Learning In a Flat World

Another Pi Day (3.14) is upon us, and math geeks worldwide celebrate this most famous of irrational numbers.

For those who would love to follow the thread, here is a link to one million digits of pi.

Yet, I feel some other just as good irrational numbers are being left out.  There are plenty of real numbers that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers.

How about the Golden Ratio, that I use in woodworking a lot?  The ratio of sum of two quantities to the larger equaling the ratio of the two approximates 1.6180339887498948482045…

Celebrated in art, architecture, and carpentry…but not given its own day.

Then there is the natural logarithm – or e – approximately equal to 2.718281828…which is derived from the way cool formula

But no day for e.

My favorite imaginary number is i – the square root of negative one.  You would think that an imaginary number could get its own day, but noooooo….

Take e, i, and π and put them together and you get what is one of the most profound and yet elegant formula out there – Euler’s Identity:

Euler’s Identity suggests that there is an elegant order to a messy universe…which is reassuring to someone who works in the chaotic world of online education.

So welcome the Fourteenth of March, when math geeks proclaim the Joy of Pi, which by the way was an excellent book by David Blatner.

I will keep lobbying for more irrational days!

I discussed the first week in the Coursera course, E-Learning and Digital Cultures, in my last post.  Now, four days later, it has been interesting to see the social side of this massive open online course unfold.

Friday, I attended the Google Hangout session for the class.  Bud Deihl joined me in my office as we watched:

It was fun to listen to Jeremy Knox, Siân Bayne, Hamish Macleod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair – their distinct personalities definitely came through!  Having Bud with me in the room added to the experience, but what made the Hangout even more engaging was the excellent Twitter backchannel going on, which the profs integrated into their comments very well.  Jen Ross confirmed by Twitter that they used Hangout-On-Air – first time I had seen it in action.

Eleni tweeted the stats for the backchannel for that session:

Actually, Twitter has been quite active this week (not to mention that the hashtag was active before the class even started).  Rob tweeted:

I think that it was Sian who mentioned that out of the 40,000-plus who registered for this course, over 17,000 had been active the first week.  As MOOCs go, that is not bad!  For me, what has been interesting is the variety of social media means by which people worldwide connected.

First, blogging, which I have been using.  Not sure of my rationale, but I did not want to be constrained to just four people in quadblogging (which appears to be pretty popular).  Instead, I subscribed to about 20 blogs I randomly pulled of a list generated in Facebook.  I have tried to comment to every blog that I read, and I have had a half-dozen people comment on mine.  I did notice in the Edublogs stats that my hits had doubled over the past week.  So not a big jump in readership but some. Some blogs I enjoyed this week:

http://robhogg.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/learning-on-a-local-and-global-scale/

• Rob gave a good background on precourse activity and compared this course to another Coursera course that he had completed.

http://elearningquadblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/technological-determinism.html

• Paula discussed her take on technological determinism.

http://thedoctor63.blogspot.com/2013/01/since-first-movies-made-their-way-to.html

• Eric discussed dystopia in science fiction (which was a nice trip down memory lane for me)

http://learningcreep.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/enthusuiasm-and-expectancy-for-elearning-and-digital-cultures-mooc-edcmooc/

• Helen had an excellent post on posthumanism and cyborg literacies which I enjoyed.  She also linked to one of Sian’s prezis on uncanny digital literacies that was pretty cool.

http://martellsmooc.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/31-1-13-dipping-a-toe-in/

• Martell’s interesting take on “the ripples of community and learner support”

http://elearningmoocedinburgh.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/day-3-week-1-e-learning-mooc-edcmooc-wheres-the-action/

• An Australian’s reflection (which mirrored mine) about where was all the action if 40,000 were engaged in this course?  (Though it has picked up since she posted)

In addition to blogs, one could connect to fellow students through the Coursera class discussion board, Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, and probably others I am not even aware of.  I noticed that a group in Minnesota had a face-to-face meet up.

For me, Twitter , Facebook, and the EDC MOOC News feed within Coursera remain my main links to this course.  I dipped my toe in to the course LMS discussion boards, but they seem too massive and lacked organization.  One could say the same about Twitter, but at least I know I am dipping into the stream there.  Maybe it is a comfort level thing…I am comfortable with Twitter (backed by Tweetdeck for following the hashtag stream).  I also have not gone into Google Plus much, other than for the hangout session.  Between Twitter and Facebook, I am remaining engaged with people worldwide (and enjoying that).  The News Feed provides new blogs to check out.

