The LTD Project Blog

The following is a comment that I’m cross-posting from the B4B Blog entry on Week 4 – Best Blogging Practices (task 2). It reflects in part upon another less recent entry in Edublog Insights than I wrote about in a previous entry in pab’s potpourri.

Were I to be so bold as to assert knowledge of best bloggin’ practices, I’d be stretching beyond my ken. Nevertheless, there are a couple things that sound good a mere 7-8 months into personal blogging.

First, I would like to reflect and perhaps re-spin Linda’s suggestion… regarding how to treat learners’ blogs. That seems to imply our treating their blogs with the utmost respect, as connected, interested and motivated learners, ourselves, who are focusing on emerging ideas rather than unrefined forms.

Second, since a number of preceding comments have focused on the second of the readings found on the B4B wiki [Kathy Sierra, January 3, 2006; Creating Passionate Users: Crash course in learning theory], I’d like to bounce back to a point that immediately and memorably caught my attention in the first, by Ann Davis, a week or so ago when I had a moment to read it (and before I moved on to blog another of Ann’s interesting posts):

Giving students a choice in making their own connections about their learning on blogs paves the way for blogs to be constructivist tools for learning. These attributes are compelling and powerful motivators that help us shape the pedagogy.

What Ann says about pedagogy still seems to resonate with my spin on Linda’s suggestion (above), and sounds even more suited to educational blogging with adult learners – andragogy….

Caught some good vibes reading into Edublog Insights, where Anne Davis reprises “Ellin Oliver Keene’s keynote at the TRLD conference.” That’s: Technology, Reading and Learning Diversity; I gather.

Continuing to sum up Ellin’s presentation, Anne notes several strategies for enabling learners to “dwell in ideas… in the classroom”, namely:

• Clearing time for learners “to listen to themselves think and consider subtleties”;
• Modeling “how proficient readers frequently re-read and re-think portions of text… to explore [ideas] more deeply”; &
• Teaching “about meta-cognition – thinking about one’s own thinking – and the seven most common meta-cognitive strategies.”

I wonder whether a minimum of 10-15 minutes individual, reading-related blogging per day might help fill the bill. That is, to implement some of the seven strategies that Anne recap’s:

1. Connecting the known to the new;
2. Determining importance, learning the essence of text;
3. Questioning, delving deeper into meaning;
4. Using sensory images to enhance comprehension;
5. Inferring, finding the intersection of meaning;
6. Synthesizing, discovering the contour and substance of meaning;
7. Solving reading problems Independently [capitalization in original], empowering children to move from problem to resolution.

Those metacognitive strategies go, I suppose, for adults as well as children.

This post begins by recapping Parry (2006) and continues as a virtual dialog digesting and reflecting upon larger chunks of Parry’s article (a Blogging for Beginners workshop task-related reading).

Recap

Laying the groundwork of an argument for class-based RSS feeding, Parry (2006) points out need for learners to make effective use of two distinct sets of analytical reading skills, especially in online venues: “one, the quick analysis to find what is worth reading, and the second, a switch to slow analysis to carefully consider what has been found” (Parry, 2006, Helping Students to Become Better Readers to Become Better Writers, paragraph 3). He argues that RSS supports the first, and saves time for the second. Rather than provide an RSS tutorial, Parry points out a number of other guides, and concludes by claiming “RSS alters the transmission (reading and writing) of digital knowledge, and thus is critically important to any classroom instruction which requires digital composition, but especially projects which involve blogging” (Parry, 2006, Conclusion).

Three Large Tender Morsels for Digestion

To require students to write papers and then post them to a blog or website misses the point. In fact, this often results in frustrated students, because understandably they fail to see the relevance of such writing. Instead, productive classroom blog projects focus on teaching students how writing for the internet requires a different type of authorship—again, an important lesson in how context shapes meaning.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 1)The point Parry makes about relevance to learners is a point well taken. Simply transferring learners’ papers to blogs won’t necessarily foster awareness of or engagement with blog audiences. However, if they’re first time bloggers, and one of their initial tasks is to introduce themselves, blogging a previously written piece of introductory writing may serve to bootstrap inter-personal communication by almost immediately supporting commentary from group, class or community members. Blogging a prepared piece of writing at course onset also may provide a baseline, or sample, and serve as a proto-portfolio component, indicating learners’ initial interests and writing abilities.

… In order to be successful authors in this space, students need to construct content that takes advantage of the iterability and citationality that the web offers…. This type of citation and appending comments to citation is crucial to becoming critically engaged readers and writers.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 2)Granted, there is a lot more opportunity to experiment in writing spaces such as blogs than there is almost anywhere but in wikis – “Weblogs on steroids” (Tomei & Lavin, 2007, cited in Wikis and websites and blogs, oh my! B4B message 319). Nevertheless, starting with a prepared text at first (say something already composed in a notebook or with a word-processor) could provide learners with a ready-made platform for experiments with the kinds of web-based functions that Parry finds advantageous.

