I have something to say, but I won’t be saying it here. I’m setting up new digs at http://www.jentropy.com. I won’t be writing about ed tech, and it’s not a mommy blog. It’s someplace in between and you’re welcome to join me.
It’s time to move on and leave you to navigate the social web with your newly found friends and professional contacts. I’ve uploaded a ZIP file of all the onramp posts, as well as an instructor guide, the delicious resources and sample syllabus as HTML files, if you wish to use any of this content in your own practice. Thank you for reading along and sharing your knowledge with me!
Jen
In this series, I’ve deliberately excluded instructions for working within an LMS and other closed commercial applications. Like many others, I try to stay away from these tools, if I can. However, I’ve met instructors who are not permitted to use anything else. For instructors in that situation, I hope you have internal support to use the system effectively. Some of the commercial systems allow integration of outside RSS feeds. If this is the case with your system, you may wish to publish your materials openly outside the LMS, and simply import the feed. Many institutions have heavily invested in these products and you will find very little support for anything else.
Institutional culture is difficult to change, and innovation becomes the victim. For insight into Disruptive Innovation Theory, and how it can be applied to education, read the book, Disrupting Class, by Christensen, Horn and Johnson. The theory and their case studies are a fascinating read, although I feel the book was either prematurely published, or the authors did not dig deeply enough into the existing culture of sharing through participatory media. Their most important point, is that disruptive innovation must address unserved populations, rather than replace an existing technology.
While the book focuses on innovative change in K-12 institutions and systems, there is implication for higher education and professional development. I’ve found many higher education institutions are attempting to simply convert existing face to face courses into online courses. If there is any validity to disruptive innovation theory, this process is destined to fail. Our attention should be focused, rather, on addressing unmet needs. For example colleges can target rural populations, military service members, and high school students. Rather than replacing face to face courses in their entirety, the course model can be disrupted to offer new instructional models. I would personally like to see disruption to the current practicum and student teaching models. I envision external entities matching preservice teachers online with underserved students, and serving as connectors and facilitators.
In terms of changing organizational culture to accept these new instructional models, there is an entire field of social science devoted to organizational change theories. My experience with Viral Professional Development (VPD) has led me to believe the best options to influence organizational change and innovation occur when faculty and staff are supported in their efforts to self-organize and learn together. Support for VPD and other informal learning strategies may include providing time for online social networking, creating comfortable physical spaces for networking, and offering informal online and face to face sessions, where participants are encouraged to experiment and share. Administration cannot force innovation, but they can support it. For example, I was hired to develop a course for BTC. When I asked if I could publish components on my blog in this onramp series, in order to gain feedback, I was encouraged to do so. Not all institutions encourage the kind of sharing that can lead to feedback and spawn innovation.
If you feel the information you’ve gathered in this series can help improve your teaching practice and that of your colleagues, yet you don’t feel your institution will support the ideas and concepts we’ve explored, you may be facing deep, institutional culture issues. These can’t be taken lightly, and aren’t always possible to overcome. For a good conversation about some of the implications of exploring social media for learning and reaching a brick wall professionally, check out Steve Dembo’s post here, and read through the comments. I have known many people who have left their organizations because of the lack of support for innovation. This is a real crisis, in my opinion, not just in terms of social media, but in realizing the needs of our society have changed so dramatically in recent years, innovation may be the only way we resolve our problems.
One of the questions I am most frequently asked is why I don’t support the term, “Web 2.0.” I have addressed this in many individual conversations and in a few blog posts, podcasts and a video, but thought I should include it in the Onramp. The term definitely refers to Web-based applications that involve participatory media, as opposed to static “read-only” Web sites. When you hear the term Web 2.0, you probably start thinking, “blog, wiki,podcast!” In terms of promotion for learning, I’m not happy with categorizing participatory media by types of tools. I feel this puts us at risk of narrowing our opportunities to communicate, by encouraging us to socialize across a particular type of tool, rather than focusing on the people behind the tools. With RSS, we can bring text, video, audio, photographs, and conversations wherever we wish. When I post something to my blog, I want the world to be able to easily respond using their favorite medium. As much as we talk about moving away from the silo of the LMS, simply moving to “Web 2.0″ tools, does not solve the silo problem.