I may not be a social butterfly, but I am enjoying the diversity of thoughts, perspectives, and even culture as the course unfolds (neat to remember that it is summer in Australia as I shiver here on the American East Coast).  I am looking forward to week two!

On Thursday afternoons for the past few weeks, I have been joining Jeff Nugent‘s graduate class in VCU‘s Preparing Future Faculty program.  This class of twenty-four bright masters and doctoral students probe concepts at the intersection of teaching, learning and technology, and through the process, keep a learning journal in the form of a blog.  These are aggregated here and make for interesting reading.

This past Thursday, Jeff ran them through a class activity in which they unpacked their concepts of a learning management system like Blackboard (the one with which they are most familiar) in terms of what were the advantages and disadvantages of using a LMS from a student’s perspective and from a faculty member’s perspective.  Several things emerged.  First, when focusing on student perspectives, they tended to align with the findings of the ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology.  Students like the convenience and access that a LMS gives them.  They also saw it as a good communication link to faculty and students in their class.  Their perspectives of how faculty use a LMS also mirrored the ECAR study, in that they saw faculty use as unsophisticated.  I was actually a little surprised at how many reported that faculty they worked with continued to use the out-dated Digital Dropbox in Blackboard rather than the more efficient Assignment Manager.

The bulk of the afternoon class was devoted to Jim Groom, who came in to our class via Google Video Chat (which worked quite well).  The Right Reverend Jim, an instructional technologist from the University of Mary Washington, is well known in the blogosphere for taking on corporate learning management systems, and his conversation with our students was not disappointing.  He spent over an hour discussing the role of the LMS in teaching and learning and gave all of us lots of fodder to chew on!  Jeff Nugent did a great job capturing key points in his post “[Un]packing the Learning Management System.”  As Jeff noted:

I often take for granted that the web is a space for learning, but am reminded that this is not always broadly shared. Jim helped me to see that this remains a central part of the conversation, and is important to continually address when the LMS is often the defining space for the intersection of formal coursework and the web.

Jim launched his discussion by noting that the class had three reading assignments.  The first was Coates, James, and Baldwin’s “A Critical Examination of the Effects of Learning Management Systems on University Teaching and Learning.”  The second was Lisa Lane’s “Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Impact Teaching.”  The third was Carmean and Haefer’s “Mind Over Matter: Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments.”  Jim noted that the first was behind a pay-to-read system, the second was widely available, and the third was published under Creative Commons.  This illustrated in a microcosm the issues of the LMS and the range in which access to instruction occurs in higher education.

To Jim, the real issue with using an LMS was an issue of power.  Locking student work behind the walls of a LMS, and more importantly, cutting off access to their own intellectual work in the course at semester’s end, suggested to Jim that one did not respect student work.  The model he has proposed at UMW Blogs is to make student work open and transparent over the student’s life at Mary Washington, and to give them ownership of their own work.  They have made the shift in giving access to a course to giving access to individuals – a much more learning-centered approach.

Jim took head on the fear that allowing students to work outside the sanctioned LMS would potentially lead to legal issues.  He said that people are quick to note very rare instances of problems, but that few have addressed the benefits of working in an open environment.  He told several stories of cases in which UMW students became aware of their worldwide audience.  For instance, a class that had students writing poetry and telling their poems in podcasts in their blogs discovered that students in India were using their poems to learn English.  Jim felt that UMW was doing a better job than typical universities of helping students discover and manage their digital identity.

At almost the same instance that Jim was discussing this, Lisa Lane was blogging about the same subject.  In “FERPA Schmerpa, the LMS and open ed,” Lisa stated:

To me, posting/presenting and commenting is open work and open education — for my online classes, this process is behind a wall right  now only because I’m in a Learning Management System (Moodle), but it shouldn’t be. If I instead used a Ning, I could set it to be closed, “just for students”, but I’d like everyone to see the work. This is where I’m heading with online teaching — open courses. Learning should be open — if it is, people will be less afraid to try out their ideas, absorb and respond to criticism. They will also be part of a larger community. That’s how the web works, and these are important skills for my students’ careers.

Important skills indeed.  Jeff, Jim and Lisa are moving the conversation forward regarding open learning.  This summer, I will be working with Jon Becker to update our Educational Technology for School Leaders course.  We are still working on the vehicle (blogs versus Ning), but we are moving towards a more open course.  School leaders need to develop these digital skills themselves as they work with the next generation of students rising through K-12.  Those of us in faculty development should continue to both model and promote  these learning centered practices so that when these rising K-12 students arrive at college, they do not find themselves back in the Dark Ages.

