abject learning

…or that technology is an inherently liberating force in education or in daily life, it’s because I’ve read too many stories like this one.

Like Stephen Downes, it took me a while to believe this wasn’t some sort of internet-based urban legend:

A substitute teacher is told not to turn off the computer (because she won’t be able to log in again). Searching for hair styles, she or a student clicks on a link that launches adware. because the computer’s security has been allowed to lapse, the adware installs itself and begins sending a steady stream of pornographic images. The substitute teacher is charged with willfully exposing minors to pornography. Investigators did not look for adware on the computer, and defense testimony showing how the adware was installed is not allowed to be presented in court. She is found guilty and faces 40 years in jail (presumably, her teaching career is a shambles as well).

I keep waiting for something like “justice” or even that nebulous concept of “common sense” to kick in at some point. How much evidence do I need before I stop expecting these things? I might as well hope for Santa Claus to help this poor woman. No wonder so many educators are afraid of the web and resistant to using it more.

And of course politicians continue to that find demonizing the web and launching mindless sledgehammer assaults on freedom in the name of children’s safety are surefire vote-getters, right across the spectrum — on this issue at least, liberals and conservatives have no trouble finding consensus. People who laud the organizational and communicative power of the web can’t seem to raise the slightest bit of resistance to the kingdom of fear, even with these wondrous new tools.

I am the Canadian poster boy of high-tech attention deficit, originally uploaded by MrGluSniffer.

So if memory serves (and mine is an unfaithful, insubordinate and much-abused servant indeed), a year or so back I was interviewed and photographed by CanWest media for a puff-piece on blogging. I think it came about as part of the run-up for Northern Voice 2006.

The photo was goofy, and I took an appropriate amount of ribbing, figuring I would just have to ride it out and all would eventually be forgotten.

So imagine my surprise when a friend mailed me a clipping that uses me as a laptop model for a wholly unrelated story, a story I have serious misgivings about. “You’d walk by other classes and see everybody playing solitaire,” complains one professor. If “everybody” in your class is playing solitaire during class you have bigger educational challenges than a surplus of technology.

I’ve been interviewed more than a dozen times by major media — newspaper, radio, and TV — and it is almost always an embarrassing, dispiriting experience. Then again, maybe that should tell me something. I’m reminded of Groucho Marx’s line in Duck Soup: “He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you… He really is an idiot.”

I guess I’m in some photo archive with the tag “laptop”, so I can expect more of this sort of thing… not that I have ever signed a release or given permission for perpetual use. Oh well, it could have been worse. I might have been the dangerous fanatic wielding a laptop on the front page of today’s paper, which makes the argument that terrorists will use city-wide wi-fi to bring us to our knees. Terrorists might also use our bus service to move about the city undetected — so I should be grateful that Vancouver’s transit system sucks, after all it’s for our own protection.

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My first pipe…, originally uploaded by MrGluSniffer.

Many have noted the arrival of the Yahoo Pipes service, which may well herald the arrival of the data mashup to a place somewhere closer to the mainstream.

At the very least, it certainly promises a set of functionalities that I’ve trying to establish for creating filtered, meaningful, courseblog aggregation… And of course it can do way, way more. The screenshot above represents my first attempt, which as yet really only functions as a concept… the number of items returned was much lower than it should have been.

This prototype pipe has gotten a few bangs from the Mash-Ups for Non-Programmers gang and they’ve identified a few problems, but we still have a ways to go. It’s hard to know if there might be an intrinsic problem due to diverse feed types, or maybe a bug in the application itself.

But I’ve seen enough to get damn excited by this concept. I think I see an emerging set of skills for Instructional Designer 2.0. BUT… though this interface really is a marvel, what’s holding me back is a clear understanding of the underlying technologies being mashed up. It would be ironic indeed if a groovy drag-and-drop screen was what finally led me into reading technical content-type documentation, after years of steadfast resistance.

