Week 4-Blog Posting #8-Reflection on Blogging.

For me, blogging has been a very interesting experience. Not an experience without frustration.

As I began this mod blogging was something totally foreign to me. Through the process of writing about, and posting to a blog on a regular basis I’ve discovered new writing skills.

At the same time, the frustration I have found with this blogging exercise has been not so much with the blog itself but the format in which we were doing it. In order to read other people’s thoughts, I have had to switch from one blog to another. I believe the goal of these assignments was to truly share information. A tool that would be much easier shared with the standard discussion window or perhaps even a threaded discussion if our FSO could handle it.

As I think back over the tools we've used in the last four weeks I find Web 2.0 a truly amazing conglomeration with the phenomenal ability to engage in social networking and social bookmarking I have truly extended the range of my data gathering and sorting abilities.

As my students and I move into learning 2.0 we are together discovering new ways of organizing data and sharing our lives with each other. One of the unfortunate side effects of too much information is multitasking, as I looked at my multitasking abilities I discovered the I could really do not want better work if I did not count the radio or television going on. It takes more and more time to shift from one activity to another. I have come to believe there is no such thing as true multitasking. But instead sequential task switching and as I become older it takes longer to switch those tasks.

As information piles on top of information I find myself in many ways suffering from future shock. "too much change in too short a period of time". (Toffler, A, 1972) the following video clips are from any documentary narrated by Orson Welles on Toffler’s groundbreaking work future shock.

Communities of practice will make this transformation much easier, by providing forums for the free exchange of ideas. These forums can now be used around the world with the aid of the Internet and social networking. Second Life even provides ways of moving through time and space to create meeting places for the 21st century.

References

Schanzer, K. (Associate Producer) (1972). Future Shock, Documentary film. From YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ghzomm15yE

Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 -Second Life

I feel the need as many of my colleagues have done to establish my status as other than a nimrod. I took my first programming class in 1972; computers have been a part of my home and professional life since 1978. While that does not fully qualify me as digital native, I am an immigrant from long ago. Computer games have been a part of my world for many years. As a science fiction fan I have spent thousands of hours in alternate realities with my favorite authors. As a teacher I connect to my students in virtual classrooms.
I approached Second Life with great eagerness and high hopes of finding a new way to engage my students across the country. When faced with a new platform I first go to YouTube and see what other people say, and to look at tutorials.
One of the best I found was

from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA

The possibilities appear to be endless. Unfortunately the reality for me was not so hot. In my professional practice I need to demonstrate live techniques in the Adobe Creative Suite. So far I have not had luck with this task. The exhibits in SL are great; being able to move through virtual museums and historical villages is great. Probably any standard lecture could be enhanced in second life.
I was thrilled at the possibility of a ballet performance in SL. Again the reality failed to live up to the hype. On the other hand, there are many examples of high quality Machinima on YouTube and I am excited to learn the techniques to generate examples of this type.
Among my students I have received the same kind of feedback as mentioned by Anonymous (2009). Students are frustrated by the steep learning curve, the glitches and the lag time as well as the unpredictability of teleporting to new locations.
So there is hope, my best guess SL will be great in a couple of more years as the technology matures.


Reference

Anonymous, . Barriers to Student Learning in Second Life. (2009). Library Technology Reports, 45(2), 29-34. Retrieved August 27, 2009, from Social Science Module. (Document ID: 1668931091).

Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

Blog Posting #5 -Social Media
Prior to the days of what we now call Social Media, there were bulletin boards and mailing lists. My favorite memory of these started when I got a paper back from graduate school. The instructor had written in big red letters, “Don’t you have a spell checker.” I thought I did but it was not working and if a work doesn’t have a red line under it, it must be spelled right. For the next three weeks until I found and fixed the problem in WordPerfect I emailed my papers to a fraternity brother in South Africa for spell check. The world has grown ever smaller because of the web and social media applications

To discuss social media and networking I need to break it down into a few chunks.

Social Isolation
For people like my friend Jim who is suffering from a debilitating disease, can’t drive after dark, can’t work, and can’t be up for more than a few hours at a time the computer is a vital link to the world. For Jim the prayer for the computer is very apt.

