Came across a rather interesting blog article from EduSpaces user AWyatt called "Academic Facebook: Lessons learned so far". AWyatt has been using Facebook to talk to students outside of the class and offers some interesting insights upon it's use:

"Things I have done that I thought were positive:

• Have messaged conversations about issues that matter, but that were too personal for a class discussion
• Send messages of encouragement
• Send application presents (jack o lanterns, gingerbread men, christmas tree presents) just for fun 
• Check status changes.  Sometimes I can follow up on a student's well being the next time I see them, on the sidewalk, in my office, or before class starts.
• Use the messaging feature for my class groups to announce things like changed due dates (which are also announced through the usual channels)
• Participate in student run groups as a contributing member
• Find out things about who my students are and what they are concerned with that make me see them so much differently.  I have always been bemused by students who, even at the end of the semester, did not know my name (and I generally teach small classes with a lot of interaction!).  I can see how professors would really not know much more about a student than what they look like, how they write, and where they sit!  I was never satisfied with that, because it meant that I had never made a real connection with the person AS a person.  Facebook gives me many more cognitive "hooks" to use in making our relationship better and to help me tailor my teaching methods."

and misuse:

"I decided that,  if my students were gracious enough to be friends with me, I probably should not:

• leave a message on their wall asking why they were not in class or where an assignment was
• send them any apps without checking them first (sometimes the adverts at the end turn out to be something I would not like to endorse personally)
• be judgmental about any activities, even if I initially find some of the posts/photos to be surprising"

In my first blog entry, I mentioned that I had read Dreyfus' "On the Internet", which I described as a:

"...fascinating, philosophical and accessible tome that looked at the Internet and, in particular, distance learning in a critical and provocative way."

Oddly enough I went to see Dr David Starkey ("the rudest man in Britain") who was guest of honour at my girlfriend's school. The school had just received humanities specialist status and Starkey was telling the audience, inbetween sips of red wine, that eduation had "saved him" and that learning should be a "pleasurable experience". I say "oddly enough" because I could almost hear Hubert Dreyfus speaking through Starkey - maybe I had too much wine that night as well?

Anyway, even after re-reading chapter two, "How far is distance learning from education?", I still stand by my initial statement (see above) in the respect that we do need more of these philosophical debates that look upon the 21st Century world and opens up those big issues of self, society, education, technology and identity. There is an awful lot of academic literature that tackles these issues within psychological, sociological, cultural, technological and educational dimensions and perspectives. What is lacking is work that covers the deeper essences surrounding these themes.

What is maddening about Dreyfus' work is that it lacks the academic rigour that is usually expected from essays submitted by first year undergraduate students. This is plain for all to see. What's not so obvious, to me at least, is Dreyfus' "selective borrowing of past philosophers to support [his] arguments" and is quite rightly brought to task by the likes of Champion (2004) and Burbules (2002).

One of Dreyfus' main issues with distant / online learning is that of "embodiment". How can a student learn from a teacher without being physically in a classroom? How are they able to pick up on the most subtlest and intangible of stimuli if they are learning "at a distance"?

Champion (2004) notes an interesting Amazon review of Dreyfus' "On the Internet", which is allegedly written by one of Dreyfus' former students (Geoffrey Cain) who says:

"I took one of Dreyfus' classes at Berkeley as an undergraduate and I never got to talk to him, there was no face to face learning. If you feel that the lecture method is the only way to learn, then the internet is not for you. If you want to feel like a "disembodied presence" go take a class at Berkeley as an undergrad."

Over the past 10 weeks on this course, I have had adventures in Skype, Second Life, pbWiki, Web 2.0 and WebCT; not to mention my past adventures in e-Mail, MSN Messenger, Blackboard, Discussion Forums and host of social networking and dating sites - yes, I am a former user of online dating sites. In all of these environments, and contrary to Dreyfus' beliefs, I have never felt disembodied. I have never felt alone, despite my own personal belief that we are creating new forms of isolationism using this technology (which we can trace back to the early days of radio and television).

