Journal reflections: Group Work

Red Group discussions are going well and some really interesting suggestions are emerging.

Journal reflections: Group Work

The difficulties that Red Group have faced mirror the difficulties that students may face and report.

Activity 4 (week 3)

• Individually consider how you might support the digital and learning literacies of students in your own subject discipline or department. Factors to consider might be: how far you should provide extra curricular provision or embed it within your subject discipline, how could you support students' use of both social software and institutionally provided software, which literacies do you consider to be most important.
• Share your thoughts/ideas within your group using any of the collaborative tools listed above
• Agree to develop and present one of these ideas as a student learning activity to the other group, clearly highlighting the target group of learners and the context of use, the intended learning outcomes (consider knowledge/skills/values), issues around feedback and assessment, and the motivations and expected benefits of using the tools you have chosen to support this activity.

Discipline: Media Communications

A potentially distinctive element of Media Communications is that social networking tools are objects of analysis. Within my department (Media, Film and Cultural Studies), there are several courses that explicitly engage with social networking and its social, cultural, political (etc.) impact. Bringing social software in is as learning tools would involve carefully thinking through the reflections that would need to be explored by students.

In response to this activity and the JISC comments, I would highlight the need for specific training courses for students. Employability has been an area (through PDP, Professional and Academic Development, etc. course) that is increasingly mandatory within students’ overall degree programme in UK HE institutions (limiting my comments to areas I have experienced). Staking quite a claim for the significance of these tools, how about compulsory training around social software?

Induction weeks often provide tuition on using to an institution’s central files, e-mail and the Virtual Learning Environment. There could an opportunity to bring students to a common point and to not assume digital literacies and ‘nativeness’. Such a framework would allow tutors to ‘assume’ a level of proficiency and later on, when necessary, to direct students to specific resources and ‘refresher’ training, etc.

It seems that there are great opportunities for incorporating various social software applications, but as this ELSS course has potentially demonstrated there is a lot to work through. Providing this instructional role may be too much. Tutors often provide tailored, module specific guidance on essays and readings for example, but can ‘assume’ a degree of capability and comfort by students in these areas. Could we explore the same for social software?

Things to think about – how it sits with institution’s VLE; student social life ‘invasion’ questions; different cross-discipline literacies; the extent to which social software is linked to assessments and then must be introduced within modules (same as essay workshops, etc.); which social software tools would be selected, resource issues (who – time/finance).

In short, I guess the learning activity I’m suggesting (for now) is a generic training course. This is not particularly subject-specific; I felt that to be able to advance with the subject specific learning and exploration, a level of comfort and familiarity would be useful.

Activity 3C

Diigo set up:

http://www.diigo.com/profile/danielashton

Journal reflections: VLE and the university

Further to our debate on the Brookes VLE, the following is well worth a look: 'Why Universities Behave Like the Music Industry' by Mikes Molesworth (MeCCSA 2008 paper):

"By comparing interactive media ‘solutions’ created by universities (VLEs, LMSs, e-portfolios) with those available freely in cyberspace, we argue that the imposition of institutional media tools onto students might be seen as a way of managing and controlling student performance in such spaces, so that power is reinstated with the institution."

Journal reflections: Privacy!

Have a look at this site www.123people.co.uk/

Journal: reflections on Prensky

I was going to do this using sticky tags, but I may have to put on a hold on diigo for a few days.

I've previously mentioned David Buckingham's excellent Beyond Technology (2007) and his discussion of Presenky and Gee. Here are a few quotes:

"Like explorers returning from distant lands, both writers see their role as being to explain the activities of this exotic new species for the benefit of their confused and puzzled teachers and parents" (105)

"Prensky's argument is reinforced by what he regards as definitive evidence about the 'plasticity' of the human brain have not adapted sufficiently over thousands of years to enable all of them to read and write, it appears that, within the space of one generation, technology has brought about fundamental evolutionary changes that are making children unrecognizable event to their own parents" (105).

It can be awkward to extract quotes sometimes, but hopefully this provides a sense of the issues with Prensky's comments.

Journal: Notes from Rennie and Mason Ch 4 and surveying tools

Chapter 4: Mason, R and Rennie, F (2008). E-Learning and Social Networking Handbook - Resources for Higher Education. (Routledge).
( Begin to make a choice of what tool/s might be useful in your own work and how you migh integrate them - as preparation for the group work to come on this course.)

