Blog Juice for Educational Technology

NB: Mike Edwards contributed heavily to these notes. In fact, most of what’s here is his work, so I want him to get credit for it.

The CCCC Blogging SIG had a large and productive meeting Thursday night in
Chicago. We began by discussing some of the initiatives the SIG had proposed
the previous year, including the one-page paper handout guide for teachers new
to blogging (which, we might hope, will continue to be revised collaboratively and kept up to date as necessary), as well as thoughts about assessment of weblog writing,
outcomes of weblog use in writing courses and professional endeavors, and a possible large multi-institution study investigating the
classroom uses of weblogs.

Following the initial discussion, we split up into five small groups focusing on
action in specific areas. The groups discussed their areas and reported back when
we reconvened. Here are the results of our discussion:

Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab wrote a piece for The Financial Times saying that there should be no computers in schools. He argues that billions could be saved by keeping useless technologies out of schools. As an educational technologist, I felt that I needed to address his critique.

 
I think his main argument is with educational software companies, but he fails to differentiate between them and between teachers using technology in the classroom. His article cites nothing other than his own opinions, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i27/27a00601.htm

I thought this community might be interested to see how the Chronicle represents what’s going on in Lubbock.

Michael

The Director of Developmental Studies at my college called in all of the developmental writing instructors for a meeting. Among other things, we listened to a sales pitch for a new textbook. This textbook is apparently in wide use, and has been well received.

The promotional materials say that “textbooks should be visually appealing with bright colors, plenty of white space, and lots of diagrams and visual aids.” This quotation is from someone with an Ed.D. who teaches at a large community college.

Well, I don’t want to argue with anyone who has a doctorate in education. And certainly, this book has many bright colors. I especially like the orange, red, and yellow. Plus it has white space, which is white. And it has fascinating visual aids. For example, when the authors wish to link two concepts, they put a picture in the margin of two linked paper clips. Clever, huh?

An article many of you will want to read, via elearnspace, who notes that the overview “covers blogs, wikis, podcasts, video logs, etc. Each .pdf is a 2-page overview of the technology, addressing questions such as ‘what is it, how does it work, where is it going, what are the implications?’” Perfect for a lot of people I know who say that they “don’t get” social bookmarking, wikis, etc.

Dear Kairos Readers,

The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce the launch of next\text, a new project designed to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that will enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook.

There are two stages to the next\text project. The first is a curated website showcasing significant projects currently in the field. The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions. These areas include, but are in no way limited to: “expanded” multimedia textbooks; “open-source” textbooks continually improved by teachers and students; dynamic, networked textbooks with live or regularly updating components; collaborative work spaces; and multi-user games.

Via Infocult, the kickoff of Academic Commons, which, as a combination discussion forum/quarterly journal, looks to be a very valuable resource. From the first edition page:

Academic Commons (http://www.academiccommons.org) offers a forum for investigating and defining the role that technology can play in liberal arts education. Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College (http://liberalarts.wabash.edu), Academic Commons publishes essays, reviews, interviews, showcases of innovative uses of technology, and vignettes that critically examine technology uses in the classroom. Academic Commons aims to share knowledge, develop collaborations, and evaluate and disseminate digital tools and innovative practices for teaching and learning with technology. We want this site to advance opportunities for collaborative design, open development, and rigorous peer critique of such resources.

Academic Commons also provides a forum for academic technology projects and groups (the Developer’s Kit) and a link to a new learning object referatory (LoLa). Our library archives all materials we have published and also provides links to allied organizations, mailing lists, blogs, and journals through a Professional Development Center.

The first issue of the quarterly looks very interesting. The pieces that pique my interest the most are these:

Technology & the Pseudo-Intimacy of the Classroom: an interview with University of Illinois-Chicago’s Jerry Graff

http://academiccommons.org/commons/interview/graff

Graff’s interest in “teaching the conflicts” as a way of rescuing higher education from itself has recently been replaced by a profound worry that higher ed is becoming increasingly irrelevant to American culture. We checked in to see what role Graff thinks technology might play in these unsettling times.

Copyright 101 by Richard Lanham, UCLA

http://academiccommons.org/commons/essay/lanham-copyright-101

The pervasiveness of digital media has so altered the nature of authorship and ownership that questions of intellectual property have become matters of core concern for our students and our contemporary culture. Lanham argues that these issues require an academic response, and that a basic course in copyright — “Copyright 101″ — represents a first step in this process.

Cross-posted to CultureCat and CCCC-IP.

During the last academic year, many of my fellow teaching assistants (and full-time faculty) struggled with Blackboard. The primary issue was the desire of most users to type in another application, then paste the results into discussion boards. The results tend to be a mess. High-ASCII and Unicode characters become question marks, formats are lost, and everyone gripes.

I tended to prefer using Nvu, which works pretty well on my PowerBook. I’d paste the resulting HTML into Blackboard, and all was good. However, this is not a practical solution when dealing with 84 instructors and more than 6,000 English 1 students.