Week 7: February 22, 2010
I will start with several fascinating reading for the topic this week:
In Nicholas Carr (2008, July/August). Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google , I thought it was fascinating how Carr discusses how technology has affected writing (and reading) since the invention of the typewriter up to today with computers and cell phone texting. He refers to this as 'intellectual technologies' (coined by Daniel Bell) and explains that our minds begin to take on those of the technologies. He acknowledges that Google's mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful and seeks to develop the perfect search engine", he feels that our minds today have become filled with artificial intelligence dependant on search engines like Google.
I would have to agree with Carr a little about out dependence on search engines like Google. I know I have said to my own students as well as my 16 year old son, 'Go Google It', knowing that they will mostly likely will find it somewhere on the web. My goal was to have them seek out the info rather than I just providing an answer. I hope this does not lead to 'artificial intelligence' as Carr describes.
The next article I read was: Catherine McLoughlin & Mark Lee (2008, June/July). Future learning landscapes: Transforming pedagogy through social software. Innovate. 4(5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=539&highlight=mcloughlin
I really loved this article! This article discusses social software (web communities such as facebook, flickr, twitter, blogs, etc..) use with Web 2.0 to transform education into something called Pedagogy 2.0. The article goes deeper to describe how Connectivism can enhance Pedagogy 2.0 through course content, curriculum, resources, communication, scaffolding, processes and learning tasks.
On a personal note, I teach an online Professional Nursing Communication course and have added multiple connectivism methods to the course such as You Tubes, e-books, student teams to develop content projects and discussion forums. A student recently emailed me and stated she really loved the course because of the visuals I used in the content portion which made the topics more meaningful to learn. I considered this quite a complement. I would say I have been inspired by all the courses I have taken from Dr. Bonk. It is a challenge to continue to find fresh and new web enhanced sites for the course. (thanks Dr. Bonk :)
One last article I read was Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison and Margaret Weigel. (2008). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century Chicago: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved August 17, 2008, from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
This is done as a white paper that focuses on the topic of Participatory Culture and how the MacArthur Foundation has contributed 50 million dollars to make a difference in providing multi-media to the US. The paper defines participatory culture as (pg. 7):
1.With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2.With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3.With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is
passed along to novices
4.Where members believe that their contributions matter
5.Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they
care what other people think about what they have created).
The paper points out challenges, potential problems and solutions to provide web access to households across America.
To me, making digital learning accessible to everyone sounds wonderful but I am sure there are multiple issues including funds for equipment and technology education for all to take advantage of this option for education. The white paper does address most of this but I believe it will take a few years before every household has internet access and computer technology as if it were a TV or phone. Many rural areas are basically without high speed access to the web. Maybe I will be surprised and it will happen sooner than I think.
Interesting links / tidbits for this week:
http://voicethread.com/about/doodling/ from Mag a live demo of a really cool tool on the VoiceThread site called the Doodler that allows you to draw on top of media (see white freehand circle above) as you record your comment (using mic, webcam, or keyboard), control playback of a video while Doodling and commenting on specific video segments. The Doodles are synced to your comment, showing viewers your thoughts in action.
Sample Web 2.0 tools and companies (from Dr. Bonk)
VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/ add audio to pics
SnapGenie: http://snapgenie.com/ tell stories behind pics
Scrapblog: http://scrapblog.com/ create a scrapbook of pics
Dotsub: http://www.dotsub.com/ create subtitling text in online videos and films
YackPack: http://www.yackpack.com/ email an audio file
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=7495&bhcp=1 site with 7 things you should know about Web 2.0 technologies
Connectively Yours :),
deb
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You know, Carr does make a good point. I don't know about you but I know for myself for example, that I couldn't tell you the phone numbers of my siblings because I have them all on my cell phone as speed dial. Carr's ideas about how Google makes us stupid is the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI still have some challenges getting my mind around using social networks like Facebook in the classroom but I'm open to the idea. I work with Human Resources though were our topics are usually sensitive and critical and not necessarily stuff you want blabbed all over the net. The points you listed on participatory culture also hit home for me too because I work in the Organization and Employee Development (a division of HR) where Human Performance improvement ideas are always on the mind.
Diane