Would you like to try MERLOT?

MERLOT is a multimedia educational resource and for learning and online teaching. 

As you can see from the screenshot above, MERLOT has a lot to offer. It got its start at the California State University Distributed Learning Center in the 90's. It enables educators to find content that has been reviewed by peers who are experts in their knowledge area. It offers a free web page development tool with the MERLOT Content Builder, as a FREE trusted online resource, it saves time for educators and learners alike.

It is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.

Why don't you find what you're looking for on Google? Well, you could. I know I do. However, I'm a busy person, and MERLOT makes it one step easier by saving me time, and ensuring the quality of the free resources available on MERLOT are up to industry standards. It is open source. Other educators have created materials previously, and they are willing to share them with you. This encourages collaboration, and improves the quality of the lessons our students are presented with. I can't believe I have not heard of this tool until this week!

This is just one of the many resources, on one of the many formats, available on MERLOT.

Lecturers’ Behaviors And Beliefs About The Use Of Social Media In Higher Education: A Study At Mahasarakham University In Thailand

This week I read Lecturers’ Behaviors And Beliefs About The Use Of Social Media In Higher Education: A Study At Mahasarakham University In Thailand by Thapanee Seechaliao. 

To set the scene, the Thai Government had recently adopted the One Tablet per Child project, recognizing that gaps in income enable some students to have more opportunities to learn about technology than others. Mahasarakham University had just adopted the Microsoft Surface for Lecturers, and Education Faculty developed a strategic plan to develop an e-Learning system. Because of that, Lecturers needed to design their courses in a way that they could begin to integrate technology more often. While Social Media is widely used, and most lecturers believed it to be at least moderately effective as a learning tool, many of them may not be familiar with these tools, or may not know how to use them correctly, or effectively. 

Facebook, for example is currently the most popular platform among Thai students for online social networking. A lecturer may not know that It would be a better idea to create a group where all materials related to their class could be published, or that they could use hashtags, instead of posting statuses that everyone can contribute to. 

This article reminds me of situations I may find myself in whether I am in Higher Ed, or in a corporate setting. If a company is redesigning their training program from the ground up to incorporate more technology, those who are used to doing things without technology might find themselves slowed down by the sudden use of it, or may become frustrated and decide not to use it. Others still determined, may not be aware of how to use it to their advantage, or how to really get the most out of it. This article made me think of these situations, and how I might try to ease the transition for lecturers, or colleagues as an Instructional Designer. It also made me think of how I could, and should use such frustrations to create a dialogue and offer more support during these transitional periods... and also how social media is the perfect place to do just that, so that if other people have the same questions, we can make sure that they receive the help they need.

Reflections: Keeping the Conversation Going

As we have molded our #eme6414 community, and joined and observed other communities as well over the course of the semester, I think we've been pretty lucky. Our facilitators are experts. We seem to be an active bunch, eager to share and contribute, and with enough of us contributing, it seems easy to keep the momentum going. But as we get further into "the dog days of summer" and blogging starts to become part of our weekly routine, sometimes I have trouble keeping up with things. My posts have become fairly formulaic: Review one of the articles for the week, reflect, review one of the tools, post a new poll. You may have noticed that I didn't post the usual poll this week. I felt that with this formula, I was almost beginning to limit opportunities for interaction, or pushing the discussion further. I would like to add more opportunities for the readers to be involved in content creation, rather than just contributing comments. 

This week I wanted to try something different. 

I did a bit of searching...

lol.

Apparently I'm not the only one having a hard time keeping the conversation going. I wanted to find out what other successful bloggers do to stimulate conversation, and keep their readers both coming back to seek their content, and contributing content that reinforces the notion that they are both valuable parts of a community rather than just talking at people. 

Lo and behold, YouTube had the answer I needed. 

http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com/2015/07/keeping-conversation-going.html

Many popular YouTube channels have the right idea. People love one video and say something like "haha! I love your video about ___It would be great if you did something like that with ____!" 

