Department of Alchemy » education

SXSW Podcast

Alex Leavitt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:27:40 +0000

So, I went to this thing called South by Southwest. It’s a tech conference in Austin, TX. Kind of big, maybe.

I presented a panel about social technology in education. The podcast’s up. Why not give it a listen?

On the Notepad: The Evolving Palette of My External Memory

Alex Leavitt — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:18:25 +0000

Ever since my laptop battery died in Kyoto (currently, it runs only via wire) back around October, I’ve been constantly musing about purchasing a new computer. A post is forthcoming on the issue. However, in my ponderings, I have thought about many of the motivations and consequences of said purchase. One of which happens to be its benefits in the classroom.

Aside:

I will now unabashedly plug a panel (not that I haven’t already) that I’ll be moderating in March at SXSW:

“Blackboards or Backchannels: (Social) Technology in the Classroom of Tomorrow”
Five students will come together to discuss technology in the classroom and the implications of technology to help improve (or utterly destroy) the social elements of education.

One of the debates I’ve had over the past year in writing for this blog concerns the essence of note taking. I’ve written in the past about my aversion toward liveblogging and my affinity for accurate notes, however meticulous. Over the past few years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my notes, when typed or written, culminate in roughly verbatim reproductions. I grasp at words. I ingest language and digest meaning.

My realization: pencil on paper no longer does the trick. As minute as my script has become, this semester I churn out two to three full-length, handwritten pages per class period. Yet I still snatch at my teachers’ dictations, trying to capture the entirety of every phrase. The readability of my notes thence suffers, as my pen dances from left margin to right, without lifting from the page even to spare the spaces between syllables, while I battle between lecture transcription and lecture absorption.

With a typing speed averaging around ninety to one hundred words a minute (thank you, middle school computer classes), I can speedily record my precise notes while assimilating the content. Only in the past year have I carried my laptop to class in order to take notes by means of keyboard. I could use excuses as reasons for the change (save trees, easier to share online, &c.), but it comes down to practicality. To take notes as detailed as I want, the convenience of the keyboard helps me to write quickly and succinctly, while also providing the opportunity to process the presented information more thoroughly. Of course, the keyboard has limitations, restricting the ability to scribble more than words. For example, my methodology is built around a complex system of arrows to point here and there to signify links of meaning and significance.

Forbes recently talked with David Karger, the leader of a project to develop a new system of note taking online:
The study found that “capture speed” was the main reason a worker might choose a Post-it note over a computer program, even those programs specifically designed for these sorts of jottings.
“Even seemingly minor difficulties or annoyances with tools could deter use of a tool,” the study said. It noted that one volunteer subject “would write notes on Post-its and stick them to his cellular phone to transfer into Outlook later rather than enter the data directly into his smart phone, even though the phone supported note synchronization.
“When asked why not enter the note digitally in the first place, he responded, ‘Starting in Outlook forces me to make a type assignment, assign a category, set a deadline, and more; that takes too much work!’ Similarly, paper notebooks were often chosen instead of laptops because they required no time to boot up.”
My opinion is that pen and paper now limit my “capture speed,” especially when I can simply bring up a TextEdit file (advocated by Diana Kimball) and type away.

Of course, note taking on my laptop does not replace the notepad. My desk is garnished with the multicolors of PostIt notes, while my desk houses a dozen different pocket-sized, portable notebooks. Sometimes I even find myself affixing stickies to my computer screen. It’s probably true that the most convenient upgrade to laptop technology would be constant operation without rebooting. For now, the keyboard provides a most efficient method to capture language, while still being able to call the records notes.

SXSW: Promote That Which is Awesome

Alex Leavitt — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:40:23 +0000

Awesomeness will be going down in Austin, Texas come March 2009.

I’m putting together a panel on technology in the classroom for an infamous conference called South by Southwest. My presentation’s called “Blackboards or Backchannels: The Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow.” This thing’s BIG. And I’m trying to make it bigger.

I’d love to show the audience the potential and capability of students connected. The Internet is a grandiose machine. So I’m extending a hand to fellow students and friends to get the word out.

If you’re willing to help, go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1123, take five seconds to create an account, and vote on my panel idea. If you want to be more awesome, vote and then leave a comment, to get people talking.

This would be an awesome way to show that students, together, can break the system, be it a simple voting interface or the conventional, old-school methodology of education.

Visit the original Facebook note here and throw it around between your own group of friends.