We will continue to use the LMS for the management things for which it is best suited – roster management, grades, and private conversations.  Our use of blogs or Ning will be integrated into Blackboard, similar to the way Susan Gautsch described in her webinar on Pepperdine’s GLEAN – Graziadio’s Learning Environment and Network, or Jon Mott’s Open Learning Network.

One of Jeff’s students had an amusing comment that illustrates our challenge perfectly.  She said that one of the department’s faculty had walked in on a conversation she and others were having about whether to use Blackboard or not.  The professor immediately stated that he thought the use of this was old-fashioned…he much preferred the whiteboard!

Learning can certainly occur whether one uses a blackboard, a whiteboard, or a web mediated tool.  Increasingly, the web is becoming more integrated with teaching and learning, and the central question becomes whether the interaction on the web should occur behind closed walls or on the open web.  Jim made a great case Thursday night for freeing student content, giving students responsibility for their own digital identity, and in the process, creating fantastic learning opportunities.

I would be interested in what others think about deciding what is open and what is closed.  Am I overstating this question as an issue of power?

As Jeff noted in his post, these are questions we each should make when we choose to teach in closed systems on the web.

{Photo Credits:  Chronicle of Higher Education video, mag3737, xiaming}

As a final assignment in the online course I team-taught with Lynda Gillespie, we had our students reflect on the journey they took over the 14 weeks of class.  Our course is Educational Technology for School Leaders, a graduate course in the Ed Leadership masters at VCU.  We were fortunate in this class to have some unique opportunities.  First, the class was made up of both Richmond area school teachers working on their Masters, as well as Visiting International Faculty working on theirs.  This mix of local and international students teaching across three states led to some fascinating discussion and discovery.

Also, I was fortunate to team with Lynda, who is the Director of Technology at Chesterfield County Public Schools, and who spent this semester finalizing her county technology plan.

During the first part of the course, the students explored Web 2.0.  The 29 students were required to select 29 web tools from Jane Hart’s Top 100 List, research the tool, and then place a presentation about the tool on the class wiki.  Many found this assignment way outside their comfort zone, but by week 4, there were 29 tools posted on the site.  Their comfort level with technology really took off at this point, so that in the next three weeks, as we explored ethical, legal and political issues associated with the web, they put together a great list of resources in the class wiki on whether to filter or not filter the internet in schools.

Finally, they were split into five teams and each team developed a technology plan for a fictitious school, which again they presented inside the wiki.  From a group of self-proclaimed nervous-Nellies regarding technology, the five presentations included two groups who used Prezi and one that used VoiceThread!  Jing and Camtasia filled out the other two.

The students wrote short reflection papers in the final weekend about their journey, and I took their combined papers and loaded the text into Wordle.

Reflection Wordle

I found it interesting that after technology, the two words that most stood out were “student” and “use”.  In fact, “class use” seems to be the story from Wordle, and that matched what many said of their experience.  By course’s end, many reported that they had already modified how they were teaching.  What does not show up in the Wordle was the number of students that played off the theme of this class as a life-changing event.  By that, they had seen that technology was not something that you waited for an administrator to schedule training, but rather something integrated in daily life that they now felt personal responsibility for remaining current.

I thoroughly enjoyed facilitating the learning in this online class.  As we ramp up plans for increased online teaching at VCU, I look forward to carrying this positive experience into my work with other faculty.

{Photo Credit: Lydia Elle}

This week, we launched a project that has been in development for the past five months.  The past few years have seen significant growth in the development of online learning in both K-12 and higher education settings. With an estimated four million college students taking at least one online course this year, and forty-four states (including Virginia) now having significant online programs in their K-12 systems, many university faculty are beginning to explore the use of online instruction in their programs and courses. In response to this growing trend and VCU faculty interest, I worked with my teammates at the CTE, Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl, to co-develop the Online Teaching and Learning Resource Guide.

This resource guide is designed to help faculty who are seeking to transition their courses from a traditional face-to-face class to one delivered either partially or fully online. It reflects the foundation established in our White Paper from last May entitled “Building from Content to Community: [Re]Thinking the Transition to Online Teaching and Learning.” Teaching and learning online is different from traditional forms of education, requiring new practices. This guide will help faculty members reconceptualize their instructional approaches for the online environment.