They take requests. They encourage their followers to determine by vote what happens next, and in doing so they literally keep coming back by popular demand. I mean, who wouldn't watch a video that they helped write the script or the punchlines for? 

Epic rap battles of history, and most makeup tutorials provide excellent examples of this. 

So with just one week in the semester left: I'd like to ask you the reader, what content you would like to see next week? What tools were your favorite? What have we not covered yet? What am I doing right? What would you like to see more of?

And even though it's scary: as a blogger, what could I be doing better?

Communities of Practice

This week, as we explored communities of practice, I found myself searching the internet for specific examples, and eventually found this podcast at Creative Labs.

https://creativitylabs.us/podcast/workwise-7-communities-of-practice-make-perfect/

The podcast itself is interesting, but I also enjoyed the hand-drawn infographic and the additional links used to explain the project further. If you're short on time (the podcast episode is just over 55 minutes long) but I highly recommend you take a few minutes browsing through the pilot projects blog.

http://pilot-projects.org/blog/entry/communities-of-practice-using-systems-thinking-to-co-create-a-better-world

Is it just ME or are WE a thing?: Reflections from Week 4

How social are social media technologies (SMTs)? A linguistic analysis of university students' experiences of using SMTs for learning

This week I had the opportunity to read Thomspon (2014). In this article, the researchers were interested in finding out if online environments were as collaborative as we thought they might be. And what type of framework might encourage a collaborative learning environment? Participants in this study included undergraduates-postgraduates. Over a twelve week period they blogged, contributed to wikis, shared photos, entered virtual worlds, and spoke amongst themselves in small focus groups for discussion. What I'm saying is: They are US. 

Researchers were monitoring the amount of times they referred to themselves as a single individual (I) or as part of a collective (we). The pronouns they chose to use in their reflections could be a tell tale sign of how connected they felt. Using the pronoun 'WE' could indicate more solidarity with peers. 

They found that while some students used both, most students spoke of themselves as an individual most often, using the pronoun 'I'. Over the course of the past 4 weeks we have had a chance to communicate, share a snap, share a laugh, bond, express contempt at the state of modern family communication, and teach each other something new. With all of the material we've covered previously in mind, do you feel that we approach this course as a collective, or are we all just lone rangers, coming together somewhat unnaturally?

 Though I have had that experience in online courses in the past, 'I' don't feel that way personally. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. 

As always, thanks for contributing in this week's poll. It looks like Pinterest and Youtube were the tools you thought you'd be most likely to use for curation in the future. 

Keep an eye out for next week's poll. It will remain active until Saturday July 30th at 11:59pm. 

Question: Why haven't I talked about Quora yet?

Have you heard of Quora? 

According to Wikipedia "Quora is a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Its publisher, Quora, Inc., is based in Mountain View, California. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.^[4] Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.^[5]"

To me, Quora is a web 2.0 tool that allows users to ask questions to drive the converation, and dictate exactly what they learn. The quora community then answers as their expertise allows, and the funny thing is, many of them seem to be, or are in fact experts. It is not often that I scroll through the comments/ replies and find people who are not qualified/ do not know what they are talking about attempting to answer questions here. They are qualified to answer these questions and spread their knowledge with questioning users and lurkers alike, and if you don't like it, or you think you can do better, you can add your answer too...which only leads to a more complete and well rounded understanding, I suppose.In theory at least. It sounds too simple, and yet it is not a chaotic failure yet. Which may be the most amazing part. 

The idea of users posting questions, and random people with answers contributing them in an online community is not new. If you haven't had a chance to check out Yahoo Answers yet, you may enjoy it, but may find some of the answers participants contribute to be sub-par, or just plain bad advice. This low-quality information is harder to find on Quora (at least in my opinion.) 

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-Quora-reddit-and-Yahoo-Answers

For example, one Quora user asked what sets these Q & A sites apart from eachother. 

Have you used Quora before? If so, what was your experience like, and how did it vary from previous strategies you used or other communities you turned to to answer questions?