Also, check out these other nibblets of amazing:

Christina Xu’s Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke

Tim Hwang’s The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10 and Obsolete?: A World After E-mail

Notes from Berkman Luncheon w/ Anne Balsamo

Alex Leavitt — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:47:16 +0000

As soon as I saw a derivative of the term “culture” in Anne Balsamo’s bio linked to from the Berkman website, I knew I wanted to attend this luncheon. Ironically, there was only mention of cultural reproduction (though it’s apparently present in her book, soon to be released), with much of the discussion focused around the future of libraries and museums (still interesting). The initial idea that jumped out at me from Anne’s presentation was her point about media as reproduction, specifically alluding to biological functions, and how this metaphoric/literal process defines and reworks our notions of gender online. Three other points were brought up that I want to discuss in future articles:
- Memory, remembering, and the evolution of stories and their telling in the move to the digital environment
- The future of the meritocracy of professorships in relation to publications
- The potential importance of Harvard’s Houghton Library after digital literary curation/publication and the hypothetical revolution of personal paper-based printing & publication

For now, the notes:

—

Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work: Anne Balsamo

—

book: transmedia project

addresses 3 points:

technological innovation: transform what is known to what is possible
technological imagination: engage materiality of world to create conditions for future world making
cultural reproduction: development of new narratives, myths, rituals;

technology, the world, culture: created anew
training of technological imagination: necessary

designers: work scene of technological emergence

ch. 1 – culture in the age of innovation

polemic of book: need to train imaginations to take seriously technological innovations: responsibility of educators across curriculum
how humanities can serve as resources: to engage new technologies

ch. 2 – gendering the technological imagination

always gendered, but we didn’t recognize it as such
biological reproductive technologies: connects to media technologies as premier reproductive technologies of our age: draws from feminist criticism on reproduction

ch. 3 – the performance of innovation

work on future of reading: w/ embryonic technologies

ch. – public interactives and technological literacies
designed to communicate history that is all of ours
future of literacies

ch. – working the paradigm shift
focus on literal labor: participatory culture: call people to the hard work required by the paradigm shift

ch. – the work of the book in a digital age
Q: why are you writing a print-based book?

—

transmedia project: relates to other previous projects:

interactive multimedia documentary (“women of the world talk back”) on women’s rights held by UN in Beijing

practices on new media journalism

museum exhibit: designed to probe how we might read in the future: not abandon but rethink the print-based book

—

we need to do something different to bridge the two cultures
need to create new institutional places: multidisciplinary research/projects

new participants: women, underrepresented participants
new commitments: requires everyone to be learners again
collaborative teams: from early work in feminist organizing
new spaces: where people can work together on technological things

—

distributed research network: in UC Irvine, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago
scholarship in a digital age: will look different: local and distributed
understanding technological infrastructure to support distributed research network

digital research & learning @ McArthur: funded: museums, libraries, schools, recreation, home, after-school
claim: learning is changing in a digital age: eg. learning occurs in distributed environment, not just one local place
think about how museums/libraries will function in distributed learning environment

—

What’s next?

XFR: Take 2
Digital Learning Objects: Open Education
MIxed Reality Learning Environments: Morse’s Law, Nintendo Wii (gesture-based interface)
Thinking with Objects: DIY movement, makers culture movement (making things with your hands; virtual: only simulations of what we used to do with our hands)

—

Q: what has everyone been thinking about futures of museums/libraries

—

Q&A:

Q: what is the future of designing librarians; how do you design professionals to adapt to new changes?

A: information designers: need standardization of metadata; also need people to understand how (meta-)information also has narrative, cultural effectivity; when we get to semantic web: it can’t be stupid

Q: Weinberger: future of paper-based books?

A: many genres of paper-based books that will migrate to the digital space; other genres: that aren’t going to disappear, because of physicality: paper-based: will long outlive human lives: part of case history; have to maintain digital archive
libraries: becoming museums of books that have ‘collections’

Q: Weinberger: in future w/ electronic readers: publishers won’t actually print books: will want to move directly to digital

A: things that are slipping away in a digital age: we will want to preserve

Q: humanities in the future: esp. w/ focus on publication

A: rethink scholarly publication, but I’m not the one to take on such a project;
have to learn to read again
UChicago: thinking about new paradigm of peer-review process for publication
tenure cases for those w/ digital scholarship

Q: printing a book: just output form; talk about crafting in digital environment: you: on laptop, w/ word processor

A: these kind of questions are critical, esp. w/ close reading of electronic text
authoring backwards
designer parallels with author

discussion:
libraries: providing ACCESS to books, etc.; cost of maintaining digital libraries: low, but not zero; decisions will always need to be made about curation
assumption: possibility of a canon: where all the ‘good’ books are

Q: “science fiction: the mythology of the industrial age”

Q: what do you think might be lost?

