Nexus

This is a question that has been tumbling through my mind recently. I’ve spent this past week as a guest of the Canadian Space Agency, touring the Kennedy Space Center, and watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. That means I have spent my time in the company of people who, at the very least, have a profound interest in space exploration.

I had the opportunity to listen to some snippets of conversations that were occurring all around me that presented misconceptions as fact. I was surprised in this environment for instance, to hear people talking about the “zero gravity” environment of the Shuttle and the Space Station. This is a very commonly-held misconception, certainly among the students in our ISS07 project. The reality is that there is lots of gravity, about 90% as much as on Earth. In fact, it is the Earth’s gravity that keeps spacecraft (and the Moon) in their orbits around the Earth. Therefore a better, and more precise way to describe this environment is to call it a “free-fall” environment. In orbit a spacecraft is actually falling (accelerating) directly towards the centre of the Earth. (The astronauts inside are falling at the same rate and therefore float). It is only as a result of the spacecraft’s enormous horizontal (tangential) speed that it is able to maintain a more-or-less constant distance from the Earth’s surface.

So what does this example mean for educators? I’ve been listening to or taking part in conversations with many edubloggers over the past year about the need to give our students the tools and experiences required to develop the skills to build personal learning networks. I’m getting the uneasy feeling that at least some of us are assuming that authority will reside in the network. As my gravity example shows, the group, or by extension the network, can be wrong. What then?

Where do we go for authoritative information? I’ve noticed a trend in responses students have been posting to challenge questions in both of our Polar Science projects and now our ISS07 project; students start with Wikipedia. I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as a starting point. But should students stop with one information source?

In a recent post on his Connectivism blog, George Siemens states that the popularity of Wikipedia is due not so much because it is an authoritative resource, but more because it’s good enough and easy enough to find what he calls “quick and dirty” knowledge, such as “How is beer made?” Siemens states:

Wikipedia provides “gap filling” information, not necessarily foundation information on which we base world views. For foundational world view information, we don’t rely on a singular resource. We blend many - experts, our own experiences, our own thinking, influences of colleagues, articles, books, and so on.

David Warlick in today’s post talks about plans to add a comment feature to Google News and the implications this will have for authoritative journalism. Warlick asks:

So, where’s Walter Cronkite when you need him?

This takes me back to the question I asked a couple of paragraphs ago, where do we go for authoritative information? If there ever was, there certainly is no longer, a comfort zone, a respected authority under the watchful eyes of authors, editors, journalists, experts. The answer lies in what Warlick calls new literacy habits:

The only comfort — our ONLY safety — is in people who are critical thinkers, skilled information workers, who ask questions about the answers that they find — by habit.

Develop that habit in the context of what Siemens calls “blending” many information sources, and then I think we can have confidence in the authority of personal learning networks.

Warlick says:

That puts the ball in our court, teachers.

Amen! And what an incredible responsibility and exciting challenge!

Technorati tags: Canadian Space Agency Kennedy Space Center Space Shuttle Endeavor gravity misconceptions edubloggers Wikipedia Polar Science ISS07 George Siemens David Warlick Google News

As I mentioned earlier in my “Uber-blogging” post, I’m taking the time to really process the implications of backchannelling for both my own professional learning and its relevance to the way we structure learning opportunities for our students. I have quickly come to the conclusion that I must develop some new skills myself and re-think some social norms before I can get a clearer picture as to how backchannelling can work in the classroom.

I think a little historical perspective is called for first as background to what has become my own social norm for classroom behaviour. I spent 20 years teaching French as a Second Language (FSL). I used a communication problem-solving approach wherever possible and trained students to use all possible clues to make meaning of what was being said. Of course that includes social norms such as context, facial expression, body language, gestures and tone of voice. These clues are most effectively deciphered through attentive listening. I have come to expect that attentive listening includes eye contact; therefore making eye contact became a social norm in my classroom. Even when I moved out of FSL and taught special education, language arts and computers, I still hung on to my predisposition for eye contact. It was one of my preferred strategies for engaging students with ADD. When students came into my computer lab, they were expected to take a seat at a workstation and then face the center of the room where I would give my short preamble setting up the tasks to be accomplished that period. I did not want to hear the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard at that time - I expected full attention.

Look at this picture. It comes from Brian Crosby’s NECC07 Edubloggercon Flicker photostream. Before you read on, describe in your mind what you are seeing.

The photo was taken during one of the Edubloggercon unconference sessions. The arrow is pointing to me; I was the one talking at that point. What do you notice about the other people in the room? Do they appear to be engaged with the speaker? Very few people were looking directly at me, and I could hear click, click, click, as fingers flew across keyboards. I have to admit that at first I found it difficult to speak, (even after factoring out that I was totally awestruck by the composition of the group). What you don’t see in the picture is David Warlick sitting across the circle from me. He was facilitating the discussion and although he was typing as well, he looked up from his keyboard and made eye contact on a regular basis as I was speaking. I clung to that lifeline to persist in getting my point across.

Were the members of this group listening attentively?

You bet!

Were they engaged in the conversation?

You bet!

Had they all developed skills I still need to work on?

I think so!

Members of this group, the uber-bloggers I referred to previously, have developed the skills needed to listen, think, keep up with the comments they are reading, think, compose their own responses to commenters, think, ask questions for clarification, think, post notes to their blogs, think, type, think, and jump into the F2F oral conversation as needed! Wow!!! So many questions run through my mind. Can I develop the skillset to multi-task with such intensity? Is my age a limiting factor? Have my life and learning experiences resulted in a brain that is wired in a linear fashion? Can I re-wire it through new experiences? Happily, I can answer the last question with “I think so”. I’ve been following the Tuesday night chats of WOW2, and am becoming much more comfortable listening to the speakers and following and taking part in the chat. I know I will need much more practice before I reach a point where I can facilitate a discussion that includes simultaneous F2F and online components.