Knowledge Sharing and Curation with Pinterest

Most of us finished up our Knowledge sharing and tracking assignments. I chose to use Pinterest for this task, and it enabled me to view the tool in a new light, when using it for educational purposes. My previous strategy on Pinterest was a mess. I used to think It was very well organized, but now I know better. The boards were arranged in very broad categories such as "easy gardening", or "ISD infographics." For this project, I made each board more specific. For example, instead of having one board called "photography" where I just dumped an endless pile of photographs or photo related pins from across the internet, this time all the boards were related to "photography" but were each a step in the film developing process, from figuring out what film and camera settings to use, how to address a photo's composition, and then how to make the best of a tight situation in a makeshift darkroom. Making all boards more specific enabled me to access the information I needed faster. It wasn't just curated to show my tastes, but was also curated to show my needs. 

https://www.pinterest.com/kahlavoyles/

Now that the project is complete, I plan on continuing to collect materials on the subject of film photography there. Feel free to follow my page, or feel free to share a link to your own Pinterest in the comments below! 

Follow me on Fakebook

This week I tried Fakebook, a website created by ClassTools, which allows users to create fake social media profiles, usually of historical figures or celebrities for learning purposes. To be honest with you, I am a huge fan of fake social media profiles of historical figures. While these tend to be mostly comedic in nature, I could definitely see this being a fun alternative to the traditional "book report" style I used to inform my class about the coolest historical figures growing up. I love the immersive aspect of this tool,which requires you to take "walking in their shoes (er, em, tweeting in their shoes?) to a whole new level!

Here we have Lincoln checking in and adding life events. His friends Harriet Tubman, Robert E. Lee and Horace Greeley are very active on social media too.

This week I attempted to create a profile for Florida Native Julian Edwin Adderley, more widely known by his nickname "Cannonball" Adderley. It was fun. I found live footage of him, interviews, information on his childhood, his family members, all in an effort to make him seem like a well-rounded individual with a complete and complex profile. I added statuses inviting friends to "check out our latest performance in Switzerland, and linked to old concerts and TV shows. It was a lot of fun. However, I ran into some trouble. Fakebook would not let me sae my profile. I watched a few tutorials, and downloaded the instructions on how to save, and still had no luck. I tried a while later, and had the same problem. The site seems fairly intuitive, and adding information was a breeze, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Perhaps Adderley already has a Fakebook page, and I was unable to save because It would have been a duplicate? 

Here is a screenshot from my sad incomplete page. The site urges that you keep making posts and will be able to save after a few, so I posted and posted, but the site seemed to freeze up when I actually wanted to save the profile and fill it out completely. I'm sorry that this is all I have to show for this site, because I believe it could be amazing when well done. In absence of something really wonderful to showcase, here are a few links to superb Fakebooks I came across by Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks!

http://www.classtools.net/FB/1910-xKpWDy (Earhart)

http://www.classtools.net/FB/1248-H3y2Ri (Parks)

If you had any luck with this tool, please let me know. I look forward to having the opportunity to use it again someday, and I love that this one encourages the student to really get into character! 

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Social Technology Platforms in Higher Ed

The results are in. It looks like Periscope, Reddit and Instagram are in a 3 way tie for favorite tool of the week. Thanks again for participating. These polls will help me determine what tools I would like to incorporate in instructional situations when given the opportunity. 

You guys are the best!

Now, I would like you to imagine you have a chance to vote on the adoption and implementation of a new social technology platform at your University, or perhaps your place of business:

The Good

How would you like it if your University began using a social technology platform that relied on user data, data aggregation, and user feedback to recommend courses you should take, university services you might be interested in, or having other personalized information, curated just for you and sent to you via text or email? The community college system in California is already doing this with Sherpa, a Social Technology Platform. 

