http://eduspaces.net/antmcneill/weblog/243247.html

I tend to use 'text' in a loosely literary/cultural theory way to designate pretty much any sort of signifying practice: adverts, songs, newpaper articles, television programmes, txt msgs etc. 

Whenever I use it, i'm reminded of my first reading of lit theory and the blurring of the opposition between the particularity of literary texts and the general textuality of the culture.

Dear all,

 have a good start into the new semester. 

Kind regards,

Gerard Remkes 

Wow!

I'm impressed with the speed this site was set up. It's great that it contains all of the functions that Eduspaces had too as I really liked that site.

Here's looking forward to a new term - making some new friends and reacquainting with some old ones (if thirteen weeks could be considered old)

Have a great term eveybody!

So here we are, the final leg of a 12 week journey that is "Digital Environments". This is the first time that I have done an online course taught at a distance. I already had some experience with a correspondance course; which I did, in part, to test the waters to see if I had the stamina to take on a higher degree that was being taught from a distance. Oh boy! it couldn't have been more different.

"Block A - Orientations" gets the ball rolling very quickly by using discussions boards to introduce yourself to the group and to discuss a number of presented scenarios - immediately I can see that the communication element is far superior here than the correspondance course which relied mostly on sending material via Her Majesty's Royal Mail, possibly e-mail which was read on certain days or a telephone call which may be picked up during a two hour window on Sunday's only. Oh and no fellow students to talk to about the course or the assignments.

The communication dimension of the course aside, the really big thing that impressed me the most was how fantastic the course Blackboard/WebCT was laid out (see "First Week Impressions"). For example, all the reading lists were located under the relevant week's topic folder (not in a completely separate reading list folder that my academics tend to do - but then we don't do course design as part of the basic Blackboard training that we offer academics if they want to be Blackboard Instructors).

Despite not having met (yet!) Sian Bayne and Rory Ewins, their digital presence has been strongly "felt" (sorry Dreyfus! Wasn't he Inspector Clouseau's boss?). This has also been true of the more prolific students (Tony McNeill, Henry Keil, Nicki Brain, Andy Miller and Bill Babouris). The feedback from blog and discussion board posts from Sian and Rory have been pretty much immediate - so much better than a correspondance course (or even a classroom-based course come to that!). On the subject of discussion board posts (I've made 44 posts in total), I did find myself not participating on some of the more popular topics. This, in part, has a lot to do with me coming to the discussion boards after 7.00pm when everyone has gone on a discourse feeding frenzy like a plague of locusts - much discussion and research has been done about this.

"Block B - Environments" allowed us to explore "structured spaces" like e-portfolios and virtual learning environments (VLE); "volatile spaces" like Web 2.0 and Hypertext; and "new spaces" such as Second Life. One of the reasons for doing the MSc in e-Learning at Edinburgh was the richness and diversity that the course offered (see "And so it begins...") and it is here that it is at it's most apparent.

For me, the discourse and the theoretical underpinnings of the e-portfolio was a lot more exciting and interesting than trying to "knock up" an e-portfolio on Blackboard/WebCT (see "Betwixted, bothered and bewildered"). The Web 2.0 section of the course made use of a number of activities such as adding a bookmark to Delicious (whilst I appreciated what was going on here, the activity could have benefitted from adding a bit of extra meat to it) and placing an entry onto the Group Wiki (interesting that no-one wanted to mess around with other people's entries). We also discovered that the volatile nature of the Web 2.0 application / service is fraught with opportunities and dangers (see "Web 2.0: A Game of Snakes and Ladders").

One of the big delights for me on this course was the opportunity to use Second Life in an educational context and to interact and engage with my tutors and peers in a very relaxed and friendly environment. The nature of digital identity, personalities, group dynamics and digital discrimination and prejudice was explored and discussed; along with that of "presence" - by now this had become the course arc word (see "Return to the Rabbit Hole").

"Block C - Contexts" introduced us to the more philosophical (and highly explosive) discussions of "learning bodies" (or the importance of human embodiment to teaching and learning) and "digital natives" (the controversial metaphor, the generational rift that it appears to have opened up and the implications to 21st Century teaching and learning practices). Indeed, the course material should have been rubber-stamped with an "highly inflammable" symbol. On the subject of course material, I should say that the quality of the reading materials and the scanning have been first rate and easy to read.

Whilst I can see that the "digital native" / "digital immigrant" dichotomy would have offered a useful conversational starter on the perceived changes in student behaviour and learning that Higher Education (and in education as a whole) would have to address - it has now been insidiously absorbed into something far greater and more menacing than anyone would have imagined (see "Digital Imperialism: The Tyranny of Technology").

So for now, I bid Rory, Sian and the inspirational "Digital Environments" course a fond and affectionate adieu.

Thanks for the digital memories.

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"

I came across Lynetter's Flickr account whilst looking for a picture on "digital natives" / "digital immigrants". She has an area called "Interesting Snippets" which used to be called "Online Developments".