Observation #24: More than all the other Onramp posts, this is an example of my personal opinion and a reflection based on my experiences and natural curiosity. I include it in the Onramp, both to address the Web 2.0 issue, and to give an example of the type of reflection you may see from students as they explore social media. I’m not citing any source as backup for this rant. It’s all me!
I’ve heard many presentations on Web 2.0 being the future of learning, with Moore’s Law being cited as critical to understanding the exponential growth of technology development. It amazes me to see the same people promoting Moore’s Law, trying to move people into a technology advancement that has already been around for years. If we’re going to teach Web 2.0, I feel it should be taught as an important historical event that forever changed the nature of communications for people with access. Of course, it is more complicated than that, but I just hate to see it used as a lure to recruit newcomers to presentations, that sometimes seem like magic shows. I have been guilty of this myself.
Sometimes I feel like I’m approaching this from the perspective of a member of an elite group, holding the exclusive keys to the future of learning. But this is the Web. It is here. Everyone can do what I do, as long as they have access, and can read. The big problem, is that not enough people have access and reading comprehension. Sometimes Every day I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off trying to improve access and reading literacy, rather than convert reluctant instructors to integrating technology in teaching. After all, if a person has strong reading comprehension skills and access, won’t employers be prepared to train them on their individual systems? I don’t have the answer to this, but sometimes I feel guilty teaching these tools to people who have the access and ability to figure it out themselves. I wonder if we’re giving stronger voice to those with privilege, when the power is there to enable the unheard, if only we could get them connected and literate.
So, to me, Web 2.0 is not a set of tools. It was a social, historical, and cultural event that changed the way we communicate and organize around social objects, events and causes. The world will never be the same. People now have the power to quickly organize and communicate desires and demands to corporations and political organizations. Unfortunately, not all people have that power, and many who do are quickly learning to control and take advantage of social media participants. I’m troubled when I hear educators quote the high numbers of connected as a reason to use social media tools for learning. Sometimes I’m called to give presentations and I’m told I was recommended as an “expert” in social media. It deeply affects me when I give a presentation and feel like I’m suddenly revealing the wizard behind the curtain. I feel using the term “Web 2.0″ creates the sense that there is some type of illusory new technology, without which, learning cannot occur. If I knew a way to engage those without a voice, this is where I would next focus my career. I know someone must be working on this. Hopefully we will find each other!
There are many books, journal articles and blogs offering advice for building and maintaining online communities, but the reality is that each community experience depends a great deal on the types of people involved in the community. I’ve been reading Groundswell, by Li and Bernoff, and believe their philosophies help explain why some communities are successful, while others fail miserably. They describe six levels of Social Technographic profiles, as explained in this presentation. Each profile represents a different level of social engagement with online media.
I think it is important to be aware of the communications techniques political and corporate entities use to engage us and keep us coming back. Often, they employ the same principles we use in education. People will become proficient in using these technology tools as consumers, and we need to give weight to that when considering how to facilitate learning experiences for our students. If you consider the Social Technographics profiles as a start in the right direction, you can see how the wrong mix of students (consumers) would challenge community builders. If you can reasonably develop a profile of your students prior to instruction, you can select strategies ahead of time. If you must wait to get to know them, plan for flexibility.
These profiles are also important in trying to develop other types of online social communities, such as alumni and parent groups and faculty networking sites. I created a Ning site for instructors at BTC when I first started working there. Registration quickly swelled and I received a lot of attention for such an innovative idea for professional development. More than a year later, I recognize that it was the wrong tool for that purpose and it would have been more effective if I had profiled the potential community members ahead of time. Ning is great when you have a strong group of creators and critics. Instructors not only don’t have time to participate in this way, they often resist putting their creations and critique in a limited environment, targeted only at their institutional colleagues. This is a good thing, as it is more beneficial to everyone if they publish openly where more people can access their resources.
