Bud Deihl and I traveled north a few miles to attend the University of Mary Washington’s Faculty Academy 2009 in Fredericksburg, VA.  It was a chance to reconnect face-to-face with some of my Twitter friends like Martha Burtis (see her reflections on this day here), George Brett and Laura Blankenship.

One of the highlights for me was the lunch debate between the Right Reverend Jim Groom and John St. Clair on “Is the CMS Dead?“  In a lively back and forth, the original Edupunk Jim suggested that the course management system was only good for management, not learning, and as such, SHOULD be dead … but appeared to be more undead (I knew zombies would appear at some point in his talk).  John countered that he thought the talk was about CMS – conservative mid-sized sedans – and that he thought most people wanted a sensible automobile and not some do-it-yourself hovercraft!

Both gentlemen gave great passionate arguments to their side.  I talked to Jim afterward and asked why the question had to be CMS “or” open systems?  In the past two semesters, I have used the Blackboard CMS for the things it does well (document and link management, rosters, grade management), but also used blogging, Jing and wikis for collaborative work with my students.  In other words, Blackboard served as a portal and launching point for my students into the open web.  This seemed to me to be a case of “AND” rather than “or.”

I enjoyed the lunch debate, but in reality, the whole day was fantastic!

James Boyle gave an invigorating keynote on “Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness.”  Having just come off the Board of Directors for Creative Commons, he was uniquely qualified to discuss this issue.  He started with a history of the internet and how openness was a bug meant to be fixed later, but the internet grew more rapidly than anticipated and openness spawned many wonderful opportunities and profitable enterprises.  It definitely caused problems and concerns, but also amazing positives in the business world, entertainment, government, and education.  Yet, Boyle stated that education has yet to deal with its concerns and instead simply is biased against openness.  He noted that openness meant not only the ability to copy but also the ability to improve.

Thoroughly enjoyed the talk.  Jeff Nugent has recently had us at the CTE discussing licensing our Center organizational web material with a Creative Commons license.

I attended a great panel discussion by UMW faculty on their use of blogging in their classes.  It was a chance to see a very diverse mix of blogs associated with writing classes, art classes, science classes and math classes.  One of the take-aways was that blogs allowed time for students to reflect on critical issues for which there just was not time in 50-minute classes.

Cole Camplese of Penn State University gave an excellent talk on emerging trends impacting teaching and learning.  I loved his observation that we view what our students do as “technology,” but that it is only technology to those of us born before technology.  To the students raised in a wired world, it is simply a means of communication and connection.  I was blown away by the fact he listed that 40% of students at Penn State no longer bring a TV to campus.  They get their “TV” and entertainment straight off the web.  He noted that our universities are still designed as if our students are going to receive our wisdom and reflect it back to us, when in reality, through their own content and knowledge creation, our students act more as amplifiers than reflectors.  At Penn State, they have cast blogs as a form of digital publishing and are exploring ways for students to keep their own digital content.  If blogs are viewed as personal content management systems, then digital expression is seen as a form of scholarship that must be systematically supported.

I was also impressed that a third of PSU faculty reported using YouTube instructionally. 

The last session of the day was a workshop run by Laura Blankenship on “Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and Your Students.”  We will be discussing the same topic at our upcoming Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute in June, so I was interested in seeing how Laura presented this concept.  She did a great job by first focusing on problems that needed solving, and then brainstorming from the group web applications that could be used to solve these problems.  In the course of the discussion, we discussed RSS feeds, Google Reader, delicious, Jott, and a host of other tools.

One last side thought – Twitter was very active among participants, and the hashtag #umwfa09 made note-taking unnecessary.  However, Twitter had scheduled maintenance today which hit right at the end of Cole’s talk, and it was momentarily frustrating to lose it mid-conference (so much so that I complained about it in Facebook!!!) 

Great day – looking forward to Day Two tomorrow!