We will be returning to this wholly unscheduled but fervently anticipated irregular programming shortly…

….you hear is the mudhole of opportunity sealing itself shut with tremendous, irresistible force. You may only have minutes left if you want to register for Northern Voice.

Only those with registration bonafides will be allowed on the premises. Everyone else — absolutely NOT! Don’t think that just because we’re weblog geeks you can push us around. We will have Pit Bulls.

This applies to everyone! Except, maybe, like Michelle cause she’s my boss.

This Thursday, February 15 at 1:30 UBC is hosting our latest webloggers salon at Telestudios, and I think it’s going to be a humdinger (whatever a humdinger is, I hope it’s a good thing). As with previous salons, I envision something between a formal panel and a total free-for-all, and hopefully we’ll attract a sizable contingent of UBC’s blogging community, as well as anyone else in the area who is interested.

We have three featured participants that represent a vast wealth of diverse experiences and expertise:

Eugene Barsky is the driving force behind the UBC Physio Info-blog, a site designed to inform and connect British Columbia’s physiotherapists. With an intended audience of 1,700 practitioners, the site has had 17,000 visits over the past nine months. Among other things, I hope to get Eugene talking about the many nifty goodies he’s added to enhance the site, such as the Google custom search.

Jon Beasley-Murray has been blogging at Posthegemony and Latin America on Screen (and elsewhere) for nearly two years. I’vealways enjoyed our collaborations, as he is a consistent advocate of a distributed and hands-off approach to course blogging that ensures student autonomy over their own spaces. An example of a simple course aggregation over multiple platforms can be seen at this page … and a similar approach was used for a distributed symposium on Gayatri Spivak. One reason I’m glad he’s taking part is that he doesn’t withhold his fearsome critical skills when it comes to blogging — see this rip for a sample. Jon will also be part of the education session at Northern Voice.

E. Wayne Ross maintains at least three blogs. A course blog (e learning with e wayne), a complementary blog to the Workplace journal, and his freewheeling professional/personal Where the Blog has No Name. Wayne is always provocative in all these spaces, regularly turning me on to professional developments ranging from the shocking to the appalling. And shallow fellow that I am, I especially enjoy his music blogging — his tastes are diverse and most groovy, and he’s the only person I know who might dig Robert Pollard more than I do.

In addition, we have a few special blogger guests who we will be weaving into the discussion. If you are attending and have thoughts you would like to see represented on the agenda, do let me know.

For those who want to stick around after the discussion wraps around 3:00, I will follow with a series of short demos of useful tools and tricks that offer some pretty slick benefits for bloggers, particularly educational ones.

It promises to be a lively discussion. If you can attend please do register so we can plan for appropriate numbers.

Blurb below:

—-

Weblogger’s Salon – UBC’s Bloggers Sound Off

Date: February 15, 2007
Time: 1:30 – 3:00 pm – followed by lightning tool demos from 3:00 -3:30 pm

Location: ITServices Telestudio, Lower Level, Rm, #0110 – 2329 West Mall

The simplicity and flexibility of weblog systems has led
to an explosion of popularity in all domains, including education. The
dramatic growth in the ranks of UBC bloggers across the university is
undeniable. But have the
shiny tools fundamentally changed educational practice? Do weblogs and
other social software tools truly provide a superior means of
publishing information and communicating with a community? What happens
when student are given meaningful control over their online
environments? What are the drawbacks or dangers of this approach? What
can technology units do to provide the support that bloggers really need

As
a special event leading up to the Northern Voice weblog conference,
some of UBC’s most innovative and accomplished webloggers will lead a
discussion of these and other critical issues. For those who can stay
after the discussion, convenor Brian Lamb will run through a series of
lightning demos of tools and tricks that are indispensable for the
educational blogger.

Vinyl, originally uploaded by Sumlin.

So this weekend my special lady friend (h/t Lebowski) is dancing across the water to Cortes Island for some Permaculture-type meeting, organizing and learning… Leaving us Lamb Boyz to fend for ourselves. I have a few household tasks I hope to tackle while she’s gone, but none more daunting than getting the vinyl organized.

