By Lisa, on May 11th, 2012%
I noticed that Dave Cormier is using a single course blog for his ed366 class, with students as authors. Back in November, I was working on this issue with Brandon Davis-Shannon, whether it is better to have students run their own blogs or work on one big blog, and I’m thinking about it again as I plan my History 103 for fall.
I have done one big blog before, but never many student blogs (except for the POT Certificate Class). Dave has done both and notes:
It is interesting to me that engagement would be lost when students run their own blogs, versus posting on one big blog. It brings up questions about where students perceive the course is located, as well as the usual issues about motivation and self-motivation.
In addition, it may be about the changing world of online courses in the past year or so.
The typical online course offered by an institution is one kind, and for this model students translate their classroom thinking to the online class. The thinking is that on-site the class is held in Room 601, and online it’s held in Blackboard (or another LMS) or at a particular URL or website (though that’s more rare).
It’s hard for students to really see a course that’s held “on the web”, or one where their work is based in their own space, and aggregated somehow for all to see. That involves a mental shift much greater than just on-site to online.
That mental shift is encouraged by MOOCs, at least in their Couros/Siemens/Downes/Cormier/Groom model. Self-direction and/or connectivism are engrained in the format of the classes. (I’m gonna call it the CSDCG model, because no one can stop me.)
But there is another pseudo-MOOC model now, subdivided into two categories which sometimes overlap: institutional (think Stanford, MIT) and commercial (think Curtis Bonk’s class in Coursesites). These are beloved by the New York Times and the Chronicle, who are seeking to reframe educational trends. They are becoming the mental-shifting model instead of the original MOOC design.
That may be because they are held in Learning Management Systems or sites that act like LMSs (I’m afraid I have to count WordPress here, because of its use in this context). This model perpetuates the idea that “class is here“. Yes, you can run your own blog, but it’s preferred that you blog “inside the classrom”. It’s just easier for people to get their head around the idea that the class is at the instructor’s website. It fits with their current thinking, but expands it into the world of blogging. It also fits for instructors who need the two things LMSs are best at: enrollment management and grade tracking.
That seems to be the middle ground, and pedagogically it may be better not to push the envelope too much with students (at least if you want them to stay enrolled). Despite my own learning preferences, which are open and aggregated, most students aren’t conceptually ready for this kind of learning, and the cognitive dissonance overcomes their willingness to engage (which, for some, wasn’t that high to start with).
We can argue for years whether their lack of readiness is apathy, behavioral training in K-12, or cultural ennui, but most of us “practitioners” are interested in what works: what keeps them enrolled, encourages engagement, allows some independence, but doesn’t cause panic. Plus there are increasing concerns about asking students to create their own space at third-party sites, which collect and use student information and content in ways we may not consider ethical.
The WordPress Multi-User site, or the LMS that’s open to all, or the main blog where all blog within it but can have their content exported to save (which is what Dave is doing) may then be the preferred models for balancing these issues with those of exploration and innovation. They are being chosen because they take into account concerns of pedagogy and comfort, not because they can handle 1,000 students and use their content and personal information for other ends, but because they work.
 NB: The only obvious exception to this balanced model is Jim Groom’s (plus) ds106, with its student-run blogs aggregated to a main WP site, and where clearly something magical happens. And possibly my own POT Certificate Class, where I have no idea why it (sort of) works, but I dare not apply it to a standard college class.
By Lisa, on April 30th, 2012%
I’m leaving Curt Bonk’s open online class “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success”, which started this week. It’s a class about retaining, motivating and engaging online students, and I’m leaving because I’m not motivated and not engaged.
It’s not because of Dr. Bonk – his work is very interesting.
It’s the classroom. I wanted to attend to see the new CourseSites from Blackboard, which is being touted as Bb’s “open” LMS. Maybe it would be innovative! A new LMS. I’m always very interested in learning management systems, and what they can do.
Well, it’s the same old Blackboard, with more white space, nicer fonts and some cool icons.
First assignment included two 44-page pdf files that were expensive to print and difficult to read online since they were double-spaced. Oh.
Well, OK. I went over to the discussion to introduce myself, and oh dear. Same threaded discussion – very 1999. With each iteration of Bb, I find it harder to believe they’ve done nothing with forums. Each person had started their own “thread” to introduce themselves, necessitating opening each one at a time or collecting those on the page.
