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Prensky and the concept of the digital native deserves to be lampooned and satirised
W 13+14: Activity 4b: Making sense of the student experience
Read Bennett et al. (2008) ‘The “digital natives” debate: a critical review of the evidence’.
As you read consider the following questions:
____________________________________________________________________
What do you understand by the use of the term ‘moral panic’?
Or the ‘immoral panic’, or the lunacy that has academics and politicians jumping on catch-phrases like ‘the Net Generation’ that are totally sensationalist, eye-catching, worthless, unfounded, claptrap.
In fact they are pandering to our base desires, the belief or wish that there is a narrative to our existence that says it is always rubbish now and can be fixed by reading their book, with its oh too neat title.
Here’s another soap-box wonder who believed she had the answer to everything:
Moral panic (Cohen, 1976) … Mary Whitehouse caused many in relation to smut on TV.
There is a pressing need for theoretically informed research – the concept of ‘Digital Natives; is popularist and designed to sell a book(s) and the lecture/consultancy services of the person who coined the phrase, ‘Marc Prensky.’
So what is a ‘moral panic’?
Anything that gets JPF (just plain folk, a John Seely Brown expression I love) feeling anxious, that things on right in their world and the false prophet spouting doom and gloom is also the one with the answers – just follow them! Converts then to rant about this High Priest of the quick fix – Prensky is of course right about everything (just read the pages of gushing enthusiasm that he puts in his books. Try reading them; for a different product much of this would be professionally written to go on the back of a Cornflakes packet). The educational world will be saved from the horrors of the natives gone digital, if we only listen to him (then praise him to the hilt).
The research from Bennett says this about Prensky’s thesis:
– Little critical scrutiny
– Under theorised
– Lack of sound empirical basis
Dangerously Bennett reports ‘to address this proclaimed challenge, some high-profile commentators are arguing for radical changes in curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and professional in education.’
Prensky and his lot deserve to be lampooned and satirised
Worse, they are given genuine educators working with technology a bad name. Professional educators are on the side of teachers and lecturers creating tools that are convenient, easy, transportable, and hopefully engaging, best of all permitting a large class, or cohort to have some sense of ‘student-centred’ learning through tools that enable a taste of the that privileged Oxbridge one-to-one tutorial that 800 years on is far from threatened by e-learning and digital everything, indeed it thrives and has become even more precious and valued.
I was suckered into believing Marc Prensky as a naive MAODE student in my first module, H807.
I wanted to believe that Prensky had the answers to everything because I was working in a business in 2000/2001 that wanted clients to believe that if we created immersive, game-like learning online for them their students would teach themselves. Prensky pushed the problem, we offered a response.
This ‘Digital Natives’ thing is as vacuous as airfreshening devices in the home; it is a marketing gimmic designed to sell a product.
Prensky has no answers, and befuddles it all for us, worse academics have initially picked up his thread and have been terribly slow to get the research done that quite frankly demonstrates the nonsense that has been used to sell Prensky’s books and lecture series.
‘Claims are put forward with limited empirical evidence’ ( e.g. Tapscott, 1998) or ‘supported by anecdotes and appeals to common-sense beliefs’ (e.g. Prensky, 2001), who also cites Captain James T Kirk form Star Trek (sic) … as if a fictional character, or the show (rather than its author) should be the one to site at all.
Were ‘Digital Natives’ presented as an ECA it might pass, but the feedback would call it ‘light’ and poorly referenced.
‘The reality is complex and diverse’, says Bennett not just across a nation, but probably in many classes themselves. It’s as if Prensky and his crew are suggesting that this generation were born with a third eye or six fingers.
(Actually, they are ‘The Simpson’ Generation and we need to worry that they’ll all turn yellow and chop of a finger from each hand).
Can we take seriously an academic writer who cites Star Trek? And references quotes like this? Prenksy says he studied at Princeton and Harvard? What did he study?
Prensky could be, making it up.There is no means to check most of the references, if you can call them that.
I bought ‘Educating Digital Natives’ it is unacademic twaddle from beginning to end.
It’s no better than one of those self-help books you can pick up in an airport.
So what is a ‘moral panic’
Anything that gets JPF (just plain folk, a John Seely Brown expression I love) to have a rant … ideally to rant about how this prophet Prensky is right about everything and the educational world will be saved if we only listen to him (then praise him to the hilt).
What does this article suggest to you about the technological determinist thrust of the Net Generation argument?
Academic writers and current research, writing in calm, objective tones (Kennedy, Conole and others) knock flat every piece of ‘hear say’ from these authors for what it is – journalistic, sensationalist nonsense.
I have to question Marc Prensky’s credentials; I simply cannot believe an academic with a Harvard MA could possibly write like this, indeed I want to ask Harvard to confirm that this is the case.