As my fellow students have articulated this week; embodiment, risk and involvement has been brought about by the power of the written word on the screen; an emotional attachment towards the course and the people that populate it; a yearning to learn more; and a keen imagination - it is not held together by a teaspoon and pieces of string, nor smoke and mirrors.

Like OU psychology undergraduate, Kieran Lee Marshall, in Katbamna's (2007) article: I am not a student ID number - I am a fully embodied human being. 

References

Blake, N., (2002). Hubert Dreyfus on Distance Education: relays of educational embodiment. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(4), pp. 379-385.

Burbules, N.C., (2002). Like a Version: playing with online identities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(4), pp. 387-393.

Champion, E.M., (2004). The Internet and Its Enemies: A Critique of 'On the Internet'. Computers and Society, 32(8). [online]. Available at: https://www.vle.ed.ac.uk/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/readings/DigitalSocietyanditsEnemies.htm [Accessed 22 November 2007]

Dreyfus, H.L., (2001). On the Internet. London: Routledge.

Katbamna, M., (2007). Open (almost) All Hours. The Guardian [online]. Available at: http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2201273,00.html [Accessed 22 November 2007]

Turkle, S., (1997). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix 

"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, L. Carroll (1865)

I am still feeling quite invigourated from last Tuesday's classroom session in Second Life. Yes, a real time classroom session inside a "real" virtual world. Wowsers! (as Inspector Gadget would say). I did have some questions in mind that I posted in last week's blog entry; despite touching upon a couple of them, I don't think myself nor the group had any firm ideas about them. I personally feel that myself and Wray would need to immerse ourselves more into Second Life to get a sense of it; and would need to have experienced a few more teaching and learning sessions before we can get a handle on it. Mine and Wray's experiences so far have been a little superficial (see Inside the Rabbit Hole) and sketchy.

"Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they 'command' the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?"

One of my questions (see above) piqued Rory's interest. I guess myself and the others on the MSc programme latched onto the comments made in the Taylor (2001) article that referenced users choice to become animal avatars; and that it's role was one of superficiality and playfulness. Infact, one of the group actually turned up to the session sporting an animal's head upon a human body (very Egyptian methinks). The work and research by John Suler, a cyberpsychologist, conducted within the The Palace virtual world identifies a number of psychological and visual profile types.

According to Suler (2007b), people who choose to become animal avatars do so because "animals symbolize certain traits or attributes in myth as well as popular culture" which may represent "some real aspect of his or her identity, or some characteristic admired by the person". Suler goes as far as to liken the use of animal avatars to that of the Native American "totem", which are seen as a "symbol of one's essential nature or potential". In January 2007, Suler visited Second Life and felt that his initial research in The Palace stood up reasonably well with respect to SL with a few notable exceptions - namely making money (Suler, 2007a).

"What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?"

Henry Keil, who had chosen to portray his avatar as a balding Afro-Caribbean man, found a fascinating article on ageism and prejudice that occured inside Second Life (Koreen, 2007). This suggested to me that Second Life is not as liberated, non-judgemental and all-inclusive as it would like to think itself to be. The three personality types (real / virtual / projected) put forward by Gee (2003) and Taylor (2001) would seem to imply that the "real" personality type is probably the more dominant one; or else people are projecting personalities that they wouldn't normally exhibit in Real Life.

Reynolds (2007) suggests that far from liberating us, virtual worlds like Second Life seems to "reinforce and indeed spread the dominant ideologies of the time", but acknowledges that they have the "potential to liberate".

It would be interesting to hear from Henry how his avatar got on under his current guise. Though it is a little hard to tell, Wray is actually an albino goth - and that comes loaded with all sorts of literary, cultural and mythological symbolism. Indeed, Wray is the metaphorical white rabbit.

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Koreen, (2007). Agism in Second Life. EdGames Blog. [online]. Available at: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/edgames/2007/11/agism-is-second-life.htm [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Reynolds, R., (2007). Do virtual worlds liberate us? Terra Nova Blog. [online]. Available at: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/11/do-virtual-worl.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Suler, J., (2007a). Second Life, Second Chance. The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog. [online]. Available at: http://psycyber.blogspot.com/2007/01/second-life-second-chance.html [Accessed 15 November 2007] 

Suler, J., (2007b). The Psychology of Avatars and Graphical Space in Multimedia Chat Communities. The Psychology of Cyberspace. [online]. Available at: http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psyav.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61. 