The Bad

Some would argue that this technology could be used to beef up campus security, and make the college experience a safer one for students faculty and staff alike by collecting information from Google searches (such as “online research about the personal life and daily activities of a particular faculty member”); Monitoring Facebook activity(namely, “angry and threatening comments on his Facebook wall about that professor”); Amazon purchases (like the purchase of “high-powered firearms and ammunition”); File management (for example, a saved “draft version of a suicide note on his personal network drive”). To many, this function sounds much less appealing and convenient, and more like an overreaching attempt at surveillance and an invasion of privacy. 

The Ugly

This "dark side" of social technology platform capabilities is what many private corporate entities are already doing, only they usually don't claim to do it in the name of campus safety. The data is often easy to collect and users are often blissfully unaware that they've provided some personal information. 

I had a chance to read Reyman (2013) this week, and came to realize that there are a lot of implications of data mining practices for intellectual property on the social web, and what we do now, and what we allow as standard practice now, may have a far reaching impact tomorrow. Will we pave the way for a culture of surveillance? Would you vote to have something like this in place? If so, Where would you draw the line? 

Also: A New Poll is available now! This week we got to try out Pinterest, Goodreads, Diigo, Storify, Flickr and youtube. Let me know which was your favorite!

Curating the Literature: Organizing your references with Mendeley

Say you're preparing to write a massive paper, and you have all the references saved on your laptop, but they're all mixed in with the articles you saved from last semester, or maybe you remember that you wanted to cite one of Dr. Dennen's articles, but you have so many saved on your computer, that you're not sure which one you intended to refer to anymore, maybe you always forget to save files in the same format, or perhaps you have so much content saved on your personal computer that you are almost out of space. If any of these sound like you, you're going to love Mendeley! Mendeley is a reference manager/ pdf organizer that makes it easy to curate collections of essays, book chapters, entire books, critques, and even cite and annotate as you go. This is always something I used to save until I was almost ready to turn a paper or project in, but once I began using a pdf organizer, it became a much smaller and less stressful undertaking. 

Here is a screenshot of my Mendeley library. I have it saved in 3 main categories. Everything I saved during undergrad is less relevant than I thought it would be, so its all thrown together, in a big messy folder, and maybe i'll organize it later, or maybe I'll end of deleting most of it. Undergraduate research for the Psychology lab I was in is another category. ISLT is the 3rd category. I organize publications by the class they were provided in. Specific projects within the class are separated into additional folders. It is a lifesaver. 

There is also a social component to Mendeley. Many researchers choose to share their data online. Similar to Goodreads, articles can be recommended for you based on your interests, and you can join groups and share your research with other users in the online community. You can download the app and add things directly to your libary from any of your devices, or just visit mendeley.com

Of course, this is not an advertisement for Mendeley, there are other reference organizers out there. Zotero and Docear are other popular options, and Docear has provided this awesome side by side comparison between them. 

http://www.docear.org/2014/01/15/comprehensive-comparison-of-reference-managers-mendeley-vs-zotero-vs-docear/

Are you using a reference organizer to curate your academic content, or find content curated specifically for your interests? Please share

Getting Cozy with Copyright Laws

This week we had the opportunity to become more familiar, and hopefully more comfortable with copyright law. If it wasn't relevant to us already, it is about to be. We're about to become ProdUsers and add our own content online. Before doing so, we need to determine how we feel about others sharing, using, adding to, and/or modifying the content we create and share.

In the spirit of believing in the power of sharing, and that "knowledge is power", when it comes to creating educational content, at this point, I think I am comfortable with my work being published under the creative commons category. 

When it comes to works of art, my opinion shifts dramatically though. For musicians especially, it is rare to be able to do what you love and excel at and also be making money off of it. If you are, then you are the exception. I feel that things don't have to be that way, but as a society, perhaps we have come to expect that our talented nephew will play guitar for free at our next party because he'll love the "exposure", or that our beloved Aunt Lisa would love to take our prom photos for free, because she's a nice lady and she loves us. While imaginary Aunt Lisa would probably love to do a million things for us for free, why do we expect her to do the one thing she does for money, as a respected and professional individual for free? We don't expect doctors to diagnose us for free, or teachers to stay up late grading our papers because "the children are our future!" so the idea of asking an artist to do this seems insulting. 

