I find it hard to explain how touched I was by Michael Wesch's An anthrolopological introduction to You Tube.  It had me in tears three times:  the first was right at the beginning with the wonderful Gary "Numa, Numa" Brolsma, whose video according to Gary Walker "single handedly justifies the existance of webcams".  He is the first ambassador of "a new cultural order". I actually was part of that first wave of sharing that celebratory video.  I remember - startled by its joyous power - sending it to many friends, including one guy who had just quit his job and was suffering one of those life "why am I here?" moments of existential angst.  I told him "watch this video, it will change your life" and he replied "I have watched it over for about an hour, I love him.  Thank you - suddenly everything seems ok, I have even started to learn the dance".

The second moment of teary joy was over Juan Mann's Free Hugs camapaign. Here I recognised myself as an educator.  The first time I got a group of students to create a community blog it's name was Towards World Peace etc.  I had a group of bright but fractured Thai Teens and the blog brought them together and created a creative energy that transcended by far the original English language learning dynamic and became an essential connection for living life.  Wesch mentions, in relation to Mann's video, the sense of "people trying to reconnect with humanity in some profound way"and this spirit is what both myself and my partner are about as educators (and personally as an educational manager).  The lesson content is almost incidental, the empowerment and relationships (student/student, student/teacher and ultimately student/world) is what drives me.

Final tearful moment was with bnessel1973 who said, "Some people have said that the videos we have made on You Tube should be created in hopes to change the world. I've made mine to help me live in it".  Once more that is a powerful message for me as an educator - almost a mission statement.  If I can use the tools of web2.0 to help people live in the world, I will be happy.

A final whimsical connection: As I watched the Wesch's video and experienced that surge of emotion I was reminded of a very early memory. Watching the TV advertisement for Coca Cola from the early 70's (hey I was 3 or 4 years old, I was allowed to be cheesey).  Unburdened by distrust of marketing and a dislike of multinationals (cynicism came later) I used to watch it and want so bad to stand on that hill and sing with them.  I think (judgement on the tooth rotting product aside) there is a spirit in that clip that lives on in the best of our web2.0 connections.  We will always yearn to connect and embrace the learning and growth comes through those connections.  The technologies we have at hand which (quoting Welsch talking about the Numa Numa meme) evokes "new forms of expression, new forms of community, new forms of identity" allow us connect more widely than ever before and in doing so maybe we will understand ourselves better.

Come on Clara, sing along - you know you want to!

I'd like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to hold it in my arms and keep it company

I'd like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills "Ah, peace throughout the land"

(That's the song I hear)
I'd like to teach the world to sing (that the world sings today)
In perfect harmony

The whole class seems excited and energised by web2.0.  It’s a little like Christmas!  J

But as exciting and empowering as this interactive / integrative technology is, what use is power if you don't know how to wield it?

This is a really good point.  Though I am a little uncertain about calling it “power” – what do you mean by that?  To me it seems more like “tools”.  Then again, I guess you could argue that the tool encapsulates particular potentials and possibilities, and it is those that are the “power” of the tool [in the Latin origin sense of ‘potency’].  Thus knowing what tool to select, how to use it and for what purposes becomes vitally important.  So what are the implication for teaching and learning?  How do we equip learners to choose and use an appropriate tool for their needs?

Yes, I think the power comes from the use of tools.  In the case of our studies it can lie in what you have called "high stakes"reflection, effective communication with tutors, and the networking we do with our peers. Power also resides in the tools we choose for personal organisation, research and transmission of ideas.  I call it power because I am focussing on the product or outcome rather than the process.  We only need to watch the video talk given by Michael Wesch to see that the process of uploading video to you tube, is the tool - but my interpretation is the power is the result, a worldwide audience, new relationships, career making fame or career breaking infamy - if only for 15 minutes.

How can we as educators help our students to make appropriate educational choices about which of these tools with enable their growth and development if we aren't able to make those choices ourselves.

