למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

תוויות: מידענות

My typical day starts with a cup of coffee and a click on my browser icon. It's strange now that I think about it, but the first thing I do in the morning (no matter what I have to do during a particular day) is to start my browser - Safari. I don't stop to think - oh, I need my browser now! - I just do it.

… but it doesn't just stop at reading and clicking links. Fact is that whenever I find an interesting post or link I immediately feel the need to share it. A few years ago I'd perhaps email or IM the link to family or friends, but now it's just much more. I feel the need to share it with the world - I don't want just friends and colleagues to read this link, I want to give everyone in the world that might be interested in a certain topic a chance to read it!

Keeping a blog makes me an active seeker of content that will be interesting and relevant for you: the readers of my blog. I am now the editor of my personal channel and for this reason I feel a big responsibility for the "life" of my blog - it is up to me to keep it interesting, current and worth reading. And all this also makes my primary work as a researcher more engaging, and even more valuable and meaningful to me. I feel that I can do much more than just the task in front of me. I am constantly learning, collecting experiences and thinking about how they could be shared for others to read.

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה

תוויות: דיווחים

And after all, there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה

In the past week and a half, I’ve seen my first attempt of a digital story go from being a little unknown corner of YouTube to having over 48,000 views. Now my poor little attempt at creating a digital story is getting knocked around with comments.

This whole experience has me thinking about our students and the content they produce on the web. Everything from the videos my students have on YouTube to their personal Myspace accounts. It’s a great lesson that content can lay dormant for a long time, and it only takes one connection to bring it to life. I think about our high schoolers today who are putting things on the web that today seem harmless, but tomorrow could cost them their job, or impact a family member or friend’s career. There is a lesson here that connections are constantly being formed; everything and anything you put on the web can be connected too. Our students, no matter what their grade, are creating their digital profiles, a profile that is clickable, connectable, and tells a story of who they are. Now, I wish I would have read over my script a few more times before actually posting the video, cleaned up the images, and made it a little less boring (as most of the comments state) but at the time I wasn’t thinking it was going to be viewed by 48,000 people. I was practicing; learning a new skill, and trying something new…and now the world has a hold of it.

תוויות: כתיבה, שימוש בבתי ספר

So is the growth of Internet-based fan fiction a cultural development to be wholeheartedly applauded? Not quite. The good news about the Internet is that, in a world without gatekeepers, anyone can get published. The bad news, of course, is the same.

I would rather focus on the value of expertise and the wisdom of people who are trained.

We should not reduce the value of participatory culture to its products rather than its process. Consider, for a moment, all of the arts and creative writing classes being offered at schools around the world. Consider, for example, all of the school children being taught to produce pots. We don't do this because we anticipate that very many of them are going to grow up to be professional potters. In fact, most of them are going to produce pots that look like lopsided lumps of clay only a mother could love …. We do so because we see a value in the process of creating something, of learning to work with clay as a material, or what have you. There is a value in creating, in other words, quite apart from the value attached to what we create. And from that perspective, the expansion of who gets to create and share what they create with others is important even if none of us produces anything beyond the literary equivalent of a lopsided lump of clay that will be cherished by the intended recipient (whether Mom or the fan community) and nobody else.

תוויות: בלוגים, כתיבה

כדי לקיים בלוג ראוי לשמו צריך לדעת לכתוב בלי שגיאות, להתמצא בתכנים, להשקיע בנימוקים ולהקדיש למשימה חלק משמעותי מהזמן הפנוי. מי שאינו פנסיונר, מובטל מרצון, נער או נערה בגיל הטיפש-עשרה, משוגע לדבר ולרעיון, איש פרסום, עיתונאי העובד ממילא באמצעי תקשורת ממוסד או לפחות פוליטיקאי הרץ למשרה כלשהי - לא יצליח להתמיד בבלוג משלו.

Not until blogs are part of the teachers’ own social network will they be perceived as a worthwhile use of time. Yes, there are teachers who both read and write blogs, but they are not the majority in most schools. Projects such as the restructuring at Arapahoe HS (see the Fischbowl) make blogs part of the teachers’ network and day to day professional conversation. Until there are projects like this, teachers will continue to view blogs with the same disdain as they do a table of 9th graders.

תוויות: כתיבה, שימוש בבתי ספר

תוויות: כתיבה

תוויות: שימוש בבתי ספר

תוויות: כתיבה

I sense this is the direction that you, the writers of amillionpenguins, may be heading in.

I would humbly suggest that you re-think this. Can someone go in and try to unclutter it a bit?

תוויות: ויקי