Week 7: Web 2.0 Behaviors

1. In the Metzger article, one of the findings was that students minimally verify the content of the information they receive from the Internet. Then again, students minimally verified the content of the World Book when that was the hot research source, though admittedly, the World Book did have some sort of peer review process. Does this mean that, with the advancement of technology, we need to shift the focus of how we think about research, especially in a K-12 classroom? It wasn't that long ago, but when I was in public school, both the topic and the methds for researching the topic were important. With so much information at hand, do the research methods actually begin to trump the information itself?

2. In their article, Adar and Huberman discuss "free riders" on the Gnutella network and lament their damage to the community. This discussion made me reflect on my experiences (past only, of course) with downloading from peer networks. I remember, at the very beginning, downloading from FTP sites. Some allowed free downloaded, while others required that you upload in order to download. For these sites that required an upload, 1:1 or 1:2 ratios were not uncommon, meaning that you could only download an amount proportional to what you uploaded. Then came the peer networks ... Napster, Gnutella, LimeWire, KaZaa, and now BitTorrents. On these networks, especially the ones offering copyrighted materialas, of course there are a lot of freeriders. Why? Well it is the people who share, not download, who tend to be targeted by groups such as the RIAA. Do many people use services like Gnutella to share non-copyrighted material? While peer-to-peer services may have a noble calling, in my mind, they are mainly the way to obtain Warez (cracked or otherwise made-free commercial software), MP3s, video (TV shows and movies), and pornography. Are there actually legal uses (with the stipulation of people actually using them)?

Week 6: Blogs and wikis (well, mostly blogs in my readings)

1. With my English Ed background, I found the Kajder and Bull article interesting as it dealt with the integration of blogs within k-12 language arts. One issue I still have, though, is privacy. Students are interested in blogging because they can instantly publish and access material, but I wonder what conversations/discussions in class have been had about what is appropriate to post and what is not. With Facebook, MySpace, etc ... I think that some people don't really think about the consquences of putting their life online. If this was done/started as a school assignment, is the school/teacher liable at all if anything happens? If it is made private, does that defeat the purpose of a blog?

2. The Glenn article discusses scholars who blog. I keep several blogs, but I don't keep one about my "profession." Why? Well, first of all, perhaps I don't feel confident enough to publish my thoughts/comments in such a public forum. Secondly, and this happens with any post I make, I wonder how my posts will reflect on me as a future employee of a company/univeristy, etc. I understand that blogs offer easy discourse, but then again, it is discourse that is not generally accepted as furthering knowledge, for use in promotion/tenure, etc. Would potential employers be upset that I am using my time to publish freely accesible information without any sort of formal peer-review process? Would they think that this would limit my publications or perhaps my status in the professoinal community? Do they think that, for any argument in the field, I would use the public forum to air my dirty laundry?

Week 5 Questions

As stated in the Johnson (1994) article, there are five major elements of cooperative learning:

1. Clearly perceived positive interdependence
2. Considerable promotive (face-to-face) interaction
3. Clearly perceived individual accountability and personal responsibility to achieve the group's goals
4. Frequent use of the relevant interpersonal and small-group skills
5. Frequent and regular group processing of current functioning to improve the group's future effectiveness
   

This reading in particular dealt entirely with face-to-face groups. My question is, how does social computing or social technologies affect these elements? Are technologies a help? a hinderance? Both? Are there extra elements you would add when talking specifically about cooperative learning using technology? The Curtis and Lawson article focused mainly on text interaction, but what about technologies that are more advanced?

2. All of these papers talked about the benefits of collaboration, but in my experience, most students groan when they find out they have to do a group project. What causes this separation between research extolling the benefits of collaborative learning and the students that dislike groups? What is the role of the teacher to make groups more collaborative? What is the role of the students?

Video that ties with some of the readings ....