Only those on the page can be collected. There are 30 pages of introductions.
A sense of chore, of overwhelming ennui, engulfed me. I saw that you can also blog instead. That’s good! I can blog as I go, on my own blog! And everyone will read it, and there will be comments, and I can comment on theirs! Oh….
I’m not going to blog inside a closed system, even if it’s open at the moment. Yes, I could add a link to my own blog to the wiki, but that’s not exactly integrated into the course. Pretty evident, then, that the main discussion would be in those horrible forums.
It’s only for a month. No, I can’t. I don’t use Bb anymore for exactly this reason. I will be happy to read Bonk’s works, on my own, and blog about them. I’ll miss the community. No, I won’t. I can’t miss this many people.
I’m spoiled. I blame George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Alec Couros. I blame Jim Groom. I’m used to aggregated blogs, embedded media, distributed conversation. I think of these things as being what open, online classes are all about. I blame my own class at Pedagogy First!.
You’ll say I didn’t give it a chance. You’ll say I’m being too picky. You’ll say…well, I don’t know what you’ll say, since I won’t be in the class.
By Lisa, on April 21st, 2012%
 Yesterday these Kony posters appeared in our neighborhood. I knew they would get torn down as soon as people saw them this morning, so I went out early to take some snaps.
As I pulled up to the first one, a man (good-looking, maybe in his late 20s?) got out of his car and headed toward the sign. He leaned down to my open window and said, “do you know anything about this?”.
I said, “No.”
He said, “I think I know the kids who did it. It was kids.”
“Oh.” I said
“They don’t bother me.” I said. He looked puzzled.
“I figure it means they’re thinking”, I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s just it,” he said. “They’re not thinking. It’s a Facebook thing.”
“Well,” I said, “maybe it will make other people in the neighborhood think, and that would be a good thing.”
Pause, as he turns away.
“I’m an educator,” I say, “It goes with the territory.”
He looks at me curiously. “Wait a minute,” he says, “Are you a teacher?” (This immediately reminded me why I never use the word “educator” – I have no idea why I did.)
“Yes.” “Where?” “MiraCosta.”
“I think I had you,” he said. (I avoided sighing – people saying that to me used to mean something completely different.)
 “Then,” I said, “You should know I like this sort of thing.” He smiles and rips the sign down, going back to his car. I drove to another part of the neighborhood to get more snaps before he finished his morning endeavors.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague who is otherwise very intelligent about the world. In fact, he teaches about culture. I was complaining at how few of our colleagues have any understanding of new media, the internet itself, or the role of these elements in our culture.
He said, “Well, I’m not on Facebook, if that’s what you mean.”
“But your students are,” I said. “Don’t you think you should get in there and try to understand what’s going on? You could learn more about how they think.”
“I don’t like Facebook,” he says.
So I’m thinking (as I imagine the FB “dislike” thumbs-down in my head), is this how we deal with this? We don’t want to use it ourselves, so we aren’t interested in understanding it? Do we think the same thing about other kinds of knowledge and understanding? How do we teach our students if we don’t understand something that has become so quickly a major part of our culture? What do we teach our students if we don’t understand this?
It’s not “a Facebook thing”. Or if it is, it means we need to understand what being a Facebook thing means, and that it doesn’t necessarily translate as “doing what my friends do” or “living in a different space”. Facebook, and the whole internet, affects our lives every day, whether we have accounts or not. And when students (and former students) and teachers don’t get that, it’s a bad thing.
By Lisa, on April 18th, 2012%
On PBS radio, Kevin Whitehead’s review of Jenny Scheinman’s ‘Mayhem’ included a quick comment that if one of the songs was “taken out of context” it would be heard differently.
There are wide-open moments on Scheinman’s “Devil’s Ink” that, taken out of context, could pass for modern composed music.
Which made me wonder how a piece of a song could be taken out of context? It would have to be informed by other songs or other knowledge.
 Of course, an individual song can be taken out of context — bands like Pink Floyd and Radiohead didn’t want their songs to be sold separately in iTunes. Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare is meant to be heard in a certain order – so is Queen’s Night at the Opera. Album rock is based on the album, not the individual songs.