2008 was certainly a very different year from my 57 previous ones.  Even though I had worked with computers for years and had engaged in online learning for the past dozen years, in many ways I was a creature of the Web 1.0 era.  I did not grow up with interactivity – I grew up with Basic computer language and dial-up modems.  The computer was a tool that I used primarily offline, but I did go online to go places (my online class in Blackboard, Google, Mapquest, even Wikipedia).  In my developmental years, my web interactions were mostly one-way and teacher-oriented.  I remained in control of my journey and knew where I was headed.

With my colleagues at the Center for Teaching Excellence, Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl, I had begun dabbling in Web 2.0 apps like Ning sites (Classroom 2.0 and College 2.0) and delicious in 2007, but I was still primarily a voyeur.  My colleague Jeff would prod me to try out different sites or check out different blogs, but I did so rather passively.  My “network” for the most part consisted of people I worked with and a couple of others.  At the start of the year, I was subscribing to about ten blogs and a variety of journal and news sites. It was not until January 13, 2008, that a blog post by Michele Martin grabbed me.

Over the course of a couple of days last January, Michele discussed her own growth online and illustrated this with her social media spiral shown above.  I saw myself in that spiral, and recognized that to grow, I needed to move higher up the spiral.  I had moved from isolated consumption to aggregation in 2007, but I was still of the mindset that few would be interested in anything I might have to say.  I really cannot say why, but Michele’s spiral was the tipping point for me that moved me to start my own blog.

Michele cheered me on during that first month, as did Sue Waters, a new “friend” whose advice and guidance helped be grow as a blogger.  My network began to grow as I entered the spiral of commenting and blogging.  By May 2008, I felt confident enough to join the 31-Day Blog Comment Challenge.  It was exhausting but illuminating, and it added new friends like Ken Allen to my network.  Along the way, I learned that my “personal” learning network was really a social one and not an individual one.  I was learning from the likes of Will Richardson, Michele Martin, Wes Fryer, Vicki Davis, Jeff Utecht and many, many more – and that learning was social.  These superstars were interacting and commenting on my comments and blog posts!

As I taught this fall, my frequency of blogging slowed.  Part of that is due to the time spent microblogging in Twitter with many of the same people I follow through their blogs.  Part of it was due to redesigning my online course – Instructional Uses of the Internet.  The redesign was driven in large part by my experience in the spiral.  2008 was the year I made the leap to social networking, and it was transformational.  I now view my life and my job through a different lens than I did a year ago, shaped by the global friendships I have made and continue to make.

Learning in a Flat World.  The name still fits.  This will be my 125th post this year.  There have been 310 comments, comments that helped me learn – and comments from all over the globe.  I am still humbled by the ClustrMap above.  My readership is worldwide with nearly 4,600 hits since I started tracking it last February.  More importantly, I have gotten to know some of the gifted people behind those red dots marking the globe.  I see them as mentors, colleagues, collaborators, and friends.  I see the world as a different place from the way I viewed it pre-2008.

Tom Friedman remarked that the world had gotten flat and closer due to the internet.  While I loved his book and had done several seminars on THE WORLD IS FLAT, I do not think that I really understood that until 2008.

To those who have journeyed with me this past year, my deepest thanks!  You have made me a better educator!

Just think what 2009 might bring!

A little graphic but it got Tom’s point across.  Sometimes crap is what crap is.  I was thinking about this today when I found out that Edublogs has been adding advertisements in a stealth mode to mine and other Edublogs that they host.

Two things I should state up front.  First, I do not pay for my blog.  One of the things that attracted me to Edublogs was their premise that they would host a blog for educators at no charge.  In fact, if you go to Edublogs, you see the notice at right which tells you to sign up and get started for free.  And I did almost one year ago.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this blog and the connections it has afforded.

Second, I believe in the power of blogging and the networking that occurs through blogs.  I have learned much and am indebted to Sue Waters (who is paid by Edublogs) for the superb “how-to” blog she provides at The Edublogger.  The edublogging community has definitely benefited from the hosting and support provided by Edublogs.Org.

So I was caught off guard this morning when Jim Groom tweeted this to Jeff Nugent:

I checked my own blog and there were no advertisements.  But then I cleared all Private Data including log in data from my Firefox browser and then went back in to my blog – in a manner similar to one of my students Goggling me and then checking out my blog.  Here is what I found:

Very interesting!  A blog post in which I discuss things I am thankful for brings up an ad for finding the right bar! That definitely sends a signal about who I am!!!

