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educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

One of the really significant opportunities in blogs is the multi-directional flow of communication they facilitate. Blogs aren’t just a way to deliver content in the way websites are. They’re mechanisms through which interaction can occur between readers and bloggers – and importantly between readers as well - to the point where a vibrant interactive community develops around the topics covered in the posts.

In this sense the ability for a blogger to present their initial thoughts is important, but the conversations that emerge from this information is arguably as important, if not more so.

The blog post frames the resulting discussion. From there the conversation has the potential to go a multitude of different directions – from clarification and peer support, to disagreement and debate; and from anecdotal thoughts and points to relevant tangents or even transitions into related topics.

Cross talk – In a traditional classroom setting cross-talk is often discouraged because it is viewed as disruptive to the primary discussion or lecture. In blogs, having multiple perspectives and concurrent sub-conversations is a valuable thing because it adds to the context of the discussion and can inspire further exploration into the subject matter by both readers and blogger alike.

Debate – Given a healthy and safe environment, debate can be a very effective means of reinforcing concepts because it requires debaters to argue their point and provide evidence to support it; both of which require a thorough understanding of the intricacies and complexities of the subject matter.

Peer support – In the same vein as study sessions, blogs are a valuable forum where students can work through complex issues together, pose questions to one another, and where students who are having difficulty grappling with a topic can seek assistance or clarification from those who understand it clearly.

As an example, in the case of my “Blogs in Education” post, Rohesia asked me to explain why I thought blogs could reinforce or facilitate student comprehension of subject matter. Instead of providing a rather superficial one-line response, her comment has inspired this entire post, which has forced me to consider and present my thoughts and arguments in a coherent manner. As a result I have developed a better understanding of the subject matter – hopefully she has benefited from the response as well.

Instructors as facilitators of healthy discussion

As the occasional news stories on online bullying, flame wars, and harassment exemplify, the prospect of encouraging student discussions on blogs is not without its challenges. This introduces one of the really critical roles of course instructors in the age of social software and Web 2.0 technology, and that’s as the facilitator.

From an educational perspective, inspiring a culture of well-considered commenting and discussion is really important. So even before the blogs are created, instructors need to emphasise their guidelines and expectations on what is best practice, what is acceptable and appropriate, and what is not.

It’s critical to establish a safe and encouraging environment that nurtures healthy discussion, debate and peer support – and importantly, a means of monitoring, and if need be, policing the discussions that are taking place.

Additionally, on a much more positive note, instructors have an extremely influential role which can be used to inspire discussion where none is occurring; contribute to an existing discussion through injection of a different perspective, related piece of information, online resource, or news article; or provide clarity where there is confusion.

I’m extremely interested in the idea of using blogs in higher education and believe the opportunity to create, organise and maintain their own blogs could provide students with a tremendous opportunity for deeper exploration in subjects of interest. My theory is that the creation of their own unique virtual space would inspire a greater sense of ownership in not just the course, but the subject matter as well; and this could in turn lead to a greater synthesis, appreciation, and retention of information.

In reality however I am currently unfamiliar with any examples in which blogs have been used in this manner. A proper research mind dictates objectivity, therefore one of the many investigative tasks I’ve set for myself is to locate real world examples in which blogs are being used to support learning and teaching, either as a tool for documenting student progress, a research journal, presentation page, collaborative portal, or other activity.

I will post synopses of anything I find here.

One such course, ENGL 112, run by Elizabeth Clark, is scheduled to commence this semester at Mesa State College in Colorado. Elizabeth described the first assignment in her blog, 4RxT (”Using Blogs As Research Journals“).

Students will be asked to review a series of websites and video clips covering blog use, history and basics, and then complete a series of activities - not unlike those you’d find in offline assignments.

• “Brainstorm a list of topics you’re interested in using for your research project this semester….

• Write three paragraphs about the topic you’ve selected: (1) identify your topic and explain why you chose it, (2) discuss what you already know about your topic, and (3) discuss what you don’t know and want to learn about the topic….

I would be very interested to see what emerges from this experience and have submitted a comment on her blog requesting/encouraging her to post a summary when the semester is complete - or better yet, an ongoing account of the discoveries and hurdles that arise.

The prospect of a public discussion on classroom experiences may be a bit too much to ask however, so it remains to be seen whether we’ll hear anything further from this.