It is not all bad. Allowing others to use your work or modify it opens up the floodgates of creativity. It encourages collaboration with other artists, and is a great tool for self promotion. I'm always going to choose the free photos I have been pre-authorized to use over the photos I need to ask permission to use or pay for before using. In doing so, am I undercutting those who have vowed to retain all rights and only allow use when they have been paid accordingly? On this I have mixed feelings...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_Creative_Commons_licensed_works

^This list contains everything from educational materials, to comics, albums, videos, and recipes. 

Here is a recent example of an artist's work being used without their permission:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/6890288/ted-cruz-explosions-sky-video-campaign-greg-abbott-your-hand-mine-texas

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound, or, if you use copyrighted material without permission, and no one finds out, are you really doing any harm? This is a complicated issue with many sides. Though the answer may be simple and straightforward, web 2.0 and the shifting ways we consume and produce content has complicated the matter slightly. Please share your insight in the comments below. 

Finding your people with GoodReads

Though I have used Goodreads briefly in the past for a quick book review, this week provided me the opportunity to make the site more interactive in several ways:

1) Join a community centered around reading

2) Test my knowledge with quizzes and trivia

3) Keep track of all the books I've read (at least that I can recall...) and all of the books I would like to read in the future in one place

4) Create challenges and reading goals to accomplish in 2016. 

5) Curate content for myself, and others, based on common interests or themes such as genre, decade, author, recommendations, etc. 

According to the information I have provided to Goodreads, these are my "most read authors"

I would not have guessed that David Sedaris would be at the top, and that may be because I could not remember all the material I have read by other authors. Curated lists such as these, no matter how surprising, could serve several purposes, and provide me with insight into what groups I may be interested in joining within the Goodreads community. (They could also tip a loved one off about what isle they should head down, should they intend to buy me a book for my birthday, just saying...) The most helpful thing about a list I can think of, is that it may give hints to where I should look next. 

Goodreads has information about what other readers who also liked Kurt Vonnegut are reading: https://www.goodreads.com/author/similar/2778055.Kurt_Vonnegut

These are the books I am reading at the moment. I have set set a 2016 challenge for myself of reading 12 books (that's just one per month) and books for school or work do no count. I think I may actually reach this goal for the first time in a long time, and having a list of what I want to read next will hopefully help me to keep this momentum going. 

If I keep this up long enough, I plan to join a book club. Goodreads has over 7000 to choose from, so if you like the idea of being part of a book club, but the local clubs don't seem to share your literary interests at all, this might be a better option for you. Let me know what you thought of Goodreads, what you're reading. If you have any recommendations please send them my way! Do you belong to a book club, or have another way of keeping track of what you're reading? Let me know in the comments below!

Reflecting on Connecting

Over the past week, we've focused on Community Development, PLNs, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, SlideShare, Snapchat and Periscope. 

This week I got more familiar with LinkedIn Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, and really familiar with Reddit, which I think it potentially turning into my favorite for learning and connecting with communities and networks. 

We learned that our own families are actually another network we are a part of, and that Information and communication technologies have helped ease some of the tensions that might go along with shifting family roles, by bringing families together and opening lines of communication, rather than pulling them apart.

We've gone out into the world to live double lives as silent lurkers and active ProdUsers. We've attempted to answer the question of whether silent observation and absorption is harmless or completely unjust, and perhaps some of us will figure out if there is one right answer after living in both sets of shoes. 

Switching gears...

As a way to promote interactivity with my readers, I tried an experiment with #tweet4kahla. It wasn't a sucess, so we won't dwell on it...

I also posted a poll last week. Last week, we all had the opportunity to explore Twitter together, and I have to say, I really enjoyed seeing what it could be when used in an information sharing and educational way. I personally intend to keep my account open for now, and while I won't be posting as frequently, I do intend to reach out to friends and individuals I'm interested in keeping tabs on to follow them, and join the conversation when it feels natural. Eight of you answered, and I consider that a success, so I think I'm going to keep it going!