If you have creators and critics, but not enough to maintain your own community, you can involve them in existing communities. What I really needed for this group, was a searchable location where they could locate resources and ask questions. A blog with delicious bookmarks could have served this purpose. RSS gives us the power to collect and organize publications from anywhere with a feed. If users are already publishing within their own space, facilitators can compile feeds, provide a single feed for the group, and create a community that interacts in multiple spaces. A simple way to do this is by subscribing to the individual feeds in Google reader and assigning them to a single folder. That folder will have its own feed you can then provide to others. With this single feed, your students can see each other’s publications without having to leave their reader. To take it a step further, if your students publish on multiple sites, have them compile their own feeds this way and give you the feed to gather with the other students. There are services, such as friendfeed, that make this easier. There are also more technical tools that help to generate custom feeds.
With smaller classes, and classes where students have little social networking experience, you may find it difficult to build a community with just your students. This is when it helps to bring in your professional network, connect students with those in other courses, and open up your course to outside participation. However you decide to build community, keep in mind the different profiles your learners may exhibit. Learn to work with them and stimulate them appropriately. For example, you may have students who find it extremely uncomfortable creating blog posts, yet, they might be prolific in commenting on other blogs. You may need to reconsider assessment when you think about the individual strengths of your learners. Of course, I don’t suggest you allow everyone to remain in their comfort zones and not experience challenge. I would just like instructors to be aware of these differences, so as not to be surprised when “good students” don’t give the performance you expect in social media assignments.
Observation #23: This isn’t a discussion about Communities of Practice, as there are plenty of resources to learn more about CoP. As an exercise, try searching for it on delicious. This is a good example of how people use different tags for the same thing, which can be confusing and is one of the challenges of folksonomy. (Try communitiesofpractice, communities_of_practice, communities.of.practice)
There are a few things I’ve learned in building communities, that seem to remain consistent. Building and maintaining a community is a lot of work. If you’re doing it for work, make sure your co-workers and supervisors know how it fits into your work load. Community moderators must take a very different role from community participants. As a moderator, you have to put aside your personal beliefs in order to maintain peace. Community moderators who try to act as “experts” are not always well-received by community members. A community doesn’t always work for for an online class. There are a lot of variables to consider. If you do intend for students to participate in community activities, make it clear from day one and give them strong examples of your expectations. It makes sense when you’re teaching about educational technology, but it may not be as meaningful for courses like medical terminology or statistics. I’ve found the key to successeful community management is to recognize each participant needs to play their own role. If everyone is required to produce the same amount and type of content and responses, it isn’t community or conversation, it’s just an assignment. Focus on how communities organize face to face, and you’ll have a better understanding of how to facilitate them online.
I haven’t yet talked much about institutional policy and technology support. Often, when instructors begin to explore social media, they discover a lack of internal support. It’s easy to assume that if a tool is available and free, it can be used for instructional purposes. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. If you intend to use third party social media tools for instruction, you may wish to explore your institution’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and any policies related to data retention and student privacy. In the US, institutions are subject to FERPA laws, and in some cases, HIPAA laws.
In some organizations, there’s a disconnect between academic technology, administration and instruction. This leads to misunderstanding, misinterpretation of regulations, and lack of support for instructors and students. When policies are vague and left open for interpretation, the culture and politics of an organization can get in the way of determining how to fairly support technology in the best interest of teaching and learning. It is likely we will need to move more toward a future where academic computing is led from instruction departments.
From the perspective of its theoretical and historical foundations as well as its primary mission of instructional support, academic technology has more in common with the library, faculty development, and distance or continuing education than with IT departments supporting campus telecommunications, networks, and administrative computing (Albright & Nworie, 2008).
