Not long ago, Heather Ross asked about institutional social networking policies, and also about institutional access to third-party sites educators use.
Though I tried commenting on that post, I got error messages twice, and then fedback to this effect, “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” Since I’m unsure what got through, here goes again.
I thought Heather might be interested in an encapsulated gem I found the other day, and have described like this in Diigo:
Jenna McWilliams’ post frames and follows on from Steve Taffee’s post comprising Proposed Guidelines for Use of Social Networks by School Faculty and Staff (Blogg-Ed Indetermination, Social Networking Guidelines for School Employees, 2009.02.12). Her follow-ons focus “On ‘Misrepresentation’” and “On Course Use of Social Networking.”
The Group Badge below represents a Diigo group forming in Kumamoto to animate, promote, and study blogging initiatives and leadership within an expanding online community. The acronym WinK, for Weblogging in Kumamoto, indicates the group’s geographic focus, though not its initial tertiary education nexus.
The group description in the badge should be self-explanatory. If not please feel free to ask for additional information or clarification in comments on this post. Keywords for the Diigo group include: blogging, collaboration, community, education, leadership, technology, and writing.
A graphic representation for the Diigo group, to replace the default avatar, is in the works. We’ll stew on shortening the group name to fit badge width.
Spring office cleaning and a computer change-over are leading to a host of re-discoveries, reflections, retrievals, and restorations. Many old sticky notes, some not originally yellow, have surfaced from the sea of dust accumulated over years of good intentions. This reflection is about copyright, stemming on a final tiny, dog-eared leaf from an old sticky pad about EdTechTalk#25 (2005.11.13).
A suggestion I jotted down when I first encountered that chat reads, “Teach Ss to copyright [their] own stuff.” The note on the back of that tiny leaf suggests, “[T]eachers need not be techies” (no date).
As I searched to retrieve a reference to substantiate the stimulus for those brief notes, I discovered a recent, yet related comment in the EdTechTalk blog sidebar entitled Teaching about Copyright and Fair Use (Renee Hobbs, on Teachers Teaching Teachers #135, 2009.03.02).
Renee points out two more links to explore: one for educators interested in exploring fair use, and the other to videos introducing intellectual property rights issues to educators and learners:
Code of Best Practices … (Temple University, School of Communication and Theater, 2008.11.00), and
Music Videos Help … (Temple University, School of Communication and Theater, 2009.05.23).
It is a pleasure to follow Helen Barrett’s work on portfolios. I’ve been especially excited about it since she demonstrated the utility of blog pages as readily exploitable portfolio building venues: WordPress.com (V.2) (2006)
In a post on December 8, 2008, she touches twice upon a concept of freshness (¶¶ 2 and 3, or ¶¶ 3 and 4), yet her Digital Archive for Life Diagram includes a node for “‘Legacy’ Stories” (March 16, 2008):
I realize that her current endeavor, Balancing 2 Faces of ePortfolios (January 30, 2009), focuses on higher education. Nevertheless, the broader context of her work suggests less of a two-faced concept of portfolios for learning, and more of a continuum or flow from currency to legacy, as well as from process to product.
While developing portfolios in higher education contexts may be very much one-off endeavors for students coerced or cajoled into it, where she’d originally situated reflection under the time line, between collection and selection in the graphic displayed on her recent post (January 30, 2009) hardly represented or promoted the recursive nature of the reflective process. She seems to have taken this into consideration in later developments of the diagram that she has linked to that graphic (Balancing 2 Faces of ePortfolios, 2009).
I’ve tried and tried to express appreciations on Paisie’s Perusals (For our visitors), but blog security and comment screening have frustrated my endeavours. Thanks, anyway, Paisie, for perusing Edublogs themes, and listing those you’d found that afford comments on pages (The Edublogger, 2009.01.30).
Thanks to all of you who’ve pitched in by responding to the Edublogs themes survey already. On the previous post (LTD Project Blog, Which themes…, 2009.01.30), the Google form now appears functional. If it goes out of whack (again), the link to the form still works.