‘The researchers found that only a minority of the students (around 21%) were engaged in creating their own content and multimedia for the Web, and that a significant proportion of students had lower level skills than might be expected of digital natives.’ (Bennett 2008:02)
Kennedy’s research in Australia says it all.
Emerging technologies are NOT the lifeblood of a generation, far from it. Research amongst students in three Australian universities showed that:
- 21% blog
- 24% used social networking
- 21.5% used podcasts
i.e. far from universal in this generation as the self-publicists of ‘Net Generation’, ‘Digital Natives’ or ‘Millennials’ would have us think.
Is there a theoretical or empirical basis to the arguments that are presented using the terms, Net Generation, Digital Natives or Millennials?
None whatsoever.
As Bennett said, we had a go at kids watching too much TV in the past. This is their lives and ours; it is the world as it is today. Nothing whatsoever has changed physiologically or psychologically about us humans, how we develop and grow.
The concept of any generation been universally similar fails to recognise differences related to:
- Socio-economic status
- Cultural/ethnic background
- Gender
- Discipline specialisation
Internet use by teenagers is far from uniform
- Widely varying experiences according to children’s school and home backgrounds (Lee, 2005)
- Family dynamics
- Level of domestic affluence
Multi-skilling claims … are facts that equate to young people at this stage in their developmental processes and is the same today as it was a thousand or ten thousand years ago – ability to work in fine detail, to work on several tasks at the same time.
‘A significant proportion of young people do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the digital native idea. Such generalisation about a whole generation of young people thereby focuses attention on technically adept students. With this comes the danger that those less ale will be neglected and that the potential impact of socio-economic and cultural factors will be overlooked’. (Bennett, 2008:02)
‘Although such claims may appeal to our common-sense perceptions of a rapidly changing world, there is no evidence that multi-tasking is a new phenomenon exclusive to digital natives’, (Bennett, 2008:02)
Just because something resonates with our personal observations doesn’t make it so. Frankly, Prensky et al should be stand-up comics – you have to laugh, at their nonsense and how gullible we are to want to believe them.
‘Generalisations about the ways in which digital natives learn also fail to recognise cognitive differences in young people of different ages and variation within age groups.’ (Bennett, 2008:02)
People change their approach according to their perceptions of the task.
- ‘It is apparent that there is scant evidence to support this idea, and that emerging research challenges notions of a homogenous generation with technical expertise and a distinctive learning style’. (Bennett, 2008:03)
- ‘Our analysis of the digital native literature demonstrates a clear mismatch between the confidence with which claims are made and the evidence for such claims.’
- ‘Arguments are often couched in dramatic language, proclaim a profound change in the world, and pronounce stark generational differences’ (Bennett, 2008:03)
- ‘Such claims with appeals to sense and recognisable anecdotes are used to declare an emergency situation, and call for urgent and fundamental change.’ (Bennett, 2008:04)
The problem is that Prensky is an easy read.
Too many people prefer this than wading through dry, hard-nosed analysis of the truth. The truth? Business as usual. E-learning to education is what a whole raft of tools were to the housewife in the 1950s and 1960s … they make it easier to get the job done. They make life more convenient.
In the case of education it makes realisation, for some, the dream of more student-centred learning, possible.
If there is a generational shift it ought to be that more people are gaining access to an education on their terms. We have moved from a teacher-centred model of teaching (Kember, 1997) … which only existed/exists of necessity (not everyone has ever been wealthy to give their children a personal governess then tutor) … to supporting students’ active learning, the student-centred model (Gibbs, 1995).
If there is, what do you think are the key features of this change in generations?
How might these changes affect education?
Did serendipity bring me to this?
‘An evaluation of students’ perceptions and engagement with e-learning components in a campus based university’. (2011) Afam Ituma
All your answers to the MAODE in eight pages.
REFERENCE
Bennett, S, Maton, K, & Kervin, L 2008, ‘The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence’, British Journal Of Educational Technology, 39, 5, pp. 775-786, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 9 February 2014.
Is technology changing society or responding to society?
There’s far more going on than simply technology and it’s a moot point to know when the technology is changing society or responding to society, the two are in a spiralling dance we see, hear and know more – our close relationships are even closer and then those we have kept at arm’s length are drawn in too.
This might make an interesting debate in Cloudworks. It is one of Grainne Conole’s.
‘The old labels of primary, second and tertiary education and work-based learning perhaps have no meaning now in the complex, changing environment’. (Conole, 2007.02)
And this might be interesting to answer:
What does it mean to be a learner in a modern complex environment?
This is valuable, the set of progressions Conole picks out: monitoring, recording, sharing, aggregating information, synthesising, providing evidence, assessing in from form, validating.