A: course: history of literacy: ongoing question of why is it important to remember?: disturbing: youth: just-in-time learners/rememberers
we haven’t taught value of remembering
culturally: remembering was more valuable to the other generation: ties to why history is important: ties to “future of the past”

—

digital divide: the other way: economic/social reasons
need to have interdisciplinary places of learning

Notes from Luncheon with Walter Bender (Sugar Labs) @ the Berkman Center

Alex Leavitt — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:17:05 +0000

I RSVP’d to the Berkman Center on a whim a couple of days ago, and I am glad that I went to this luncheon (the first of hopefully many for me). Sitting in a room of thirty people, with Walter sitting at the head of the mahogany table, talking calmly, solidly, professorly, I felt like part of a secluded university lecture. He’s an advocate for an education and he keeps faith in the three elements that I’ve always found necessary to education: learning from risks, learning from mistakes, and learning from experience. Notes are below.

—

OLPC: plan: have impact on learning
lack in opportunity: how do you give kids high quality education, opportunity to learn

school reform: impossible if done top-down; way it will change: generation of children who come to school w/ different skills/expectations: will change school
these laptops: will be part of manufacturing change

title: “Confessions of a Fundamentalist”
passionate about free/open source software
fundamentalist about: learning itself: what are the best ways to position/plant seeds of learning

constructionism: role for computation as thing to think with; something children should engage with
not just access to knowledge, but appropriation of knowledge
learn through doing; what’s a better tool for doing than a computer
want to engage people in things they’re passionate about

child-centric v. teacher-centric view of education/learning
everyone’s a learner, everyone’s a teacher
humans: expressive & social

proprietary v. free/open source
a = deals with delivery of knowledge
b = trying to move over the standard deviation: users: people who appropriate, rather than just access, knowledge
open source: culture of appropriation: cultural value

service-oriented stuff: not very good
phones: about service, not construction: service model: example: people don’t write programs or essays ON their phone
point: social nature of phones
optimal situation for learning: phones: lacking in other attributes (teaching, learning, expressive)

example: Dynabook, with background
building platform: skewing odds to ~ activity happening
1. build
2. critique/reflect
3. iterate (go back to step 1)

learning: wants to be free
culture around open source –> how do you decide about governance? difference between governance and engagement of community in critical discourse

engaging in collaboration, engaging in critique
tools to do this: lacking in education (maybe not university ed, but definitely in primary ed)

example:
Nigeria: English = official language, but spoken: probably 3rd largest
kids: built spelling dictionary for Igbo

Sugar: primary user experience on OLPC
at core of Sugar: notion of activity
before: run applications; turned “application” into “activity”: enhancement of application: 1) brings notion of sharing/sociability into the open: always present; presence of others is always with you; eg. ability to share document between users, whether online or offline; 2) journal: file system that automatically saves everything you do: never have to save/back up; creating a diary/portfolio of your work; place to watch your progress, have conversation with another about your progress: importance of progress, march through time: important feature of learning; 3) transparency: no ceiling; music: network with other laptops to play music, can compose music, make own instruments
Python: language that underlies Sugar: open

[why cell phones will never replace computers: memory capacity]

example: want to change metrics inside Sugar so that kids can measure in anything, any metric they imagine

David Hilbert: 23 problems of mathematics
23 problems facing people in technology & learning:
- how to make the network work?
- make code that is malleable yet won’t lead to malware
- better tools for localization & internationalization
- power: use a scarce resource better? even if you’re using calories to crank in power, better use them intelligently
- construction in scale
- economics: correlating economic development with learning: hypothesis or fact that learning leads to economic development
- governance
(will be blogged)

—
Q&A:

Q: definition of free
A: not as in beer
comes down to appropriation: example: learn to code by copying code, breaking it down & changing it

Q: small inexpensive laptops: ie. Asus EEE
ultimately: help cause of learning via computers by making hardware more available, or hurt it by losing sight of mission of learning
A: definitely help it; $200 for laptop, versus $10,000/year on education; in developing countries: maybe $200/year on education

