Virgil Varvel, distance education guru, presents ongoing commentary and notes on educational research, issues, and publications.September 28, 2005
Lankshear - Information, Knowledge, and Learning
For the next week, I'll be posting my notes from Mary R. Lea & Kathy Nicoll (Eds.) (2002). Distributed Learning: Social and cultural approaches to practice. RoutledgeFalmer, NY. Starting with Ch 1. Information, knowledge, and learning: Some issues facing epistemology and education in a digital age. Colin Lankshear, Michael Peters, and Michele Knobel, 16-37.
See pdf file.
Posted by vvarvel at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 27, 2005
Student Privacy Issues, Ethics, and Solving the Guest Lecturer Dilemma in Online Courses
Although it is a bit shorter than I would prefer, thus leaving out some discussion, I discuss privacy and ethical issues involved with the use primarily of guest lecturers in an online course in an eLearn Magazine article recently published. See http://elearnmag.org for more. The direct link, which wasn't working when I just tried it is http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=28-1.
Posted by vvarvel at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 26, 2005
To Blog or not to Blog (in Humility)
I have to admit, that while I have decided to run this blog, I am not a major proponent of their use. It becomes necessary for me to state some of my guidelines for good (not just well) and bad uses of blogs
I had some reservations about writing this blog. I have reservations about blogs in general. The nature of a blog is based on broadcasting of personal information or personally reconstituted information. Is what I have to say really so important? From a democratized viewpoint, I would say that everyone's view is important, mind included. Information disseminiation is a good thing. But are personal (note that I am not including RSS feeds of an asynchronous discussion as a blog in my personal blogs definition) blogs the best way about this?
It is against the principle of humility to project yourself or your group as all important in any medium. A blog is not a dialogue or polylogue, but a monologue with the possibility of comments after the fact. I personally believe that they have grown in popularity as a result of the inherent ego of humankind. Blogs also play to our need for control. In a blog, the owner has control over the content, direction, tone, flow, etc. of the information. Blogs are not a direct community development tool, but an individual tool.
Furthermore, for someone to get the blogged information, they must either search for the blog or choose to subscribe. It is good to allow this level of control by the user. Unfortunately, status then becomes a marker used to draw people to your blog. Eventually worthiness of the information comes into play, but I doubt that this is an initial factor in blog selection by a reader. Many readers may not even be properly educated on the given topic to become a judge of worthiness.
Open asynchronous forums provide a more democratic, synergistic tool for information discussion and dissemination. These too have disadvantages though such as topic control or policing if only to limit the sheer amount of material discussed and the possibility of flaming to name a few. Such forum can also include a lot of posts that really are unnecessary and lead to clutter. These disadvantages listed can be solved by a blog, especially a well informed, public, ethical, and humble blog, which is how I hope to maintain this blog.
Thus, although there are disadvantages, I now see that blogs can have a place when properly utilized. But what do I see as proper utilization, and why should anyone care what I see as proper. I recognize that I am a very value laden individual, whose values may not synch with yours. Therefore, I am going to try and list the various forms of blogs that I have recognized on the Web, and try to argue for why the modality I'm choosing and will try to adhere to for this blog may be one of the better choices in many situations.
Let me organize the rest of this monologue by laying out some of the many uses of blogs as I see it from my wanderings on the Web. Then, we can look at the implications of these uses from an ethical and educational view mixed with my own personal morality, which you can freely agree or disagree with at your leisure. I am not assuming or implying that any of these categories are mutually exclusive, and while I have tried to find an exhaustive list, you may come up with others. I have placed in bold, uses that I would see as fitting a modality consistent with ethical, communal, educational, and/or general well-being of humankind in general. Red denotes the use that I will try to adhere to with this blog.
- I'm awesome - Some people like to blog as if their opinions are more important, more informed, more literate, more fantastic than someone else's or everyone else's opinions. If this is your primary motivation behind writing a blog, hopefully no one reads it.
- It's an awesome world - Some people really do have a wide variety of worldly experiences and travel. For various motivations (which may include I'm awesome), they like to put those experiences down in writing. I placed this item as bold, because an example like an animal expert blog talking about animals around the world as part of his/her job would be a valid use for example.