"This is my personal dumping ground for various cool quotes, the odd stat, as slides to talk around when describing how things are changing online and in media & communications generally."

These are really fantastic pictures and images coupled with quotes and sound bites that have been taken from various media, communications and technology sources.

The photo set comes with an RSS feed if you want to keep tabs on any new photo-quotes.

The notion of "Millennials" (Howe & Strauss, 2000), "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001), "net gen" (Oblinger, 2005), "technological generation" (Monereo, 2004) and Frand's (2000) ten attributes of the "information-age mindset" is of great interest to me. Why? Well, my institution was awarded, this year, with some HEA Pathfinder funding to equip some of our lecturers with the necessary skills sets and tools that would enable them to speak the "new" digital language of our students.

Indeed, the aforementioned authors have identified a set of modus operandi that is common with a particular group of people that were born after 1982 (give or take a year or two). This M.O., as it were, includes such activities as: multitasking; visual literacy; highly social; constantly connected; a preference to using keyboards than pens / pencils; and a preference to reading on the screen rather than printed text.

A number of reports (Ipsos MORI 2007, Livingstone & Bober 2005) and commentators (Bayne & Ross 2007, Owen 2004) have put out warnings that this might not be the case - the presupposed M.O. just doesn't fit. Delegates at this year's ALT-C conference were cautioned that the so-called "digital native" student may not be overly familiar with Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and podcasting.

The flip-side to the "digital native" is the "digital immigrant" (more on that later). Both terms have been popularised and mythologised from Prensky's (2001) original work and the basis of which have little or no substantive evidence or research to back-up his claims. McKenzie (2007) accuses Prensky of being "guilty of 'arcade scholarship'". Unfortunately, in the process of lambasting and unpicking Prensky's ideas, theories and claims; McKenzie is also culpable of the same sense of "arcade scholarship" - which is a shame really as he does take Prensky to task.

Whilst I recognised that for many young people the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players are very much a part of their everyday life and culture in the same way that television, radio and cassette players were with me in 1970s - so much so that it stops being technology and becomes normalised - it doesn't necessarily follow that all students use technology or that they appreciate the use of "trendy" technology as part of their learning experience; despite what JISC (2007) may say.

According to Prensky (2001), "digital immigrants" represent the complete antithesis of the "digital natives". Whilst some of the more "smarter immigrants" might be able to embrace technology and begin to speak the same language as the "digital natives", albeit with an "accent", most are not quite as forward-looking or thinking. It is these gross assumptions and the patronising manner that makes the whole "digital divide" debate / discourse distasteful and wholly unhelpful.

The whole lexicon of "digital native", "digital immigrant" (Prensky, 2001), "digital savage", "technological migrant" (Monereo, 2004), "digital colonist" (Sandford, 2006), and "digital refugee" (Feeney, n.d.) is imperialistic in nature and racist by inclination (Bayne & Ross, 2007).

These metaphors alludes towards cyberspace as being some kind of untamed and untapped "Wild West Frontier" with the physical apparatus of pipes, cables, fibre-optics and microwave links being construed as a "digital railroad". This kind of linguistic flimflammery are neither useful nor helpful culturally, ideologically, technologically or educationally; and do very little to help us to try and understand the true digital diversity (cyberdiversity?) of our hetereogeneous student body.

References

Bayne, S. and Ross, J., (2007). The "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant": A Dangerous Opposition. Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education. December 2007.

Feeney, L., (n.d.). Digital Denizens. In: Previously In The Spotlight [online]. Available at http://loki.stockton.edu/~intech/spotlight-digital-denizens.htm [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Frand, J.L., (2000). The Information-Age Mindset: Changes in Students and Implications for Higher Education. Educause. September/October 2000.

Howe, N. and Strauss, B., (2000). Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Vintage Books.

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

JISC, (2007). In Their Own Words: Exploring the learner's perspective on e-learning. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/intheirownwords.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Krause, K., (2007). Who is the e-Generation and How are they faring in Higher Education? In: Lockard, J. and Pegrum, M. (eds) Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 125-139. 

Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., (2005). UK Children Go Online [online]. Available at: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/bober/UKCGOfinalReport.pdf [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

McKenzie, J., (2007). Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). [online]. Available at: http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

Monereo, C., (2004). The Virtual Construction of the Mind: The Role of Educational Psychology. Interactive Educational Media. 9, pp. 32-47. 

Oblinger, D., (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials: Understanding the New Students. Educause. July/August 2003.

Owen, M., (2004). The Myth of the Digital Native. Futurelab. June 2004. Available at: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article561 [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Prensky, M., (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press.

Sandford, R., (2007). Digital Post-Colonialism. Flux. 14 December 2006. Available at: http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2006/12/14/digital-post-colonialism/ [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Sources 

The photo comes from Lynetter's "Interesting Snippets" Photo Set on Flickr.