And a reminder of the team behind and beside the student as they learn: ‘the student themselves, of course, is the most important one, but also the peers that they work with the tutors who support them, the course developers who provide the course and the environment for them to work in, the senior managers and other support staff who provide the enabling framework, the quality assurance body and validating bodies, as well as professional bodies and, of course, employers’. (Conole, 2007.03)
And there’s more:
‘Education is no longer simple and classified into different boxes and boundaries, for the wider, societal environment in which students are now working and learning is different and constantly changing’. (Conole, 2007.03)
And interesting take on blogging:
Personal blogs both have the ability to provide personal reflective journal but also as a means of experts providing a filter on a complex changing environment.
But has anything changed?
‘It begs the question of does this offer a whole new dimension of learning or again is it more of the same?’ Conole asks and continues later, suggesting that Web2.0 technology ‘is just an integral part of their toolkit that they use to provide support for their learning. They’re also very critically aware now of the pros and cons of different things and they vote with their feet. If they can’t see the benefit they won’t use it’.
And further thoughts on which to dwell:
‘Because so much content is freely available and easily accessible they view it very differently. It has low intrinsic value. They expect high degrees of interactivity. They expect to be able to mix and match and interact and change’. (Conole, 2007)
And future research?
We’re particularly interested in looking at how students are learning across different boundaries and I think this related very much to progression in terms of breaking down those boundaries or silos I talked about before.
We no longer have primary, secondary, tertiary and work-based learning. The whole thing is mixing and changing and interconnecting.
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Use of mobile devices in e-learning
Where do we strand with the use of mobile devices in learning?
The Kukulska-Hulme et al 2011 report ‘Mature Students using mobile devices in life and learning’ may be a recent publication (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning Jan-march 2001) but draws its conclusions on research undertaken in between May 2008 and April 2009.
Technologically, in relation to the potential for e-learning, has move on a great deal. In industry would we not expect a report, say from Nielsen or Monitor, to have been done in the last six months?
As Kukulskha-Hulme and her colleagues point out by 2009 PDAs were virtually extinct and we were about to experience the launch of the iPad. Since 2009 smart phones have graduated – they’re bright in many ways.
Like their users?
Bright people with the means quickly find ways to put these tools to work, extending their reach to their online course, for materials, forums and assessment alerts, to organise their study time around their diary.
‘In today’s global marketplace, educators must know the technology habits and expectations of their students, including those from other countries.’ (Kukulska-Hulme et al, 2001:18)
A growing body of students expect a component of their course to be managed using mobile devices.
I like this point from JISC. It supports the constructive view of learning
“Learners can be active makers and shapers of their own learning. They should be supported in using technologies of their own choice where appropriate”. (JISC, 2009, p.51)
It is interesting that the report notes that ‘mobile will not necessarily be readily adapted for learning’ (a 2008/2009 perspective) with reasons given as: ‘Ergonomic, pedagogical, psychological and environmental facts and the issue of cost’. (Stockwell, 2008)
Much more is possible today, and expected.
They do suggest that, ‘more widespread adoption by students and teachers is likely to follow’. (ibid 2011:19)
The report notes ‘notable minorities’
A notable major minority who ‘use the internet to download or upload materials.’ (major minority)
And a lesser minority, minority who ‘contribute to blogs and wiki and engage with virtual worlds.’ (ibid p.21) (minor minority)
‘Their age seems less important than their position as early adopters and instigators of change through their influence among their peers and through their networks’. (2011:19)
Which debunks Prensky and favour diffusion of innovations as a mode of study.
‘We were interested in gathering data that might challenge the still widespread opinion amongst educators that mobile devices are of little use for academic study. Activities such as web browsing, reading e-news, article reading, book reading, and note taking are valued in the academic world but often considered implausible on handheld devices.‘ (2011:20)
Which has indeed happened with smarter phones and the proliferation of the tablet (or slate) or iPad … whatever the term might be that we settle on.
‘Since the survey was developed, other devices including notebook computers and e-book readers have become popular, making it even more difficult to draw boundaries between ‘handheld learning’, laptop learning’ and ‘desktop learning’. (2011:21)
As if such a distinction was ever necessary? They are all computers, just different sizes, affordances and capabilities.
I liken this loss of boundaries, or the blurring, to drops of ink in a tank of water that gradually swirl about each other and merge.
MOBILE DEVICES ARE USED IN LEARNING FOR:
– Contact with others
– Access to information and answers
– Reading e-Books
– Listening to Podcasts
– Scheduling
Producers and consumers become ‘produsers‘
One survey shows that mobile devices are enabling users to create resources for teaching purposes, write blogs to keep their friends up to date with events, take and distribute photos and videos, and make and take notes and recordings’. (2011.31)
What is interesting is that there appear to be many ways in which users are employing technologies to generate products.
Bruns (2005) coined the term ‘produsers’ to denote both of these approaches.