But context can be important for bits of knowledge as well. And this connects (really it does) to my students coming to class not having done their reading.
I complained about this on John Mak’s blog, in answering his query about flipping the classroom, where I described the problem in my hybrid class, where lectures and readings are online, and on-site time is for discussion:
Several students seem to “forget” to do the online work at all, having been “trained” to just show up in a class. The time in class, now joyfully turned over to “discussion”, doesn’t go as well when students don’t do the online readings.
The readings provide context for what we talk about in class. Reading about what happened (yes, including some facts) provides the context for both the primary sources and further discussion.
And yet, there is no reason for a person to realize they do not possess context for their ideas. They may think their thoughts spring from an internal source, without connection to their culture, upbringing, or surroundings. Only their presence is required to engage in criticism, on any subject.
Such disconnected idea-building could represent a moment of spirituality, but is more likely to express simple ignorance.
People who cannot think within a pattern of intellectual endeavor (mathematical, historical, literary, scientific) lack the context within which to put the bits and pieces of information they may encounter.
The Nowhere Man in Yellow Submarine knew a million details, but had no knowledge.
So the entire purpose of education is to provide context. Or, at least, it is its central purpose. Providing facts and forcing memorization, we say, doesn’t do that – you only learn the details. But could enough facts, stuck together however tenuously, create a net that becomes a context? Can we rearrange the songs to make an album?
Or is it necessary to have someone else (expert, professor, teacher, curator) create the album, so that we hear the individual tunes as a contextual package?
Perhaps the controversy between the constructivist or connectivist pedagogies and the instructivist pedagogy is mostlya bout context. The constructivists and connectivists want the students to build their own contextual package, inductively, and the instructivists want to provide the contextual package, within which students fit the specifics, deductively.
Either way, it seems to me, the goal is the same.
By Lisa, on April 14th, 2012%
 No, I am not a big fan of the James Cameron film, mostly because of the awful script and the inability of the two leads to rise above it.
I have also not been a big fan of tweeting “history”, in historical reinactments done via Twitter. I critiqued the approach heartily almost exactly two years ago.
However, I have now been to two museum exhibits of artifacts from the Titanic (including the current one in San Diego), and tonight I sit here watching Twitter as the Carpathian steams in to pick up survivors, and I have to say, it’s ridiculously riveting to watch the disaster unfold on Twitter.
I have followed both Real-Time Titanic and TitanicVoyage out of the UK publishing house The History Press for the last couple of days. Both have done a great job in creating a suspenseful account of what professional historians like to call (often disdainfully), “popular” history, Real-Time Titanic using a third-person, journalistic style and TitanicVoyage marking posts by the type of tweeter (#captain, #crew, #thirdclass) for an even more harrowing first-person tone.
As with most of the popular history I’ve enjoyed, I was drawn to a single aspect of the subject, in this case the problem with the Marconi wireless radio just a day before they hit the iceberg.
Apparently, the transmitter went down.
And apparently, they broke the rules to fix it.
Naturally, this sent me on a hunt for rules about Marconi wireless, and the stories of the young men who worked the radios. I found a respected article by Parks Stephenson, a fascinating page on the wireless telegraphists, a website “specialising in radio aspects of the Titanic disaster since 1999“, and a recent article from Atlantic Monthly on the importance of radio to the survivors. None of the creators of this stuff are, to my knowledge, professional historians. They are enthusiasts, of history and radio.
Even if only parts of the stories are true, it is possible that a couple of young men took apart a radio against some sort of policy to make sure it transmitted, and if they hadn’t then a day later when Titanic hit an iceberg they might not have been able to send the distress call.
Conclusions can thus be made about the value of mechanical tinkering, and not being afraid to break the rules, and professional pressure to do your job (hundreds of passenger-sent messages were sent from the ship by radio).
It’s harder to explain, though, the emotional impact of watching it unfold, in “real time” 100 years later, as if it were happening now and we could hear the screams of the people freezing to death yards from the lifeboats. There was a certain War of the Worlds aspect to it, even though Twitter is not really the radio and one couldn’t unknowingly follow the Twitter stream the same way people unknowingly tuned in to Welles’ show.
And again this odd use of Twitter makes me rethink the role of stories and history and the enthusiasts who put it all together, and I’m filled with nothing but respect for their work.
