December « 2006 « Vicarious Conversations

December, 2006

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

reflections on blogging in too many places

So I started this journal in some attempt to develop some research interests in blogging. It was supposed to be the place where I separated my work from my play. Here I was going to post lofty thoughts and theoretical insights, and be incredibly clever, all the while maintaining my inane side in my other journal. I figured that the stuff I didn’t want people to know would go over there, and here would be some semblance of intelligence.

Twere not to be. You see, instead of being able to neatly separate the personal from the political (or whatever phrase is current), I merely slowed down on both fronts. The theoretical separation of personal and research became a gulf. Many times, as I went to post in either place, I felt restrained cos a) it was too personal for here, or b) it was too deep for there. In the end, I barely posted in either place.

Now I know that some people have both private and public journals, some apparently languishing (like both of mine did) and there are one or two contemplating this kind of schizm. My daughter did the same thing (and has done it yet again with her film journal), but her academic journal remains dormant (her other journals also remain dormant, but she’s trying to finish her dissertation goddammit!).

So I think I’m kinda interested, in an un-official academic way (not academic as in let’s publish this, but more an academic this is an opportunity to understand this phenomena (which is just as well cos I’m good at the latter but seem to be missing it completely on the former (can we say oh noes, tenure coming up, pull ya frelling finger out!!??))).

So, those of you who have attempted said schizm and those contemplating schizming, what were/are your reasons? Do you think you will be able to maintain the distinction between the journals? How did you/will you bow out if it doesn’t seem to do what you thought it might do? Is that even a valid question?

BTW while this journal has languished rather unloved, it will continue to do so. I’m going back to my original journal, which I have just renamed (cos the old name was kinda inane, picked because I couldn’t get what I wanted at the time, only to find that it really isn’t what I wanted anyway and it only took more than four years to figure that out). You are very welcome to friend that journal and I will reciprocate. I’m not big into commenting, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value your insights, differences and thoughts. I still think there’s something to be drawn out from the vicarious interactor, which reminds me, I should finish writing that paper.

Oh, my other journal? ([info deleted] who said I couldn’t still be inane?) And this journal may still get an occassional post of the deep and meaningful kind. I’ll see how it goes.

Tags: blogging, oldLJpost

Posted in Ramblings | No Comments »

Friday, December 29th, 2006

Remix culture vs the Cut and Paste Collective

The more I think about the ways in which students (not all but many) approach learning and hence assignments, the more I wonder about the so-called remix culture. The Remix culture is what students are being exposed to. Snippets from here there and everywhere, linking to this and that. The remix culture is kinda central to the whole notion of the web.

But, and here I get a little fuzzy, this culture is not what learning is about. It brings to mind the notion of feral learning that Nunan hinted at way back in 1996. There seems to be no culture of learning. I’m beginning to think of it in terms of the Cut and Paste Collective. Everything on the web is available for cutting and pasting and it really doesn’t matter who first said it. (There’s a great article by Hess that I have bookmarked on CiteULike that I must (re)read.) Remixing is a cultural phenomena, one that is acceptable within many ‘social’ circles. According to Hess, remixers have a particular style and way of citing their originals. Aurally, the sample is recognisable. Sampling is an accepted practicce. However it is decidedly not acceptable within academia but it’s an argument that I find hard to make and hard to instill in the so-called net generation. But, my recent re-reading of Bruffee kinda lets me into a little secret. It’s the academic culture that we need to bring students to. Like Nunan said about flexible learning: Basically, the argument is that flexible learning (and flexible delivery) is the form of learning carried by the information technologies and that student expectations about teaching and learning and their approach to learning (feral learning?) is increasingly a factor of their experience of using information technologies. So, their experience of the information culture is to cut and paste. Why have it there if it’s not open to cutting and pasting?

The way students come to us, as part of the cut and paste collective, needs to be firmly deconstructed (gee, did I just use that word?). This is my goal for 2007: to investigate the cut and paste collective and to figure out ways to help students to see beyond that.