Traditional IT departments have spent decades entrenched in the mission of protecting the campus network. Their professional development revolves around re-certification and hardware and network issues. They also have spent more time traditionally supporting administration and business functions of institutions. In addition to the historical constraints, weighing heavily on IT right now are issues of copyright and security. When campus IT departments spend their time preventing illegal copying and distribution, instruction suffers. IT priorities, rightly, include expanding access to wireless networks and exploring application outsourcing and cloud computing. It’s no small wonder there is little time to explore implications of hundreds of third party web applications for instructional use.
It is easy to see this as a battle between IT and instruction, but the issues are not that simple. IT has valid concerns when instructional material is placed in “the cloud.” In the US, there are laws regarding electronic discovery, where IT departments must make reasonable effort to retrieve digital communications in the event of legal action. While these laws give some flexibility and understanding of the limitations of this process, there is little help in providing reasonable interpretation of the laws to the people who must support them. In order to avoid confusion and to prepare to address these issues in your organization, there are a few things you can do.
There are risks with using online social media tools, but the benefits for educators usually outweigh the risks. However, I don’t recommend you adopt them blindly. I feel we have a responsibility to our students to learn the risks before introducing the tools. We also can’t successfully advocate for institutional adoption if we aren’t familiar with the risks. Start reading the End User License Agreements (EULA’s) when you sign up for new tools. Understand the responsibilities of the company if they go out of business. Recognize many of these tools are in beta release phase, which means they may have functional challenges and limitations without user support. Be prepared if your online content is lost. Teach students how to back-up their information. When you find valuable social contacts within one service, ask for alternate contact information so you can reach them if the service shuts down.
Observation #21: There are many sides to these issues. This post is based on my own opinion and experience. Please consider other viewpoints when deciding how you will incorporate these tools into your teaching practice. Above all, consider the learning, before the tools, and select what works best for your learners.
I have addressed the IT/eLearning conflict previously on my blog. You may wish to listen to this podcast interview conducted by Michèle Royer at Bellevue Community College. She’s discussing changes in IT with their IT director, Agnes Figueroa. For more perspective from the IT standpoint, here’s a post Cindy Siebel made following my posted interview. She’s linked out to a few other resources you may wish to view. For another perspective, take a look at this Campus Technology keynote by Adrian Sannier of ASU. It is an energetic and engaging look at his view of campus technology in the near future.
This is a complex issue, and I feel it is harmful to take sides. I’ve learned that I can’t just say Web-based tools are always the best option. Please take time to explore your institutional policies and become active in the discussion. Learn as much as you can about all your options, and then make educated decisions about those that will best support student learning.
Observation #22: My current opinion is that self-hosted, free or open source tools are better than commercial, free applications, in terms of stability, security and control. However, things can go wrong anywhere. When I hear complaints about unstable sites, my typical response is, “Yeah? Dogs eat homework. Scantron machines break. Copiers fail. Chalk runs out. Professors lose papers. There’s always risk.”
Learning requires feedback. For every choice we make or action we perform, we receive feedback, which influences our future decisions. Without feedback, we tend to cease inquiry or we repeat behaviors. Participatory media is designed to enable feedback loops, yet social conventions and community culture often get in the way. Social media is supposed to increase collaboration and stimulate thoughtful discussion, right? Wrong. It’s not about the tools, it’s about the people, and how they use the tools to connect with other people.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t handle criticism well. I’m committed to public civility and professionalism, but behind the scenes, I take it very personally. Therefore, I’m also hesitant to critique others. When I have something to say in response to a blog post, I will typically bounce ideas off my friends first, before taking a leap to respond directly to the writer. I’m fairly certain I am not alone in this practice. There is a certain degree of intimacy created between social contacts online that mirrors the intimacy we have with face to face contacts. We are loathe to hurt the ones we respect or care about. There is also a sense of community and reciprocity that encourages us to focus on the positive side of things, rather than pointing out flaws or discrepancies.