Every evening
As I'm laying here in bed
This tiny little prayer
Keeps running through my head
God bless my mom and dad
And bless my little pup
And look out for my brother
When things aren't looking up
And God, there's one more thing
I wish that you could do
Hope you don't mind me asking
But please bless my computer too?
Now I know that's not normal
To bless a mother board
But just listen a second
While I explain to you 'My Lord'
You see, that little metal box
Holds more to me than odds and ends
Inside those small compartments
Rest a hundred of my 'BEST FRIENDS'
Some it's true I've never seen
And most I've never met
We've never exchanged hugs
Or shared a meal as yet....
I know for sure they like me
By the kindness that they give
And this little scrap of metal
Is how I travel to where they live
By faith is how I know them
Much the same as you
I share in what life brings them
From that our friendship grew
"PLEASE" Take an extra minute
From your duties up above
To bless this scrap of metal
That's filled with so much love!
Author Unknown

For Jim and the many folks in similar situations Social Media and networking provide a lifeline to the world outside from their rooms.


Connecting and reconnecting to old friends and family
In the days when most people never traveled away from their hometowns social networking was a part of daily life – it took place in the barbershop or the lodge. A quick listen to The Prairie Home Companion will provide a glimpse into those days of yore. In today’s world of mobility it is much harder to maintain those connections. Social Media provides a platform to maintain connections.
Classmates.com provided one of the first reconnect services. Unfortunately they provided mostly teaser service in the free version. For a small subscription fee you can get email addresses and establish direct communication. Facebook and My Space have moved beyond the limitation of premium membership with targeted click through advertisements. Combining search technology with social media has reunited many old friends.

Professional
The Leelefever video lays out the basic concepts of Social Media.


Sites like Linked-in have increased the range of personal networks to span the globe.

Time Wasting
While there are many great and useful applications in the realm of Social Media, there is also a huge percentage of time wasters. I am sure that many people are eager to share their sexual and drug stories along with their farms and hugs. While many of these are harmless diversions, folks need to realize that once something is posted on the web it never truly goes away. Hiring managers are routinely checking Social Media pages to determine an applicants’ character.
As a teacher who requires my students to friend me in Facebook I am amazed at how students that can not find enough time to do their assignments can take multiple quizzes on Facebook.

References.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSaNToDbW8


Anonymous. (N.D.) The computer prayer. Retrieved August 19, 2009 from http://www.best-quotes-poems.com/God-Bless-my-computer.html

Leelefever (2008, May) Social Media in Plain English [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE

Week 3 - Blog Posting #6 -Communities of Practice

It is always a wonderful thing to realize you have been successfully on the cutting edge for years and never even knew it. It is even more special to get a really cool name for hanging out with friends with common interests. Communities of Practice WOW.
When I first started to learn Microsoft Office (Version 3) I found buddies that were better at it than I was and hung out in their offices and watched them work. I picked up new techniques and gained understanding of workflows. This helped me to become very skilled in Word and Excel, or so I thought. The reality of my limited knowledge hit when I did an internship with a computer training company. In my first week I learned that I had taught myself the most cumbersome and convoluted ways of doing almost everything. My plan failed because I looked first for a buddy, and then for someone to teach me.

When I became a full time computer trainer I promoted power user luncheons and coffee breaks. It was wonderful to have a team of true power users sitting around a screen figuring out better ways of accomplishing tasks.

McDermot, (N.D.) describes “Information junkyards and empty libraries” as the common result of typical knowledge management. Somebody must know how to do that thing, but who is it and how do we find them? To address this problem I proposed and created Power User Groups for both the City of Boise and Blue Cross of Idaho. Each department supervisor designated a Power User as the go to person in the room. On a weekly basis the power users met for a presentation on a task and were treated to lunch in the cafeteria. The power users gained a new community of friends they could depend upon to help with computer issues.

“Communities of practice are groups of people who share information, insight, experience, and tools about an area of common interest” (Wenger, 1998). By establishing communities of practice in the workplace, recognizing the power users and providing on-clock time for the meetings productivity increased and errors were minimized.