Tags: learning, research, teaching

Posted in Mapping Pedagogy, thoughts | No Comments »

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

transferability of skills

Over in (LJ community), there’s an interesting discussion which touched on the transferability of skills (thanks . I think this is one of the key points that I really need to think about in what I’m trying to do with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. One of the issues that I’m finding in (re)reading Vygotsky is that a lot of it deals specifically with the development of the child. My basic assumption is that there is some difference between a child and an adult. But it terms of development, how can this be posited? Vygotsky refers to ‘higher mental functions’. But in all the reading of Vygotsky, I’ve done, I don’t think I’ve ever come across what these are. But I sense that the ‘transferability of skills’ is one of them. It’s part of the ‘zone of learning capability’ that I posited in my PhD. This zone implies that individuals can undertake specific actions to acquire greater understanding but it seems to be severely limited when discussing undergraduate students. Vygotsky talked about imitation, but tried very hard to show it wasn’t imitation in the strictest definition of that word. It was more about individuals being able to understand the process behind the acts that they are imitating. Which means … which means, that students who receive feedback on drafts and are not able to enact improvements beyond what is indicated within the feedback are attempting to work beyond their zone of learning capability and indeed their zone of proximal development.

Which begs the question (I think) of how so many students are unable to take feedback and actually improve what they do. They are imitating in the most basic form. There is no application of any knowledge, no interaction with their own text. I’m left wondering where this originates, as I see it so frequently (and by many accounts, so do others). Is this symptomatic of the information age? Is it symptomatic of something else? Do we live such surface lives that we no longer really question? Is it related (maybe) to the search culture? One click and the information is there? Maybe it’s the Wikipedia generation.

Hmm I wonder if I could do some analysis of the processes involved in Wikipedia decisions. I wonder if any of the discussions of whether to delete specific pages shows any reflective depth to the decisions. I wonder if that would provide any insights.

It feels like it’s the new year already. I want to get back to work but the uni doesn’t open again for almost another week.

Tags: research, vicariousity

Posted in teaching | No Comments »

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

I've been a slack blogger

It seems that every December, I fall into the same trap of trying to prevent yet another dismal xmas where passive aggressive behaviour is the norm. I know it’s not, but in my attempts to prevent it, I become a grinch (and perhaps a bit passive aggressive myself). I haven’t put my finger on why it happens, but there’s something about family get-togethers that should be shaken apart.

I think I succeeded in shaking things up this year. But aside from that, I’m getting back into reading. I’m going to seriously (no, really, I am, just watch) get back into the research.

To that end, I started reading Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context this morning. Yesterday, I proof read (a part of) a chapter that I’m writing on computer mediated communication. For someone so well versed in the theory, you’d think I’d be better at the practice, but that’s another paper.

I’m wondering, though, if I can really manage to rework Vygotsky for adult learners in mediated environments. All the pieces are there, it just seems that there’s another piece missing, an area of research that I haven’t found yet. I think it’s the notion of the end product of childhood developmental processes, but adulthood is way too vague a concept.

And then again, adulthood is a contested mindset.

Tags: blogging, voices

Posted in Ramblings, teaching | No Comments »

Friday, December 8th, 2006

More about the wiki

What did I expect when I set out to get students to use the wiki? I dont think I really expected much. The minimum they had to do was create two pages and write at least 1500 words in the wiki (this for 40% of their grade). The two pages consisted on one technical page and one social/business application of technology page. I figured this would be a fair assignment, not requring too much effort, yet getting them involved in both learning processes and creating learning outcomes. They also had to journal their experiences of the wiki with some reflection on their learning (15% of their grade). The third aspect of assessment was styled participation and was to be extracted from the wiki. Participation in this case included every login, every update, every comment, private messages, blog posts, whatever they actually did. It gave a measurable value to their participation, something that I knew I could point to as ‘hard evidence’ of participation rather than the vague and subjective measures of classroom participation in face-to-face classes (I’ve always had a problem with these kinds of measures as students often conflate participation and presence). The only thing the wiki didn’t log was their movement around the site, what they read, etc. This would have given a clear indication of their vicarious participation/interaction which is clearly different from the more active forms of participation that we grade. But yes, the activities in the wiki accounted for 70% of their grades (the other 30% was development of a website, an assessment item I’m considering dropping in favour of a short exam, but I’ll get to that later).

So, I expected at least two pages to be created per student. I figured with the cap for this class to be about 30 students, that would result in probably 60 pages to assess. That seemed manageable, given that actually assessing the pages was something I had no idea how to do at the beginning, particularly given that I needed to be sure what each student was responsible for.

What did I get? Well, instead of 60 pages, I got nigh on 160 pages. Not all of the pages were good content and there seemed to be a tendency for students to ‘own’ them by signing them or in same way linking them to their perceived notion of output (I really need to examine all the pages individually to check this). Assessing the pages became a real headache as some were edited by only a single person while the most was 20, and oh bugger, my excel file has been corrupted. Will continue this anon.

Tags: teaching, wikis

Posted in teaching, wiki | No Comments »