Responses are beginning to begin to trickle in (see: spreadsheet display, below). Please let your Edublogging associates know I’d like to hear about their themes, too.
There seems to be a difference of opinion out there in the blogosphere. For instance, Matt asserted “default pages will have comments enabled on them” (WordPress.com, Comments on pages, 2006.09.11).
However, Blogosquare asserted, more recently than Matt (above), “Most [WordPress] themes don’t come with comments on pages,” and then explains how “…to check whether yours come with that feature:
[L]ogin to your Wordpress admin section > Manage > Pages >[;]
Click Edit under any page and at your right hand side among the page’s options, at the Discussion box, [and] check [the] Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkbox[es].
Save the page[,] and get to that page on your blog.
There, see whether the comment’s form is being displayed.”
What matters to me is whether the Edublogs themes students choose for individual blogs used for classwork allow comments on their pages. When they write about themselves, and start proto-portfolio pages, comments sure could come in handy.
A couple months ago, drmike, Volunteer Support Guru on the Edublogs Forums, suggested getting together a list (Comments on Pages, c. 2008.10.?? [no readable date]). However, checking a hundred or more available themes (The Edublogger, The 100 Edublogs Themes…, 2008.07.17) is a chore more than anyone wants to take on single-handed.
The shocking appearance of Ads by Google during in the interim seemed more likely to precipitate thoughts of moving class and student blogs elsewhere than it was to inspiring volunteer work. Nevertheless, I’m giving it a go, by calling for quick responses on a Google form.
Your theme title, plus three Yes/No clicks is all it takes. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. If the form doesn’t appear here, please try the link below
Thanks to ajisababa for his take on whiteboard instructions (Audacity, 2008.01.28). What he flagged as a change of topic in mid-post precipitates these reflections. He’s right; telegraphic task listings on the whiteboard in class the other day (2008.01.26) were insufficient.
Under such circumstances, there are lots of issues instructors need to consider. For example: In that computer lab. I can display detailed instructions from a host of sources (assignments on the course wiki, for instance), but only if and when I over-ride students’ computer displays. By design, in light of cost factors, that lab lacks separate monitors for student reference while they are working at individual machines.
I chose that lab because it still serves as an part of a blended learning environment. There I can listen and speak to students with little or no technology, answer questions, provide general and individual instructions, offer suggestions, and accommodate requests for technical assistance, with little or no time-delay.
The computer monitor over-ride function in the lab probably works greats for lock-step instruction and technical training purposes. However, since one of my ultimate goals for Engl. VIII-c is creating opportunities for, and fostering students’ tentative steps towards autonomous learning, I can decide to let students stew a bit in their own juices. I often observe what they do (or have done), rather than telling them what to do (or what they should have done).
In the situation ajisaba pointed out, I noticed no one asked for clarification of the boardwork anytime soon. However some students had gmail open, and the most recent message in their mail queues was notification regarding a change on the course wiki. Some who noticed the message opened it quickly, and followed links in to the voice recording assignment. There they found more detailed instructions than I was able to list on the whiteboard, along with links to resources related to Audacity, a tool I wanted them to use in all likelihood for the first time.
Once a couple of students realized by themselves that Audacity was a computer program that they couldn’t download in the lab (rather than a personal character trait), questions and requests for help started popping up around the class. They were ready: a) to learn that the program was already on their computers, and where, b) to open it, c) to learn how to use it, and d) to teach one another about it.
Puddles of understanding burst into pools, and soon almost everyone in attendance was referring to their online profiles for content, and experimenting with microphone settings, making sound tests, and all the rest. I was at liberty to circulate and prod obstinate shells that the rising tide of on-task-ed-ness still hadn’t reached for oh-so-many conceivable reasons. It is moments like that that make blended instruction so satisfying.
Towards the end of last year, Larry Ferlazzo posted an updated list of social networking sites that might serve equally well for educational networking:
Though still relatively unfiltered, the sites Larry has listed undoubtedly deserve a closer look. Thanks to Joao for pointing this out in a Learning with Computers bookmark (2008.12.21).
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