This week, between LinkedIn and Snapchat, we had a lot of options to choose from. Let me know which tool was your favorite in the new poll. I'll keep it open until next Saturday July 16th. 

Networked Families

In Chapter 6 of Rainie & Wellman's Networked, we are introduced to Networked Families. In previous decades, families spent much more time in close physical proximity to each other. While time together has decreased, the authors assure us this is not all bad. In many cases, all family members have at least one device, referred to here as Information Communication Technologies, which allows them to stay connected easily. This allows our families to have more opportunities for communication than ever before. 

A HOUSEHOLD IS A NETWORK. Over the course of the past 2 weeks, we have been defining networks, recognizing the networks we already belong to, establishing new ones, and questioning what it is about that network that we value. 

In today's world, the boundaries between work and home life have broken down. Family roles have shifted among men and women, and sometimes children too. 

TEXTING IS THE NEW LEAVING A NOTE

"made it home safely"

"running late!"

"don't forget the coke mom!"

"text me when you make it to Jaime's"

"what do you want for dinner?"

We've all probably sent simple texts messages such as these at some point. They allow our children several more degrees of freedom. They eliminate many gaps in communication, allowing time sensitive information such as "you left your presentation in the garage!" to reach the intended recipient in time. 

             Solitary togetherness                                                Networked semi-independence

About half of all American parents feel they spend too little time with their children, but as children become proficient with computers at a younger age, less time together does not have to mean isolation from one's family. In the book, the author uses her and her teenage son as a perfect example of this: Texting "dinner's ready" when he doesn't answer her, because she knows he is listening to music in his headphones. My own immediate family is also a great example of this. We are spread out all over the state of Florida (we probably won't be so lucky in the near future.) We may only all get together a handful of times throughout the year, but group chat, facetime, and skype allow us to remain connected constantly.

Communication via these channels helps families operate as networked individuals. 

The Wonderful World of Reddit

Though much of the popular content we might skim over on "The Front Page of The Internet" is silly, distracting, or just plain bizarre, Reddit truly does have something for everyone, if you know where to look. I always look forward to the IAmA posts. It works well for the purposes of this class. If you're not familiar with the IAmA concept, it works pretty much like this: A celebrity or professional with an interesting job or career answers questions posted by Reddit users, live, for several hours answering as many as they can. Users can ask anything and often control the direction in which the conversation flows, and the expert answering questions provides a deeper look into what it is that they do. At the end of the day, these "ProdUsers" and the Reddit community at large gain a greater understanding of what its like to be in that person's shoes. I find this incredible. 

Local subreddits are also some of my favorite. New City? Not sure where to start? try /r/Tallahassee. Most places with a decent population have a similar subreddit. 

For this class, I decided to dig a bit deeper and discovered there are several groups the FSU ISLT community may find useful. I joined /r/instructionaldesign. And as you can see, instructional design folks are in on the IAmA craze too! 

These pages geared toward instructional design professionals seem to function similarly to the groups I have joined on LinkedIn, with users contributing everything from job advice, commentary on the industry at large, people asking about career transitions, and tutorials on using various instructional design tools. 

I could see myself integrating this site into an instructional setting either for distance learners working on a group project so they could potentially receive feedback from someone other than their instructor and fellow classmates, or for in person instruction, where the task would be to promote the use of Open Educational Resources. 

Getting Serious with LinkedIn

It is time for a LinkedIn Makeover!

I am excited to have the opportunity to try LinkedIn this week! Though I've been using this site for a while, I am probably not making the most of it. As you can see from the screenshot above, my profile strength is"All Star", and my profile view ranking has gone up in the past 15 days, but still, more could be done. 

I think one of my biggest, and most urgent upgrades is that it shows the job I have, but says almost nothing about the job I want. Fellow instructional designer friends of mine have been recruited heavily for this site. They link their ePortfolio and Resume, but most of the job offers come directly from this point. How will someone know that this is the job I want, and that this is the path I am on, if I barely even hint at it? 