McDermot, R. (N.D.). Knowing in community: 10 critical success factors in building communities of practice. Retrieved August 19, 2009 from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=18256282762269958641&hl=en
Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of practice: Learning as a Social System. Systems Thinker. Retrieved August 19, 2009 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=13212442059881753827&hl=en.

Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

Learning opportunities surrounds us. The challenge is to keep an open and curious mind. True lifelong learning may come from bound books, universities or the internet, but the most accessible is television. What, the boob tube? Yes, if you can stay away from the sitcoms and the soaps there is a huge reservoir of learning on the channels of the Discovery Network.

The same questions Rheingold advised his daughter to ask are essential for us as life long learners. Who is the author? What else have they done? What do other people say about them? What are their credentials? If we ask these questions and follow up on the sound bites true learning can take place.

On the TV show Brink (8 July 2009) Nicholas Carr and Tyler Cowen debated whether the Internet is making us “smarter or dumber.” The debaters agreed the internet gave us access to much more data, but they disagreed on the worth of the data. Cowen argued the breadth of the internet gives us access to the finest minds in the world. We are breaking down the cultural information and ordering them into new syntheses to suit our purposes. Every major school of thought can be found on the web and we can use it to create out own prosperity. This access to data lets us turn that data into useful information.

Carr countered with the claim that the internet gives us quick flashes of data that never turns into information. Our attention span is reduced by clickitis, we are loosing the ability to reflect upon and integrate information.

Open publication - Free publishing - More web 2.0

While Carr did not mention it by name Microsoft’s Bing commercials summarize his thesis better than anything I have found.

The tools to learn are all around us. Our mission, should we accept it, is to separate the wheet from the chaff and move ever deeper into life long learning. We need hold on to our attention spans and dig deeper into the web to support our learning over our life time.

On a personal note -- My friend Bill died last week. He lived a rich and full life before passing at ninety-two years of age. Bill published a news letter (Pre Blog) and I was asked to work with him in 1999 to teach him how to use his computer. Bill lived to educate his readership, and his mailing list grew across the world. His daily routine began with a round of tennis until he slowed down in his last year. He spent hours each day pouring over the internet to find articles of lasting significance to share with his audience.

So I raise my glass to a hero of life long learning. Fair thee well my friend. May you have calm seas and a following wind.

Kasloff, S. (Executive Producer). (2009). Brink [Television Series]. Science Channel.

Rheingold, H., (2009, July) 21st Century Literacies [Video File]. Video posted to http://HowardRheingold.blip.tv/

Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy

Multi-tasking -- Or maybe not.

As a long-term digital immigrant I was amazed at how Bob, my father-in-law could work in his shop without a radio playing. Not only that, he would only take one tool out of the tool box at a time, use it, clean it, and put it back in the box. His work habits seemed to me to take much longer to get results. One day I asked him, “Why don’t you have music in the shop”?

He responded with a little poem,

“Everything I do,
I do with all my might.
Things done by halves,
Are seldom done right.”


That memory came back to me as I began my research for this blog on multi-tasking, so I did a Google search and came up with one strong hit from a high-school annual in 1935. (http://wayne.migenweb.net/casstech.htm) Surely we have progressed a long way from then, or have we? Were we better off doing with all our might?

I grew up doing homework in front of the TV. When computers became the norm n every office I learned to switch back and forth from window to window. The pain of conference calls could be soothed with the mute button on the phone and Spider Solitaire. Now, as a grad student the idea of writing without iTunes and iChat is inconceivable. I make sure too check Google news every couple of minutes just to make sure I don’t miss anything in the world. The thought of my den without a bowl of hard candy makes we want to start smoking again.

I belong to a society addicted to multiple inputs. Hollowell (2005) describes the problem as Attention Deficit Trait.

“When a manager is desperately trying to deal with more input than he possibly can, the brain and body get locked into a reverberating circuit while the brain's frontal lobes lose their sophistication, as if vinegar were added to wine. The result is black-and-white thinking; perspective and shades of gray disappear. People with ADT have difficulty staying organized, setting priorities, and managing time, and they feel a constant low level of panic and guilt.”