- Democratization - The more opinions we get into the world about a given topic, the better the world will be, right? You may wonder then why I have not made this one bold. Of course, we ignore that fact that the opinions being displayed are those primarily of the technocrats, but that's another story. I am tentative about making this item bold, as I do not see an argument whereby a blog is a more effective measure than a discussion forum for such democratization, unless we wish to expand our definition of blog to an RSS feed of a listserv or asynchronous discussion forum. Remember, I'm talking about personal blogs here.
- Education (Public) - Someone knows a lot about a given topic and wants to share that knowledge with others who may not be in the know and in a way that provides alternative information sources for those that want to be in the know. The blog format reduces the need for that individual to debate the point at that given time, although accepting comments leaves the door open. As I am not one that believe total objectivity is possible, it becomes important to accept that readers should use more than one source for their information.
- Education (Student Use) - Some classroom teachers are beginning to use blogs to spark student writing. Syndicated (and even unsyndicated) blogs have not been shown in any way to be an improvement or even a suitable replacement for journals in this respect.
- Education (Classroom) - There may be good uses of a classroom educational blog, such as an easily accessed channel for parents to get assignment information or updates about what is going on in the class. Of course, FERPA guidelines would need to be obeyed.
- Gossip - Like information below, but with sinful character veiled in public interest.
- Information - Not all information is gossip. Popular online blogs include sports information or news feeds. The problem with monological news feeds of any kind will of course continue to be biased reporting, but some facts such as a sports score with injury reports serve to satisfy the needs of fans in a way that many would consider useful on a societal level. There may even be feeds in your neighborhood outlining upcoming events.
- More to be added as I come across them
Posted by vvarvel at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 23, 2005
Is Microsoft sweating again?
A current ZDNet alert reads, "Microsoft's nightmare inches closer to reality". In effect, the giant is switching or at least adding a new emphasis in distributed computing and hosted services. Seems Google is part of the incentive behind the push. Read the full article at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5877197.html?tag=nl.e589
Posted by vvarvel at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 22, 2005
Privacy or lack thereof in an Online Course
I recently wrote an article on complying with privacy laws such as FERPA and COPPA for online instructors. But these legal requirements are more about protecting privacy from those outside of the course. What about providing for some level of anonymity among students when appropriate or desired.
Despite lack of a good comparison study and the fact that most of the research is anecdotal or philosophical, we are consistently told that one of the most important aspects of an online course (of course assuming that an online course is instructor-paced somewhat) is community or the creation of a community of learners or practice. There are so many ways to define a community of practice that I won't get into that here. However, mutual disclosure seems to be a common aspect of effective community formation discussed in the literature. I find this interesting in that I don't know 3 verbs that my neighbors would use to describe themselves in my own community, but I may find that out through an ice-breaking activity in an online course.
Honestly, I enjoy getting to know my students, and I enjoy getting to know others in my class. I look at that as a positive for me in an online course that follows this communal approach. At the same time, I don't like all of the additional work that is related to the use of group projects that supposedly increase this community. They probably do, but there are many negatives too. Maybe I'll discuss that someday.
So where am I heading with this line of thought. Here is my question. If we support this paradigm and accept it as true, are we narrowing our effective audience to those that fit into a mold? I hear often about the advantages of the communal approach, but I would love to hear more about the disadvantages. I think it is time for a truly critical meta-analysis of the research that is out there to try and develop some guidelines for active community formation and it appropriateness given a number of criteria such as audience, information delivery, etc. Any analysis phase of instructional design could be reintegrated with this knowledge to better meet the needs of the students at hand.
Posted by vvarvel at 09:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 21, 2005
Harasim - Online Education: Perspectives
For my first notes post, I wanted a book that a lot of people have read and that seems to have interesting insight, especially considering its date of 1990. A good historical view is always good to start off with.
Posted by vvarvel at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Education Readings
I spend a lot of time reading books on online teaching and learning, as well as education in general. When I read, I take notes to help me internalize the information. Sometimes, I can't remember where something was though. So now, I'm making use of Adobe PDF's to do the remembering for me. I convert my notes to pdf and then index them. These notes don't replace the book in my library, but supplement it, provide information outlines, and organize information. Now that I have started to develop a library of such notes on education related books, I've decided to start sharing. In the coming days/weeks/months I'll be posting my notes here for you to read. You may find a book that you want to check out for yourself.
Posted by vvarvel at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack