Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Enabling collaborative learning. Sebastian has found Martin Terre Blanche's wonderful blog. He quotes a good post on obstacles to collaborative learning. Students and lecturers are more familiar with a knowledge-transmission model of education and don't always understand what is expected of us in a more constructionist environment. We have too little information about lecturers' and students' backgrounds, networks and skills - so often we don't realize that there is somebody in the group who could teach the rest of us a lot about some aspect of what we're studying. No or very limited mechanisms for students to talk back to the lecturer and (especially) to talk to one another. Inadequate 'course memory'. Lecturers often are the only bridge for this year's students to the knowledge created by last year's group - students don't get to see what last year's group did. There is no mechanism for students who want to stay in the group after the course is officially over (and who could be a useful resource for next year's students) to do so. [Martin Terre Blanche] Reading through this list made me realize that the people who pioneer new modes of communication in hi-tech conferences these days are in the process of fixing these issues - through backchannelling and real-time blogging, the product of which most often gets turned into permanent, hyperlinked, googlable archives for the benefit of those who aren't there. Here are some more obstacles elicited from one of Martin's readers. [Seb's Open Research] So good to have Seb back blogging again. The ideas in this post are dear to my heart as I teach online at UPEI. I have found that effective teaching online demands a really different pedagogy from the sage on the stage model of content transmission. I laugh when some e of my colleagues in the faculty worry about their content being stolen when I have found that what works best is dialogue, By about week 3, I hardly post at all and the class have taken over. What I find works is to have a big idea for a class - This term we look at how businesses that use the principles of the Natural Step are not only doing good but doing well. Thus solving the paradox of the supposed choice between the planet or jobs which seems to paralyze movement. We have at the core of the class 2 books The Ecology of Commerce by my old mentor Paul Hawken, who comes here to PEI on August 13-14th, and The Natural Step for Business by Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare. Each week we have a series of questions that we use as a formal structure and we have assignments which are posted for all to see. So far it looks pretty conventional. But 40% of the mark goes for participation judged on quality and quantity. I have found that this feature gets the juices going. With a class of 20 we get about a 1,000 posts in a 6 week half semester. Very soon we shift gears up from the abstract to how each of us can make a difference. We leave the world of the case studies and we look at ourselves. By week 4, we have lost the academic voice and we are in Cluetrain territory where all of us are revealing a great deal about who we really are as people. The material has become an excuse to explore our lives. If we are lucky a student goes very deep and this stimulates the rest of us to open up as well. So the content is really only a catalyst. We have gone back to the Socratic method and it is hard to tell the prof from the student. We use WebCT which is very clunky but we mainly just use the discussion tool. I would love to use Groove which I find very smooth and has great features such as images and drawing tools. I have found that it is the quality of the conversation that counts the most. Asynchronicity is a popular feature with both me and the students. I get up very early and many of them work and post late. I have even taught while on vacation in Thailand! There is huge resistance to this type of approach from most faculty because they know no other way of teaching. Many of the younger students have a problem too as they have come from school, and also know no other way of learning. I have found that my adult students fit best as they have long ago left school and are very comfy with taking a leading role themselves. They also want o lear so that they know something new while many of kids take a course because they need the credit - very different. A lot more has to change before this approach is commonplace. School itself is a huge barrier as it en-cultures the kids to be passive learners. 5:47:43 PM    comment []

How many social networks does it take to change a lightbulb?. Welcome to Tribe.net. Very cool new social software app: Tribe.net. If you've been exploring social networking software services like Friendster lately, check out Tribe.net. I just learned this weekend that an old friend and former colleague, Brian Lawler, is part of the dev team... very nice UI on this thing, and seems to facilitate certain kinds of interaction (read: non-gonad-driven) more elegantly than some of the other services out there right now. They're still in beta, but they say they hope to move into general release pretty soon. So far, I'm liking it a lot. Not ditching my Friendster account anytime soon, though. Where else online could I schmooze with Satan, Carbohydrates, Mister Roboto, and vast legions of Goth/Burningman/Straightedge twentysomething hotties, all under one roof? Wait, don't answer that. Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] So Mark Pincus' and Paul Martino's baby finally sees the light of day.  I've been helping out, pushing in a few different directions.  danah boyd is also involved.  Come on over and try it out! [Marc's Voice] Ok I have finally reached my limit for joining these things.  I had enough trouble trying to persuade friends to join Ryze, let alone Friendster, LinkedIn, EveryonesConnected,... I got some benefit out of Ryze but not enough to justify paying for it.  It's hard to see what being yet another member of Tribe.net would yield.  Maybe if these networks worked out how to federate membership (and still make money) but I don't see tangible benefits in being a member. I'd be interested in hearing stories from people who do.   [Curiouser and curiouser!] I agree with Matt - I can only sustain a few relationships. The ones I have I want to pay attention to. Once I start to breach the laws of Magic Numbers, it all falls apart. 8:19:10 AM    comment []