‘Our findings indicate that institutions planning to offer mobile apps should build on the existing preferences of students for social communication. Listening to audio, watching video and reading short texts if the apps are successfully to enhance the learning experience’. (Kukulska-HUlme 2011:32)
When students are offered appropriate mobile resources then they will use them. (2011:32)
‘Since the use of a mobile device represents a new technological means of reading books, articles and news, this might have an impact on how, and how much, students read, however further research would be needed’. (2011:33)
More research is always needed … in deed, with a longitidunal study this research would and should undertake to look at a cohort or students EVERY year.
REFERENCE
Bruns, A. (2005) ‘Anyone can edit’: understanding the produser. Retrieved from http;//snurb.info/index. php?q=node/s86
Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes, John Pettit, Linda Bradley, Ana A. Carvalho, Anthony Herrington, David M. Kennedy, and Aisha Walker. “Mature Students Using Mobile Devices in Life and Learning.” IJMBL 3.1 (2011): 18-52. Accessed (May 22, 2011)
Rogers, E.M. (2005) Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.) New York, NY: Free Press
Jones, C.R., Ramanau, R., Cross, S., & Healing, G. (2010) Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university? Computers & Education, 54(3), 722-732. doi. 10.1016/j.compendu.2009.09.022
We are all the people we have ever been
What image should we use to portray ourselves?
Is there such as thing as best practice? Ought it to be like joining a gym, we have a snapshot taken on a webcam and this current image, no matter how it comes out, becomes who we are?
Do so few of us dislike or distrust what we see when we look at our faces in the mirror each morning?
It has been the subject of research, role play in online education; I’d like to do some of my own.
I began a year ago with this.
I liked the picture, felt it was healthy, robust and confident and confident.
I should have looked at the date on it. August 2004. Happy and sunny days. You age under stress and from the mid-40s it doesn’t take much to add ten years -all that sun in the past, being unwell.
As I write below, his spirit, like mine (I hope) remains that of an enthusiastic twenty-something.
The same occurred with the Elluminate session we had in H800 the other day, the tutor on the webcam (initially in a scratchy black and white image) is not the person who goes by in the General Forum. Are we all guilty of this. Men included? We go with something in our late thirties or early to mid-forties?
I then went with this.
An image I long ago used in my eleven year old blog. I wanted something that was indicative of the content and would last. I’m still inclined to run with this. It is indicative of what I think blogging is all about – the contents of your mind, what you think i.e. you ‘mind bursts’ as I call them on numerous blogs.
Facebook personas sees me in a number of guises
While on Skype I use a image taken with the webcam on the day of an online interview – this is a month ago, so as contemporary as it gets.
I have this image fronting Tumblr taken 21 years ago.
In moments of euphoria having just successfully negotiated a 15m pond of slush on a pair of skis in front of a crowd of early May skiers below the Tignes Glacier, France. The day I proposed to my wife. We’d be ‘going out together’ for three days … we’ve now been together, well 21 years.
In my original diary we could create banner ads to publicise what we had to say to fellow writers. One of these has a spread as long as the contents of my diaries and blog: they run from a 13 year old Head Chorister in cassock and ruffs, though gap, undergrad, to add exec, video director, with four woman I didn’t marry.
Increasingly, I am thinking of using a self-portrait, that this attempt to capture myself through my minds eye is more telling that a photograph.
I could use the drawing I did of a 14 year old
What amuses me most here is how I superimpose these attachments as if I were in a school play, the beard is clearly on the soft face of a pubescent boy – I should have looked at my grandfather for the face I’d get, with the more bulbous nose and pronounced chin.
Talking of which, I find it intriguing that I am the spitting image of my grandfather, that my own children see images of him age 20 and think it has to be me. All that changes as he ages into a 40 and 50 year old is he goes bald, whereas I am thus far limited to a thinning of the crown.
This I’m afraid, if the age of my children in the rest of the picture is something to go by, is some seven years ago 😦
My only reason for picking it is that I haven’t renewed my contact lenses and am inclined, after twenty years wearing them to give up. Maybe laser surgery when I have the cash?
This is contemporary. It doesn’t say who I am, just ‘what’ I am. Wearing a child’s hat (he’s a dad), the headset to record notes onto a digital recorder (for a podcast), a coat he bought for honeymooning in the Alps (we went skiing) 18 years ago …
I have of course not changed much since 1977
It takes me back to the original point – who are we? how do we representative ourselves online in a single image when we are all a sum of a complex of parts?
Is it any wonder that we present multiple selves online, the more so the longer we’ve lived?
I don’t remember my father being around to take this picture. though clearly he did. I do remember the great-big wellies though and the joy of water spilling over the top if I could find a puddle or pond deep enough. And the jumpers knitted by my granny (sleeves always too long). And the trees in the garden I climbed behind. And my sister and brother …
How set in were the learning process by then?
The Dracula Spectacula, People’s Theatre, Newcastle.
The teeth were made from dentine and fitted by an orthodontist.I rather foolishly sharpened the fangs and bit through my own lip on the last night. I had to sing while gargling my own blood. The joy of memories.