"Five years from now a social networking site without a 3D universe will look like a dinosaur."
Mark Kern, President of Red 5 Studios. March 2007

I went along to the Tuesday evening induction session for Second Life that was conducted by Fiona and Sian. This was followed up by a session on how to build objects. Despite having a Second Life account for just under a year, I have to confess that I haven't done a lot with it. In my role as a Learning Technologist, I need to keep an eye on what is piquing the interest of the H.E. sector and what tools and technologies may interest my academics - we also have the contentious issue of not allowing Second Life to run on University desktops; bandwidth being cited as the main problem.

The world of the metaverse is something of a hot potato at the moment. The BBC announced in January 2007 that they were planning to build a child-friendly environment called CBBC World. Metaplace are planning to offer free tools for non-techies to develop their own virtual worlds. In March 2007, Sony unveiled it's offering to Playstation 3 owners called Home, where the rich, games quality graphics would give Second Life a huge run for its' money as well as attracting a much younger, trendier market to the already overcrowded fora of World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. The Sony publicity machine went into overdrive and released this statement:

"'Home' is a real-time interactive online world much like Linden Lab’s 'Second Life' and other so-called 'metaverse', except it’s designed for PlayStation 3, Sony’s newest home console. Millions of people now enter 'Second Life' on personal computers, moving avatars, or computer graphics images of themselves, in a virtual universe. Major companies are also setting up shop in 'Second Life', and analysts see great potential for such virtual worlds as a communication tool and real-life business."

Have a look at the trailer that Sony released to see what all the fuss is about; incidently they are offering this as a free download. However, this enterprise has subsequently been delayed until 2008.

Despite the competition, Second Life goes on by putting on live music concerts; degree shows; demonstrating what mental illnesses look like; continuing to promote the application of education; and anything else that makes a thriving community tick. Virtual Worlds are going to be an important tool in the future for the likes of role-playing; language acquisition and running simulations (like modelling diseases) that can advance our understanding about different ideas, concepts and working in dangerous environments or situations. IBM are also doing their bit for the metaverse by developing assistive technologies to help blind people traverse these worlds. Whilst Moveable Life provides a web interface to access your Second Life personae - not that I have been able to get it to work!

Whilst the teenagers of the Ipsos MORI (2007) report would consider University's who would use technology for technologies sake as being "sad" and "tragic". The EduServ Foundation, on the other hand, has been funding a series of reports looking at the take-up of Second Life within the UK Higher and Further Education sectors.

This to my mind is still a fun, addictive and emergent technology. I am looking forward to next week to explore how Second Life, or indeed other virtual worlds, can be used to support teaching and learning and to discover the opportunities and pitfalls that it may bring. Such questions that spring to mind include:

• What makes a classroom? Is it walls, desks and books? or can we think and teach outside of these physical constraints?
• Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they "command" the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?
• How will our choice of gender be perceived?
• How will Gee's (2003) three personalities: physical, virtual and projected come into play? How do they inform and shape our digital identity? (digidenity?)
• Will Taylor's (2001) notion of group, affiliation and social dynamics be easy to spot in Second Life as they do in real life?
• What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 08 November 2007]

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61. 

As you can see from the title of the post, I'm betwixted, bothered and bewildered. Why is that? you ask. Well, I've been playing around with the WebCT's e-portfolio tool. I've already have onsiderable experience with using PebblePAD; if you haven't already seen what the PebblePAD e-portfolio tool looks like, there is a rather nice example of it here; and I am now exclusively using Blackboard's e-portfolio tool for maintaining my own professional CPD e-portfolio (as shown in "The Quantum Chimera" article).

The University did have the choice to go with either PebblePAD (a highly structured, high customisable and feature-rich site that is programmed entirely in Flash) or Blackboard (a bare bones, no frillls,  "blank sheet" site). It was decided that the University had already made a lot of investment with the Blackboard VLE, we couldn't possibly support another system.