Of course, I played no part in selecting this ad or placing it in my post.  Those familiar with how blogs work might recognize this for a pop-up ad and not part of my content.  I would wager, however, that the vast majority of people who might read my blog are not as discerning, and since my blogs are full of links, they would not differentiate between the links “Britt” inserts and the links “Edublogs” inserts.  It is Britt’s blog and therefore representative of Britt – or worse, of the Center for Teaching Excellence where I work (my disclaimer notwithstanding).

I have several other examples, but I think the one above makes the point.  Having discovered this, I then began researching it.  If one searches the Edublogs Forum, one will find a forum on ads.  Apparently, the administrators at Edublogs began looking at ways to bring in revenue about 9 months ago, and came up with a process to embed ads that would only show to those not logged in.  If one did not keep up with the legal Terms of Service nor dutifully read their blog forum, one would not be aware of this.  The administrators stated it would be too hard to email all users with this policy.

See picture at top of post.

It also appears that several users have discovered this in the past week and some are pulling their blogs off Edublogs in protest.  The latest post noted that the administrators were re-examining the policy and would email all users soon.

I am concerned enough to start looking around at other options for my blog.  I still feel that the spirit of the Edublogs community is a worthy one, but that spirit has been soiled by the manner in which ads were added without consent to the blogs of professors, teachers, and students.  I also think that it is worth paying a fee to have no ads, and would suggest to Edublogs that they look at the process Jott used to move from a free service to a paid service, including transparency in the process.

How about those of you who also use Edublogs?  Is this an ethical issue of sufficient weight that you would consider pulling your blog?  I would be interested in your thoughts.

[Photo Credit: Tom Peters, Jim Groom]

Blogs have begun to move beyond personal journaling to emerge as a possible form of academic publishing.  Blogs today provide a reflective medium for publication of teaching and research, and provide a point of connection for community building within one’s discipline.  How do blogs fit in with other academic duties?  How can blogs help scholarship and is it possible for blogs to harm scholarship? Should students blog as part of their learning journey, and can students effectively blog if faculty do not?  This workshop will explore the use of blogs in both classroom and academic disciplines.

The last time we ran this session in September, we spent the entire time discussing blogging as scholarship.  As it turned out today, in polling the participants up front, no one was interested in blogging as scholarship, but each either wanted to have students begin blogging as a way of fostering student connections and communication, or they wanted to blog themselves, or both.  I found this fascinating, because several have discussed in the past week the concept that blogging is dead.  Paul Boutin in Wired magazine wrote Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.   The CogDog barked that “Maybe Blogging is Dead After All (Or Our Conceptualization Is).” Yet it seems that when early adopters move on to something else, the majority backfill the void and pick up the practice. As Jon Becker noted in “Greatly Exaggerated,” he was not buying that blogging is dead…and the interest I saw today demonstrated to me the same idea.

So I moved rapidly past the discussion on blogging as a public intellectual, and instead focused on instructional blogging.

One example that I could rapidly showcase is the work Jeff Nugent is doing with his Mass Comm Learning with Digital Media class.  Jeff has his students blog as part of their weekly assignments, and has collected their blogs in a Netvibes site.  As Jeff noted over coffee earlier this week, he has been gratified that some of his students are now making connections with the global blogging community, and are no longer writing for a grade, but rather for a readership that they value.

What drives that value are comments.  Blogs are a great personal reflective journal, but when others begin commenting, and one returns the favor by commenting on the blogs of others, connections get made – exactly what several professors today wish to have occur in their classes.

Blogs are not mainstream…yet.  The ECAR 2008 Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology reports that about one-third of students contribute content to blogs.  I would hazard a guess that blogging by faculty is much less percentage-wise.  Yet, a small group of faculty registered for our workshop today so that they can begin.  I find solace and hope in that!