I found the Resnick article interesting about how learning/knowledge differ in their use and acquisition between school and the "real world." It made me think of something I had just seen last week on an HBO show called The Wire. The show depicts fictional police and drug dealers in Balitmore, and in this instance, a young child comes to one of his mentors (a teenager) asking about a school math problem. The response might not be what you'd expect ....

(WARNING: There is quite a bit of bad language in this link, be prepared).

In particular, focus on 1:30 when the kid asks his question. There is an interruption in between with some plot stuff, then back to the math problem at 2:55.

Week 4 Questions ....

1. In all three readings for this week, ideas about learning were presented that are do not necessarily gel with what is considered “traditional” teaching in today’s public schools. The Resnick article, in particular, examined how learning and application differ for school and the “real world,” and that was written in 1987. In our education classes, we’ve learned about more student-centered approaches such as constructivism, PBL, etc. In your experience, has public education evolved any in the over 20 years since the Resnick article was written, or are have ideas like social learning and ecological psychology actually had an impact in at the K-12 level?


2. Both the Saloman & Perkins and the Resnick articles discuss the use of tools by learners. Both indicated a debate about the transfer of skills to a tool from a person, with Resnick noting that as long as the tool has the skills, the system as a whole has lost no intelligence. I think this makes the point, though, that the person has lost that skill and would not be able to function that particular task without the tool. At what point do acknowledge the tool’s role and absolve a person from knowing those skills? For example, in early math classes I’ve taken, no calculators were allowed, though in advanced classes, calculators were required. When does this shift happen? Is it dictated by society? I can see a student now being puzzled about having to learn about multiplication or division when almost everyone has easy and immediate access to a calculator by way of phone and/or computer.

Why I started a new blog ....

Lily raised an interesting point in class ... how many of us started new blogs for this course, even if we already maintain other blogs. I realize that some, or perhaps most, of the class didn't already have blogs, but I actually have two other ones.

Why then, did I start this blog as a separate space?

Well, to be honest, I think it's because I didn't want everyone in this class to be forced to weed through my personal blog updates in search of things relevant to the course. I've had my personal blog since May 2005 and, while my activity on it varies from constant to rarely, I'm fairly sure that I will post more frequently on that space than I probably will on this one.

With that being said, I'm not ashamed of my other blogs ... heck, I wouldn't post anything that I'm not willing to share with the world. You can see my other two blogs by clicking on my profile information on the left of this page.

Someone asked me why I keep a personal blog. At first, I started it as a creative outlet. Now, it is just kind of a place where I can be creative, post some photos I like, and share other things with my friends. I link to my blog in my signature of several message board communities, such as Cruise Critic. It's funny ... I ran into a lady on a cruise once who not only recognized me from my blog, but she also confessed to me that she had actually read through the entire thing (we are talking over 500 posts at that point). Nothing on my personal blog is too special, but I found it fascinating that it was interesting enough for someone else to spend that kind of time on it.

Week 1 Questions ....

1. Much of what we read about for social computing and Web 2.0 talks about how it is user-driven and somewhat organic in its nature. With that in mind, is it important to make a conscious effort to include those specific tools within public education, or will those tools emerge naturally through acceptance and use? Does social computing lose something if it becomes an assignment or prescribed process and is not completely voluntary (blogs for this class, etc).

This question is one part of a question I thought of last semester in EDCI 660 when Scott tried to turn our class into a learning community or a community of practice. I spent the entire semester wondering … can communities be formed from brute force, or is it something that must just emerge because of the needs/desires of its members. Perhaps key words might be useful and effective.

2. In the reading from Six Degrees about the power grid, examples are used to demonstrate how people can become dependent on networks, such as the electric grid. This idea made me reflect on how dependent we are with the cellular network … what was once a luxury has become a necessity to many people (how will we know where/when to meet up, etc). When does a network hit critical mass such that it topples from a luxury to something you assume everyone has? In a public school classroom, we generally can’t assume that every student has a computer or internet access, but we generally assume that they all have electricity and phones. Will this be a key to these tools’ widespread use in education … when they have reached proliferation?