Avoiding telling a friend she’s got spinach on her teeth or toilet paper on her shoe, may get you a scolding when she makes the discovery on her own, but likely won’t hurt her or others. People won’t start telling their friends and friends of friends about her embarrassing moment, nor will they decide it’s a new trend and begin to copy her actions. I realize this is an exaggerated and silly metaphor, but I’m trying to be dramatic here. When you post something online where there are potentially hundreds of readers, who can pass it on to hundreds more, feedback provides the means to test assumptions, correct inaccuracies and gather additional resources. Social intimacy can get in the way of this productive process, and a decade of teaching “netiquette” has caused many people to withhold critique for fear of being considered hostile.
This can be especially problematic for instructors working with students in online participatory media. Students are expected to engage with the material and with each other. They desire to please the instructor, but also feel an obligation to their fellow students, to be supportive and nurturing. In contrast, they must keep their own goals and academic progress in mind, and have a hard time posting critique which may backfire when their classmates reply to their work. This can sometimes lead to superficial social interaction, which then hinders learning, because ideas are not challenged and tested. Our students must learn to give and receive feedback, which means they must learn reasoning and logic in order to confidently generate sound arguments.
Observation #20: Matthew K. Tabor submitted an excellent proposal to the K12online conference regarding Effective Criticism in 21st Century Education Technology. Though it was declined, I think it is a presentation many would find valuable.
This week I noticed many of my peers championing a post by Clay Burrell, a well-respected international educator and blogger. I read the post and immediately felt a challenge welling up. I did not act on it. Reflecting on this, I realized our students may have some of these same feelings when faced with the task of commenting on other student blogs. Here are some of the things that kept me from an initial response:
It took a lot of thought and conversations with friends before I finally got up the nerve to respond, but I did so with respect and care, which I feel is important. I then disconnected for a while and waited for the backlash. Fortunately, I was rewarded with an excellent result, in the form of other comments to back me up, as well as a professional and dignified response by Clay. Following that, Dean Shareski posted his reflection on the process. This experience could have twisted in many different directions and I am pleased to see it opened the gates to further conversation.
Discussion Topics
With Installment 10, I accepted a challenge from George Siemens to learn about microfinance and create a visual representation. Throughout the week, we’ve both admitted to procrastination and a desire to return to our comfort zones. The learning was the easy part. That’s just what we do. Turning that knowledge into something visual, was quite the challenge for me. I originally attempted to process the information I had read, and then analyze my feelings on the topic. I found that it just wasn’t possible for me to gather enough information within a week to develop a personal stance or platform about microfinance.
In fact, I am even more uncomfortable with the concept now, as I was before I began reading. I’ve always had this little itch telling me there’s something wrong with microfinance as a means to resolve poverty. In one of my former lives, I worked in a pawn shop in Las Vegas. Our shop was in an impoverished neighborhood and sat between a bank, which had been robbed many times, and a pizza hut, where the manager had been killed during a robbery. Our shop had never been touched. The people depended on us. While I saw the benefit of helping senior citizens survive until their next social security check, I also witness people destroyed by substance abuse, gambling and crime.
I went into this project frustrated with my mantle of white privilege. There are some concepts I will never be able to grasp, because of my heritage. There are places I will never be welcome because I cannot possibly understand. There are people who will never trust me because of the color of my skin. Regardless of the fact that my ancestors were persecuted and I have suffered personal loss, I will never know what it is like to live as the beneficiaries of microfinance loans do for generation after generation. So I approached this project with reverence.
I wanted to understand and I wanted to believe. At one point, I was reminded of an experience from my childhood. When I was 5 and in the first grade, my parents had a reward program for me. There were three children in our family at that time, and the thing I valued most was private time with my parents. On this occasion, I earned alone time with my dad. We lived in the Azores, Portugal, and he took me down to the beach to hunt for seashells. When I returned, I was thrilled at spending time with my dad, and also in love with this hideous shell I brought back, which had a beautiful mother of pearl lining inside. I cherished it. But then, my parents went on a trip without the kids, and they brought me back this gorgeous shell, unlike anything I had ever seen. It soon became my favorite, but I always felt guilty and wondered which should be more valuable to me.