I had argued at the time that students in other instituitions had expressed the opinion that their e-portfolio tool should be separate from the VLE (the Institutional tool) as the e-portfolio belonged to them. I had heard that some institutions had listened to the students and offered a tool that was separate from the VLE; and equally, I heard that other institutions had scrapped the personalised e-portfolio and brought it back into the domain of the Institution's control.

The WebCT e-portfolio tool seems to sit inbetween PebblePAD and Blackboard in terms of features and functionality, such as the enhanced feedback / comment for each asset created; resume; reflection and goal creation tool along with a range of tools that enable the user to customise the interface. With my own Blackboard e-portfolio site, I am using the HTML features and have created a cascading stylesheet to manage the look and feel, so that it is "low maintenance" and "highly configurable".

The rub that I am having with the WebCT tool is that I don't particularly want to construct yet another e-portfolio space, especially as I already have an emotional and intellectual investment with Blackboard, despite it's severe shortcomings - the feedback / comment element to the tool is excruciatingly poor and unhelpful. Whilst I think it would be good for me to maintain a shareable e-portfolio for my MSc studies, I would much rather maintain it on an e-portfolio tool that I am currently involved with than with one that I am not.

Phew! That was a surprisingly hard entry to write.

Once again, we have been blessed (in my humble opinion) of some fantastic reading material on this course. I have particularly enjoyed most of the e-portfolio readings. We have just literally, this year, brought in the Blackboard e-portfolio tool to support a number of Institutional initiatives such as personal development planning (pdp), continued professional development (cpd) and assessment.

I certainly know from my own research into e-portfolios how difficult it is for people to agree on an overarching definition. You only have to read the raging debate that is going on with the JISC CETIS Portfolio SIG on their wiki and JISCmail sites to know what I am talking about.

The use of meaningful metaphors to make sense of one's own e-portfolio is both powerful and compelling. Barrett (2004) reels off a list that includes mirror; story; journey and campfire. On Jen Ross' blog, she is developing a "mask" metaphor, which I am sure Goffman (1959) would appreciate and even Acker (2005) alludes to it as a "digital representation of self on characteristics of interest to a community". This, somewhat, reminds me of an early incarnation of my website that used "hat" imagery to denote the "wearing of hats" that I have had to put on in both my personal and professional lives. Curiously enough, Sir John Mills, the actor, spoke of not being able to be in character until he wore the "right kind of shoes". Identity is a funny old game as Jimmy Greaves would have said if he were a philosopher and not a footballer.

My personal e-portfolio at work (see embedded picture) uses the "acorn" to denote growth and development. The "branches" indicating all the work, experiences and achievements that you can see; the "roots" indicate all the stuff that you can't see and may need to dig deeper to find out more. When talking to staff about e-portfolios, I have used the image of a "rucksack". The rucksuck is synonymous with journeys and travelling as well as being a means to store stuff. Inside the TARDIS-like zippers and pockets of the rucksack are things you want to keep and present. Each different zipper or pocket of the rucksack provides a different representation to different audiences / viewers.

I was particularly enamoured with Barrett and Carney's (2005) tale of the John Godfrey Saxe poem: "The Blind Men and the Elephant", which in itself is based upon an Indian fable. I was so enamoured with it, in fact, that I e-mailed by colleagues around the office about it today. I liked the notion that the e-portfolio becomes a very different beast when different people look upon it; a bit like Schrödinger's Cat, whereby the poor, old hapless moggy would be isolated from any external interferences; to know whether the cat was alive, dead, or simply not there meant that the observer would have to "look inside the box" to find out, thus interfering with the experiment and, in turn, becoming entangled with the experiment itself.

So for me, at least, the e-portfolio is transformed into a fabulous beast: a quantum chimera. How it reveals itself to you largely depends on how you wish to view it and from which angle you are viewing it from.