In “Getting Started“, we explore how the web is changing education, what research suggests about online teaching and learning, and how to determine one’s readiness to teach online, as well as students’ readiness to learn online.

“Course Design” provides resources for translating goals and learning objectives specific to one’s course into designs that work online. Specific attention is paid to customizing Blackboard to serve one’s learning needs.

In “Teaching Practices,” we explore how the role of faculty changes online, the dimension of social presence for both faculty and students, and principles of good practice to meet instructional needs.

“Managing Online Class” covers a variety of administrative areas, such as time management, online routines, icebreakers, academic integrity, accessibility, and support services such as libraries and help desks.

The “Teaching Online Toolbox” explores a wide variety of web-based tools to facilitate instruction, such as blogs, wikis, discussion boards, screencasts, podcasts, and social media. The intent of this section is to help one integrate the right technology that enhances instruction for one’s specific discipline.

In “Online Assessment,” we look at multiple ways in which student learning can be assessed, both formatively and summatively. Techniques such as concept mapping, active learning, journaling, and testing are covered, as well as specific support applications such as LON-CAPA, Respondus, and StudyMate.

The final section provides additional resources, such as journals and online teaching websites. Faculty can also request additional consultation via a convenient online form in this section.

In this resource guide, we have assembled research-based resources and background articles on each topic, as well as “how-to” processes and best practices covering a range of topics. We hope that the resource can provide VCU faculty with a solid starting point for thinking through the challenges and possibilities of online teaching and learning.  It is completely Creative Commons Sharealike, so other institutions should feel free to remix and use it as they see a need.

There is a feedback form in the final section.  Either in comments here or through the form, we would welcome feedback, comments, suggestions, and additions that you see as missing from this initial publication.  We have had fun putting this together, and we would welcome your thoughts and reflections on ways to improve it.

I have not posted for quite a while, with the primary reason being an upgrade of my old body.  My colleague Jeff Nugent termed my pending knee replacement as an upgrade to Knee 2.0, which seemed very appropriate.

So a little over two weeks ago, the good team at West End Orthopaedic retooled me with titanium parts.  I have been recovering a home for the past 14 days, and see new improvements each day.  It was definitely time for the upgrade!

It has also given me some time to think and ponder the retooling that education is undergoing!

If you did not catch it earlier this month, Lisa Lane had an important article published in FIRST MONDAY entitled “Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Impact Teaching.”  Her point – right on target I think – was that the default settings on most CMS have an implied pedagogy, and because most faculty do not work and play online, most faculty accept the defaults and therefore the given pedagogy – whether it fits their content, their discipline specific pedagogy, or their own style.

I was thinking about this because prior to going in for my upgrade, I had begun working with six fellow faculty in a year-long exploration of online teaching and learning.  Our faculty learning community explored my online class first, and then two weeks ago, explored another member’s approach – one that was radically different from mine.

I consider myself pretty adept at elearning, having taught online now for a dozen years.  Yet, this look at new approaches is tugging at my comfort zone, because I have fallen guilty of the view that “my” way of teaching online is “the” way of teaching online.  Not that I do not do a great job – I do – but I use a fairly structured and hands-on approach to build a learning community that then has the freedom to use open approaches to learning as they grow comfortable with them.  In other words, drawing from Lane’s comments, I make my students work and play online some before turning them loose.

My colleague has developed a brilliant certification process that allows one to start at any point, proceed at any speed, work toward certification if desired, or simply work towards self-development without the academic credentialing requirement (and at no cost).  In other words, a true open content process.

Just as in retooling myself physically, I also need to retool my thought processes and open myself to new approaches in teaching and learning online.  My faculty learning community is occurring at the right time and place!

I am also starting Curtis Bonk’s book The World is Open.  In full disclosure, the publisher sent it to me at no charge, but it does look timely and helpful to retooling my thinking.  I’ll blog more about it as I go through it.

I would be interested in your thoughts regarding online teaching and learning.  I have been wedded to the concept of a community of learners as a prerequisite for successful online classes, yet we now are entering a world of social networking and informal communities that coalesce around topics of interest.  In the structured world of higher education, what is the right approach for elearning?

{Photo Credit: Larry Page}

Image via CrunchBase

It has been an interesting week for me in Facebook.  I have reconnected with several colleagues that I had lost touch with in the past few years.  Facebook to me is great for connecting with family and friends, but as with any social networking application, a host of questions arise concerning possible uses for instruction.  And so far, I have not used it for instruction.