- Could a daily snap taken when looking in the bathroom mirror be used to tag memories from that ‘era’ of your life?
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Love your memories in a blog
I thought 500 page views was a landmark, then 1000. There has been steady growth to 10,000. It went crazy for a week in April with 1,000 views a day then settled back to 150-250 day. Whose counting? Basic analytics are a form of recognition, even reward for the blogger. 50,000 is a biggy that has taken 14 months to achieve. 100,000 is unlikely within the Masters in Open & Distance Education, though a MRes, another module in the MAODE (because it interests me so much) or a MBA are all of interest for later in the year and all would be blogged upon right here.
Are you saying something worthwhile to this audience?
Even if I feel the PC Screen is a mirror and I’m writing this for my benefit first as a reference I can return to later: what did I think? Where is that quote? Where was I in the learning process? Aren’t I glad I’ve moved on! Editing old entries, bringing them up-to-date develops this. As Nabokov wrote,
“I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.” Nabakov
Read Backwards
e-Reading ‘A New Culture of Learning’ backwards in a large font isolating interesting gems I may have missed. Also reading it by search word; ‘play’ works and is appropriate with over 160 mentions.
I liken this to panning for gold.
Once I’ve done this a few times typing out notes may be irrelevant; I’ll know it. ‘Play as the new form of learning?’
One final thought. Two decades ago I liken learning to a nurturing process, of an educator/teacher or course designer/principal sprinkling water on the heads of students buried like heads of lettuce emerging from the ground.
This no longer works for me.
What I now see are kids in a large paddling pool having fun and making up games with toys offered to them by supporting parents and older siblings.
The mantra for e-learning is ‘activity, activity, activity’, perhaps it ought to be ‘play, play, play’; that’s what you’ll come away with if you read John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas ‘A New Culture of Learning; cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change.’
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Want to blog? Sources of inspiration and getting it down.
ON BLOGGING
Sources of inspiration and getting it down.
Get this for a start: Use of Blogs (2006) Axel Bruns and Joanna Jacobs.
It persuades you why to blog. Each chapter is written like an academic paper – an essay at least. Chapter 5 I found I was copying out verbatim (which I can’t do here). Go see ‘Can Blogging Unspin PR’ Trevor Cook.
Your starting off point can be anything at all, once you start (for me at least) it is like opening a vein.
Who cares if it is a note to yourself. If it’s work or course work remember that you can compose then recraft as often as you like; what is more, you can turn access on or off as you please too – even allow comments as you please – with other blog platforms the list of linking choices is as broad as the destination board at Heathrow – you can ‘blog’ to a person, a group, people in different groups and so on (though this is a level of complication may turn the novice off).
If you are at all stuck for content ideas then my suggestions are:
1)Write about the deep past (everything you write is of course in the past) – what this might means is thinking of your earliest experiences of whatever your blog may be about – if it is about education then try these:
2)Your best friend at nursery school
3)Your first day at school
4)The funniest thing that your witnessed or did at school
5)The first thing you learnt and how
6)Add a caption to an old photograph then expand these thoughts into the era.
7)A birthday party
8)A Christmas
9)A first book
All of these are possible jumping off points; once you’re in flight you’ll be surprised how easy it is to steer back to where you had planned to be – who cares about the journey you took to get there – you can leave it in or edit out the first paragraph / chapter.
If you kept a diary at any time in your life – milk it! Put it up, selectively, verbatim and / or relived – you can even retrofit the date.
Getting it down
There is a beauty and simplicity to pen/pencil onto paper. Personally I find typing it up afterwards tedious and will find myself inevitably expanding beyond the way the thing was initially written. The mistake here is that you can/do with ease turn a natural, conversational flow of thoughts into something else – verbose at best, disjoined at worst. You then get into editing and saving sections/chunks for future entries.
Ideally, whether you have notes, an essay plan or mind map to guide you, I’d recommend typing directly into the Blank Box. The QWERTY keyboard is a piano keyboard and you’re playing a ditty or having a jam.
Most blog platforms have ample editing tools, the only warning is to save regularly in some if you are prone to distraction.
Even back up onto a clipboard or Word, though personally I’m not a fan of overworking a piece in Word first.
Have a notepad, record a thought on paper or into a digital recorder, have a device that you can readily use on the go – my most fruitful blogging years were when I had a Psion – I could type this spec-case sized device and draw it into my Mac to upload.
I’ll discover in due course an iPad can offer this facility – I believe it will (and some).
A final thought for now – if you can touch-type and write stream of consciousness then how many words can you get down in so many minutes?
Let’s say you think at FIVE words a second, talk at THREE words a second and type at 40-60 words a minute. In theory in five minutes you can blog between 200 and 300 words. Perfect length. Have a plan, three or so points to make and fire away.
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Notes from ‘Use of Blogs’ (2006 Bruns and Jacobs)
Blog of the day once again (Photo credit: the Italian voice)
An expression I like and will use … though it might have come from ‘Everything is miscellaneous’ David Weinberger (another must read).
