Blurts

Teaching Students to Live Tweet – Starr Sackstein, MJE, NBCT http://nzzl.us/2oysnPu  – really wish we wouldn’t. Engage in extended writing.

I posted the tweet appearing above earlier today. Some time later my wife saw the tweet and took exception. She told me that I should be more positive and educators would think of me as a luddite because I question interest in using twitter.

I suppose she was right. My criticism of Twitter might be offensive to those teachers interested in this tool and they might make assumptions about my commitment to educational uses of technology.

However, the potential of this misunderstanding illustrates my major objection to Twitter. Simply put – you can’t say much and brevity at the level of a few words hinders communication and I would argue the use of writing as a learning experience. For example, I would suggest that interest in online writing is great, but it makes more sense to me to engage students in blogging. To be fair to the author of the post linked in the tweet, live tweeting might be a little different than most writing tasks that would involve greater student reflection.

The fact is I make fairly extensive use of Twitter. I tend to share links – content I find interesting and content I have written. This is also the reason I watch Twitter. I do not expect to find profound arguments within tweets, but there is always the possibility something mentioned in a tweet will be impressive.

Mimi Ito claims teen mastery of phone technology is an untended consequence of this age group having limited privacy in other areas of their lives. Other opportunities for privacy are declining due to parent fears. “Constraints configure practice.” The phone provides privacy and messing with other capabilities develops expertise. This is interesting and seems logical, but I wonder how you would test this proposal. The digital native assumption of expertise was such a destructive proposal and points to the danger of untested claims.

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When it comes to education, I am pretty much a fan of hybrid everything. I think integrating new things tends to work far better than making drastic transitions. It also avoids the flip-flopping so common in educational practice. It seems there are advantages and disadvantages to nearly any practice I can think of so it makes sense to engage students with a variety of experiences.

Blended learning appeals to me (I am still waiting for the data). It spends some time in individualization and some time in group experiences. It spends some time on direct instruction and some on learner exploration.

Here is a site dedicated to the process of moving to a blended educational environment (PDFs). Take a look.

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David Pogue has taken to Scientific American (of all outlets) to address adblockers and revenue for online content creators. Pogue recognizes that one of the reasons for the popularity of ad blockers is the slow load speeds and wasted bandwidth associated with the multiple ads that appear within some content. He also recognizes the growing “arms race” between ad blockers and services that block ad blockers.

Pogue proposes that it may be time to reexamine micropayments. The idea would be that those committing to a micropayments system would avoid ads by providing a small payment when viewing content. Micropayments are not new, but have not taken off. Pogue suggests that now may be the time,

You may participate in a micropayment system if you use Amazon and pay for an “all you can eat (read)” Kindle plan or if you read content as part of a Prime membership. At least I would describe these plans as a version of micropayment. In these plans, you pay a flat fee and read at no additional cost. The author(s) is compensated a small amount for each page you view. The amount works out to less than the author would receive for purchasing the book, but you also do not get to retain permanent access to the book.

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Yahooligans is gone. No one told me, but the vetted portal allowing young users to find appropriate online content was a victim of the slow decline of Yahoo! I suppose ads could not be included so the service was an expense without any revenue.

I discovered this when rereading our textbook. Believe it or not, I do this whenever I use the book in a course. There are advantages of digital books, but these advantages can also become disadvantages. You can include links, but you cannot guarantee that the links will remain active. The best we can do is to use our online resources to provide updates until it is time to work on a new edition.