In the archived chatcast, (from the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston this summer), where David Jakes “hosted” the Skype session of Ewan McIntosh’s presentation - Is Your Public Body Public, Dean Shareski states:

90% of teachers would be having a heart attack right now

I agree. At first glance this looks like “note-passing” on a grand scale. Given the opportunity to conduct a skypechat session during a lesson how would students react? What skillset would they bring to the experience? Although they seem to be able to multi-task, and naturally chat in numerous conversations at the same time, is their processing/thinking focussed or scattered? Will they bring the same focus and intensity to the conversations as the adults did in my example above? What will be the balance between on-task and off-task chatter? Clearly this is a deviation from the social norm I’ve been expecting in my own classes. What effect will this type of student activity have on the way teachers facilitate the F2F component of the conversation?

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that this new mode of learning activity is worth pursuing further. Do a blog search for NECC07 or BLC07 and you’ll come across numerous examples of archived skypechats or blogger notes. There is such rich content - of value for participants in the original conversations and non-participants reading the archives. Wouldn’t it be incredible to open up the learning that takes place in our classrooms to this kind of participation?

Darren Kuropatwa invites us to imagine the possibilities in this post reflecting on the BLC Conference:

Imagine a 20 minute lecture where all your students back channel about what you’re saying. Outside guests or experts are invited in. Someone acts as a “rudder” to keep the conversation on track. The discussion is displayed on a SMARTboard or with a projector. The chatcast is immediately dumped into a wiki. The rest of the class is devoted to reorganizing the wiki clarifying what was said, answering questions (student to student as well as teacher to student; and don’t forget the people, students, teachers, mentors or parents beyond the glass walls of the room) summarizing the big ideas, reframing the discussion in terms of what needs to be explained again and where we’re going next. Imagine the possibilities …

Imagine indeed! I have a “gut feeling” that backchannelling activities may democratize classroom discussion, changing the dynamics as to who drives the conversation. In a recent post, Instructional Scaffolding, Konrad Klogowski lists ownership of the learning event as a key characteristic of successful instructional interaction. He states:

The project can be initiated or suggested by the teacher as long as the student has his or her own reasons for participating in the activity and is given opportunities to develop the topic as an independent researcher.

I think the kind of back channelling activity I’ve witnessed so far will pull students into learning ownership.

You’ll be hearing more from me on this topic as I try to think through my questions, and I have so many questions…

Technorati Tags: backchannelling discussion learning activities Atlanta Edubloggercon NECC07 NECC2007 BLC07 BLC2007 Skype chatcast Brian Crosby David Warlick WOW2 David Jakes Ewan McIntosh Dean Shareski Darren Kuropatwa Konrad Klogowski

If you had to guess, how “old” would you say the practice of blogging is?

For sure, I’d guess at least five years. Well I’m off a fair bit - double that. According to this article in the Wall Street journal:

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger — regarded by many to be Jorn Barger — began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”

The article goes on to mention that David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld were also early adopters of this new form of journalism/editorialism. In fact when I searched for CamWorld to find the link to insert here, I came across this entry, posted July 11, CamWorld Turns Ten. It’s a fascinating post. In it Barrett states:

Ten years ago today I sat down at my trusty Apple PowerMac 7100 (66 Mhz), fired up a text editor and wrote the very first entry of this weblog. It said simply, “Life is a constant challenge.”

There was no further explanation, no diatribe about the turmoil my life was in at the time, no links to web design and HTML resources elsewhere on the web, no opinion about politics, no product reviews or endorsements. It was simply a cheap rhetorical statement thrown out into the growing thing which soon acquired a name: the blogosphere.

Barrett goes on to describe how much a part of his life blogging has become and how his blog has chronicled major events in life, including his claim that he was the first person to ever get fired over a blog. He also added that although blogging is still important to him, personal and work commitments keep him from writing as much as he’d like.

I’m not going to summarize any more of the Wall Street Journal article here. It’s a fascinating read, with a dozen brief meditations by people, (such as Mia Farrow, Newt Gingrich and Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner), from a variety of walks of life on what the blog has come to mean to them. Pour the beverage of your choice, relax and check it out for yourself!

There are a few videos embedded in the article as well. This one resonated so much with me, I felt compelled to embed it here, as opposed to simply pointing to it.

In the video, Cory Doctorow and David Pescovitz of BoingBoing.net talk about how they come up with ideas for their blog posts. They simply write about the topics they are passionate about. They don’t claim to be “experts” on these topics. They know that with the size and diversity of their readership, there will always be readers who are “smarter than they are”. Their readers, who are also passionate about the topic, (or they wouldn’t have made their way there), will correct any inaccuracies or misconceptions in the post, answer questions the bloggers may have asked, or just add to their depth of understanding. In fact Doctorow says that often they end up collaborating with the people they are writing about.

I’ve watched the video several times now. To me it really drives home the critical role the reader has in blogging. The onus is on the reader to not only make meaning from the text, but to contribute to the text. If David Warlick were ever to read this post, I imagine he’d say, yes, that’s part of the new literacy I’ve been talking about. Well David, I think I get it!

Technorati Tags: blogging blogiversary Wall Street Journal VARADARAJAN literacy Warlick