Edublogging: getting started and what the future may be.
Summary: Have been reading and thinking about the ideas of interested participant-players in the edublogging arena. I summarize, link and respond. Topics: the psychological effect of edublogging, getting students started with edublogging, the nature of the set of educational paradigms after edublogging is fully established.
Reading two edublogging entries ( one here and the second here) from James Farmer started me off. Initially he cited blog entries of Seb Fiedler and Seb Paquet , [in response to Seb Fiedler] on equipping college and graduate students with weblogs as a major learning and self-development tool. Their entries are well worth your time.
To their thoughts I would add two. First, this is not simply a technology you are trying to hand over to these students. You are passing over the deuterolearning (aka meta-learning and learning-to-learn) torch.
Think of weblogging as a major self-teaching tool, a learning-to-learn tool. Even if the student learns only to use the weblog as a self-reflexive journal it has the potential of enhancing self-teaching. If we take that capacity and add to it the self-directed research and collaboration opportunities that are increasingly available on the web, we are talking about a major self-uplift machine. That said, it may now be more obvious why I believe that there are intrapersonal as well as technical issues of weblogging that you and the student must deal with in order that the student learn's to use the weblogging technology fruitfully. Ones which they may need help and encouragement with, with which they have had little direct training to this point in their education.[I thought I might mention this because those already deep into a) weblogging / journaling, or b)research and development, as two examples, are already deep into self-directed growth and may take their own skill for granted. This taking-for-granted sets up a certain blindness to the total set of attitudes and skills that go into high levels of active and self-directed learning. And this blindness, in turn, can render the teacher/developer incapable of isolating and teaching the subskills and attitudes that are involved.] [Spike Hall]
Spike is right on the spot with his comment. I have argued for quite a while that careful interface design and a step by step introduction to functionalities and particularities of Webpublishing systems ensures that students quickly master the "technical issues" of weblogging. This is rather manageable task in comparison to "handing over the meta-learning torch".
Though I certainly see the potential of personal Webpublishing to be turned into "a major self-uplift machine" (actually a good part of my paper for BlogTalk 2003 was trying to examine the possibility to conceptualize personal Webpublshing as a powerful tool for self-organized learning), I keep bumping into missing "subskills and attitudes" of adult learners whenever I try to integrate personal Webpublishing practices into formal course settings.
I don't think I necessarily suffer from a "blindness to the total set of attitudes and skills that go into high levels of active and self-directed learning." Instead, I am searching for learning environment designs and intervention strategies that support a transition away from an authority and curriculum centered approach to learning.
Changing the habits and attitudes of adult learners is an incredible hard job to do and always raises a variety of ethical questions. Humans are rather conservative systems not only in a biological sense. To understand why some folks just cannot make sense out of personal Webpublishing practices in the context of learning, it is useful to look at Gregory Bateson's writings.
We suggest that what is learned in Learning II [meaning: learning-to-learn or meta-learning] is a way of punctuating events. But a way of punctuating is not true or false. There is nothing contained in the propositions of this learning that can be tested against reality. It is like a picture seen in an inkblot; it has neither correctness nor incorrectness. It is only a way of seeing the inkblot. [Gregory Bateson in "The logical Categories of Learning and Communication"]
Now, let's say our inkblot is a certain learning environment design within a formal instructional context (like a grad course at a university). The adult learners all carry an extensive history of formal learning and immediately punctuate the stream of events into familiar contexts of learning:
"This is the instructor, she will deliver content and tell me what to do... these are my peers,... they do not know much more than I do, ... what exactly do I have to do to get a good grade here?... what are the resources that I am supposed to work through? ... "
Who would want to claim that this is an incorrect way of punctuating (and thereby making sense out of) the average formal instructional arrangement?
So, here we are coming along with these Webpublishing tools and practices and tell these good folks: "Oh, forget about anything you have learned about formal instructional contexts. What you really want to do is putting half-digested thoughts, unpolished products, stories of your struggles and mistakes, and your personal questions, worries and the occasional insight on the World Wide Web, for anyone to see. "
This is a major perturbation (to use a term from Piaget) for quite a few people. And being a rather robust mature human organism, adult learners surely hold a bunch of coping strategies to fight such perturbation off and to keep there current system running.
What can we really do to promote more self-teaching and self-organized learning?
Can personal Webpublishing practices support a development into this direction?
Or do we need to treat some "attitudes and sub-skills" as explicit pre-requisites for turning personal Webpublishing into a tool for personally meaningul learning?
[Sebastian Fiedler]
[Seblogging News]
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