Q: cultural implications behind OLPC
A: one item of 23: understand culture vs. construction; constructionism: about people, about how they learn: based on Piaget’s constructivism
teacher: having more fun

Q: resistance — proprietary companies: don’t like idea of open source; how does interaction of proprietary companies and developing nations play out?
A: big social/economic battles in next few decades; people that go with open source: will do better in the long run;

Q: concern: not if enough laptops will be available in 1 week, but how many available in 5 years
A: OLPC: trying to keep the pressure on: so that industry won’t slip back; 5 affordable laptops announced in the last week
if we replace chalkboards with laptops: loss of value

Q: modern edu: these principles aren’t being taught
A: part of education: should be dirt on hands experience
lots of children, but “laptop” is part of OLPC so don’t forget that

Q: what is it that drives discussion: people, community, tools? what assumptions drive the balance and what we can do about it?
A: open source projects: rely on developers but also multiple volunteers; don’t think many are in it for the glory, but think they can make a difference

Q: people seem more willing to work on things and jump into them if they’re not shiny/new; how does design seem to enable more interest in working inside the laptop?
A: thought about it in slightly different way; skins: can replace set with more inviting images; other issue: don’t want things to break, but want people to explore: how do you make environment where you can find that balance?; instead of make it hard to break, make it easy to repair, so that people are willing to take risks and make mistakes

Berkman@10: Digital Natives & IRC

Alex Leavitt — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:19:45 +0000

I wrote last night about implementing IRC in an educational setting. The topic is coming up right now in the Digital Natives discussion about technology’s role in the classroom, methodologically and physically. I think it’s quite funny though how most of those sitting with laptops in front of them are not currently in the IRC channel. There’s been a huge debate that further proves the opportunities for hyperdiscussion. I’ve reproduced the IRC discussion below:

