A colleague of ours, Joe Dale, from the Isle of Wight, posted this video clip to his blog, and it has been making its rounds throughout the language-learning related blogosphere.
As we here in the US savor what for some is the last weekend of summer and calm before the fall semester frenzy begins (*sigh*), please sit back, and enjoy.
Back in the olden days, I was one of those people whose bedtime was established by end of the Johnny Carson monologue. Carson’s opening act often included an interchange where he would lead with the line “it’s hot/cold/smoggy and the audience would respond “how hot/etc. was it?” to set up the joke. To this day, when someone makes a statement “it’s whatever”, my mind responds with with the audience’s line. “How whatever is it?”
This time of year, I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out “how bad is it”–not as a way of setting up a joke, but in trying to figure out what problems are important enough to solve “at the root” rather than just dealing with the symptoms. For example, we’ve opened a new building on campus and one of my staff members just spent about a third of last week dealing with issues have nothing to do with academic technology–she’s chasing down questions about wire molding, conduit, network connections, door locks and other stuff that clearly is not her responsibility. (I guess these things are technology related in some broad way–they all do have wires.) She gets the questions because she knows all faculty in the building and because there is no clear communication path established as to who really is responsible. When we try to figure out a way to deflect those questions so she can focus on things are clearly are her job she comes back to the relational question: “If not me, who?”.
In complex, decentralized, underfunded organizations, figuring out who actually does have the responsibility for even something (relatively) simple like coordinating all those building changes (and then documenting the process) may require hours of phone calls, meetings, memos, negotiations and communications–even staff training. Deciding whether or not to try to fix the root problem is a judgment call that we make dozens of times a day, and, more often than not, it’s easier to just spend extra time to solve the immediate problem rather than to try to dig down and fix the root. Our faculty are busy folks and they’re generally very appreciative when someone–whoever–helps them.
But I have to wonder what the long term cost is when “fixing the symptom and ignoring the cause” becomes ingrained in the organizational culture and it becomes the accepted way of doing business. In my real (non-William and Mary) life, I much prefer to deal with organizations where the simple things are simple. No matter how helpful, friendly, and courteous someone might be in helping me navigate the corporate run-around (think Cox or Comcast here), I much prefer not not to get embroiled in a mess in the beginning. I’m wondering if we’re as much a part of the problem as the solution?
Stephen Downes is one of my heroes - a pioneer in online learning. However, I think he missed the mark with his post yesterday entitled “My Take on the Top 25“. Stephen took Jane Hart’s Slideshow of the Day list of the top 25 technologies - and commented on where they fit (or did not fit) in his own world.
A quick disclaimer, I may have took notice because I was one of 192 professionals that submitted our top ten tools to Jane, who compiled them into her Top 100 Tools for Learning. Given the number of submissions and the depth of expertise of the submitters, this list strikes me as pretty balanced and interesting. But I may be biased.
However, in reading Stephen’s post, I was struck by a feeling that I have not had since my Pentagon days - one of “NIH” - or “not invented here.” NIH was a condition that sometimes struck officers of one branch of the military if an officer from another branch suggested a solution. Stephen seemed to be unimpressed with many of the tools because he had already written a script or code that did similar functions and saw little utility in the tools listed. He basically downplayed or outright stated that he had no use for 15 of the 25 tools.
I would suggest a different take. Most faculty (and I include myself) are not as inherently gifted at coding or programming as Stephen is, and instead are simply looking for tools that solve problems in their very real world. Many of the tools in Jane’s list meet these needs. They have for me.
What I find interesting in Jane’s list are the possibilities it has suggested. Rather than saying “I do not use this tool”, I looked at the list for suggestions on tools I might use to solve problems I have with my online teaching (and my students’ online learning). I now routinely use 21 of the top 25 tools (though that was not true two years ago). The four tools that make up my PLE (delicious, Google Reader, blogging with WordPress, and Twitter) are all in the top fifteen. I am using Camtasia and Wikispaces in my online Blackboard class. Firefox is my default browser. Pictures in my blog come from Flickr or SnagIt, and I routinely network with others through Ning and Slideshare. In fact, I continue to be blown away by the fact that one of my powerpoints I uploaded on a whim to SlideShare, Teaching In A Flat World, now has over 7,000 views in just the last 5 months - not to mention nearly 600 downloads and 16 embeds in others’ websites. Long winded way of saying that I find tremedous value in these tools.
What is your take? Do you find Jane’s list unhelpful (does it not fit your world)…or is it helpful - does it open up new possibilities for teaching and learning? Be interested in your thoughts!
