Mapping Pedagogy « Vicarious Conversations

Category: Mapping Pedagogy

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

MP: The animated gif

In this second post about Mapping Pedagogy, I’m realising that I’m focusing on an almost atomistic view of the technologies. Part of this project is to take all of the things[1] we use or have used (and maybe forgotten) and see what they can contribute to a flexible learning environment. I think we have much potential to do some things simply. There seems to be a tendency towards the more complex solutions as that is, apparently, what students want.

The animated gif is probably one of the first multifaceted image technologies that we have. While single images give a good display, a single snapshot of a state, the animated gif provided our first glimpse into process. The potential was there (although I cannot remember an instance) to show the steps involved in a process for achieving an outcome. These have mostly been replaced by the video, but the simplicity of the animated gif provided a glimpse into possibilities.

Animated gifs could tell a story in a few short images. Take the image in this post. It tells the story of the evolution of the computer interface. The original image showed Bill Gates leaning on a Windows machine that had the word “Windows” written on it [2]. But over his shoulder was a Mac Plus. Bill had one before the rest of us. The animated gif focuses our attention on just a portion of the original image, giving some control over perception and understanding.

I like animated gifs, although many of them are distracting rather than focusing.

The technical term [↩]
The image is allegedly for Teen Beat magazine, but listed at ‘Rights managed’ at Corbis.com [↩]

Tags: learning, pedagogy, technology

Posted in Mapping Pedagogy | 1 Comment »

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

MP: The static web page

Where would we be without the static web page[1]? This bastion of forgotten technology is probably one of the best places to start with my project because we seem to have moved on from it and yet not.

I see the static web page as a holder of critical information, a pointer to things needed. The static web page allows us to provide necessary information, the needful things. Where there are facts and figures to remember, the static web page comes in handy. Overviews and standard procedures are wonderfully served by the static web page.

I think it is useful for students to find that unchanging information is unchanging. Pedagogically, the structure of a course or program or activity should be unchanging at one level (the most broad level) so students (and their teachers) can chart their progress and improvement against a set standard or set of criteria. So the static web page points to expectations of students about what is to be learnt and, at the same time, what teachers/instructors expect – the outcomes of learning.

There are other ways of communicating this information, but, if we are focussing on technologies, the static web page and its traditional counterpart, the paper page, provide clear paths to learning outcomes.

This is part of my Mapping Pedagogy project. [↩]

Tags: learning, pedagogy, web

Posted in Mapping Pedagogy | 1 Comment »

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 6th, 2006

reflections of teaching with wikis

Im going to start posting some of my reflections from teaching with wikis based on my experience through the last semester. I probably should have been doing this as I went, but, I’m terribly slack at times.

I suppose I should start from the begining.

Preparing to teach with wikis

The hardest part of getting ready for this semester was getting an actual wiki running on uni servers. Everytime I spoke with someone, they said they could help and then pointed me to someone else. Had I not been on a particular committee, I don’t think it would ever have gotten off the ground.

But, seeing as I eventually found the right person, the wiki was up and running two weeks before semester started. I will admit, at this juncture, that I had never admin-ed a wiki before, and indeed had very little real experience with a live wiki on the web. Most of my previous experience was with TiddlyWiki which is a local wiki, that is, it runs on a computer within a browser. It is a java-based application and requires very little technology to get it running. However, the linking process and the ‘chunking’ of information available in TiddlyWiki provides an insight into the use of wikis, particularly the syntax for formatting and creating ‘tiddlers’ (chunked information). Seeing the potential of interlinking information was the impetus for embarking on the Wiki project.

So my experience is almost indicative of the average potential user of wikis within education. The majority of students and teachers (instructors, etc) have likely read wiki pages, most frequently in Wikipedia, but have not added content. Administering a wiki proved to be a steep learning curve although most tasks (such as adding users, updating pages, locking pages, setting the style sheet) were relatively simple. Understanding specific terminology for TikiWiki provided some challenge, particularly as, like most open source projects, the documentation was not developed for all features.

Hmm, in my next installment, I’ll talk about the mismatches between the course profile (that is, what I expected of students) and the actual participation. I still need to look at the frequency of visits by students, their patterns of interactions and come up with some questions for interviewing them (either face-to-face or by email).

Tags: learning, wikis

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Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Wiki challenges

Using the wiki is really challenging me. In good ways. There was an awful lot that I needed to learn to get to this point. I’ve already started to think of my next grant to further the ideas. One thing I haven’t done (or at least not done well) is document the requirements. I can really only document how to do it using TikiWiki in this project, as that’s the one that has been implemented as uni. But the ideas of how to do things really needs to be put down.

I actually have another two blogs now. In the wiki. One of them is all about my reflections on teaching and the mistakes I’m making. Some of that documentation is occuring there, but it needs to be linked to the literature (of which I’m not reading enough … I’m spending too much time playing with the wiki). The other blog is a how to. This will also inform the use of wikis, particularly within the context of our courses.

The students have commented to other people (who have passed on the comments) that it’s good to be doing something so different. Either the course is reallyinnovative or the rest of the courses are … dare I say, boring?

Tags: learning, wikis

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