Also, while I'm doing an excellent job of letting viewers know where I have been employed, I say little about what skills I picked up along the way there, or about what I want out of my work environment. The most successful pages I've viewed tend to offer a brief abstract or summary about the individual, including what they are passionate about and excel at. 

Am I doing anything right? I think so. I have been using the site to follow mentors and people who have the job I want: People who have been there already and are looked up to by their peers and colleagues. Their status on LinkedIn could be considered Celebrity. I follow individuals I've met at various professional events, and folks who consistently publish content I find interesting and relevant.  I was not aware of SlideShare until this week, and will try to use that function more in the future. I've also joined several groups within FSU's larger network including the ISLT group, FSU Alumni, and many others. I find that people of all backgrounds are received well here by Alumni looking to provide support whether its for new graduates, or advice for seasoned veterans in the industry. 

While I already use LinkedIn quite a bit, I can only see myself relying on it more in the future as my skill set, and professional network continues to grow. Feel free to connect with me there. Let me know how you use the site, and what else I could be doing differently for my LinkedIn makeover in the comments below! 

Reflections in Web 2.0

I was very lucky to stumble upon this podcast episode this week of all weeks. In the course of one hour, they attempt to define what Web 2.0 is, AND go over using Twitter in the classroom AND using Blogs. 

Why Do We Call It Web 2.0 Anyway A TeacherCast Podcast

They also cover concerns teachers might have over protectin student privacy and restricting acces access to certain websites from school, as well as how to teach Web 2.0 skills for cheap or free! 

They discuss the needs of learners from preschool all the way to university and adult learners. 

It's not the fanciest podcast I've come across, is still really well done and might be useful to many of you. 

BONUS! The creator of this podcast also offers a free ebook on free educational technology tools. 

Even if you don't have an hour to spare, I recommend saving the webpage as it seems to be a goldmine of tools and advice for those looking to incorporate elements of Web 2.0 with their learners. They encourage questions, and requests for content you would like to see in their future episodes. 

They bring up both new web-literate skills they believe young all students should be introduced to, as well as skills that schools are no longer teaching our students. 

What skill sets do you think will be essential for our students in the future? 

Leave your feedback in the comments below!

ProdUsers: A New Breed

Generation C: Minimizing the disconnect between producers and consumers

After Reading Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age by Dr. Axel Bruns this week, it has become clear to me that a major paradigm shift has occurred and the traditional one-to-many flow of information we once knew is on its way out. This could be perceived as a threat, but when embraced as an opportunity for advancement and improvement can have a positive impact on educators and learners. 

In an environment where heterarchical organization is increasingly favored over hierarchical, educators and creators of content who steer clear of this information sharing shift may find themselves missing out. 

Perhaps in the past you've heard someone say their students "soak up information like a sponge." This term carries much less meaning today. If anything, it might be more appropriate to say that one's students "strengthen and form new connections like neurons." 

So...it may not as catchy, but it fits. Web 2.0 learning environments encourage the users to also don the hat of the producer, creating a hybrid role referred to as a "produser" in the article. Produsers have more ownership over their learning environment than a traditional audience or consumer would. While it may be difficult in certain settings to embrace a structure where giving up control is encouraged, it seems that those who feel threatened by it have little choice but to adapt. 

The Bruns article points to a blog posted by Trendwatching.com in 2004:

Trendwatching: "GENERATION C" refers to a generation more concerned with advancing content and engagement for the good of the group, than previous loose, oversimplified "generations" whose aim was to release content with a different, less altruistic goal in mind.