The more I learned about microfinance, the more confused I became about whether or not it is harmful or good. I remembered learning about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in college. I thought about how a society could survive if suddenly the bottom two needs were met, after centuries of poverty and affliction. It must be complete chaos. People can’t suddenly become loving and affectionate. I thought about our desire to impose our consumer lifestyle on others and wondered if this is just the beginning of a vicious cycle of destruction. I never found the answers in the reading.
I began to question the nature of creativity, art and craft. If you create something, are you creative? What is the difference between art and craft? Is it the medium? Is one better than the other? Can a person be creative just some of the time? I tried to decide on a medium. I wanted to make an effort and leave my comfort zone. That meant avoiding something computer generated. I did consider composing a piece of music, but felt limited by time and the topic. I next thought of creating a batik, but didn’t have a decent location in my house to set up for that. I finally settled on creating a sculpture out of copper wire and pennies.
The project was meaningful to me on so many levels. There is a lot of symbolism in the piece, as well as many subtle ironies in the creation. Surprisingly, I had to go to the bank to get pennies. When I asked for 5 penny rolls, they brought me the paper to roll pennies. I guess it’s rare people in our developed country would even ask for pennies. I had to break the law to hang the pennies, and I did so within view of a prison. The piece is arranged with shiny pennies on one side and dull on the other. The people on the shiny penny side are involved in acts of leisure and pleasure, and the people on the dirty side are suffering. I did not use any adhesive or solder, so the work is as ephemeral as my thoughts on the subject.
Observation 19: If you’re following along with my onramp, this post is an example of how students can use social media to reflect on their learning. How would you evaluate this assignment? What is important to learn? How do you measure if learning has happened? If you were my instructor, what would you do?
If you participate in social networking, you’ve probably been exposed to the term, “PLN.” PLN, or Personal Learning Network, is one of the leading topics of discussions, conference presentations and instructional content for educators participating in and promoting social networking. It is not a topic I can ignore, yet I want to make sure and introduce different perspectives. Rather than point to an authority on the subject, I would like to provide a handful of resources for you to view in order to come to your own understanding of the meaning of PLN. This is another one of those things that is difficult to grasp without personal immersion. Hopefully, you have started your journey into social networking, and these resources will give more clarity as to your purpose in participation. These are provided in no particular order.
I haven’t located the original attribution for the coining of the term, but I feel that definition may be less relevant than the current socially negotiated meaning of PLN. If you view the Twitter search for “my PLN,” you can get a better idea of how this meaning has been negotiated and adopted. ”My PLN,” seems to mean people with whom I connect through electronic tools in order to share knowledge and learn. Fair enough. Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
It sounds like a beautiful thing. Who wouldn’t want to meet new people, share knowledge, make discoveries, build relationships and learn? I cannot think of any good reason to not develop a PLN, as described in these resources. I fully support encouraging and teaching others to learn how to participate in a PLN. However, I do think the concept deserves some serious research attention and critical evaluation as it gets closer to a viral tipping point.
Observation #18: I used this wiki for a presentation last year. There is an audio recording in the introduction, as well as audio narratives on the pages linked to names. These are a few stories of connections I’ve made online that have been especially valuable to me.
Having said that I support the participation in what is considered a “PLN,” I now want to address some of my questions about the term. If you know me or have been reading me for a while, you know that I question everything. It isn’t that I don’t trust, I just want to know all sides before I adopt something new. Here are some of my questions, based on my experiences, which may be completely different from anyone else.