Reflections to follow

Activity 3B or 3C

I set up everything on delicious and then worked my way to diigo. I've been trying to work through the differences and found the Experiencing E-Learning blog helpful.

Instructive comment from there:
"You wouldn’t have to migrate to another system if you want to do more over time. I think migrating and learning “one more new tool” is a barrier for a lot of people".

I'm feeling very dispersed!
The potential for connecting aspects of our communications technologies are abundant (i phones, mobile me, etc.).

I'm seeing a large gulf in VLE and social networking (as discussed on Brookes VLE discussion board), but beyond this in terms of different social bookmarking for example.

Be interesting to see how everyone is getting on. For someone who is fairly familiar with this stuff, there is a lot to take in.

Activity 3B

Check out selected shared resources on Web 2.0 for teaching and learning from earlier courses that used the tags elss08, elss08_pac in the social bookmarking application del.icio.us.

Account set up and ready to go.
http://delicious.com/DanielAshton

I got into a bit of confusion bringing together my Firefox folders with tags. I have been used to working with folders for so long!

Posted five tags using elss0609.

I'm not entirely sure to what extent I've made by bookmarks public, but when I saw the 'tag cloud' I felt that I was displaying a lot. My tags are fairly functional (module titles; conference papers; hobbies).

Again, something that I imagine I could work into modules with tags being an interesting starting point. This connects with comments I took from Rennie and Mason (on wikis) about identifying existing practice and seeing how this could connect.

Activity 3A

Twitter is an online service that you can use on a mobile phone or on a computer with Internet access. It enables you to broadcast short messages (140 characters) to friends and "followers". You have control over who you want to follow. You can also direct messages to specific individuals only.

My twitter name is Daniel Ashton. This seems a very engaging and consuming activity and I'm not sure to what extent I'm going to contribute/follow it.

Activity 3A to 3C

I'm really excited about the potential applications of diigo to a common academic practice - quotes.
I'm going to explore this - potentially a critical discussion of some of Prensky's work.

I've used deli.ic.ous before but have forgotten my username/password (anywhere else finding this increasingly a problem?!). I think I'll return to.

Not to sure about twitter. Lots of coverage. There looks to be some novel uses (should be sharing this using deli.ic.ous hey?). A media literacy discussion of twitter from twitterhandbook.

Twitter storytelling very interesting. This site takes the user updates from Twitter and shuffles through random sentences that begin with specific phrases.

GET BACK TO CONNECTING THESE!

This posting has gone a bit 'look at all this' and I shall endeavour to work through some examples and applications (potentially a helpful thing to compile by each of us on the Brookes VLE in a discussion thread. A case study section of sorts).

Journal: functional title

I wish I'd gone for 'Dan's Engaging Learning with Social Software' as a title - a lot of generic titles here!

Journal: Notes from Rennie and Mason Ch 1 + 3

Some notes I took from Mason and Rennie's (2008) E-Learning and Social Networking Hanbook. These are not summary notes but points I found helpful/provocative.

Chapter One: Social Networking as an Educational Tool

p.5 "through appropriate course design, we can help learners to pursue their 'selfish interests' of passing the course, while at the same time adding value to the learning of other students"

p. 11 Book's wiki

p.12 Prensky is mentioned here. Noticed that we look at some of his articles next week. I'll flag up now that David Buckingham's 2007 Beyond Technology is very helpful for thinking through a lot of this.

p.13 Comments on cultural specificity of learning.

p.14+15 Collaborative elements and collective intelligence.
(How does this fit with p.5 and selfish interests?)

p. 17 Constructivism

p.19 Connectivism

p.20 Learning Design Tools

p.21 Assessment - positive contribution to the learning process (again, wondering about idea of selfish needs and 'market' education)

Chapter Three: Selecting the Media Palette

p.44 Commentary on 'the Net Generation', 'Millenials', and 'homo zappiens'.

p.48 Distributed media

p.50 "The introduction of distributed media resources needs to be a way of creating new opportunities for sharing and extending learning, rather than constraining learners into different forms of learning participation"

p.52 "In each of these examples [wiki], the educational process and the required output(s) come first, the wiki is just an alternative solution to face-to-face meetings, with the advantages that the wiki is asynchronous and builds a written record of interaction"

--
During course and module revalidation, an issue was raised about how time consuming working through individual student contributions to a wiki could be.