In the past week, Jeff Nugent had a conversation with VCU faculty members Mike Abelson, Melissa Johnson and Stephanie Rizzi who shared their experiences with using Facebook and offered their perspectives on the pros and cons of “friending” students.  Their podcast is here. I listened to this podcast while at the gym, and I found myself arguing with them mentally.  (I have not yet reached the point where I begin talking to myself while wearing an iPod!)

My colleagues here were nervous about responding to “friend” requests from their students.  They seemed to agree that it would be inappropriate for them to friend any of their students.  That got me thinking about my use of Facebook and my own students.

For me, my context is different.  My podcasting colleagues here at VCU teach college freshmen – I teach graduate students who are also teachers.  As such, I already consider my current students as my colleagues.   So I would not be adverse to my students friending me, though I do not actively seek them out.  Part of my reasoning for not actively seeking them out is that Facebook for me is a social connection, not a professional connection.  My friends right now consists of three groups – family, colleagues, and former students.  And by former students, I mean students I had 15 years ago at the University of Nebraska.  My colleagues span VCU, Gwinnett Tech, and Herkimer County Community College.  I use other social avenues professionally, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and the blogs I follow in Google Reader.

I think that one reason people are nervous about Facebook is the negative press it has gotten lately.  The Chronicle had a recent article on How Not To Lose Face on Facebook.  It noted:

“For years college administrators have warned students to watch their step in online social realms, noting that sharing too much could hurt them later on if future employees saw their drunken party pictures or boorish writings. Now that professors and administrators are catching Facebook fever, they should heed their own advice.”

Good advice, but it underscores that many faculty (and students) do not understand the various settings they can control in Facebook to selectively release their posts to specific friends.  Nick O’Neill had a nice explanation in his post “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.”

But as I thought about Facebook and privacy, I wonder if we are asking the right questions.  The whole issue of one’s digital footprint is raising vexing questions.  Is anything truly “private” anymore?  Maybe I am a little paranoid, but I was blown away by Pattie Maes‘ TED Talk demonstration of wearable technology.

Pretty cool, huh?  Yet think about this from the ubiquitous web perspective.  If Pattie’s vision becomes the norm, everyone will be walking around wearing a device that constantly scans the environment and through facial recognition potentially pulls up information on every person you meet.  Being worried about your cheerleader picture in Facebook might be the least of your worries.  “Privacy” will take on new and interesting meanings.

I am still wrestling with whether it would be good or bad to walk in on the first day of class, meet a student, and instantly know that student’s GPA and Facebook profile.  As my good friend Kathryn Murphy-Judy noted to me today as we discussed this, would a sound-bite be meaningful if you did not know that underneath a bad GPA was the death of parents or the ending of a relationship.  It takes time to build a relationship with people, and would this ubiquitous web presence speed that up or derail it on occasion?  I do not know.  The only thing I do know is that the world is changing and ignoring that change is not an option.

I would be interested in your thoughts?  Do you use Facebook for instruction?  Do you friend your students?  Do you have conversations with your students and colleagues about their digital footprint?  Should we? – is that part of our role as faculty?

What ever else, we certainly live in interesting times!

I am sure that I will not be the only one blogging today about President Obama’s Inauguration speech.  Bud Deihl and I walked over to the student commons and watched it with several hundred students and staff.   Our new President crafted a wonderful speech with both hope and purpose in mind, founded on the idea that we are all in this ship of state together.  Looking out over the cheering students, I could not help but reflect not only on the journey, but also on the idea articulated by another young President that indeed, the torch had passed…and that we will be okay as a nation.

I probably will also not be the only one using Wordle today, but I like the way certain words jump out at you from his speech.

As a retired Navy Commander, his call to service for this country really resonated with me.  I was reminded as I listened to Vice President Biden take his oath of office that that particular oath was the same one I swore to as a Navy Ensign.  It is an oath of allegiance to an idea, not a person…something I have always held dear.

As several Twitterers noted, the White House website rolled over to the new administration’s site on time at noon.  It proclaims that change has come to this country.  I was happy to hear the word “digital” in Obama’s speech, and it appears likely that the digital age will be part of that change…and that these changes will impact education.  I see that as positive.

I have not blogged for the past three weeks for a combination of reasons.  Some of it is old habits.  When I was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, January was historically known as “The Dark Ages.”  Old habits die hard.  I was also sick for a week, followed by the hectic nature of a semester start.  The Dark Ages began to thaw this weekend when several of my students remarked in our online class that they were excited and enlightened by the first week’s activities!  I was simply introducing Delicious and Web 2.0 to these school teachers, but I spend so much time immersed in Web 2.0 that I can forget how exciting and refreshing it is to discover it!