Random acts of journalism
Micro-new level
‘Traditional journalists treat participants as deviants rather than as citizens. Participatory news requires a reversal of these practices and should rest on the assumption that citizens are as relevant and important as public officials.’ Gans (2003) in Uses of Blogs (2007:12)
People forget when that start saying that the role/jobs of lecturers are threatened by technology … others, if not all of us, have to adapt to the change, or be like the Amish and reject it all.
‘When big news breaks, it’s tough to beat a weblog.’ (2007, Bruns)
I recall how when the Tsunami struck Japan I went to the TV news channels. I started off with BBC 24, then went to CNN and stuck for the week on NHK from Japan as it was closer to action, as it were, and the other two were taking the feeds from NHK mostly anyway. I thought my 12 year old son should have been taking an interest, in fact he was one step ahead watching photage (Freudian slip or how we ought to spell)
‘Such unedited, firsthand accounts have also come to have significance beyond reporting the news and contrasting friends and family.’ Uses of Blogs (2007:13)
Is being ‘Unedited’ the key to authenticity I ask? And the first draft tone of a conversation? Well written, but from the heart, a stream of consciousness expressed as it is formed.
What a person has to say matters more than spelling, grammar or even style. In this respect I wonder if getting people to blog is about building up people’s confidence when it comes to doing this … writing. That they could be crippled by a school experience that crushed their every effort.
I learn that a huge rush to blog was prompted by 9/11 and these become know as ‘Warblogs’.
The point that matters is the event the got people going. Better to start keeping a diary on January 1st, than any other day of the year. Better to start a blog when you, your family, team are marking the start of an era. Might a requirement to keep a blog on the company intranet be written into a person’s contract!
‘Most of what they bring to the table is opinion and analysis – punditry.’ Raine (2005) in Uses of Blogs (2007:12)
I like this. And I prefer the stance that bloggers take. Many are frank in their views. They may be opinionated, but they are up for a verbal struggle. Many have insights that no journalists could ever have.
‘Redefining the journalist’s role as an annotional or orientational one, a shift from watchdog to the ‘guidedog’. Bowman et al (2005)
Just as we want or expect tutors to be more coach-like in their behaviour, not teachers, but guides, facilitators or ‘animateurs’. Or, if they still want to teach at their students, challenge them to treat their students as clients, that their remuneration is based on how many they retain for the duration of a module … and that in the web 2.0 world everything (it has taken thirty years or wishful thinking in industry) is bottom up, responding to what customers/students want not they need to be shoehorned into.
Before Google surfing the net, indiscriminate browsing, or deliberate searching was looking for a needle in a haystack, today you look for a needle in a stack of needles. You are spoilt for choice. You go for anything in the top search.
GateKeeping to GateWatching
Commentators
‘New bloggers form a distributed community of commentators who will engage with one another’s views on the news as much as with those expressed in other news sources.’ (2007:16)
The exact same applies to learning … certainly at postgraduate level, possibly even at undergraduate level. If we can find a way to share what we are doing we can learn together from the experience.
Publish, then filter vs filter, then publish.
Before and after, even web 1.0 to web 2.0. As we progress what we do online will lose its ties with old broadcasting/publishing mechanisms and behaviours.
There is no intermediary. There should be no one to get in your way. You have something to show and tell, show it and tell it – write about it, sing about it, paint it or photograph it.
‘Writer submits their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact.’ Shirky (2004)
The words someone writes and publishes here should never be edited, nor the grammar or writing style commented upon (unless it is praise). Positive feedback, any feedback should be to encourage, to give more of the same, to find a voice, and to develop and learn through trial and error.
‘Multiperspectival news is the bottom-up corrective for the mostly top-down perspectives of the news media.’ Gans (2003:103)
It isn’t even the case of things being turned on their head, rather it is the case that the gatekeepers should join the throng.
‘A new media ecosystem … where online communities also produce participator journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary and fact-checking, which the mainstream media feed upon, developing them as a pool of tips, sources and story ideas.’ Bowman and Willis (2005:13)
‘Deconstruction of content, demystification of technology and finally do-it-yourself or participatory authorship are the three steps through which a programmed populace returns to autonomous thinking, action and self-determination.’ Rushkoff (2003:24)
Related articles
- Blogging to Revitalize Online Learning (malmsy.net)
Diffusion of Innovations – Picking this up a year ago at the start of the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) I couldn’t relate to it.
I hadn’t enough experience of ‘e-moderators’, the term Gilly Salmon uses for Tutors (also Associate Lecturers). A year on I appreciate the complexity of the role, and potentially the considerable demand on their time and efforts to help us students sing – it can’t always happen. If we are a choir, then at times we have to learn to practice in small groups in our own time.