{Photo Credit: LexnGer}
This Saturday, I will be doing some guest lecturing in our Fast Track Executive MBA “mini-camp” here at VCU. They have asked me to demonstrate “collaborative software.” I am looking forward to this session, but the language they have used demonstrates how the world is evolving. We really do not use “software” anymore for collaboration - it is now done on the web.
I was struck by this in reviewing a post today from Read-Write-Web entitled “Back to School: 10 Great Web Apps for College Students“:
1. Evernote
3. Google Docs
4. Zoho
5. Zotero
6. EasyBib
10. Meebo
Evernote and Google Notebook are listed as note taking applications. Google Docs and Zoho are online office suites. Zotero and EasyBib help build bibliographies. Google Calendar and RTM help keep students organized. Rate My Professors helps pick the right class (debatable…but the students do use it!). And Meebo is an instant messaging app for staying in touch.
The list above generated quite a few comments, with some suggesting the addition of some favorites of mine, including Jott (even though it costs) and Facebook.
In my presentation to the Executive MBA students, I plan to do some quick polling to get a sense of what they currently use, and then suggest some quick tools built around Google applications. From Google Sites to Google Docs to Google Calendars, and of course, Google Reader, MBA students (and students in general) have a rich variety of web tools that can enhance their collaborative work and build networks for the future.
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown
So, building off the question Frederic Lardinois asked in his RWW posting, what am I missing? What tools would you suggest to Executive MBA students to bring their collaboration into the Web 2.0 arena?
Photo Credit: www.CentralDesktop.com
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Image by Andrew Feinberg via Flickr
How’s that title for an attention grabber? It basically translates to saying, unless you’re a bad parent, you should drop what you’re doing and pay attention. In blogs, newscasts, and almost everywhere else that you turn we hear the warnings. Scary warnings about food, travel, drugs, and now the de rigueur warning about the hazards of the Internet and [insert dramatic music here] Internet Predators. The latest example is by way of Will Richardson who points to an incident that happened in a Wyoming high school. An officer from the nearby Cheyenne Police Department came to the school and spoke to students about the dangers of predators on the Internet. He used MySpace as an example of where students post their personal pictures and therefore leave themselves vulnerable to those bad people watching out there. Now, while there is some debate about what the officer actually said. Richardson’s point that it is the absolutely wrong approach is right on. He has a suggestion:
Go to your principal or superintendent right now and ask her/him this: Would you really rather have your students learn about safety online from some “authority” figure who drops in and attempts to make them fearful, or from people who they know and trust and see every day in their classrooms who over the course of time in appropriate and balanced ways can educate them instead?
Now I know a few police officers, good men and women all, but I know that their perspective is somewhat clouded by the fact that they see the end result of the "bad Internet". To them it must look mostly bad. So this fear approach to Internet safety doesn’t work any better than other types of "scared straight" education. This results in nothing more than articles like this one from 2003, which starts out like a bad novel. "Christina Long’s life was full of promise." I mean for cripes sake, what purpose does this serve? Christina Long was indeed the victim of a crime, but the Internet was no more of a perpetrator than violent TV, or slash and burn video games. Another example is this pitiful article from Katherine Ramsland. After referencing the story about Christina Long, she refers to a June 2006 article in Science News:
[The] article reports that nine in ten adolescents utilized Internet resources in 2004, and at least fifty percent went online every day. A lot of them are contacted by predators seeking a viable contact whom they can draw into their net. Most predators have a number of fetishes and paraphilias, so for some, almost any kid who responds will do.
Guess which part of that paragraph were Ms. Ramsland’s words (hint, they’re in bold), because they are, in fact, wrong. Watch the PBS Frontline program Growing Up Online and see how the teenagers talk much more rationally about online life than the adults. Maybe we need to correct some of their laissez faire attitudes, but for the most part they know where the good Internet ends and the bad one begins.
So what is a good source of information that is easily digestible and dispels the myths of online predators? Well, start with the Crimes Against Children Research Center’s fact sheet from the University of New Hampshire. A quick read of this resource will demonstrate loud and clear how much hype there is when it comes to Internet dangers. Kids know when they’re being lied to, especially when we try to scare the crap out of them.
My wife and I are down in Augusta GA to celebrate my parent’s 60th anniversary. Here is a picture from August, 1948, when my parents wed in Atlanta GA. I came along 2 years later, followed by my two brothers. They were typical of the Greatest Generation - hard working, dedicated, and committed to making their sons’ lives better than theirs. Thanks to them, I was the first in my family to attend college and go on to a successful naval career and doctoral studies.