So today’s speech seemed to lift those dark feelings off me.  It may still be January, but I am looking forward to this semester and the coming days with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.  I know I have a part to play in education…and I will look for opportunities to serve in other ways as well.

Three words captured the start of our country and three new words capture the direction forward,

We, The People!

Yes We Can!

The speech today merged these two concepts into one unified direction for our country and all of us.  I’m stoked! 

{Photo Credit: Jim Young / Reuters}

Swimming in my PLE this weekend and it felt a little like the Dow Jones Stock Index…up one minute, down the next.  I am an optimist by nature and believe that as the web grows even more ubiquitous, faculty by and large will look for ways to integrate it into their classroom.

There are certainly good examples from the early adopters.  Stephen Downes posted a powerpoint on Slideshare this weekend from his Prince Edwards Island 2008 presentation entitled “Integrating the Internet Into the Classroom.”

Yet, at almost the same time, Dean Shareski pointed in Twitter to an article on the Britannica Blog entitled “Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom,” by David Cole.  First, David apparently only sees laptops as a stenographer tool – good only for taking notes.  His complaint is that his students are distracted and not engaged in his class unless he bans laptops!  One wonders whether the problem is the laptop or the delivery?  One only needs look at how Michael Wesch has engaged his class (full of laptops) by co-opting the students into the learning process.

Luckily, Beth Holmes got me excited again with her post “Creating a Disturbance!” She was blogging about three educators who were actually doing what many only talk about:  Stephanie Sandifer in The Knowing – Doing Gap; Alec Couros’ K12 Online Conference presentation “Open, Connected, Social: Reflections of an Open Graduate Course Experience”; and David Truss’ 10/21/08 Pair-a-dimes post POD- or Personally Owned Devices.

As she noted:

“Boy, did I hear the old music and see the new steps! There they are – three educators who are familiar with the tools – making the transition from “knowing to doing” and urging us all to START DOING NOW.”

I hear that tune myself, Beth!  (But then again…it may just be Pandora…)

I think others are hearing that tune and are uncertain how to start dancing.  Jeff Nugent tweeted from the POD annual conference that he had met a fellow faculty developer who was starting blogging for the first time.  She (I am assuming “she” since the blog is Development Diva) felt that she had to remain anonymous due to her profession of working with other faculty.  In “Blogging: Confidentiality vs. Accountability“, she stated:

“My first thought, in my first post, was to protect the identities of any of my clients about whom I might write and thus to attempt to conceal my own since my work is tied to place and from place to people. That feels like a no-brainer…But yet I felt an unease that I struggled to put into words. What about the scholarly record? There are good reasons that scholarly work needs to be both public and attributed (e.g., dialog is essential to develop further knowledge, tracking the source of ideas is key in building new understandings). If someone wanted to quote my work here, either the content or the process of doing a blog, then to whom do they attribute it? P(l)odder? that feels dishonest.”

Maybe I should worry more (as I do the same job she does), but I believe that I can safely reflect on my profession without naming the names of my clients, and have done so for ten months now.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that cloud computing will “shake up campus technology.”  My own students (most many years older than early 20′s) are busily updating and editing our class wiki this weekend and doing just fine in the Web 2.0 stream.  The K12 Online Conference continues to pump out fantastic presentations.  So I remain optimistic!

Wondering what my colleagues think?  Is the glass half empty or half full?  How do we get that big early and late majority population to transition from “knowing to doing” and START DOING NOW!  Is the music playing for you?

{Photo Credit: Jespis}

I had the privilege of facilitating a panel discussion today during one of our Brown Bag luncheons in which Terry Carter and Jon Becker joined me to discuss new opportunities for academic publishing. All three of us blog, and we shared how we each use blogs in education.  Our podcast is located here. Give a listen as we attempt to address key questions about how blogging supports critically reflective practice, functions as a form of academic publishing and enables us to play a role Jon Becker described as public intellectuals.

Links mentioned during the above podcast:

Jon Becker’s blog – Educational Insanity

Terry Carter’s blog – Coming About

This blog – Learning in a Flat World

Henry Jenkins – Why Academics Should Blog

Michelle Martin – Social Media Spiral

Open Notebook Science Project

{My thanks to Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl for recording and mixing this podcast).