I haven’t seen a whole lot of critique of what ways of being are being introduced to students who engage in SL.

2) In the one class where the issue of SL has been brought up this semester, a student mentioned it as this “place online, where like, people live their lives and spend real money” with a tone as if to skeptically indicate that s/he had heard of this, but does such a thing really exist?

3) Capitalistic values (that whole spending real money aspect) are inherently and obviously perpetuated in the SL environment, and that may or may not be appropriate for language learning and/or other educational endeavors. Maybe, as English is the current lingua franca of business, that makes it the perfect learning environment for English.

And on that note, with #3 tying nicely back into more questions of how SL perpetuates or breaks previous historical patterns, I will break in search of lunch…

Although the post-teaching rush is widely documented, I find myself amazed at how exhausting teaching is. No wonder teaching colleagues at my former job thought I was insane to leave the desk behind. And yes, there is a certain reprieve in knowing that when you get up in the morning, you can sit at a desk for a few hours before having to do anything taxing, like, for example, convince 16 groggy undergrads to discuss Hofstede’s theory. But I digress from my intended topic, which is the sudden renewed interest in the topic of education in general, which was pushed to the back of my agenda when I was sitting behind said desk.

I have heard the allegations that today’s kids are digital natives, which I recently remarked was not what my new experience is. I might be being a little bit harsh. While they did not immediately seem to register understanding when they created accounts on the class blog, no one claimed to not know what a computer is or what the internets are. Actually, the whole process of getting people oriented to what they needed to post and where went fairly smoothly.

I am newly aware, acutely aware, of the tension between (1) the importance of critical thinking/higher order thinking and the rootedness of these skills in a liberal arts education and a general sense that an ability to manipulate emerging technologies is fickle, and with excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills, today’s learners will be able to adapt to changing technical skills and (2) a fairly certain understanding that though critical thinking and problem-solving can be generally learned, there are specific skills inherent in adapting to digital technologies that many do not just “pick up” and that many find intimidating, and one must gain problem-solving experience specific to the domain of digital technologies and message design and communication using these tools to become competent in those areas. And here’s a shocker, the rest of the liberal arts world doesn’t seem to be too keen on this idea. I’m not saying there’s outright hostility, but there are definitely traditional feelings even among others who teach in digital media circles.

This brings to life, really for the first time for me, a real interest in the questions being posed out there by others about the tension between education (credentialing) and education (learning). I loved Downes’ post this week about responding to criticism about Web 2.0. He comments, in regards to, I assume K-12 institutions:

Schools were designed for a particular purpose, one that is almost diametrically at odds with what ought to be the practices and objectives of a contemporary education, an education suited not only to the information age but also to the objectives of personal freedom and empowerment.

I can’t help but wonder whether this applies to higher education too. I want my teaching to be different. I want to teach undergraduates as I would adult learners, but I’ve been told that undergraduates are different, and this might be a fair assessment. (Might be–or the advice about how to relate to students is rooted in a particular hidden curriculum which may or may not be necessary). In fact, probably too many adult learners are not self-directed, a general weakness within the assumptions of adult learning theory. I want to guide students in understanding how to find information for themselves, to navigate the digital world that is everywhere and rapidly shifting, whereas I am not confident that these are goals of most higher education instructors. And if that’s the case, talk about being irrelevant. And this attitude makes this entire post paradoxical, because I do believe that there is value in the liberal arts curriculum, but the old way of understanding what information is and how we construct it just doesn’t add up in the digital world.

This sounds like a joke. A substitute teacher facing sentencing for not shutting down a computer fast enough? I found a discussion of this on Intellagirl’s blog, and the original link back to the PC World article. The analysis at PC World is enough for you to get a full sense of what unfolded. The author, Steve Bass, correctly pinpoints the blame back to the school not having antivirus software installed and firewalls enabled. But let’s take it a step farther. Isn’t the real blame the creators of malware who willingly and forcefully subject us to advertising porn as well as real porn through their malevolent tactics? I’m also wondering why the state of Connecticut is wasting taxpayers money to try a substitute teacher. Further, the comment from a juror on Intellagirl’s posting– “If a 40 year old school teacher does not have the sense to turn off or is not smart enough to figure it out, would you or any other person wanting her teaching your child or grandchild?”– doesn’t even make sense!!! It’s mind boggling. This isn’t a contract renewal meeting, it’s criminal court!

I hope this turns out to be some internet hoax.

The Attack of the Pod People addresses student enthusiasm for downloadable lectures in lieu of, it would appear from the context, attending class. I neither fully agree or disagree with the author, but he is getting a fundamental point in terms of the student in question’s reaction to being able to podcast class materials–just because students like it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for them. That being said, in the context of this opinion piece, there is a fundamental blurring of distinction between lecturing and instruction that would be nice for a lot of faculty to pay attention to. In fact, I would say if your argument for not providing podcasts is that students would have no need to go to your class anymore (a concern I have heard more than once), then you are doing something wrong. Why? Because if all your students do when they come to class is sit and listen to you, then WHY NOT just let them download your comments and listen to them through osmosis while they sleep off last night’s hang over.

Schneider asks: “At 8 in the morning I may not be beautiful — hell, I may not even be fully awake — but I’m there, and I’m dressed. Any questions?”