‘E-tivities’ is a must read at any time. You may not agree with the five-stage approach to online learning but I’d go this route until you know better from experience; i.e. play a game that has rules and works before you make up your own.
It should be a game. It should be playful.
It can be. It often is. I don’t tinker away at the QWERTY keyboard like this if I didn’t enjoy it; as Andrew Sullivan puts it, this is jazz. These ideas the latest from John Seely Brown. Remember in his lecture to the Open University he described it as ‘Bringing Coals to Newcastle’ (Week 1 or 3, H800).
That is respect for the Open University who remain the leaders worldwide.
As Lord Putnam, the OU Chancellor put it, ‘It’s as if the Open University was waiting for the Internet’. From TV and Radio, with books, videos and CDs sent out computer-based and now e-learning was and is pioneered right here.
More of this then.
And I’ve made a start on this, the seminal John Seely Brown publication:
I do like a good read, something cover to cover (though these days as a e-book, it does make highlighting and note taking massively easier). And we want to share what we think about what these guys say? I put my notes in the OU e-portfolio My Stuff so could/can share pages from there. Just ask.
I can’t be bothered with this:
I read three chapters nd skimmed through the rest.
I was working in a Brighton-based web-agency in 2000. Ten years ago I would have sung from it. A decade on I find it vacuous hype that occasionally gets it right but often does not.
That said, there are books that I dismiss the first time I look, but can be brought back to sing its praises. Another must read, especially for H807 ‘Innovations in E-learning’ is Roger’s ‘Diffusion of Innovations‘.
Related articles
- Are you the learning architect or the learning builder? (mymindbursts.com)
- Do I join I club when it is clear I’ve become one of those students the OU will never get rid of? (mymindbursts.com)
- My interactive, web-based, online, offline, inline, e-learning journey to date (mymindbursts.com)
- Pause (mymindbursts.com)
- MOOCs, online education and the rights of learners. (dougbelshaw.com)
- Is it a good idea to base an e-learning module on a book? (mymindbursts.com)
- Accessible e-learning – identefying issues, actions and problems using an Activity System (mymindbursts.com)
The card-based Hybrid Learning Model and a card-based Tool Kit for writers.
From HLM Flash Demo
For someone who does NOT have a formal teaching background this for me is the first time in 13 months that I have something practical that is based in learning, not ‘e-learning’ that I feel can apply immediately to any learning context: instructing sailing, teaching swimming, advising on digital marketing, supporting a team making a short film … and especially thinking of ways to occupy children who are now on a three week holiday.
Blogspot from conference presentation of HLM
Institutional e-learning services
I found this exercise extraordinarily useful. In the space of an hour I felt I assembled the makings of a series of activities, a module that might take place over a weekend, or a week or two. Thinking of this as learning first, and e-learning second helped.
I decided on creating a course on ‘marketing to the social web.’
I’ve always fallen back on system, surveys and so on. A set of questions, in this case cards, that you can mix about, sets the process up. A similar end result might be achieved in different ways, but here, falling back on the cards and working with these options helps you to get something down. Indeed, having the cards makes you appreciate at every stage you could approach it differently. It would highlight any repetitive approach, something some online educators are guilty of i.e. a course where every activity is a person talking to camera with a transcript of what they say. And no better than the weekly lecture and reading list which was almost my entire three year undergraduate experience.
The graphics worry me. I do think there is value in engaging the best graphic designer for things like this, to come up with something universal. I wonder how some learners would interpret a class that involved the use of flash cards with coloured in cartoons on them. Given the ability of the www to offer choices I’d give users a choice of a dozen alternative images for each activity.
As I’m looking at various courses on digital marketing I’ll see how I can add to this.
| Activity/Task –Objective | Learning Event | Teacher’s Role | Learner’s Role | Resources | Tools (inc. Technologies) | Other comments |
| Survey on current awareness of advertising/marketing in social networks | RECEIVES | Explain | Evaluate
Review |
WWW
Marketing to the Social Web as key resource. |
Survey Monkey
(e-reader) |
Individual |
| 24 hours of Google Alerts, Twitter and Facebook, Linkedin. | EXPLORES | Coach | Research | WWW | Min six people sharing task to cover entire 24 hour period. | |
| Write in a blog, microblog. As text from the spoken word. Writing within parameters, not just Twitter’s 140 characters, but other word counts. | IMITATES | Perform | Apply
Perform Reflect |
WWW
WordPress LiveJournal Blogger Writers & Artists Handbook. |
Voice Recognition Software
Touch Typing Software |
Trying to develop a fluid, immediate, even ‘stream of consciousness’ approach to writing. |
| Image only in a blog. | CREATES | Coach | Create | WWW
Flickr Tumblr |
Digital Camera
Mobile Phone Webcam |
|
| Comment on blogs, join in forum discussion . | EXPERIMENTERS | Explain | Practice | WWW
Blogging for Dummies. Letters to the editor. Letters. |
RSS | Within the group and beyond |
| Add sound to a blog … voice, music, live (Skype) and broadcast (podcast). | PRACTICES | Coach | Perform | WWW
Podbean |
Headset
Microphone |
Group |
| Measure | RECEIVES | Apply | Questions | WWW
Analytics Neilsen Research companies Tools |
Technorati
Google Analytics Buzzmetrics |
Group |
| Promote (PR, advertising, marketing) | EXPERIMENT | Perform
Explains |
Explore
Perform |
WWW
Viral Video Event D&AD DVD Mobile platforms |
DVD player | Group |
| Survey on final awareness of advertising/marketing in/to social networks. | RECEIVES | Explain | Evaluate
Review |
WWW
Marketing to the Social Web as key resource. |
Survey Monkey
(e-reader) |
Individual |
The Writer’s Tool Kit
All these cards had me thinking of a writer’s tool kit, ‘The Observation Deck’ by Naomi Epel. In that period where I wrote fiction all day I often dipped into this, simply to keep me going. In pratise it is far more useful for someone who blogs all the time as it triggers a line of thought.