… By using RSS, you can syndicate all of the students blogs; every student in the class will get the class “newspaper” with headlines and synopsis of each student’s writing, allowing them to scan all of the posts at once, and then decide which ones are most relevant, and select them for close reading. Furthermore, RSS can facilitate commenting, as most blogs will allow you to syndicate the comments to a specific post, so that students can post to a blog and continue to follow up on the comment thread. Again, this will help students to realize how writing for the web is a matter of continuous conversation rather than static paper design.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 3)The third and final bit of Parry that I cite above (Why it matters…, para. 3) seems based on an assumption that learners within a group, class or community have individual blogs – as opposed to simple posting or commenting privileges on a group or class blog, and at least commenting if not also posting privileges on one anothers’ blogs. To extend the newspaper analogy, it seems educators then need to assume two inter-related roles: first, as editors and publishers of the learners’ stories through RSS newspapers; and second, particularly in case they are teaching learners of English as an additional language, teachers of newspaper reading skills.

References

Parry, David. (2006). The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu/articles/view.php?id=6

Tomei, J., & Lavin, R. (2006). Autonomy Arising from Community:
Experiences with Weblogs and Wikis [Keynote (trademark) presentation].
Kumamoto University: January 14, 2006.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Attribute to “pab’s potpourri”.

Whilst scouting neighboring tribes in the blogosphere, I found a blog among MaryH’s listings called Learning with Computers [LwC]: A community blog for the Learning with Computers Yahoo! Group.

What first caught my eye on that blog were a couple definitions posted there by one of MaryH’s blog mates, which distinguish two different purposes of blogs:

The Filter Style Blog vs The Journal Style Blog (July 28, 2006).

In retrospective, those definitions makes this blog sound like a combination of both styles, a combination which I hope the blog title “potpourri” accurately reflects.

Although the LwC blog apparently has gone into hybernation (since October 2006), a comment linked to the filter vs. journal definitions (above) points out a typical filter blog that is still up and running, namely: The Generator Blog

Looks like some of the generators filtering through there are worth checking out. Two more generators have shown up since I started this blog entry!

In Thoughts on “Lurking” in Online Courses, an on-going Learning Times community discussion where I’ve been playing the role of a legitimate peripheral participant, Alan Sellig points out how, for virtually every educational stake holder other than learners themselves, learner-centered approaches challenge instructional standardization – especially for credentialing purposes (January 22, 2007).

I understand how technological approaches to educational endeavors manifest, perhaps by default, all kinds of IT standardization techniques. However, I don’t understand why, in our enthusiasm or haste to adopt and adapt instructional technology, we don’t recognize and remove as much of the IT industrial overburden as possible.

To do so could not only clear pathways, but also open broad avenues – perhaps even expose frontiers – conducive to learner-centered learning. In the weeks to come, I am looking forward to discovering ways that educational blogging might do just that.

When a colleague emailed this morning and asked for reminders of what we’d discussed yesterday, face-to-face, in a global locale that may have been a tertiary or quaternary target the day that Nagasaki got a-bombed, I sort of went ballistic. Here’s an annotated snippet of what I wrote back:

Tabula rasa, man, tabula rasa;1 let me twang your synapses!

You dutifully promised and faithfully engaged to:

a. Always bring a pulp and fiber-based notebook and indelible ink pen with you when you visit my office, and have them handy whenever you call;

b. Begin immediately listing to-do’s in your notebook the moment that they spring to mind, because if you don’t write your thoughts down, they may as well never have happened;2

c. Carefully annotate those to-do’s as to whom you’ll need to involve, what resources to obtain and distribute, and when you expect to do so;

d. Deliberately and diligently transfer all [pen & paper] notes to a byte-based format at your earliest convenience, supplementing them with electronic ticklers (reminders) as necessary;

e. Endeavor to duck and cover your pulp and fiber notebook at the earliest hint of an EMP,3 and soak the notebook with urine in case of subsequent firestorms;

…

r. Remember that all data stored electronically can be wiped out faster than ink dries.

…

Food for thought:

All that I am really doing is putting together on single spot for my students to be able to access it quickly and efficiently so that they can expand their knowledge about certain topics we cover in class.

This post covers a review of eight blogging applications in which Campbell (2005) offers guidelines for choosing amongst them and other tools like them to use for language learning purposes.