PLACE-ORIENTED BLOGS. You may have noticed that I (sometimes unfairly) group blogs in my blogroll into artistic, business/scientific, environmental, news, and political categories, with Salon blogs listed separately because...well, because they're my community. Recently I've discovered another type of blog that is primarily geographical in nature. These have been self-styled as 'place-oriented blogs' or 'blogs of place'. Although most of us write from time to time about what's happening in our physical community, place-oriented bloggers write almost exclusively about the history, geography, and current events (often with photos) of their community. They're actually very entertaining (and sometimes educational) to read. Here are some of the best of the breed I've found: London and the North - London & Yorkshire, UK Faultline / Creek Running North - California Lifescapes - Texas Bowen Island Journal - British Columbia Laughing Knees - Japan Life at the Edge - Tasmania (whence the photo above) Ecotone - A wiki with more Bloggers of Place, and more about them Some of our Salon bloggers write more about their physical location than others, especially those living outside the country as ex-pats. What do you think -- is your blog a 'blog of place' or do you just write about home when there's nothing more urgent to write about? Is this a legitimate new genre of blog? I have occasionally posted about my home on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, but not with any geographic thoroughness. Should I write more about place? [How to Save the World] Thanks Dave - you and Chris on Bowen Island have got me thinking this morning about why PEI is so important to me. I was at a wedding this weekend of two friends - one from Germany who owns 600 acres here and his new wife from Argentina. Many aspects of the wedding link back to place. We held the wedding at his "place" a cabin that he had built with friends in the woods. He has been living in Paris where his wife is at school and could only turn up here on PEI a few days before the event. She is organizing the second wedding in BA later this month - so his friends organized this wedding. Everything came from the farms and smokehouses of people that he knew. The cook was my daughter, the serving staff the daughters of friends - the wine waiter - me. The photographer was a friend who taught his wife last year at the community college. In effect he was truly married in front of his community. On PEI, our place in our place demands that we really help out our neighbours His final words in his speech of thanks though were not to the people but to the land - the great pull that this "place" has on all of us who live here. He like me have in effect come home to this place after many years of wandering. Like the Odyssey maybe? I wonder if most of us have forgotten the power of place. We live such mobile lives. I think that I have moved more than 20 times. We get so busy that we cannot pay attention to the detail of our place. Yet for our ancestors place was everything - you would know every bump, every tree every wave of new growth of the wildflowers. Like Chris on Bowen Island, an island helps reinforce the sense of place as it has boundaries. Not just physical ones but community boundaries. Not being born here I will never become an Islander. Good clubs have tough rules for membership. I think that such community boundaries push those from away together and push us to contribute. At least when I die, people may say that I have helped my community - not bad for a foreigner? Dying here on PEI is a huge deal - funerals are command performances and supplant any other social or business arrangement. Going to a funeral can get you out of anything. For a while I thought that this was quaint - but living close to death all the time has given me a new perspective. People matter here - they come first in fact. So when a family member dies - the whole community pulls together. After all we all end here. Dave talks about the value of walking his place with his dog Chelsea. I find that Jay and Mildred have also taught me a lot about my part of this place. We too have ritual walks around the boundaries of my place. The dogs poo and pee at strategic places just outside our legal boundaries. The dogs like running through the hay fields where they periodically jump like dolphins from below the tops into the air where they can see where I am at the edge of the field. At dusk Jay stands at the 4 corners and barks defiance to the foxes and coyotes who lurk just beyond the boundaries. We have an old horse training track around a field that I mow. Inside the field is either hay or barley. On the perimeter that I don't mow is a bank of wild flowers that shift in their own rotation as the summer moves into fall. We have a tree house that you can go up into to look around the place. I find that mowing - 4 acres twice a week - is not only a form of meditation but also allows me to sense the minute changes in the place. Changes in soil moisture; Changes in the insect world; Changes in the bird population; changes in the weed rotation . I have been surprised in that I now can notice the smallest changes in our local environment. Most of my work too seems to be moving in a direction that supports this place. When I work to help the health system it is of course my health system. When I work to help an Island business to do better, it improves my community as well. This has changed my view of work from being a narrow relationship with a client to a broader relationship to my place. Thanks again Dave for a good jolt this morning   8:15:42 AM    comment []