Update: Just to clarify, because I didn’t write this post nearly as well as I had in my head - it is the integration of blogs into coursework and/or research activities that I’d really like to delve into.

This is the most significant aspect of an integration, because in order to be truly effective from an educational standpoint, use of blogs can’t just be thrown into the mix on a superficial level. Careful consideration and planning must be given to educational aims and outcomes, ways of measuring and/or assessing these outcomes, methods of tying the online aspects back into traditional face-to-face settings, and the more esoteric vagueries of how to inspire the growth of an online community that focuses on (or includes) a dozen or more student blogs.

The theory of blogs in education is an inspiring thought; the reality is undoubtedly much more complicated.

The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article today that highlights a fortuitous, yet unplanned, outcome for an academic who maintains a academic blog.

In a moment of reflection he published his thoughts on a mutant plant gene and went on about his day. But as the Chronicle continues:

“Six months later a plant geneticist at the University California at Davis contacted Mr. Cartwright after reading his post. The California researcher said that he had coincidentally arrived at the same hypothesis offered by Mr. Cartwright, and that he was about to publish his research in Plant Cell. The plant geneticist said he felt obligated to acknowledge Mr. Cartwright’s blog post and offered to make him a co-author of his article. Mr. Cartwright, who is not a plant geneticist, accepted the offer.”

Blogs are quick to publish, quick to edit, widely distributed, and easily accessible by millions and millions of people. In an academic sense this means the scale and scope of potential for collaboration is incredible. They key is how to effectively harness this capacity and utilise it to its fullest potential.

Given academic blogging is still relatively under the radar in higher education it may be a while yet before wide-spread collaboration will occur via social software. Yet there is little doubt in my mind that there is tremendous opportunity and value that should be investigated across the academic spectrum.

A commentor named Richard Tabor Greene perhaps put it more eloquently when he said:

“Blogs are privately published publicly available such ruminations—and if we measure their impact—they open up for diversity and collaborative enhancement early stages of thought hithertofore much more laboriously and slowly opened to much lesser degrees to thought. Now global audiences can diversify greatly entirely local blog publishings of ruminations. This is a great step for humankind, overall, in this way.”

Hi Marcia
Originally uploaded by akagregbrady

You know a technology has arrived when it has Brady Representation.

Via Mashable, I’ve just discovered a brand new social community called “The Greg Brady Project” run by none other than Greg himself:

“My friends call me Barry. From time to time I also hear the name Greg. Yeah, as in Greg Brady. The Brady Bunch represents a fun time in my life. But it’s only part of the story. There’s more to say and that’s what The Greg Brady Project is all about - a place to say it. So, I’ve invited some friends to join me and share their perspectives on the Brady’s, the 70’s and just about everything else.”

Above and beyond the nostalgia trip you’re immediately transported upon, what’s really impressive about this site is the depth and extent to which Barry Williams (aka Greg) has embraced emerging technology.

There is a Flickr stream, a video streaming area (using Brightcove), commenting functionality, quick links to submit pages or posts to Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati Favorites and Magnol.ia, a list of the most recent BlogLog visitors, and impressively an entire social networking framework underlying it all, which offers substantial interoperability with more widely known systems.

As Barry himself explains:

…you can also create a ‘My Networks’ page which lets you import and access your other social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn without ever leaving The Greg Brady Project Community. In the ‘Friends’ section, you can import all of your friends across social networks and message them. You can even access your community content and friends from your mobile phone. It’s exciting times. Come and join me and my friends.

Interestingly the site is powered by Wordpress, meaning the GBP team opted to go open source for their technical framework - at least for a portion of the site.

I wonder if this could be interpreted as a vote of support for the open source movement by the Man himself? It would certainly make for endless promotional opportunities. Just think of the potential taglines: Greg Brady Loves Open Source.

I’d make that a shirt personally.

NB: It should be said I haven’t read anywhere that he is an advocate for open source, I’m just indulging in some harmless supposition.

If you’re into technology and grew up in the 70s this site gives you motivation twice over to drop by for a look: once for the Bradyesque trip down memory lane and another to check out the technical implementation.

Visit “The Greg Brady Project” at: http://www.thegregbradyproject.com

Some neat new features have just been launched on Blogger in Draft:

Blogger in Draft: Polls and enclosures added to Blogger in draft: “Today we’re saving two more features to Blogger in draft: Polls and enclosure links.”

I’ve yet to have a play with this, but both options sound like they’ll offer a great deal of potential to Blogspot users.