Yes, I have a question. What else –besides being there and wearing clothes– are you requiring of your students during this class time that makes the class relevant for them, which allows them to build on their knowledge of the content and receive feedback, and which allows them to interact with their peers in developing their expertise? I’m not picking on Scheider. I’m just suggesting that going even deeper into what is offensive about the lecture-podcast besides a sense that because he, as the professor has to be there to show s/he cares, students should too. That’s not enough of an argument because it leaves the opposite argument open–if a professor feels that creating podcasts is how they show commitment to their students, isn’t that caring enough? Production, after all, can be very time consuming. In fact, it’s the treatment of content as something that only need be transmitted to the student for learning to occur that is offensive.
In this debate, I’m struck by the contrast between research on learning which lauds the importance of social interaction in learning and the importance of understanding how to communicate with others in a target community of practice versus the advancement of the technological machine, which many seem to interpret as permission to distance themselves (students and faculty alike) from (other) learners. It is a curious contradiction.

I haven’t posted in a while, which is simply indicative of being caught up in other work. Currently, I am conducting a workshop on blogs, podcasts, and wikis, the content of which I organized on a site using drupal (to take advantage of the aggregation feature). I set up my course site for Digital Media for Art Educators (links dead :() in the same manner. I like it, but I don’t love it as a CMS. I do love the aggregation feature, and it saves having to get everyone acclimated to using an aggregator.

Has anyone else used drupal in this manner? The only problem I keep running into is setting up the cron jobs. I set it up on the cultivating.us server without TOO much trouble, but now on the school server, it doesn’t seem to be working exactly right.

This is just an informal post to list some of the issues and questions that came up in the course of our workshops today on RSS feeds, blogs, social bookmarking and podcasting (and every place I use blogs in this post, feel free to replace with dynamic social collaboration tools). I don’t want to lose these thoughts, and I will if I don’t write them down. So in no particular order:

-I was surprised about the initial perceptions about blogging and particularly myspace as largely negative and mostly irrelevant to education. There was mention of the association of myspace with crime (I’m guessing the resonating effects of the Taylor Behl case).

-The question was raised—why is it that a child who would freak out if their mom invaded the privacy of their room is willing to post all kinds of private information (name, address, school, etc) in an online forum such as myspace?

-It was expressed that blogging content is not reliable information (fair enough) and thus information from blog sources may not be appropriate for the classroom. This is an interesting one. I’m going to take this a little farther with a RL (real life) analogy. If we were all sitting at the corner store, having a glass of soda on the porch and having a conversation, how would we know whose information to trust? The “blogosphere” is not really all that different—the information is as credible as the source, and all netizens must develop the skills to be adept at evaluating the source. Looking at who is authoring a site, who connects to or comments on their site, what sources they refer to—this is how we can start to construct a perspective of what is “true” using a variety of information sources.

-The above leads into the larger point—we cannot just think of blogs purely as CONTENT. They are dynamic. The information is updated with regularity. The style is colloquial. It is PROCESS, not PRODUCT driven. The perspective of the writer is hopefully changing, growing, developing over time. The affordances built into a blogging platform allow for discourse and quick linking to original sources and other commentary. The interactions with others through the medium; the links to the words of others; belonging to a community of discussion–this is the larger picture of the potential of these RSS-fueled media.

-Internet 2 ≠ Web 2.0

- A lot of concerns about privacy, and what is appropriate and not appropriate for students to discuss openly. When confidentiality, privacy, building insular trust in a class is critical, blogging/podcasting/etc is not appropriate. Are controversial topics appropriate? Where do free speech lines get crossed?
-For educators preparing professionals in the community (nurses, teachers, etc.), even if blogging is not integral to the course, discussion of one’s representation of self online could be key, as inappropriate content online can derail a career.

-Can .swf files embedded in RSS feed be automatically detected and downloaded to a podcatcher (Juice)? Are there any restrictions on the type of embedded media that can be dowloaded via a podcatcher?

-My own question—is blogging behind password protection still blogging? Or is it something else? This is only an issue at this point because Blackboard is so backwards in terms of not providing any kind of blogging space that would be worth using, and because they do not provide a way to link RSS feeds from discussion boards. (In other words, our choices at my institution are a basic discussion board or a wide-open-to-the-world blog.) When those features are added, I hypothesize that the majority of educators interested in blogging will step back behind their content management system for student discourse. And that’s ok. But we still need to understand what is going on with all that information is out there in the blogosphere.

-The progression the use of these tools need to take is for students to become adept at finding useful information to their process of lifelong learning, to create their own content, to participate in educational communities that sustain the curiosity that convinced students to enroll in a course in the first place.

Some things we did not talk about nearly enough:

-Use of these tools for communication is fundamentally changing how we interact with others. There is no way around this, once you start digging in. In addition, once you start to “lurk” and comment on blogs, these changes begin.

-I do not like to the buy into the myth of the “millenial” students, who are basically cyborgs at this point. That is way too simplistic. These students–perhaps more than older students who understand what we are giving up and sacrificing in the way of privacy, and who have certain conceptions of what constitutes a “trusted source”–NEED space and guidance in reflecting on the nature of information and communication in the age of ICT.

-The truly positive side to these social communication and collaboration tools in terms of connecting isolated individuals with various needs (whether it be educational, community support in dealing with an illness or life difficulty, friendship) and providing a space, not connected with geography, to form human ties.

-If one believes that most of what is on blogs is useless drivel and too much information, what sources of information do you trust and why? We give a lot of credence to information that is “published” because it has been peer-reviewed. In a heavily read blogging site with many readers, isn’t that also “peer-reviewed” to some extent? Are experts always acting in the interest of simply deploying truth, or are there other factors at play?

All in all great audience participation and questions.