References

Acker, S., (2005). Overcoming Obstacles to Authentic ePortfolio Assessment. Campus Technology [online]. Available at: http://campustechnology.com/articles/40147/ [Accessed 08 October 2007]

Barrett, H., (2004). Metaphors for Portfolios. electronicportfolios.org [online]. Available at: http://electronicportfolios.com/metaphors.html [Accessed 08 October 2007] 

Barrett, H. & Carney, J., (2005). Conflicting Paradigms and Competing Purposes in Electronic Portfolio Development. Educational Assessment.

Goffman, E., (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books.

McAlpine, M., (2005). e-Portfolio and Digital Identity: Some Issues for Discussion. e-Learning. 2(4).

Stefani, L., Mason, R. & Pegler, C., (2007). The Educational Potential of e-Portfolios. London: Routledge.

The latter half of Feenberg's (1989) paper becomes a rather confused and muddled mess; whilst there are some interesting ideas, he doesn't quite pull them off. I noted some intriguing points in the discourse section where Feenberg refers to Marshall McLuhan's 1960's announcement on the "end of literate culture and the rise of a new 'oral' culture based on electronic broadcasting". This was when the TV star was in it's ascendency and the noble art of conversation was enduring a slow and choking death.

Feenberg raises another pertinent statement; especially when you consider the rhetoric that children spend far too much time watching television, playing computer games and surfing the Internet:

"Recent years have seen the proliferation of remedial writing courses in
colleges and the gradual decline of the childhood pastime of reading for pleasure."

The effect of this particular game of dominos would be reverberating across the academic and corporate worlds for years to come as it becomes painfully apparent to the powers that be that a generation of children would be ill-equipped to learn and to work. These discordant ripples continue right upto (and beyond) the Leitch Review (2006).  

In 1998, the UK Government introduced "Literacy Hour" into all Primary schools to try and get the kids into reading. As fate would have it, a certain bespectacled boy with a lightening bolt scar on his forehead was going to do something that no Government initiative could possibly achieve; and that was to get children to read books for fun, a recent study seems to support this assertion.

We digress somewhat. Feenberg's habit for name dropping those great theorists of Goffman, Lyotard and Derrida makes for heavy work. Terms such as "absorption", "engrossment" and "atomisation" are both unhelpful and a little inaccessible to educationalists or technologists alike, unless they are blessed with a sociological / philosophical mindset.

On the role of the moderator, Feenberg suggests that they should be more like a chairperson within a meeting. In the real world, a skilled moderator would be able to exert a physical presence; much like a conductor would with an orchestra. In the online world, one is not able to exert such a presence. Whilst technologies would give the online moderator the ability to "block" unruly participants - which is a bit like being kicked out of the pub by the landlord - it is hardly conducive towards any meaningful discussions or debates; if anything, it will only serve to make the participants feels isolated and alienated.

If we can imagine for a minute, a parent teaching a child how to ride a bike, then letting go so that the bike is under the child's control; so the moderator's role, therefore, should exhibit a similar approach. Indeed, we would redefine the moderator's role to that of a facilitator. The facilitator would, therefore, steer the participants out of the harbour and allows them to go at their own pace and accord; with the occasional nudge of the compass, the participants are gently brought back on the track and continue to make those connections in a more fruitful and organic way.

References

Feenberg, A., (1989). The written world: On the the theory and practice of computer conferencing. In: Mason, R. & Kaye, A. (eds) Mindweave: communication, computers and distance learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. pp. 22-39.

Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P.A. & Jochems, W., (2003). Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research. Computers in Human Behavior. 19, 335-353.

McInnerney, J.M. & Roberts, T.S., (2004). Online Learning Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of Community. Educational Technology & Society. 7(3), 73-81.

Crikey! This blog is getting all heavy and doomladen and I haven't even written "Textual Meditations - Volume 2" yet!

I've caught sight of this very funny book called "The Internet Now In Handy Book Form!", which spoofs a number of well-known websites like "Facebook", "Google" and "Apple". There's even hilarious version of popular website genres such as dating and "boys toys" sites.

Take a tour of "Crackbook" today and discover that it "is an addictive social utility that makes you feel that you're connecting with people when actually you're just not".

Ahhh, my kind of website!