The one suggestion I’d make to the folks at Blogger though is I hope that they’ll be including recommendations on hosting service providers for bloggers who want to take full advantage of the enclosures features, which are intended to let people turn their blogs into a podcast channel.

Or perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Rumours of Google’s GDrive have been rife for months now, and with the pending release of a limited Beta of Microsoft Live Folders, which provides online storage with both private and public settings, a native Google file storage and delivery option may be right around the corner.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald asked “Does Google know too much about you?“:

“Google, the world leader in web search services, is the focus of mounting paranoia over the scope of its powers as it expands into new advertising formats from online video to radio and TV, while creating dozens of new internet services.True, the Silicon Valley company has millions of people telling it daily what’s apparently on their minds via simple Web searches, generating mountains of information about consumer behaviour.”

This is a very interesting question that seems to be coming up more and more frequently these days, particularly during the lawsuit between Google and the US Government, who had been trying to force the internet monolith to open up its search queries.

Suddenly, what had once been seemingly insignificant time wasted online was taking on a life of its own. Your search queries weren’t disappearing in a poof of smoke; they were being stored somewhere - potentially for a long period of time.

Moreover, those who embrace the social software and social networking movements in particular volunteer extraordinary amounts of information that over time combines to present a very holistic picture of who we are - to anybody who cares to look. We write our innermost thoughts in blogs; post pictures of our loved ones, our houses, our friends, and our neighbourhoods in our photo sharing pages; even provide up to the minute updates on the fact we’re drinking coffee in our pj’s on our Twitter pages.

So once again the question arises: Does Google, and indeed the greater web in general, know too much about us? Or perhaps equally importantly: What do you hold back from sharing - or do you?

Blogger has recently announced the release of a new development environment known as Blogger in Draft, which will provide curious users with access to tools and features that aren’t quite ready for prime time.

The inaugural release is Video Uploading. Just as Blogspot and Blogger users are currently able to upload photos directly to their Picasa Web account via the blog posting page, so can they now to do the same with video - but only from Blogger in Draft. Uploaded videos are submitted automatically to Google Video, where they are associated with the same Google account.

Realistically this tool only streamlines the video embedding process, it does not create an option that wasn’t there before. However previously users would have to go to Google Video, complete the upload form and submit the video, select the code snippet to embed the video, go to Blogger and create a new post and then paste in the snippet. That you will be able to do all this directly from the post page makes things much quicker.

At the same time it does not resolve the more fundamental issue of bandwidth speed that makes work with digital video very time consuming for most people - and impossible for those still on dial-up. The upload process either requires a substantial pipe to push up the video in the first place, or an equally substantial amount of patience on the part of the user. Until high-speed internet is more widespread, and high speed infrastructures are more prevalent, I suspect the uploading of video will remain isolated to relatively small pockets of users.

The enhancement of global high-speed internet infrastructures will be a natural progression I suspect - and in Australia is becoming a political issue that the pollies want to look proactive about - however it is also a cost-intensive one that is more than likely still a ways off on the horizon. Nonetheless the inclusion of a video upload feature in Blogger makes a whole lot of sense and is good to see on the table.

It also represents a wonderful opportunity for the folks at Google to increase the usage of Google Video, given it has been all but eclipsed by the likes of YouTube.

For more information on Blogger in Draft or video uploads, please visit the official Blogger in Draft blog.

Reference:

• “Updates About Video Upload“, Blogger in Draft, 20 June 2006

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g]
“The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)” provided by: mwesch

One of the strengths of social software which can’t be emphasised enough is its depth and capacity to serve learning and teaching via a variety of different mediums including text, video and images. Furthermore the speed with which you can develop and disseminate information means minimal time investment is required to technically develop the content as compared to traditional websites.

In the case of the latter, in the past, static web content could only be made available after coding up pages in HTML, locating a hosting provider, paying for a hosting deal and then beginning the process of content development and uploading to the site. With social software the barriers to use have been drastically reduced.

The emergence of powerful search engines such as Google, as well as collaborative technologies such as wikis extend this capacity by establishing existing sources of reference material that can augment original content.

As a case in point, I am an amateur guitar player in my free time and have taken to sharing my performances on YouTube. Initially this was the end-all and be all. I’d capture a song on a web camera or digital video camera, upload it to YouTube, perhaps add a brief description and that would be it. However over time I realised the video clips were themselves learning objects that could be put to a greater purpose.