Another good question.  For me, the answer will always come back to purpose – what am I trying to achieve and what best enables me to achieve it?  Perhaps in one learning context social bookmarking is more useful, in another a wiki.  Of course, I am always up for the path we’ve taken in IDEL - let the students loose in the sweetshop and see what they choose for themselves.  :)

Yes as I said needs analysis has never been so important.  I have always used needs analysis in my teaching to discover more about my students: their motivation level, reasons for learning English, preferred learning style, previous experience and exposure. When using technology in the classroom I imagine it would be useful to have a parallel learning technology needs analysis to discover their preferences, current knowledge base, research interests, organisational ability, and even basics like computer access at home, internet speed and keyboard skills.

Me and choices don't sit well together.

And how well do you and no choices sit together?  :)

Valid point.  :D

The pic you’ve included is fascinating – are you suggesting the web2.0 services are broken scraps and leftovers that only work when they come together?

The image is (I am sure you know) M.C. Escher's 'Order and Chaos' I chose it to illustrate how for me, the two are still side by side, the order being far more beautiful, but yet there is humanity in the chaos.  Interestingly Escher chose as chaos human detritus; the jetsam of everyday life, as opposed to natural flotsam twigs, bones, leaves etc.  And the order is represented by a crystal.  It is a more natural symbol, but still faceted and therefore imposed or 'tooled'.  But imposed by whom? It could be human - but I see a more supernatural quality in it.  It is no man-made diamond, but an uncanny supernatural thing (a star in a sphere).  Escher spoke the language of geometry and mathematics so I suppose his order comes from the laws of maths and physics.  I am hoping for divine intervention - deus ex machina? Or more probably synergy of connectedness.  I hope by participating in web2.0 technolgies the world and I will come to some agreement on a portfolio of tools which will survive the intitial flurry of early adoption and avoid the crash and burn of fad-death. Yes this portfolio will be in constant flux, but by careful selection I would like to think I can choose (for myself and with my students) tools that will be relied on to have value now AND in the future.

One final thought, in Escher's image chaos finds itself reflected in order - maybe that is all we need order for, chaos is infinitely more creative and inspiring, but sometimes we need order to act as a mirror, a reflective devise to organise the chaos into something we can use.

Wasn't it exciting though eh? I don't think I have ever been so happy at an election result.  Many of the Americans who post on The Northlands (my discussion forum) are running round predicting the end of the world - now that a 'Muslim fundamentalist' has been elected they are counting the days till the beginning of Sharia Law & a police state. 

I don't care, I think he is fab.

I feel both excited and overwhelmed the the profusion of web 2.0 technologies.  It may not surprise you to know that I have already sampled some of them.  I have blogs with Blogger and Wordpress, I micro-blog through Twitter and Tumblr.  I have social networking accounts at Facebook, High5, Vox and LiveSpaces (and a few others, Including Myspace which I have either forgotten / deleted). I am a member of Technorati, Digg and Delicious.  I attempt to organise my online world through both Netvibes and Pageflakes.

But as exciting and empowering as this interactive / integrative technology is, what use is power if you don't know how to wield it?   There is too much out there.  Maybe the point I am missing is you are meant to embrace some of it rather than all of it. But what to embrace?  I need a digital equivalent of a financial adviser.  Extrapolating into education... need analysis has never been so important.  How can we as educators help our students to make appropriate educational choices about which of these tools with enable their growth and development if we aren't able to make those choices ourselves.

I should add that I can stand in the supermarket aisle for 10 minutes trying to decide which  breakfast cereal to buy.  Me and choices don't sit well together.

From: e-portfolio vs blog

The blog is quite linear isn't it? I mean you post... you post... you post... and they sit there frozen in time. You don't really go back and delete things or revise them. Whereas a portfolio is not only added to but removed from in a sense. It is where you 'hone' and 'polish' who you are and where you are. I like them - we have just started electronic (but not e) portfolios for our teachers in the British Council network. They are something that we imagine teachers will carry with them from post to post. The best of their achievements, their high points (and low ones if they were learning points). If you look at long term blogs online there is so much in them that seems dead or dated. Whereas (I imagine) an e-portfolio is capable of more organic growth as it embraces the necessary pruning back of out of date material.

From: Sketches and Masterpieces

Kevin: they can even allow for fraudulent or fictitious representations of content managers

What do you mean by this? That people will misrepresent their skills? I do believe that process is more important than content. As a teacher or recruiter (am think of portfolios as a career development tool also) I would be swayed by someone who had consistently kept an up-to-date portfolio over a period of time (and could show evidence of that growth and development). I would look at the ability to maintain such focused reflective development as an asset in itself. One far more valuable than a particular "teachable" skill.

I think we have to step back and look at e-portfolios as more than a knowledge / skill showcasing tool - something that can be thrown together in the short term, for a specific purpose.

Are they an organizing instrument? A really cool Filofax? An autobiographical platform? An art gallery, or a digital museum for our personal and professional artefacts?

Oh and I love Picasso's "I can not make use of a common method simply in order to have the satisfaction of being understood". It is like a universal "get out of jail free" card isn't it? ~ noli me tangere, I'm an artist ~

From: Musings on Metaphors

I have a story.

I went to a pebbly beach as a kid and picked up a pebble and put it in my pocket. It was a big one, lovely and smooth and cool against my palm. I took it back to the hotel we were staying at, and kept it by my bed for the holiday. I loved it and wanted it more than anything but I was also sad that I had taken it away from its fellow pebbles. As we were leaving on the last day I got into dad's car and burst into tears. I showed mum and dad the pebble and explained it couldn't come home with me because it wasn't a Lincolnshire pebble. So dad rather sweetly drove us to the beach so I could put the pebble back before we headed home.

I still find myself fighting the urge to kidnap pebbles, and I think my crystal collection comes from the same urge. These beautiful cool objects that demand to picked up, collected, arranged, held. I like the idea of a portfolio of treasures - to be arranged, and rearranged. To be appreciated personally, and by others.

From: A Personal Coach

Jennifer: Could you be both the photographer and the subject?

Portfolio as self-portrait. Brings to mind the self portraits of Van Gogh and Rembrandt - how they almost obsessively captured and recaptured themselves, at significant periods through the lifetimes.

Of course the photographic metaphor allows a more disposable snapshot. Less of an archive - except for those images we are especially proud of. Easily created and discarded. Especially in our digital, darkroom free days - where the self-image is instantly available and doesn't emerge slowly. Digital photography has also done away with the need for an outsider (the developer)... and therefore can be more intimate and private. ^^

 21st Century Rodin

The upper right-hand
corner of my desk blotter;
a fresh, stark canvas
this morning, now a sepia
montage of concentric
accomplishments.
I sip,
I Think.
I sip,
I think.
I sip…
I think.
Sip.
Think.
Sip.
Think.
Sip
Big sip
sip sip sip
sip sip sippppp.
Ahhhhhhh.
Final sip, cup down.
A caffeine-laced
still life of a Slinky.
Boy-oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-man
was-I-ever productive
today!

-Mark L. Lucker

Hi Tracy

As promised, I want to give you some mid-way feedback on how I think the blog is shaping up in terms of the final assessment. Basically, things are going well. The criteria for assessment are:

*Reflection - You are demonstrating sustained reflection on the course content and its application to your professional (and personal) practice.

*Regularity - You are posting reasonably regularly, and your postings are all substantial.

*Knowledge and understanding – You’re demonstrating a good understanding of the technologies and ideas introduced. You could engage more critically with the course readings. How do they impact on the way you understand the technologies, experiences and ideas you’ve come across in the course?

*Writing style – is excellent, making for an engaging read. Your use of the blog format (inclusion of pics, formatting etc) is above and beyond!

So, well done and keep up the good work. If you can continue like this you'll be looking at a good mark for this element of the assessment. Kudos!

Please let me know whether this is any use to you – I’m more than happy to chat through the blog process. Also, since this is my first time commenting on IDEL blogs, I would appreciate your mid-blog feedback too! Are my comments useful? What could I do to be supporting your blogging more?

Cheers

C.

Anyway, just wanted to comment on this:

"we do have to make sure our emotions and subtle thoughtfulness is transcribed into text."

Because you said very eloquently what I was thinking, and this appears have happened a few times now...

 I think that getting yourself, your personality and your opinions across in written form is more natural to some people than others (or maybe just seems that way) and this is definitely a skill: one that can be learned, of course.

 

I have taught writing for both business and academic purposes and in each case the focus is on effective and economical transmission of meaning, usually information but occasionally well-reasoned and rational opinion is permitted.

Is this genre of formal writing the ‘ideal’ we base our idea of online discussion on? Yes and no.  I think there are many purists who uphold a prescriptive aesthetic standard but for the rest of us our influences are less explicit.  They are no less there in the back of our minds, a distrust of the emotional, a distaste for the wordy and overblown.

Yet how can such restraint assist in the new role played by both synchronous and asynchronous online discussion?  We need it to enable human growth and development, build communities and social networks, forge and sustain friendships and support high level learning.  Such rigid austerity was appropriate when our written words accessorized who we were, but if they are to stand in for our physical presence can we afford ‘admit impediments’?

I think not and I playfully propose that we take our inspiration from another source than the business letter or academic essay.  I suggest the love letter of old is a far superior role model.  Let Elisabeth Barrett Browning, Napoleon Bonaparte, Balzac and Van Gogh be our guides.  We must insist on our right to be florid and impassioned for there is ‘not world enough and time’ for well-reasoned rationality, after all we are not asking the world for a refund, or hoping to exchange faulty goods; we are in our virtual spaces asking the world to fall to see our true self, not the mask we wear in the real world, we are asking the world to fall in love with us, our ideas, our version of reality.

It has been a bit of a frustrating week with a lot of time spent on trying to get my computer up to speed in preparation for the more challenging activites ahead.  Things are much improved but I still find the load time for the discussion board windows almost prohibitively slow.  The time it takes to open a window, read a post, open a reply, respond and post the response has meant I haven't been able to post as much as I would have liked.  I also find the transition from my own board format to this bulletin board format rather hard.  But I will reflect on that in another post.

Here I will summarise the things I have learnt from a week exploring the dark side (along with anything else I found interesting).

The choice of labelling personas let us to initially 'critique' people until we realised that we can't extrapolate an entire personality from the summary of one incident (which is probably more than we would get as tutors if we received a complaint).  If we have to make 'judgements' (or at least a judgement call) it is aways better to criticise the behaviour rather than the person.  

It is also good to bear in mind that behviour-based stereotypes are just as harmful as person-based ones.  So if a person is lurking it could mean they are lazy, or shy or it could be that they are reading posts thinking "yeah, that is exactly what I think, I can hardly repeat it though" or "damn that is exactly what I was going to say".  From my own experience with this activity if you don't want to look like an idler strike early, and strike hard!

Netiquette guidelines are essential, especially for people unused to an online learning environment, however you can't advise for every situation so the guidelines should serve to make people comfortable enough to survive the initial onslaught whereby they will gain enough familiarity to make their own choices on how to respond.

Overuse of jargon and acronyms is annoying and exclusive even if you know what they mean. 

The purpose of the online discussion is presumably to build community and so the social aspect is just as important as the academic. Therefore every VLE (virtual learning environment) should have a VCE (virtual chilling environment) just as every university campus has a bar.  People just need to be told (and reminded) what kind of chat is appropriate in each location.