If you’re running a creative writing course this IS your learning design done; each week take a different card from the box and do.
What’s your take on social media marketing?
Pic from MMC Learning
‘An approach to learning activity design (Sharpe et al. 2005) concluded that, as well as ICT skills, key issues were learners’ emotional relationship to the technologies they were offered – especially feelings of frustration and alienation – and issues around time management.’
In our tutor group and module forums we’ve gone through time management at length.
Understandably.
Though I suspect that for many of us time passing is the only certain thing in our lives. It has required therapy for me to downplay events when they DON’T go to plan … that life as a Dad, husband, parent, portfolio-worker person, studying (two courses, this and sports related), as well as feeding the guinea-pigs, putting out the rubbish, sorting the recycling, putting air in the tyres on the car, fixing the fence … collecting children from an event, taking them to the station … let alone the other generation, four relatives in their 80s and 135 and 210 miles away.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
No schedule set for the morning, let alone the day or the week can be followed. (Which is why I get my hours in 4.40 am to 7.00am each early morning … more pleasant with the sun joining me at last)
So, to the emotional response to technology.
I’ve come to apply the same kind of thinking to technology, yet more technology, especially if I don’t like the look of it, as something that WILL, in the fullness of time, have value.
There is no point putting off engagement with it.
The same applies to a difficult to read text (there has been plenty of that lately). It WILL become clear, it just may take three or more attempts, could involve getting advice from others in the peer group, a search on the web and dare I say it a BOOK. I actually pick up copies of ‘Facebook for Dummies’ and ‘Blogging for Dummies’ as a matter of standard practice from the library (remember them?). These books are authentic, scurrilous and engaging. The body and mind enjoy the break from the computer screen.
I got ‘Digital Marketing for Dummies’ for my Kindle though … how else can I read it in the bath while holding a coffee in my right hand (I am right handed) and ‘the book’ in my left, perfectly able to flick on through pages with my thumb.
Design isn’t just programming when it comes to software.
Compare Mac to PC. Mac not only works, but it is obvious, intuitive and often beautiful to look at.
We are so used to the extraordinary simplicity of Google, YouTube and Facebook that we baulk if a piece of software, perhaps Open Source, doesn’t have the look and feel of the familiar. It IS a DESIGN issue, as in creating a love affair with the object that has both form and function, rather than function alone.
Compendium; it is versatile, engaging and intelligent … but could it dress better and be more intuitive and less ‘nerdy’ ?
More from Sharpe and Beetham:
‘The use of technologies can compound existing differences among learners due to their gender, culture and first language’. Beetham and Sharpe (2007)
I like this too:
Learners cannot therefore be treated as a bundle of disparate needs: they are actors, not factors, in the learning situation. (ibid)
And this:
They make sense of the tasks they are set in terms of their own goals and perspectives, and they may experience tasks quite differently if digital technologies – with all the social and cultural meanings that they carry – are involved. (ibid)
Perhaps we should be seeking advice on these feelings too, how they can get in the way of us tackling technology or a tough read/assignment. After all, if motivated, people will overcome such problems, but if we become demotivated it is habit forming.
REFERENCE
Beetham, H and Sharpe, R ‘Rethinking Pedagogy for the digital age’. (2007)
p.s. This book needs an emotionally appropriate cover. Might I suggest a design from Helen A Dalby. Personally I’d like to see academic publishers make all book iPad friendly with illustrations throughout, maybe video and some interactivity too. Why stick with the rough, when you could make it smooth and cool. Video introduction from each of the authors please … and links to their blog.
Sharpe, R, Benfield, G., lessner, E. and de cicco, E. (2005) Scoping Study for the Pedagogy strand of the JISC e-Learning Programme, Bristol: JISC. Online. Available. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name+elearning pedagogy
Mind Bursts 