Campbell suggests that blogs provide opportunities for “authentic use of language” that will challenge and stimulate learners “in ways that classroom experiences cannot” (Campbell, 2005, Choosing the right weblog application, paragraph 1).

Below are principle blog features to seek (Merits) and avoid (Demerits) that I’ve gleaned from Campbell’s review of existing applications (2005), combined with a few others, and arranged roughly in descending order of importance:

Merits

• user-friendliness from the get-go (signup) including language choices;
• WYSIWYG, drag-&-drop editing and automated link assistance;
• author-ownership with edit-ability at any time, including time stamp updates;
• search and tagging or labeling functions;
• ease of setting levels of access, moderation, publicity & security;
• integrated, nearly unlimited file, A/V media and photo storage, and independent page options;
• variety of simple, easily accessible themes with intuitive (drag & drop) module arrangements;
• readily accessible, easy to use, built-in aggregators;
• networking options extending beyond immediate blogging services/venues, including whole and partial RSS feeds; &
• spell-checking functions.

Demerits

• external email necessary for confirmation, and forced local language displays;
• HTML coding skills necessary
• text-only comments;
• low contrast (text to background) themes with restricted font sizes;
• fixed or heavily constrained column, frame and window sizes for both input and display;
• same-service membership required to comment; &
• advertising.

Campbell, Aaron. (2005). Weblog applications for EFL/ESL classroom blogging: a comparative review. TESL-EJ, 9(3). Retrieved January 24, 2007, from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej35/m1.pdf

The following are snippets from email that I’m representing here as a cautious approach to construction of online identity:

When I first browsed the b4b database about a week ago, there were entries in it whose “names” were a jumble of letters and numbers, followed by no more information whatsoever.

So I decided to approach the database ever so cautiously. It wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered all of the entries included at least a nickname and some other information.

… I recommend the same course of action to students and teachers with whom I work, basically: “Provide no more information than is necessary until you know what’s really going on in any online environment.”

… Though I may be failing miserably, I do want to be able to keep the extents and locations of online identities to an affair that I can manage on the whole, rather than one needing updating in all of the particular instances.

It has taken a couple days for me to get around to reopening the b4b evo Session Participants’ database to take another look at what’s there in response to a moderator’s question asking which information I consider personal (personal correspondence, Jan 17, 2007, at 04:55, JST).

As part of this point by point reflection on b4b evo backchannel messages, I’d like to suggest that, among other items of info. collected in the database, full names, gender, Yahoo ID and Skype names are personal (no Hotmail MSN for me, thanks, but that would be, too).

If there is order to these reflective pieces, it probably entails ease of collecting thoughts, exploring group moderator proposed work-arounds, and responding to requests for explanation or assistance.

The original post in this reflective series raised an issue of “ambivalent trust” (Jan. 18, 2007, 14:54 JST). Here I’d like to explore a couple of recent interactions that rekindled thought-fires regarding trust.

The first of those interactions was run of the mill. That is, when applying for group membership, I supplied the Yahoo! (R) Groups’ interface with a concise rationale for asking to join the b4b group.

In return, I got an automated, “Please give us more information, or wait,” sort of message. Though the application form had allowed only a few more characters (200-250 character limit?), I didn’t want to wait and succumb to a foreseeable avalanche of introductory messages. As I noted later:

…I had hoped that gaining admittance to the group prior to the weekend launch would enable me to avoid a huge backlog of posts, come Monday morning….

I’d never wish that kind of reading load on EFL learners unless I wanted to extinguish their enthusiasm, or to train them to ignore the majority of posts from their peers.

So I wrote back right away to demonstrate humanity, to show that I wasn’t some sort of spamming robot, and to find out whether more info. really was necessary to do so. In short, it wasn’t.

However, the possibility of surrepititious humans gaining access to the group retraced synapses when I opened the group database. I figured that anyone who could pass the human screens would have access to all the information earlier arrivals had posted there. That was well before I’d even browsed the hundreds of introductory posts that had already arrived to see who’s whom.

When I had last checked the group participants’ database (Tue., Jan 16, 2007, 9:58 am JST), there was still an ID in the database for whom automated searches of all messages retrieved no messages. With 160+ participants now on list, I can say neither that I know everyone, nor that I’ve even scrolled, paged, and scrolled through all of the database records to double-check who’s there.

In reviewing that database today, however, I have discovered “Actions” (Edit/Delete) controls which I consider a plus because they enable participants to update their records without dependence upon group moderators. If any personal info. that participants’ list changes (or gets abused), they apparently will be able to manage it to some extent, as long as group owners permit access.

The short story ends here; I did go back and add a limited amount of info. to the database. Participants photos will probably be the next point I take up.