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.

While Marielle recognizes strengths of networking technology that enable people with common interests to form networks, if not communities, easily and quickly; she also points out amplifications and caveats to those bent on rapid diversification of networking sites, and similar migrations from one to the next:

With the viral spread of online networks, we must take care not to dilute them so much (by rapidly migrating to new ones) that they lose their power, which derives from the quantity and quality of their membership. With the proliferation of blogs, we must take care not to get lost in a plethora of solipsistic silos, speaking without listening, reinventing rather than building upon each other’s ideas and deepening the collective dialogue.

(mpal3, So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet), 2008.07.03)

At present, lacking (or simply ignoring) great automaticity in propagating connections from one blog or network to the next, it remains a matter of choice where to establish or maintain a toehold on connected writing. For me, the choice this morning was easier done than said, or written about. Anyway, here goes – a short story long:

I’d followed Marielle’s link from Blended Learning to her blog (Authorship 2.0), previewed her post about reciprocity, and decided on the spot to bookmark it in Diigo, highlighting the passage that I’ve quoted above, sharing it with a Diigo branch of the Learning with Computers community, and sending it to a list of friends weblogging in Kumamoto. When I finished bookmarking, commenting on, and description of the post that I’d flagged, the description had grown to such an extent that it seemed almost more suited for blog commentary.

There I was, in Edublogs, ready to leave a comment for Marielle, when it dawned on me that I didn’t recall, immediately, what in a flurry of early morning activity had lead me there. Once I pasted the overflow from the Diigo bookmark description into an Edublog comment window, with no, “Hi, I found this interesting post on your blog through…” (no thanks to hot de-caf. coffee on a sweltering morning before the air-conditioning kicks in), I noticed how impersonal what I’d originally written for a bookmark description sounded as a stand-alone comment.

That inkling led to a quick poke about the Authorship blog to see who had written the post So Many Nodes… (above). However, finding little more than mpal3 on edublogs (and Bmused on del.icio.us) there-abouts; I decided that, rather than leave my names, email address, and an impersonal comment on an unknown author’s blog (if knowing an author requires knowing her name), it would be easier to dump the description I’d clipped from Diigo into a new, full-featured blog entry here, then retrace my steps backwards through multiple browsers, tabs, and drop-down histories, in order to suss out what connections I could.

In short, I got lost, and wrote my way back. The remainder of the coffee is chilling, the air-conditioning is working now; I’m heating the world, and writing solipsistically. What else is new? I’ve rediscovered, in a very personal way, what so many nodes mean. I surmise that initial connections in or via writing, whether in the head or on the web, are necessarily loose, and that virtual connectedness is just that – virtual.

… Blogging has helped me view each of my students as constructors of knowledge who need frequent opportunities to be involved in the process of creating meaning. Blogs can be short, quick writes that give them the practice they need to learn from putting their thoughts down and then engaging in the dialogue about the process, both online and in the classroom….

Davis, EduBlogs Insights,
Blogs and Pedagogy, 2006.05.31

Now that I’ve spent a year with students in a blended learning environment for whom blogging was the primary course activity, I must say that those choice words from a Blogging for Educators workshop reading ring more true than ever.

One activity that I will continue to assign next year will be quick-writes at the beginning of face-to-face class meetings in order to encourage students to develop fluency in written thought production. This activity will continue to challenge them not only cognitively, but also linguistically – as they write in a language other than their vernacular, and typographically – because they may be better at text input with a thumb or two on cellphone keypads than than they are on keyboards with four fingers and two [one or both] thumbs.

In order to engage them further, in dialogues about the process of writing in English as an additional language, I am seeking to adopt and adapt or develop activities that both promote and facilitate reflective, meta-cognitive and interpersonal writing. I’ll be looking in particular for activities like that as I view cristinacost’s November 2007 SlideShare, “Practically Speaking: A ‘How To’ Approach and Practical Examples on Blogging in the EFL Classroom.”

This post introduces a new logo for pab’s potpourri, smile-e (2007), created with Omni Graffle Pro.

The concept is actually about three years old, but has come a long way since 2004. It has survived two trans-oceanic relocations: one on paper, another on disk.

The yin-yang design represents blending of face-to-face and online communication. The smiley on top of the “e” indicates preference for face-to-face communication.

Smile-e (2004)
Originally uploaded by pabeaufait.