{Photo Credits: CogDog, Salendron}

Quick Quiz: What New Web Tool Can You Use and Get an ASUS? How about a little disclosure here? Are Steve Dembo and Sue Waters getting paid to promote a commercial product (I assume Alan Levine’s rah rah post is unpaid, though you’d never know from the tenor)? Was Dembo being paid when he started plugging it on his site back in early April? I don’t care if people want to make a little money, but let’s keep the advertising content in the edublogosphere clearly labeled as such, OK? Because, as it stands now, I can’t trust anything Sue Waters and Steve Dembo write – and that’s an unhappy state to be in. Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, May 27, 2008.

In fairly quick fashion, Al Levine, Steve Dembo and Sue Waters all stated in the “Comment” area of Stephen’s newsletter that none of them were being paid. Several others joined in the discussion as well, and Sue added a response in her blog.

It is worth reading the string of responses, and as Alan Levine noted, it is good to have pot stirrers shake things up from time to time. But I would suggest that there is a difference between stirring pots and making personal attacks, and attacking the trust of fellow educators is just a low blow. In a Web 2.0 world, one’s validity is about all the currency one has, so a very public attack on someone’s credibility online is extremely damning.

Trust is a slippery fellow, hard to gain and easy to lose. I have been honored to have Sue help me in my blogging – as she has helped many others, and I see the trust that other “trusted” educators have in her. When someone with the street cred of a Stephen Downes slams a fellow educator, a lot of people will take notice. I checked the Technorati stats and Stephen has an authority of 708, WAY above my 33. (I am happy to finally rank in the 6-digits instead of 7!!!) So a ton of people check out Stephen’s blog and listen to what he has to say – many more than me. Unfortunately, given the skimming practice of many on the web, a lot of people may see Stephen’s slam but not go in to the comments and see the responses from those individuals he incorrectly slammed.

The wisdom of the crowds is normally fairly good, but vocal minorities can unduly influence it. I would hope that Stephen Downes does the right thing and apologizes so the the crowd can learn from his error. We have enough people worldwide who try to build themselves up by putting others down. Darren Draper recently did a blog series on blogging etiquette. After watching this personal attack, I would agree that we in the edublog world need to step up to a code of ethics that rises above what transpired here.

[Photo Credit: Alexandralee]

The first was easy – I had blogged on Sunday about Parallel Universes and Sue Waters left a comment to which I responded. As Sue has noted, blogs become conversational if one takes the time to comment.

It was Day 20 that took me in unexpectedly rich waters. As I noted in Parallel Universes, I attended the University of Mary Washington’s Faculty Academy 2008 last week. One of the organizers – Martha Burtis – has a wonderful blog that I follow – The Fish Wrapper. She had blogged a couple of weeks ago about the difficulty in getting students to buy in to the use of technology in classes, but I had not then followed the thread in her post. I went back and did so, which took me to a blog post by “Joe”, a student aide at UMW. Joe sparked a lot of discussion from UMW profs, one of which is Serena, who I met at FA2008. So I clicked through to Serena’s blog.

In her post Madcap Scheme (beta), she discusses the overlapping conversations and debate generated by presentations at FA 2008 overlaid by Twitter posts, and in particular, a conversation between her and Steve Greenlaw on the battle professors face when trying to connect to students. Steve made the comment to her on Twitter:

“I think it’s part of the academic culture that undergraduates don’t do real world. It’s not true, but the mythology is a hurdle.”

She goes on to discuss how to change this…and one of her comments really grabbed me -

“Forget about persuading this guy to adopt new technologies in his classroom. If he’s not viewing his students as scholars, then he’s not even going to be concerned about truly connecting with them.”

This ties back in to a post Jeff Nugent made yesterday, in which he said:

The next time I have the opportunity to talk with faculty members about how the web is impacting students, I’m thinking I’ll forgo the NetGen rap and see if we can come to any agreement on some of these questions:

1) What does critical thinking – on and about the web – look like?

2) How is the unprecedented access to information on the web [re]shaping our notions of teaching and learning?

3) What is the read / write web anyway? How is it changing our perspectives of publishing, scholarship, authority and authenticity?