Activity 1 D: Discussion of Week 1 activities

The discussion for week 1: compare experiences we have had so far. In addition consider the following issues to bring to the discussion:

Social software file-sharing applications such as Flickr provide free storage and the opportunity of sharing e.g. photos and graphics,

• How might you incorporate use of the application you chose into your work/teaching/learning context?
• What value might it add?
• What issues around ownership, copyright, privacy and security might arise from use of such online spaces?

I'm going to respond to these questions both here and in the VLE discussion board.

The main thing for me to start off with and consider is that in my field (Media Communications) social networking sites are objects of studies. I'm reminded here of comments from Terry Bolas' Screen Education where he discusses film education and draws out the distinction in film as a visual aid and object (2009: 62).

How social networking sites might be incorporated then poses an interesting question around 'resource' and/or 'object of study'. For this activity, I'm going to focus on the use of 'blogger' as a resource in relation to my teaching.

One course in which blogger has an immediate connection is 'Journalism & Citizenship'. Blogs have been regarded as having a significant transformative influence of practices of 'newswork'. Using blogs, would allow students to get a sense of these mechanisms and transformatory elements. More broadly, this is a course dealing with contemporary issues and the blog would allow students to collaborate in identifying and sharing resources.

In terms of privacy, students could adopt a module persona (as I have done with this google profile). Questions of copyright are much more confusing and something I think I'll have to return to ;)

Activity 1 B: Presentation of your persona in Flickr or a social software application of your choice

In this activity we will individually present a picture(s)/photo(s)/illustration(s)/graphic(s) - your choice - to represent what we would like the class to know about us. Think of this as presenting an aspect of your persona.

For this activity I chose two images:

The first one is a profile picture. Fairly standard 'snap'; this one taken at Alderley Edge.

The second picture at the bottom on the right is a screengrab from the Wikipedia entry for 'social networking sites'. I thought this might be useful for gaining a sense of the diverse interests and motivations in setting up and joining such sites.

Activity 1A: Check your current online public profile

Check elements of your current online identity or profile by searching for yourself by name using the Google search engine.

Record in your learning journal the aspects of your findings that might help you decide on general levels of privacy or disclosure for your various future registrations on social networking sites.

Search date 08.06.09. Top five:

1. My own website from my PhD study at Lancaster University. It is hosted by the university and created using Macromedia Dreamweaver. Not updated for about a year.
2. My PhD student profile from Lancaster University. I have finished by PhD and left Lancaster, but this page is still live.
3. A flickr stream but not for me.
4. My current Bath Spa University profile (updated by me using uni system).
5. A website for another individual with same name. Very little on my website.

Others in the top twenty include Screen Research; BFI; and Intellect publishers.
Interestingly, my facebook page was not in the top fifty. In this respect, my 'google' disclosures were managed by me.

Journal: 'Digital Natives'

There are a number of accounts that speak of 'digital natives' and 'growing up digital' (Prensky; Tapscott). I'm fairly skeptical of some of the grand claims that can be made.

At the 'Challenge of New Media Forum' at The Watershed in December 2008 (ADM-HEA site), Will Merrin's paper 'Media Studies 2.0' (available here) provided a fascinating point of discussion. In this, Will Merrin suggests "My son’s world is also my student’s world". A number of participants were uncertain of how tech savvy their students were. Similarly, in a module I led last year (Media Power and the Everyday) I asked a group twenty about their blog usage and no students stated they maintained blogs.

This is something I would like to think about with others on this course.

Journal: My own use of social software

In starting this course exploring social software I thought it might be useful to inventory my own sites, etc.

Blogger
Personal blog (started March 2007, last posting July 2008)
Walking blog with partner (started July 207, last posting May 2009)

Facebook and MySpace
From around 2005.

YouTube
Since around 2004.

Wiki
I have a wikidot website called 'Media Education'.

Welcome to my blog for ELSS

This blog has been set up in relation to the Oxford Brookes University Engaging Learning with Social Software course June 2009.

It will contain journal entries, postings for activities, and other relevant links.