[11:12am] t55e: sc1olist: just noticed wiki page for the Digital Natives session
[11:12am] t55e: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/berkmanat10/Digital_Natives
[11:12am] daithi: so, where is everyone for these sessions?
…
[11:13am] alexleavitt: Digital Natives win.
…
[11:16am] daithi: digital natives is about 75% Macs!
[11:16am] sc1olist: Well, we *are* digital natives…
[11:16am] sc1olist: A discerning population, to be sure.
…
[11:16am] sc1olist: Digital connoisseurs, if you will. Ha
…
[11:30am] daithi: over in natives, Urs Gasser is explaining the context, through a discussion of layers, but after that all the action will be at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/digitalnativeberkman10
…
[11:34am] EricaG: I love the mixed IRC & twitter chat from multiple rooms at once. Makes it almost possible to go to everything :D.
…
[11:34am] sc1olist: (digital natives) Welcome to academia, everybody.
…
[11:34am] sc1olist: what’s the twitter tag tracker for berkman again?
[11:34am] dwitzel_: using the question tool in the Digital Natives session – http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/digitalnativeberkman10
[11:34am] dwitzel_: #berkman
…
[11:35am] EricaG: berkmanat10 is the universal tag for everything but twitter.
…
[11:35am] EricaG: twitter tag is #berkman since it’s shorter and enables both twemes and hashtags to track
[11:35am] daithi: i’m trying to get as much down as I can at http://www.lexferenda.com/16052008/native/
…
[11:44am] jeckman: somebody in the last breakout called me an adult, by which I think he meant I was old
[11:45am] daithi: are you? Apparently the digital native cut-off point is 1980.
[11:45am] jeckman: because I was Born before the internet. Not a native by a decade, fwiw
…
[11:45am] jeckman: though I have been on the net since 1989
[11:46am] dwitzel_: jbeckman, i think you can still get a digital green card
[11:46am] jeckman: <- (digital immigrant)
…
[11:46am] dwitzel_: illegal immigrant?
[11:47am] EricaG: I’m in the cusp. Most people won’t claim me in GenX, but I’m a coupe years older than the official “digital native.” [1978]
…
[11:51am] fonchik: naturalized digital citizens?
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[11:52am] daithi: John Palfrey wonders whether classrooms should be wired/online during class. What do ye think?
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[11:53am] jeckman: @jessamyn Which means technically I was born before the internet (1970)
[11:54am] jeckman: And yes, classrooms should be wired during class
…
[11:54am] sc1olist: (digital natives) So far, no mention of it being useful in class to find context to what’s happening/discussed. Or that people take notes on laptops.
[11:55am] daithi: or IRC it
[11:55am] saraw1: exactly. i don’t know why professors are so threatened by it.
[11:55am] ltsui: connectivity is great for looking up things in wikipedia during class
[11:55am] saraw1: besides, what constitutes participation? Can you participate without talking? I think yes
[11:55am] sc1olist: @ltsui Exactly. ESSENTIAL in history, particularly at the graduate level.
…
[11:56am] EricaG: jassamyn, it’s so time for revolt. these aren’t supposed to be lectures.
[11:56am] jessamyn: speaking of IRCing it, does anyone have a link for THIS Scott MCloud (do I have that right?)? I keep finding the cartoonist
[11:56am] dwitzel_: shouldn’t your twitter feed count for “participation”
[11:56am] saraw1: i was in school before we had any computers in the classroom. i knew then how to feign participation/interest
[11:56am] saraw1: dwetzel-I should say so!!!!
[11:57am] jessamyn: I am trapped by my own politeness
[11:57am] fonchik: I came to college with an electric typewriter
[11:57am] saraw1: the computer has nothing to do with whether you are participating or not, nor BTW does speaking in class
…
[11:58am] sc1olist: @saraw1: I disagree on the latter, but the former is quite true. In fact, it often helps give people the confidence to talk.
…
[11:58am] alexleavitt: I don’t see why IRC shouldn’t be implemented in classroom, or at least seminar, discussion
…
[11:59am] saraw1: why does speaking in class count as participation while being silently involved does not? it’s discrimination against introverts
[11:59am] alexleavitt: http://alexleavitt.com/2008/05/16/berkman10-irc-and-the-dialogue-of-education/
[11:59am] saraw1: besides, note that there is such a thing as saying something just to say it. e.g. content-free participation
…
[12:00pm] alexleavitt: most of my English teachers have counted class participation simply through attendance; class participation grades just seem to be part of the old system that needs to change
[12:00pm] daithi: @sara: it can raise interesting gender/class/social/ethnic/disability issues too, i.e. multiple options for participation can be an anti-exclusion device
[12:00pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: It’s not that it doesn’t, it’s that it’s an important part of the training that school provides–the confidence to vocalize opinions and defend them. THere’s an argument to be made for it, that’s all. Don’t completely disagree with you.
[12:00pm] saraw1: absolutely.
[12:01pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: BTW, it’s discriminatory to teach math to people who are inherently worse at quantitative methodlogy?
[12:01pm] EricaG: it’s annoying that participation measurement favors people who speak before they think over people who save their thoughts & produce analysis later, or wait to speak til they have something new or useful to say
[12:01pm] jessamyn: I have a general feeling that we measure the wrong things, in libraries this happens, no suprise in education too
[12:01pm] sc1olist: @EricaG: Yes and no. I think we don’t give professors enough credit for suggesting participation is simply quantity.
[12:01pm] saraw1: No, it is that the definition of what constitutes participation is too narrow and variable
[12:01pm] ltsui: ericag: isn’t that why we also have response papers, final papers, exams etc? i can imagine blogging (live or not) also being part of participation.