This shift in mindset, which spans across many environments may exhibit 4 fundamental aspects: 

1. be community based
2. have fluid roles
3. contain unfinished artefacts
4. exist as common property

One of my favorite examples of this can be seen in the breakdown and gradual reshaping of the music industry. As we know, record companies used to have a stronghold on what music listeners had access to. The internet changed that in a very threatening way. I'm sure most of us remember the rise and fall of Napster. I was fortunate to have watched this happen at a very young age. I suppose this article made me realize that my first introduction to web 2.0 would probably be in the ways I interacted with strangers on the web through music sharing communities during that time. I would consume very large quantities of music at a time, and in exchange, would try and make new or rare content available to other users as a common courtesy. I belonged to communities where citizens or consumers would share and review music, and independent artists would do the same. These communities would often get shut down, and reconvene elsewhere in a short period of time. 

It didn't matter what releases your local chain music store was selling that week because these communities largely rejected music backed by record companies all together, cutting out the middle man and rejecting the hierarchical flow of one-to-many, with many producing and consuming simultaneously. 

Many saw it as the circulation and sharing of less popular music in a social environment for the greater good, others saw contributors as leeches and thieves... As motives varied from person to person, both are probably accurate. 

While Spotify, (created by one of the men responsible for Napster), attempts to let users access a wide range of sounds in a similar, but way more legal way, (minus all the fun of contributing yourself), it is still a near miss in my book. I'm often unable to find what I am looking for using this service.

How to get your music on Spotify

Today, I personally prefer bandcamp. Bandcamp is a platform created for artist promotion, which caters mainly to independent artists. It also exemplifies one of the four fundamental aspects of produsage. It "proceeds from the assumption that the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers (in this case, record companies) however qualified they may be." (Bruns article)

It allows you to follow the independent artists you love directly, so you can be the first to hear their new single, should that appeal to you. It allows artists to pick their own price points, with some adopting the popular-but-risky "pay what you want" model, and others opting to release some of their tracks for free. One of my favorite features of bandcamp is that it allows you to sign up as a fan. In this community of music listeners, the disconnect between artists and listeners had been removed, as fans are allowed to comment directly on a song. Fans review artists and albums and you are able to follow fans and see what they recommend as well. It encourages listeners to take the path less chosen and discover something new. Respected individuals raving about a band's latest release is probably the best PR they could hope for. It seems altruistic and fair in nature, and it cuts out the need for someone else to decide what you should be listening to.

 

Featured here: An album that is currently popular on bandcamp, chosen at random. 

If you haven't explored bandcamp before, I urge you to spend a few minutes discovering. It's the perfect way to spend a study break. 

The Power 140 Characters

My first encounter with twitter was back in 2009. I had just started college and the school newspaper had a music review section. They just launched the column's Twitter account and were looking to accumulate followers. They advertised that they were giving away two weekend passes to an upcoming three day, camping music festival that I was already planning to attend. All you had to do was send them a tweet and you would be entered for a chance to win.

I created the account, added my photo, and tweeted at the school newspaper that "I wanted those tickets!"

To my surprise, I won! 

A few weeks later, I forgot my password, and never logged in again...until this week. I guess I just didn't see the point, and didn't have any internal or external motivation, until this week.

Twitter is new territory for me. I have always seen it as an additional log in, and username to remember, with less functionality than the social media pages I already utilized. 

Using twitter as part of an assignment has really allowed me to see it in a new light. It has the ability to accompany the content I am already producing, and put that content in front of wider audiences using specific hashtags (something I almost always used jokingly until 6 days ago.) 

I decided to dive in head first. If you're interested in learning more about the creation of and the power of Twitter, watch this 8 minute Ted Talk by Evan Williams. I now see what a powerful and unique tool this is, and despite the reluctance of some, it has been almost seamless for me to adopt and incorporate in my routine. 

Another classmate suggested I make my posts more interactive. Since we're exploring Twitter this week, I added my Twitter feed to the sidebar of this blog, and I decided to create a poll: 

Will you continue to use Twitter once this class is over? 

The poll is located in my sidebar and will remain open until July 9th at 11:59 pm. 

Answer the poll and feel free to share your thoughts using 140 characters or less of course, on twitter using the hashtag #tweet4kahla.