4) How is hyper-connectivity (always on) changing our expectations and thoughts about communication?

5) How are web-based social networks redefining the exchange of ideas, collaboration, and community building?

For me, seeking answers to these and similar questions – across generations – is where we are going come to some better understanding of how to build connections among varied expectations and experiences.

These are great questions…and the right questions we should be debating. It appears Serena would respond (as she did in her post):

“My theory is this: make student creation and inspiration inescapable.”

She then goes on to provide seven suggestions for bridging the online world, the physical world, and the academic world. She proposes some radical thoughts that are cross-disciplinary, cross-media, and potentially engaging! It draws to mind Laura Blankenship’s post this morning that “too many people are dismissive of “the kids today” who do more than one thing at a time.” Serena’s suggestions would not only condone this behavior but welcome it.

Lots of threads….and lots to think about. Follow these threads yourself, comment to Jeff on his questions, and let me know if following these threads has helped shape your view of the hyper-connected world.

[Photo Credit: Buttersweet, Randy Son of Robert]

My initial post “Education Blogs” is here and still relevant. Here are half of the new twenty-five that I now follow:

2 cents Worth………………..……………..This is David Warlick’s blog, where he explores teaching and learning in the information landscape. As he says, he writes “…to have my ideas criticized, deconstructed, recombined, added to, and, when possible, to be used.”

BlogHighEd…………………….……………This is a Higher Ed blogger network, which features top blog posts from educators, webmasters, marketers, consultants, vendors, and more.

CoolCatTeacher……………..……………..Vicki Davis blogs from Georgia. She is a teacher, entrepreneur, edublogger, writer, avid reader, technology geek, and one of the most passionate educators I have come across. She is co-founder of Women of the Web 2 and featured on EdTechTalk.

Desire2Blog…………………..………………I met Barry Dahl at the eLearning 2008 conference. Barry is VP of Technology and Virtual Campus at Lake Superior College in Minnesota, and is an advocate for eLearning using Desire2Learn.

EdTechTalk…………………………………. EdTechTalk is a community of educators interested in discussing and learning about cutting edge uses of educational technology. They webcast several live shows each week. After each show, they usually post a podcast, chat room transcript and comment forum. Good source of links and love their podcasts, which I listen to during gym or commutes.

Educational Insanity……………………….Jon Bender is a VCU professor who blogs and twitters, much to our delight here in our Center for Teaching Excellence. Jon notes that education is the last unreformed institution from the 19th Century to now try and move into the 21st Century, and he uses his blog as a public spot to share his views on that transition.

Elearnspace…………………….……………. George Siemens is a well-known theorist on the changing nature of learning in a digitally-based society known as connectivism. I do not always agree with his views but he always makes me think.

ExploratoryLearner…………..……….…This is Bud Deihl’s blog. Bud works with me in the Center for Teaching Excellence and is both a soul mate and sounding board for ideas using Web 2.0 instructionally. He is a very accomplished bagpipe player, and his creativity spills over in to his work in communication and digital storytelling.

Half an Hour…………………….……………Stephen Downes is another theorist from the world of connectivism. He has published on elearning, learning objects, PLEs, and educational blogging. In addition to his blog, he also publishes a weekly newsletter which captures top stories from the online learning world.

How to Change the World………..……..Bestselling author of The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki is a former Apple fellow at Apple Computer and current venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and very creative thinker. He is the brains behind Alltop, and I find his business sense instructive when considering the changing educational landscape.

Injenuity…………………………..…………..Jennifer Jones is a fascinating elearning guru from Bellingham WA, working in the technical and vocational fields. She has an amazing network of fellow technologists who share lessons learned and best practices.

Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day…..Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies in the UK shares a wealth of practical tips on emerging tools. She also compiles the annual list of Top Tools for Web 2.0.

Mobile Technology in TAFE…….…….Sue Waters of Perth Australia is another of my global network who has greatly influenced my own blog. She also is one of the top Edublog and Twitter cheerleaders, supporting and reinforcing new bloggers as they start. This is one of two blogs I follow from Sue.

More to come tomorrow.