…
[12:02pm] saraw1: it’s not objective—and i don’t know that there is any correlation between someone’s arbitrary definition of participation and learning–which is, after all, the point of education
[12:02pm] EricaG: @sc1olist I remember being in classes where the number of times you spoke up was part of your participation grade, or where you could only actually get a chance to speak if you raised your hand ridiculously early
…
[12:02pm] alexleavitt: so, are we going to define participation by who writes in a collaborative Google doc?
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[12:03pm] sc1olist: @EricaG: Yeah, that’s insane. And not productive for learning.
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[12:04pm] saraw1: no, until it can be shown to be objectively assessed in a fair, consistent way—and until it can be shown to have any correlation w/educational outcomes, it is not worth grading
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[12:04pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: And the same goes for paper grading? Becuase that can’t be done in a fully objective way.
…
[12:05pm] ltsui: saraw1: i do think learning to speak in public (incl classroom) should be part of an education
[12:05pm] sc1olist: @saraw1: Do you really believe that one’s ability to defend their ideas verbally is not correlated to educational outcome, or, in another word, IS itself an outcome (since it’s so directly useful in life almost regardless of the field?)
[12:06pm] alexleavitt: @Itsui: I entirely disagree. Public speaking should be a requirement in every educational institution.
[12:06pm] sc1olist: @alex: agreed.
[12:06pm] alexleavitt: @myself: don’t add in “not”s to people’s comments
[12:06pm] fonchik: Could someone in the Digital Natives session explain this discussion (someone just tweeted it) “teaching with twitter rocks”
[12:06pm] saraw1: you are reading my objection to participation grades way, way too broadly and btw discrediting the point i am trying to make by way of hyperbole
[12:07pm] ltsui: @alexleavitt: i was saying learning to speak publicly is necessary. i dont think we are disagreeing
[12:07pm] alexleavitt: @fonchik: We’re talking about using laptops in classrooms.
…
[12:07pm] EricaG: i agree people need to learn how to defend their ideas and speak confidently and extemporaneously. but that can be done by having people make presnetations and take questions, having debates, etc. rather than trying to pretend you’re measuring it quantitatively
[12:07pm] daithi: Someone said that they were encouraging students to use twitter in class, and JohnPalfrey asked who else did, and there was some murmurs
…
[12:07pm] alexleavitt: @Itsui. Re: alexleavitt: @myself
[12:07pm] saraw1: learning to speak in public and learning per se are two different things
[12:07pm] fonchik: @daithi thanks!
[12:08pm] sc1olist: @saraw: basically, the question is if we’re teaching knowledge in some existential sense, which I think is what you’re getting at with “learning” (correct me if I’m wrong) or useful skills that could be tought (learned) in school.
[12:08pm] alexleavitt: The interesting thing about using twitter during some type of lecture is that with the limitation of input, the results usually end up highlighting important, favorite, or interesting quotations (just look at the Berkman twitter feed)
[12:10pm] alexleavitt: BTW, for anyone inside or outside the Digital Natives discussion, this YouTube video is a must watch: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o (A Vision of Students Today, Michael Wesch, Kentucky State University)
[12:10pm] saraw1: i want to go back to daithi’s comments about gender/race/native language/cultural differences re-comfort w/public speaking.
…
[12:10pm] daithi: si?
[12:11pm] sc1olist: @digitalnatives talk: How is having one’s head buried in a laptop different from in a notebook? Aren’t the people who have their heads buried in laptops simple the close notetakers of the present? Same typology.
…
[12:11pm] fonchik: @ericag is this IRC getting archived somewhere somehow?
[12:11pm] saraw1: with which i completely agree. btw, I have no trouble speaking up when i have something to say.
[12:11pm] EricaG: No
[12:11pm] alexleavitt: This discussion will be copypasta-ed to my blog.
[12:11pm] • MooingLemur can provide a log.
[12:11pm] EricaG: cool
[12:11pm] daithi: i’ll give a bit more context on what i meant, look for example about the debate on dyslexia and separating out core learning outcomes (and tapering assessment to the outcomes)
[12:12pm] daithi: to avoid assessing something that’s not part of the outcomes
…
[12:12pm] saraw1: but I do have a child who is brilliant but very shy. she gets 100%’s on most of her exams, knows the material cold, but gets b’s and c’s for not speaking up enough
[12:12pm] daithi: for class participation, the pedagogical question is what are you trying to communicate and measure
[12:12pm] alexleavitt: webuse.org/papers
[12:13pm] saraw1: exactly (daithi)
…
[12:14pm] saraw1: but, because she is shy, she gets b’s and c’s for not speaking enough. oh, btw, i would love to see a study measuring how often teachers called on kids with different demographic characteristics
…
[12:15pm] dwitzel_: i have save a sizeable chunk of the IRC. can share somewhere
[12:15pm] sc1olist: me2
…
[12:18pm] daithi: Palfrey (DigitalNatives) recommends the MacArthur/MIT Press series on digital media and learning
[12:19pm] daithi: the link is http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=6&serid=170, on screen in the classroom
…
[12:23pm] dwitzel_: who is talking?
[12:23pm] dwitzel_: what university?
[12:24pm] dwitzel_: thx @alex
[12:24pm] dwitzel_: sorry — who is talking in digital natives breakout
[12:25pm] daithi: http://www.fir.unisg.ch/org/fir/web.nsf/c2d5250e0954edd3c12568e40027f306/fe9db20511dda0edc1256ae1002c64ff!OpenDocument
[12:25pm] daithi: Herbert Burkert (also http://www.herbert-burkert.net)