Last night, my brother and his wife hosted a dinner at which a dozen friends from Atlanta and South Carolina came to Augusta to attend. As much as a 60th anniversary says about a couple, the strengths of the friendships they made say even more.
The local Augusta paper printed a nice anniversary announcement this week. I could not resist running it through Wordle, which crafted the following image.
In preparing for a presentation on course planning for Blackboard last week, I came upon a great course design tip sheet at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. The sheet begins with a couple of general questions and suggests that teachers not think specific content until after they have thought carefully about their overall purpose and about the expectations, capabilities and needs of their students. Hidden in the midst of that checklist was a question that has really captured my interest: “What’s the story line for this course?”
I’d never thought of my courses as having “story lines”, but they clearly do. The story is what pulls the disparate activities, topics and conversations of a course into a meaningful whole. Each participant constructs an individual narrative that persists long after the “facts” and much of “the content” is forgotten. The story weaves the actions, reactions, motivations, emotions, thoughts and behaviors into an unique experience with the capacity to shape participants as active creators of our own learning. As teachers we don’t control the entire story, but we do get to shape it somewhat by the activities we choose and by the way we interact with our students.
When we look back at the learning that has been most significant in our own lives, we generally relate our experience as narrative. As Gardner wrote about Professor Elizabeth Phillips:
I remember the room where I first heard her speak. No one in my immediate family had been to college. I had no idea what to expect. After that class, I left the room feeling dizzy, giddy, elated, and not a little anxious, for everything had changed, and I knew I had to at least try to be answerable to that revelation.
All of my classes have a common story line. My goal in the 15 weeks we’re together is to help all of us learn how to learn more effectively. The central issue is developing new flexibility and capacity in learning; content provides the tools by which we develop those capacities. As the catalog outlines in the emerging technology class, we’ll be thinking, talking and writing about a variety of topics including past innovations, present applications, and future advances in educational technology. We’ll look at these topics through multiple theoretical lenses, including change theories, diffusion of innovations, and learning theories. But the ultimate story of the courses goes far beyond that–at least I hope it will.
My goal in designing the course is to prepare educators who are confident in their ability to navigate in a world that is increasingly dominated by information technology. If we’re successful, we’ll be more prepared as teachers and administrators to help our own students deal with increasing pace of change in their lives. Some of the themes that I expect to emerge during my next class include ways that we can help students:
This has all the potential for a fascinating story.
courtesy http://xkcd.com
For much of the last three weeks, this comic has been my life: mooching free wireless (thank you, jrodie, whoever you are) from a neighbor while living out of boxes in my new apartment here in San Francisco. Earlier this summer I accepted a position at UC San Francisco, working in the Center for Instructional Technology as a Learning Technologies Specialist. For the 2008 - 2009 academic year, I’ll be primarily responsible for developing and delivering training on our new Collaborative Learning Environment; our campus is migrating from WebCT 4.1 to Moodle as of this Fall. Our space, and our organization, are undergoing a lot of changes this year, though, and so what my day-to-day work life entails beyond this year is not set in stone. But that’s another post, or a series thereof …
While my heart leapt at the chance to move to the city of my dreams, it sank when I realized what I’d be leaving behind. No, I’m not talking about the Ohio cornfields, or the stench of cow manure on a damp spring morning, as lovely as those things might be. However, anyone who has worked with Barbara knows how talented, kind, and generous a person she is. I could not have asked for a better or more caring supervisor, and I left her employ with a heavy heart. Anyone who has not worked with Barbara: well, now is your chance. My old position at the CILC is currently open and applications are being accepted; feel free to contact me at ryan [dot] brazell [at] gmail [dot] com with questions.
While many, many things are changing and moving and shifting in my life, my participation here on LLU is staying put. I will no longer be working with language faculty or students on a daily basis; UCSF is a graduate school solely focused on the health sciences. But solid teaching and learning practices are universal, and when it comes down to it, a Dentistry professor at a large state university and a Russian professor at a small liberal arts college are both just trying to educate the next generation. I believe they can learn a lot from each other despite (and, perhaps, because of) their different needs, wants, and perspectives. Helping folks look past disciplinary silos will be challenging, indeed, but I’m all about a good challenge. 
Speaking of which, we are looking for a better name for our new Moodle implementation. We don’t want to call it Moodle, because we don’t want to put the focus on the software, but “Collaborative Learning Environment” is a mouthful. Anybody have suggestions? 