There is nothing wrong with talking about cats.

Not all university campuses actually have bars.  Those in Saudi don't... which reminds me: remind your learners that online learning implies the possibility of richer cultural diversity.  Different cultures have different communicative norms and one man's perky challenge might be another's aggressive flame.

To feel loved and included you need to have your posts replied to promptly.  By your tutor if necessary, though this is a bit like getting a valentine's card from your mum - heartwarming but not really the point.   People should be encouraged to reply to each other just as much as they are encouraged to make thoughtful independant posts.

People are different, they post in different ways... some people are actually annoying - we should embrace that, especially if they have paid for the privilege of being annoying. They may still have something they can teach us.

It took me about a year of regular reading and sporadic posting to get really comfortable with discussing issues online.

Some tutors will naturally be more interventionist and others will be laissez faire.  Ideally there should be a balance.  If, as institutions, we can't afford to screen out students for the right virtual fit, we can't afford NOT to screen our staff.

We shouldn't behave differently online as we do f2f.  We can't afford to give up on humour just because it is hard to translate.  If someone is being cheeky, we can't let it slide just because we can't communicate our unease with body language. But we do have to make sure our emotions and subtle thoughtfulness is transcribed into text.  Learning how to do this takes time, and even when we know, we sometimes forget - especially if we are rushing.

Anyway, today one of my cats went missing.  We tore the house apart looking for her for an hour before my boyfriend found her nonchalently sucking spiders under the stairs.  She looked at us as if to say, what IS all the noise about? And was coaxed out by the offer of dog biscuits (which she prefers to the cat variety).  Cats eh?

I thought I would post a little pensee that anticpates next week's discussion topic.  In the Northlands, the online community I run with my partner we are both administrators.  We have the same ideals and beliefs for the community - but we go about 'facilitating' those ideal differently.

I am interventionist.  If something is wrong or someone is behaving inappropriately I deal with it, often publically.  I have deleted posts, whole discussion threads - taken away people's posting rights, and even taken away moderation and admin powers.  These actions are usually accompanied by a private message to the involved parties, explain what I did and why. 

Dom on the other hand tried to nudge people in the right direction by posting with them publically.  He behaves like a 'regular' member of the board and tries to reason, in the context of the discussion or, as if often the case, argument.  He will at the request of another member delete offensive posts.  But it is always in response to complaints, and never because his own sense of (in)justice prompts him to take action.

At work I am the academic manager and my senior teacher is a guy called Manjit.  I manage people at work in a similar way to how I manage people at The Northlands.  I deal with them directly, getting to the core of the issues that are causing inappropriate behaviour.  I talk to teacher x about his anger, and teacher y about her depression.  I tell them my concerns about how I percieve it is affecting (or may affect) their performance.  In cases of extreme underperformance I give people the chance to change and if they don't I put them on a perfomance plan, take away a post of responsibility or in extreme cases ask them to leave.

Manjit is like Dom, much more subtle.  He manages underperformance when has resulted in a complaint from a student or some other concrete outcome (i.e. a covering teacher hasn't been able to plan a lesson because the main teacher hasn't completed their admin fully).  He will grumble and worry, but he will not hand the teacher the responsibility for changing their behaviour until he has external evidence which he can take to them and ask them to explain, justify and ultimately correct. 

It is easier to reflect on the actions of others than oneself but if I were to try and analyse these different management styles I would say I see myself as a guardian of the people whereas Dom and Manjit are guardians of the process. 

This is easy.  Money.  I can't really afford to do this as an overseas student, but I wanted to do the course so bad that accepting the overseas status only choice I had, so I take step one hoping I can pay for the second step when the time comes.

Nothing else really worries me.  I understand there might be worries, workload; interaction; pressure; learning new skills etc. But I can manage those.  The nature of online study doesn't phase me, it is who I am in a sense. Only the financial aspect is out of my control so only this worries me.

But it will work out. These things always do.