Berkman@10: IRC and the Dialogue of Education

Alex Leavitt — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:08:50 +0000

I will say it: Berkman@10 is offering too many social tools for its audience. Twitter. IRC. A democratic question display. And then there’s Flickr, Second Life, and the live webcasts. At one point, I was watching a streaming live video from someone’s cell phone (and was surprised at the quality to boot). I honestly felt too connected throughout much of the day.

While I took notes, though, I posted a couple of tweets, and then mostly hung out in the IRC channel. I’ve only used IRC a couple times before Berkman, so I had all the tools necessary to automatically jump into the channel and start chatting with everyone present in the virtual environment. But, seriously, and I [mis]quote Tim Hwang (with whom I shared a “Food for Thought” dinner): there were some haters in there. Harsh criticism from those who decided to speak their mind (I’m especially looking at you, Dave Winer).

Besides the negative critique from the IRC audience members, I actually used IRC a lot, beyond mere chatter. Kudos to everyone in the channel for actually paying attention to the speakers, because I used you guys as an educational tool. Some people in the chatroom seemed a bit out of the loop, so others would explain concepts or post links to biographies of the speakers and even those who stood up to ask questions. IRC provided an excellent source of information, and a quick one at that. I lost the discussion a few times in my attempts to multitask, and IRC got me back on track, but the best implementation of IRC turned out to be the opportunity to gain more information about what was being said. Hypertext proves useful, once again.

Considering its practicality today, I want to introduce the IRC medium to a class at school sometime. It’d be a good experiment in networking during a seminar discussion, but it would also prove that students can collaborate to further educate each other, or also to stay ahead of the dialogue in the direct teacher-pupil relationship. I might easily predict that more “hating” would occur in a classroom setting: students complaining that they’re bored, pointing out that the teacher is wrong, declaring that they found a video on YouTube of a cat flushing a toilet. Ultimately, though, IRC would create a hyperdiscussion, one that exceeded the hierarchy of the teacher-student partnership, a grassroots educational system of sorts. I know that if my Sociology of Education (SO444.A1) class had established an IRC node during our weekly seminars, we easily could have used it to find relevant information online, particularly at the beginning of the class when my professor would ask us if we had found anything of relevance in the news at the time. Well, IRC: log on, talk to my classmates, share links with one another. Hypertext moves beyond unilinear writing constricted to paper. IRC moves beyond the linear narrative discussion. In fact, if you want to be savvy, you could even call it metaconversation. But an IRC channel in a classroom, in a lecture, in a seminar could do wonders (though I don’t obscure the potential for chaos) for education in a university setting.

Spotlight: Michael Wesch

Alex Leavitt — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:53:29 +0000

The vast sea of the Internet holds enough treasures (or cats) to keep anyone occupied for hours, yet once in a while I’ll come across some piece of content — be it a blog, video, or even resume — that impresses me to such a degree that I have to spend the next hour finding out more. I want to highlight in this article Michael Wesch, a professor of anthropology at Kentucky State University, whose popularity exploded through one of his infamous YouTube videos on Web 2.0. If you’ve never seen it, then please watch:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&hl=en]
The Machine is Us/ing Us

I’m especially drawn to the method he employs (not the medium of YouTube, but the constant motion of editing) because it involves a lot of my recent thoughts on text (both as a form and as a medium) that have personally materialized in my Literary Criticism class at the end of the spring semester. I particularly like his explanation of XML and how the language initially emphasizes content over form, but then, in its implementation, the content becomes the form to produce the content.

In a second video, he discusses how the way we have organized information digitally — on computers and through the Internet — may need to be changed if we want to keep improving the technology and evolving through it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM&hl=en]
Information R/evolution

One more video of note:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&hl=en]
A Vision of Students Today

This is especially important to watch if you’re a student at any university or college in the United States, or will soon enter one. Just as with digital information, Wesch argues that the system and techniques of the contemporary university need reorganization. The video pinpoints a good number of problems that students face everyday in the classroom and suggest how these problems suppress a positive evolution in higher education (ie. one of the last examples is simply the chalkboard). I also admire how the video identifies prominent aspects of the emerging generation (called digital natives, Generation Y, and the Millennials) and how they interact with the current collegiate structure.

Also, check out Michael Wesch’s blog on digital ethnography. I really wish I could study under him for a bit, since I feel it necessary to draw from cultural anthropology when examining the Internet, fan cultures, etc., but it’s Kentuuucky. And I like the East Coast.