By Lisa, on April 4th, 2012%
This is a story of failure. Not, at first, the good kind of failure, the kind that leads to growth. In this case, it’s the kind of failure that leads you to go back on the trail, to find that tree around which you tied the ribbon, and take the other fork in the road.
For many years, I did all my web stuff myself. This was before a whole lot of software or webware – it was all HTML, which I taught myself from a For Dummies book (Quick Reference, 1997). Oh, and we had Webboard 1 (they’re on 9 now) for threaded discussion. Geeks used IRC and other ways to talk in real time. The sound of the modem was music to my ears.
Then Web 2.0 happened, and it was so exciting and easy to use all the cool stuff. Flickr for photos! Blogger and WordPress.com for blogs! Twitter for microblogging! You could post all your stuff, even create stuff, and there it is, all for free. No need to know HTML!
I should have known better. I’m a historian.
Problems at Pedagogy First!
Most of our participants at Pedagogy First!, at our encouragement, have been using Edublogs or WordPress.com for their blogs. At first, these blogging services provided for free the means to upload the things our participants created as part of the class. But, as time has gone on, fewer features have been enabled for free accounts at these services.
The number of plugins that both services offer has also decreased. We have been exploring workarounds in response to the decline in services like embedding media. First it was Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, where you could just by typing the URL into WordPress.com but Edublogs wasn’t so easy. Then we couldn’t get Edublogs to embed Jing or Slideshare (and WordPress.com could only if we used Vodpod).
Now our intrepid participants are posting audio and sure enough, WordPress.com won’t let them embed audio on the free account using an upload. So the trick here is to upload ones audio “somewhere on the web” and put in a shortcode like [audio http://myserver.net/myaudio.mp3].
To upload “somewhere” means they really should have access to a web folder somewhere and know how to ftp to it, or try a service (I tried yourlisten.com, but it didn’t work). As they helped each other, they discovered Soundcloud could work. But this sort of thing is dicey and inconsistent, and it freaks out the newbies. Come on, everybody, let’s run all over the web looking for ways to do something simple!
Problems for Me
At the same time, I have been experiencing problems with my own free services. Posterous won’t convert my video to embed it, regardless of the codec used. I recorded the weekly message to my students in Eyejot, and it didn’t send it to me for four days. Flickr wants money to share my photos with others.
And then I look at ds106, harbinger of all things self-participatory. Jim Groom at UMW just raised money for a separate server, and they’re giving students domain names and web hosting so everyone can run their own blogs (not, you’ll note, using WordPress.com or Edublogs).
Going Backward
So is it time to go back to that tree? Back up (beep, beep, beep) the road of Web 2.0 “freemium” service providers, who (like insurance companies) are charging us more and delivering less, and get back to that DIY spirit? I always recommend some DIY anyway – keeping your files on your own computer to protect them from loss, never writing anything directly into a system. Now we may have to build learning units around it.
As we revise the syllabus for next year’s Pedagogy First! class, I’m asking my colleagues whether we should recommend some hosting, and teach everyone how purchase hosting space and create their own blog (as ds106 did last year). Our college’s super computer guy is happy to administer some WPMU blogs for MiraCosta participants, which is wonderful, but every plugin will have to be approved and updated, and/or faculty will need to be taught how to use their web folder and upload things, a whole different level of web comprehension. They won’t know why they should make the choice between uploading to their web folder and uploading into WP — too many choices is bad for newbies. And, if this year is anything to go by, 75% of participants won’t be from MiraCosta, or won’t want a MiraCosta-controlled blog. We’ll need to teach them how to not only set up a blog but get a hosting account (likely at Hippie Hosting for $12/year), install WordPress, and then set it up. It’s a year long class, but still…
This was the sort of thing we taught in 1998. Here’s some HTML. Here’s how to ftp. Now have fun. Blog platforms should make it easier, but in their current push toward monetization, they really are adding another layer, something else to be learned, instead of substituting for that back end knowledge. We didn’t whine in 1998 about learning the back end — you had to know some in order to teach online.
Walking away
As for me, I’m creating a new WordPress blog of my own and using Posterous Importer to transfer my ds106 blog. And I’m crawling through those php.ini files trying to fix problems, knowing I cannot expect novices to do that in the fall.
I also know, of course, that you can never really go back….
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