Who I Aggregate

Who Aggregates Me (and has shared their OPML)

& on Bloglines

Education
Technology

[alterego]
autounfocus
Bill Brandon
Blog.IT
Brooklyn BloggEd
cogdogblog
Collaborative Learning
Dale Pike
David Davies
Disruptive Technology
EdBlogger Praxis
EduResources
EdTechPost
EduBlog Insights
Edu-blog News
elearningpost
elearnspace
Headshift Moments
HomoLudens
Jim Flowers
Learning Circuits
Many 2 Many
Mark Roseman
Online Learning
open-education
Seblogging
Stephen Downes
teachnology
Ten Reasons Why
Tim Lauer
SiT
Weblogg-ed
X-Plana

Internet

A Networked World
headshift moments
mamamusings
tmt, tlt
McGee's Musings
Micah Alpern
Microdoc News
Powazek
Scripting News

Other

Connectivity
Library Stuff
Mathemagenic
Open Access News
Seb's Open Research
The Shifted Librarian
Unbound Spiral


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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Just Say 'Well...' Jenny wants to say 'Yes' to pre-populated aggregators. I'm probably just being pedantic here (that'd be a surprise ;o) but, well... In comparison to real life... you get a reading list, you don't get the books (it'd be too much of a head-job). Feeds need descriptors! I do do do like the idea of pre-population as a social-catalyst (especially given Sebastian's 'loosely-coupled nature' and 'painless configurations')... but that should be *initially* teacher driven (tick the box if you would like the class subscribed to each others feeds / tick the box if you would like people subscribed to only learning groups feeds) Yes, let's pre-pop with 'Key institutional news', 'Weblogs at wherever' band 'Institutions newspaper' but let's stop there News aggregation is not about centralization, it's about individualization. 11:53:54 AM    comments   trackback

Autonomy in Online (Teaching &) Learning Environments   Sebastian posts one of those posts that link into so much that I’ve been involved with lately that it’s scary… I hardly know where to start… well, let’s just freestyle ;o)   Basically he pulls into focus the key concepts of the “autonomy, adaptability, and compatibility of [personal and collaborative webpublishings] various components” when used as a learning environment, arguing that:   “Through these mechanisms it is possible to set up rather coherent and highly integrated environments that nevertheless remain only loosely-coupled from a technical perspective. This type of architecture offers a number of advantages if our ultimate educational objective is the emancipation and growing self-organization of individual learners.” [Seblogging]   Which was what got me going, especially the bit about the ‘emancipation and growing self-organization of individual learners’ because I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t this drive to ‘emancipation’ and ‘autonomy’ with which we a throttling ourselves, um, educationally speaking.   [an aside here is that Seb goes on to give three excellent examples of how autonomous technicality and the malleableness of content and feedback flows differentiates and empowers personal and collaborative webpublishing in an online learning environments… which is well worth reading… it’s just that I got started on the first bit :o]   This has come about from two recent experiences, the first was rereading some Clay Shirky work while thinking about a possible weblogging and RSS paper for ASCILITE 2004, specifically ‘A Group is it’s own worse Enemy’ (2003), in particular his references to W. R. Bion’s ‘Experiences in groups’ where Bion identifies three patterns of behaviour (in his particular group of neurotics) namely, sex talk, vilification of enemies and religious veneration and describes how these cause the group to defeat itself:   “Bion has identified this possibility of groups sandbagging their sophisticated goals with these basic urges. And what he finally came to, in analyzing this tension, is that group structure is necessary. Robert's Rules of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws, the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible behaviors, we're going to draw a relatively small circle around the acceptable ones.   He said the group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members.” [Clay Shirky]   And if you accept this as being the case, the next step is to think about how this ‘constitution’ can work… and I’d say that, on the whole, the constitution is NOT a document, set of guidelines or even that tangible, is IS in the structure, in the context and feedback flows, in the technical and social environment (in the same paper Shirky goes on to say how these can’t be separated ‘People who work on social software are closer in spirit to economists and political scientists than they are to people making compilers’).   For example, yesterday I had the good fortune to meet with an experienced teacher (of our faculty of education). and we talked about how her online groups have fared over the last couple of semesters, in particular moving from using FirstClass to WebCT Vista.   What she has experienced is a significant movement towards autonomous groups and a significant decrease in teacher presence within her course. Not due to any changes in her pedagogy but by the way the environment has been structured… a dramatic example of the power of structure.   Basically, in FirstClass, her conferences looked like this:       There was a main ‘conference’ and from that there were ‘sub conferences’. In essence a student had to enter the main conference in order to get into their ‘small group’ conferences and hence they were exposed to, participated in and were part of the larger group… the group ‘controlled’ by her. This is a constitution of sorts… “Your first port of call is this area, it is run by the teacher and you are expected to read and participate in it, and then you can go into small groups and develop your autonomy from there.   However, in WebCT things look a bit different:   Now students have their own autonomous areas, not only are these not accessed through the main conference but they’re also accessible through a number of other means (students can pull up lists of all ‘discussions’ from their main menu, for example). This separation gives them autonomy, it, in a way, emancipates the learners and it removes the structure and constitution that was previously there. Net conclusion… students are showing lower participation rates, groups aren’t following tasks, she is having to ramp up her involvement dramatically and shift her pedagogy towards a much more directed one and, without any change in course content, type of cohort, activities or assessment the entire course is changed… all because of the structure of the environment. Because learning doesn’t just happen. That’s why we do what we do… to reroute Shirky’s interpretation of Bion:  “[teaching] exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic patterns. [teaching] defends the group from the action of its own members”   But you can’t teach well if you don’t have the means, teaching by post, over rthe phone, through the TV or online is very different… the structure of a learning environment is, in a significant way, a driver of it’s constitution… it is NOT a neutral technical aspect… without a structure that allows for effective teacher presence (and, if you will, controlled autonomy and emancipation) and which is PEDAGOGICALLY appropriate and flexible we are swimming against the tide in trying to teach effectively online. 11:20:00 AM    comments   trackback

Nothing to do with the great civil rights leader, James Farmer, but here are some links that are:

Greensboro sit-ins
Reflections
Family (with pictures)


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