Blurts

p>I intended this title to be controversial. How else does one get attention?

Will Richardson offered a post a few days ago commenting (criticizing) a Washington Post column by Jay Matthews. The title of Matthew’s piece “The latest doomed pedagogical fad: 21st century skills” may offer some insight into the focus of the article. Actually, I read the article and found it much more neutral than you might expect from the title. Again, you get little attention for being neutral.

In discussion the nuances of 21st century learning and the value of active online participation, Richardson claims:

But while that can sound like a pretty positive and powerful space, it is fraught with complexity. We have to learn to read not only texts but to edit them as well, not just for accuracy but for bias, agenda and motive.

I could not agree more.

Here is my take – hopefully including an attempt to evaluate for agenda and motive. I agree with the Richardson position that “interest based”, “friendship based”, and “passion based” learning is great. We have all had such experiences and these experiences may have shaped our careers. We may enjoy such commitment outside of our areas of employment and continue to toil into the night cultivating skills that are valued by few and compensated by no one. When we reflect on our interests (science fiction, bird watching, stamp collecting, photography, music performance), we may wonder why others do not share our passions. The reality is that some of us will listen for hours to classical music and others see this pursuit as boring. Education is a lot like this – I still find some tasks quite tedious, but realize in my maturity that this is what my job entails. Others experience these same tasks with a different mix of enthusiasm and boredom.

Richardson speaks of his personal experience in blogging for 7 years. It is true that some of us have committed to this activity for this long, but the reality is that we are in the extreme minority. Most folks who start blogs quickly give it up. Simply put – what are exciting tools and learning experiences for some are not that interesting to others – even those who give it a shot.

I do think that educators should be open to the potential of new tools and new methods. Exposure to these tools and methods will be quite exciting for some students. Others we will find will not engage unless we grade, carefully list the number of required posts, etc.   The skills we find exciting and important will be recognized as such by some, but not others. Group-based education kind of works like this and always has.

Cindy forwarded a link basically advertised as college student “must haves” – 10 Tools to Save your Butt. There are some helpful tools here, but also the support of some unethical practices. One tool (file destructor) creates a fake file students are encouraged to submit when they cannot get an assignment done in time. So, instead of the dog ate my homework, the idea is to plead the computer ate my homework.

Some students may wonder why instructors are cynical when they claim they were sick or at a funeral. This type of thing is the reason. What type of response do you expect when such approaches are openly advocated?

BTW – I tell my students that their technology skills are part of what may be evaluated on any assignment. I give them suggestions for testing my requirements – e.g., send an email to yourself so you know that an email sent through the CMS works. I do suggest that they make certain files they have saved can be opened again.

A virtual chat with Sasha and Marcia from Nizhny (Russia). These are friends Cindy made during her travels and she stays in touch. The coming of the New Year seems a bigger event in Russia. They give presents and welcome Father Frost much as we do on Christmas eve.

We exchanged several vodka toasts each followed by a pickle. There appears to be an order to the toasts. I remember the second round is to remember your parents. They were eating caviar on toast. Hard for us to match that, but the cost in Nizhny is a fraction of the cost in the U.S.

The first day of 2009 did not go so well. We were on the road from Wisconsin to western Iowa to visit my mom. Shortly after dark we came over a rise in the highway and confronted a herd of deer standing in the road. No options in either lane. I probably had the speed down to 40-45 when we struck two deer. Car pretty messed up, but we are fine. No insurance adjustor until Monday because of the holiday. We will borrow a car from brother Dan to get back to North Dakota. Could have been worse.

I have tried to use Twitter for several months and I am still frustrated with what for me are limitations. I will probably hang on because the system appears popular with so many, but I have shifted how I use the system.

I know that other educators find value in Twitter and have attempted to explain to the rest of us what of educational value this system has to offer. My reaction to these suggestions is pretty much my reaction to those who propose that the cell phone, the old Palm, or classroom clickers are of educational value. To me, these systems are drastically under-powered and often are cumbersome to use. “Better than nothing” should not be our goal.

I do recognize that “group microblogs” offer some opportunities. The traditional blog (e.g., this one) discourages the participation of others (mostly to prevent spam and inappropriate comments) and may offer so many opportunities that some are intimidated. I think there is another factor involved. Many simply do not want to spend the time to generate lengthy posts and post after post of 140 characters or less would appear pretty anemic within a community devoted to more lengthy offerings. Short comments are the only option available within the Twitter community.

My quarrel is not so much with microblogs as it is with Twitter. A post of less than 140 characters is limiting. What can really be accomplished through short posts. A simple request and response pattern is sometimes helpful. What can you tell me about XX? Here is what I know. Here is what I use. etc. I do understand the notion of a conversation but I react the same to Twitter as I do to the experience of attempting to run a chat with more than a couple participants – the noise to information ratio is limiting to meaningful conversation. One way around this is to limit participation. For example, Room 24 uses Twitter to carry on a conversation or at least generate an on-going record of ideas within a classroom. The key is to  connect to http://twitter.com/room24 instead of http://twitter.com.

I also don’t like the focus on text. What is the value in such a minimalist approach? Rather than text-only, I prefer the tumblr approach. Tumblr attempts to differentiate itself from blogs by encouraging posts of a specific type – a text comment, an image, a link. Tumbler attempts to explain the difference as a scrapbook vs. a journal. The idea of self-defined groups (think friends or followers) combined with simple, but diverse post types make sense to me.

It is sometimes difficult to overcome inertia. Some would argue that more recent social bookmarking services offer superior features to del.icio.us. However, the value of a service extends beyond the software to the community using that software. Perhaps the same is true with Twitter. Folks are afraid to switch from an active, but limiting system to a less popular, but more powerful environment.

I have developed my own compromise. I am using an open source microblog called Chyrp (this site). One feature that can be activated within Chyrp allows the announcement of a Chyrp post within Twitter. Others I follow on Twitter appear to take a similar approach combining some Tweets and links from another service. I am not certain how this approach will be accepted. When I first noticed this approach, I was somewhat annoyed but what appeared to be an effort to broadcast posts across several formats. After struggling with Twitter for a few months, I now have a different perspective.

Two-year old Addie received a Dora digital camera for Christmas. She really likes to take pictures. Perhaps she just likes the flash.

Son Todd, the video editor, wonders what very young children or people inexperienced with video or pictures would capture with a camera. He claims we are limited by our past experiences. Addie took pictures of doors. Daughter Kim, autism specialist, says some autistic children struggle to look at faces and may avoid faces when taking pictures. You learn interesting things hanging our with your kids.

Addison With Dora Camera

A near miss of brother Preson