Furthermore YouTube offers the capacity to link to - and more importantly EMBED - videos in external sites, meaning the video can be viewed on a third party site such as a blog. The YouTube video clip at the beginning of this post, “The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)”, is an example of an embedded video clip. It is posted and hosted on a different application entirely, however the availability of a code snippet enables me to reuse the content in a different context.

Making this connection, it becomes clear that YouTube clips, as well as many other digital media hosting provider in general (Flickr, PicasaWeb, Photobucket, and Google Video to name a few), can be used to graphically illustrate and more easily convey the information being presented in text - thereby re-inforcing the message.

In the example of my guitar video, I’ve included my version of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” as an embedded video in a blog post that outlines a tutorial on how to play it. This provides beginning guitar players with not just a textual tutorial, but a video one as well.

Further depth is added to this tutorial through linking to reference sites such as Wikipedia’s entry on Travis Picking, as well as a tablature site featuring the chord progression to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.

What this ultimately presents is a cohesive and indeed complete lesson plan that includes text, video and reference material for further study. And the most time intensive part of the process was the creation of the text. The posting of the content took only minutes using Blogger’s WYSIWYG creation tool. (WYSIWYG = “What You See Is What You Get”).

Furthermore, the collaborative nature of social software facilitates interaction and two-way communication. This provides readers of the content with an opportunity to not just view it, but discuss it and even synthesize it on their own blogs it as well.

This is not your father’s Internet, this is something much more.

Reference:
Analysis of Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

Reflecting on the comments across the last several posts on the SANTEC blog, this year’s “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” is turning into an excellent introduction to the technology for new users.

Many of the participants so far have come from regions/institutions where the concept of blogging is extremely new. As a result, much of the discussion and interest so far has been on the fundamentals. Topics covered so far have included reasons for blogging, barriers or reluctances to use, and usage fundamentals.

A great graphical representation of the scale of possibilities with blogging technology has been provided by Tony Carr, who is facilitating the seminar over the next few days (Image shared under a Creative Commons License).

It kind of reminds me of a mantra one of my instructors drummed into our heads at uni “Once you know what to think, you’ll know how to act.”

Planned activities fall into three parts:

Part 1: We will introduce ourselves and learn about the history, nature and types of blogs. We will then start our own blogs on the SANTEC website. (16th - 18th May)Part 2: Time to blog (18th - 21st May)

Part 3: Learn about some of the advanced practices of effective blogging. (21st - 23rd May) If you’ve been blogging for a while why not join us and share your experience?

Today was the first day of SANTEC’s “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” online seminar. SANTEC, which stands for The Society and Network for Technology in Education through Collaboration

“is an enabling network of educational technology practitioners with an interest in educational technology in developing environments. The aim of SANTEC is to be a community of practice that facilitates and supports collaborative ventures and effects synergies amongst members.”

Due presumably to the timezone issues that arise from SANTEC being international and web-based, the seminar is asynchronous in nature. Discussion takes place via a threaded forum as well as blog posts and commenting. So if you missed the first day like I did don’t worry, you can review what was discussed via the forum and blog entries.

Admittedly I’ve only just learned of SANTEC’s existence within the last month, however I’m hopeful that I’ll come out of this experience with some additional insight into what other’s are doing to further the cause of blogs and social software in learning and teaching. I’ll try to write up a synopsis of the events when the flame has been extinguished on the 23rd.

In the meantime if you’d like to swing by for the fun, please refer to the following:

Dear colleagues,We’re pleased to invite you to join us for our next SANTEC online seminar on “Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts” which I will lead from 16th - 23rd May. The seminar will be chaired by Philip Uys. Please feel encouraged to post this invitation on your website and to circulate it to colleagues who may be interested.

This event takes the form of an online workshop which introduces the use of blogs for research, teaching and for personal web presence. We will learn about the history, nature and types of blogs and start our own blogs. There will be an opportunity to learn and apply some of practices of effective blogging and to share experiences of blogging for teaching and research.

To join the seminar you can just login to the SANTEC site at http://santec.uwc.ac.za on 16th May and follow the link to our seminar blog. If you haven’t been there before registration is easy and quick.

Kind Regards

Tony

Tony Carr
Staff Development Co-ordinator
Centre for Educational Technology
University of Cape Town
phone: +27216505033
e-mail: tony.carr@uct.ac.za