I have done okay avoiding the term in my practice, like many current buzzwords. (Is buzzword a buzzword?) Rather than teach people how to build a PLN, I prefer to help them discover more about identifying their own personal learning. I like to show people how they can connect with anyone. I like to show them examples and stories from my own experiences. I have tried introducing people to my contacts, and have witnessed failure to engage, as well as awkward social situations. I don’t really have answers to my own questions. This is a topic I explore daily and am trying to wrap my brain around. I follow the discussions and look forward to the formal research. I watch newcomers thrive or disappear into obscurity, and I wonder what when right or wrong. I think my advice to learners would be to explore, take risks, find people, communicate and relax. Then take time to make reflections on your experiences and make your own decision about the PLN.
As a child, I learned to associate creativity with a product. Creative people performed, produced art, wrote books and music or acted on the stage and in movies. In elementary school, I wanted to be in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program with my creative friends. I went through the testing and still remember one of the test problems. There was a open oval on the page, and we were asked to draw something and write about it. I filled it in completely with my pencil and wrote that it was the view looking down into a tornado. Fail. I didn’t get into the program, and I’ve always wondered what I could have done with that oval, that would have gotten me accepted.
Yesterday, George Siemens made a post on Twitter that truly resonated with me.
I have always felt that there is this spark somewhere inside me, and I just don’t have the talent to bring it to life. I have been thinking about the value of the creative process compared to the meaning of the product of creative activity. I replied with my thoughts.
The challenge began. Heidi Hass Gable wrote a thoughtful post about the conversation. I am now tasked with exiting my comfort zone to create some sort of creative representation for “microfinance.” This will certainly be a challenge, and I’ve only got one week. I’ll need to do the research, seek inspiration and then create!
Observation #15: Nancy White of Full Circle Associates is someone who continuously inspires creativity. She discovered her creative voice and then determined to make a positive difference in this world by helping promote creative expression for problem solving.
The further you explore social media for learning, the more you will hear about creativity. One of the first resources you will discover is Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? Don’t just view the video and have a brief moment of inspiration. Spend some time skimming through the more than 400 viewer comments on the site. This is where media becomes social. This is how a “talking head” video can become a learning experience as it becomes a social object. For a different perspective, see this recent John McWhorter article about direct instruction (DI). Again, spend time viewing the discussion with this article, for a better understanding of how a static article can become a social object.
I am not an expert on creativity (or anything else!) so I share these resources simply to jump start your research process. I have no strong opinion on the status of creativity in public education, because I simply do not have enough knowledge to make a judgment. I found this article interesting, because it refers to education ‘transformation,’ rather than ‘reformation.’ This morning I turned on the radio and happened to catch part of this interview with Sir Ken Robinson on NPR interview with Sir Ken Robinson, discussing creativity, education, and his new book. There will always be debate about the best way to educate people. There will always be research into how people learn. When we talk about creativity, it may mean different things to different people. When discussing creativity and the potential to inspire it through social media, I think we need to be careful not to focus on the tools. An application is not creative. When educators say they value the process over the product in teaching and learning, they are not talking about the process of pointing and clicking and using. The creative process happens outside the tool, within the mind, and through communication, social activity and negotiation of meaning.
Observation #16: If you ask your students to each make a 10 minute video and you grade based on the product, you will have to view each video multiple times (in real time) in order to fairly assess that product. If you ask them to reflect on the process of creating the video, and you assess the reflection, it may take less time to assess and give you a better idea of what the students actually learned.
And finally:
Observation #17: Some people are going to disagree with this post and correct me on my claims. When I receive the corrections and supporting resources, I will share them here. I think it is important to view all sides of the issues, and I don’t intentionally withhold resources. I would be thrilled to hear other views.
I think it is important to be aware of the communications techniques political and corporate entities use to engage us and keep us coming back. Often, they employ the same principles we use in education. People will become proficient in using these technology tools as consumers, and we need to give weight to that when considering how to facilitate learning experiences for our students. If you consider the Social Technographics profiles as a start in the right direction, you can see how the wrong mix of students (consumers) would challenge community builders. If you can reasonably develop a profile of your students prior to instruction, you can select strategies ahead of time. If you must wait to get to know them, plan for flexibility.