Unfortunately that sounds not only like me, but also like many of my students. In writing this blog I am experimenting with only one monitor, no Internet, no iTunes and iChat turned off. I wonder how long it will be before I stop twitching and reaching for candy?

Reference

Hallowell, Edward M. "Overloaded Circuits Why Smart People Underperform." Harvard Business Review (2005): 54-62

Blog Posting Number 2 – Learning 2.0

The video, No Future Left Behind speaks to me more than any of the other exhibits for this section.


If I would add ten years to the students in the video, it would be just right for the college where I teach. I am in the middle with my students. Some of who after two classes still cannot save files properly much less operate Photoshop. Others blow me away with their phenomenal knowledge of the Mac and amazing graphic talents. On the faculty and administration side the divide is even greater. As the oldest digital immigrant on staff I deal with a Chief Technology Officer that is willing to buy a T3 line for the campus but won’t allow students or staff to use FaceBook. He is afraid it will take too much bandwidth. He also figured out Adobe CS4 would run on thirteen-inch MacBooks instead of the fifteen-inch MacBook Pros the students used to get with their tuition. Our campus director really wants to have a virtual tour of the campus, but is dead set against doing it in Second Life. He cannot imagine students could take a campus seriously when we represent ourselves as cartoons.

So where does that leave me as a faculty member? I have discovered tools that work around the system. Wonderful things like public proxy servers to get around the blocks. I hold office hours in iChat and Skype. My students post their work on Facebook and the class critiques them there. I use ScreenFlow to create video critiques of all projects. So where can I go from here? I am hoping to create new educational models for content delivery, and am now teaching all new faculty members how to use the internet and our learning management systems. It is a perfect cover for subversive activities like Web 2.0.

Blog Posting Number 1 – Web 2.0

Blog Posting Number 1 – Web 2.0

The problem with Web 2.0 is much like the problem with Web anything else. We need a way to separate the wheat from the chaff or, dare I say it, the content from the crap. A Bing search this afternoon produced 2.16 Billion hits, that’s a lot of tag rich-client tagclouds. (Warning on the prior link.) Even Tim Berners-Lee is not overly impressed with the title Web 2.0 and the hype.

“Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people.” (2006)

In the three years following this quote, we still don’t know if Web 2.0 is a rabbit or a duck. (Anonymous, N.D) Looking at the technology we can find a huge list of outstanding tools for helping people do their work and become connected with each other. The question remains, is it truly a new version, or just a repackaging of existing technology. In the late 90’s shortly after HTML version 4.0 was released Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML) became the rage. Funny thing there was no such language. According to w3schools.com “DHTML is NOT a language. It is a TERM describing the art of making dynamic and interactive web pages. DHTML combines HTML, JavaScript, DOM, and CSS.” (N.D.) Perhaps the Web 2.0 could better be described as a movement, one that seeks use the technology of web to bring people closer together and mitigate the social isolation felt by people in their home offices as they telecommute around the world.

Many Web 2.0 tools serve very well in this role. Delicious, ZOHO, Google, YouTube and their ilk make the world a much smaller place. I remember a study years ago about how long it took a joke to move from the US East coast to the West. In the day of rail a joke would take months to make the trip by traveling salesman. Cars cut the time to weeks, and the Fax machine to hours. Now with Facebook, e-mail and YouTube it would be just moments. The web has taken over from the barbershop in spreading jokes, rumors and other time wasters and propaganda.

As a confirmed cynic, I want to know who pays for it all and who gets the money. Let us not forget, money is what it is all about. Click through ads, free versions of software that are cripple-ware or time limited (the first taste is free) or harvesting addresses to sell to the spammers. The list goes on and on. Even Craigs List where everything is free, except for job postings in San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles pulled in over 10 million dollars in 2004. (Kornblum, 2004)

References

Anonymous. (N.D.) http://www.naute.com/illusions/rabduck.phtml. Retrieved August 9, 2009
Anonymous. (N.D.) http://www.w3schools.com/Dhtml/default.asp. Retrieved Sunday, August 9, 2009
Berners-Lee, T. (2006). http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206.txt. Retrieved Sunday, August 9, 2009
Kornblum, J. (2004). USA Today, September 28, 2004 Retrieved August 9, 2009 from http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/anet.