We don’t have a massive collection but it is sizable enough that I can’t accurately estimate how many records are on the shelves. My best guess would be just under a thousand LPs. Multiple moves and countless booze-fueled late-night spinning sessions have thoroughly randomized them all. Not so bad for serendipitous browsing but a nightmare when looking for something specific.

So my plan is to put the boy to bed tonight and whip myself into a vinyl listening/organizing frenzy. But I am haunted by the fear that I will waste hours of time with inefficient sorting methods. My mind does not naturally lend itself to establishing sound processes. I did some searching on terms like “alphabetizing process” or “organize albums” but mostly come up with techie gooble, library documentation or furniture ads. What I want are three or four simple (they have to be simple given the mental state I’ll be in) effective steps and principles that will get me though this.

As of now this is what I got:

* Pull about 1/4 of the vinyl off the shelves so there’s room to work, and set them aside

* Set up simple categories (I think I will go with rock/weirdo/blues as one, since they blur together so often; jazz; and classical)

* Use cardboard dividers to break down the sections a bit (A-C; D-F; etc…), and roughly sort what’s on the shelves

* Do a precise alphabetization of each section

* Shelve the 1/4 of the collection that was pulled aside

And when I’m done, I’ll alphabetize the books! [Cue maniacal laughter]

Does this make sense?

A sentiment worth pondering, given how most information is shared in higher ed.

And can we begin to calculate the losses from silo-based word processing programs like Word?

Roland tracks the origin, and Boris is his usual cogent self:

I still believe it: email and mailing list is great for quick back and forths. It’s terrible for synthesizing information and finding a conclusion a week later.

I’m in favour of web native / crawlable archive systems. Email for notification and quick discussion, but give it a permalink to the conclusion.

I have many (many, many, …) gripes with Basecamp, but even if you use it as nothing more than a centralized email archive, it’s pretty decent. Other strategies? The Trac wiki/ticketing/SVN repository, email enabled forums (with RSS, of course), etc.

Synthesizing and collecting all the resources we deal with is import[ant? – ed.]. Help make information not die, your future self will thank you.

I have plenty of gripes with Basecamp myself, but when I talk with people and consider their particular information management desires and problems, it’s amazing how often I end up recommending it. And even more amazing that a competitor with similar attributes has yet to establish itself.

This is my first exposure to Trac, but it does look promising.

And then again, considering the wash of information flooding over us, perhaps some sort of gentle happy hunting ground for information is not such a terrible idea — of course, I have no idea how to distinguish valuable information from the flotsam.

As a run-up to the edublogger jam at Northern Voice (oh, that reminds me, I gotta spruce up that session page), Sylvia Currie (one of our estimable featured participants) passes on word of an online seminar that might prove to be a useful networked complement… the timing is certainly perfect:

Seminar: Blogging to Enhance Learning Experiences
February 12 – 25, 2007
Facilitated by Michael Griffith

How are you using blogs to enhance learning experiences? Blogging is becoming a familiar activity in our daily lives, and many educators are integrating blogs into their teaching practices. This seminar is an opportunity to share our blogging experiences and to discuss effective strategies for teaching and learning.

Access the seminar directly: http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=400
To contribute to discussions and customize your visits to SCoPE you will need to self-register http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca

SCoPE is an online community hosted by Simon Fraser University. Discussions are moderated by volunteers in our community, and are free and open to the public. We expect and welcome newcomers, latecomers, and passersby. Please spread the word!

I plan on making a nuisance of myself during this — it strikes me as a perfect opportunity to play with some ideas and get my invective juices flowing as a warmup for NV. Assuming the discussion goes well, we will certainly try to draw on the outcomes during the NV session.

As an aside, kudos to the SCoPE planners for allowing anyone to read what’s going on without creating an account. It shouldn’t even be worth noting, but I’m always amazed at how many planners put up walls protecting themselves against interested bystanders (a perfectly respectful path to take on the road to participation).