212 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2021
    1. envisioning, with students, new ways to exist online.

      Open access and open education resources are the beginnings of an interweb for the majority. Extending the infrastructure is part of an international political project to extend real democracy.

    2. web is broken

      The interwebs work, most of the time. They have been colonized by capital and neoliberalism. The "commons" is growing and resisting the colonizers, but without international political support will remain at the margins.

  2. Jul 2020
    1. information literacy and critical information literacy are the domain of all, and a useful concept for anyone engaged by questions of how information as a public good and commodity is created, disseminated, and interpreted within broader political, social, and cultural contexts.

      That is the exact reason why I participate in the IL track this year!

    2. Some additional readings

      Barron, N. G. (2007). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Technical Communication Quarterly, 16(4), 483.

      Serafini, F., & Gee, E. (2017). Remixing multiliteracies: Theory and practice from New London to New Times. Teachers College Press.

      Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen
      Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication
      Oxford UP, New York (2001)
      
      Mary Hamilton “Expanding the New Literacy Studies: Using Photographs to Explore Literacy as Social Practice” David Barton, Mary Hamilton (Eds.), Situated Literacies, Routledge, London (2000)
      
    3. Elmborg, J. (2006). Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.

      This is an amazing text - elaborating terminology and intersections bw critical pedagogy and IL

      I highlighted the html with public hypothes.is annotations

      Continue with Constructing Discourse

    4. reflect on how this approach necessarily changes how we conceive of information, expertise, evidence and access in our teaching, and what these changes require in terms of time, privilege, and emotional labor.
    1. many settings

      Because this Framework envisions information literacy as extending the arc of learning throughout students’ academic careers and as converging with other academic and social learning goals, an expanded definition of information literacy is offered here to emphasize dynamism, flexibility, individual growth, and community learning:

      Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning.

    2. apply IL

      Metaliteracy expands the scope of traditional information skills (determine, access, locate, understand, produce, and use information) to include the collaborative production and sharing of information in participatory digital environments (collaborate, produce, and share).

      This approach requires an ongoing adaptation to emerging technologies and an understanding of the critical thinking and reflection required to engage in these spaces as producers, collaborators, and distributors.

      Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson. Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners.

    3. iscusses ways

      The Framework is organized into six frames, each consisting of a concept central to information literacy, a set of knowledge practices, and a set of dispositions. The six concepts that anchor the frames are presented alphabetically:

      1. Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
      2. Information Creation as a Process
      3. Information Has Value
      4. Research as Inquiry
      5. Scholarship as Conversation
      6. Searching as Strategic Exploration

      Mueller, D. (2015, February 9). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education [Text]. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

    4. The Framework

      "based on a cluster of interconnected core concepts, with flexible options for implementation, rather than on a set of standards or learning outcomes, or any prescriptive enumeration of skills. At the heart of this Framework are conceptual understandings that organize many other concepts and ideas about information, research, and scholarship into a coherent whole."

    5. What is Information Literacy?

      According to the American Library Association, "Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to 'recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.'"

      Further, as academic libraries, Madison College Libraries are committed to moving students toward the Association of College & Research Libraries' new 'Framework for Information Literacy', adopted in January of 2016 by the ACRL Board.

      page separator

      In the below diagram, you will notice that to be truly 'information literate' requires that you simultaneously develop:

      • awareness of how you engage with the digital world
      • how you find meaning in the information you discover
      • how to articulate what kind of information you require
      • how to use information ethically
      • understand the role you can play in the communication in your profession and
      • how you evaluate information for credibility and authority.

      Image: Venn Diagram of intersecting literacies that contribute to information literacy

      Coonan, E., & Jane, S. (2014, April 29). "My dolly’s bigger than your dolly”, or, Why our labels no longer matter. Retrieved April 29, 2016, from https://librariangoddess.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/my-dollys-bigger/

    1. Increased Engagement Meaningful for Students Meaningful for Librarians Connecting with Faculty Creating Community
    2. Key teaching methods that librarians who practice critical IL report as using most often include: Discussion and Dialogue Group Work Skipping the Database Demonstration Reflection Problem-Posing
    3. approach to education that focuses on cultivating a critical consciousness in students, with the goal of facilitating students’ abilities to “take control of their lives and their own learning to become active agents, asking and answering questions that matter to them and the world around them.
    4. Critical information literacy is a way of thinking and teaching that examines the social construction and political dimensions of libraries and information, problematizing information’s production and use so that library users may think critically about such forces.
    5. Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2016),
    6. approach to education in library settings that strives to recognize education’s potential for social change and empower learners to identify and act upon oppressive power structures.
    7. critical information literacy (critical IL) aims to understand how libraries participate in systems of oppression and find ways for librarians and students to act upon these systems
    8. imagine education as a site for generating social change.
    9. emboldens learners’ agency
    10. broader literature of critical approaches to librarianship has increased considerably over the past decade, taking issue with the notion of libraries as ideologically neutral spaces, arguing for an understanding of information literacy that accounts for sociopolitical dynamics, and seeking ways to involve library users in the politics of information access and use.
    11. foundational work of critical information literacy is James Elmborg’s 2006 essay
    12. Lua Gregory and Shana Higgins in Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis, critical information literacy “takes into consideration the social, political, economic, and corporate systems that have power and influence over information production, dissemination, access, and consumption.”2
    1. The Effects of Grading

      research since the beginning of 21st cent highlights erroneous approach to teaching with grades at the core:

      1. Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning.
      2. tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking.
      3. create a preference for the easiest possible task
  3. Sep 2019
    1. to separate and inferior schools, jobs, train cars, restaurants theatres, public bathrooms, parks, and even water fountains.

      Makes me think of online education when it is meant to be inferior...not necessarily because of pedagogy but because of lack of social capital

  4. Aug 2019
    1. Contemplative Community in Higher Education: A Toolkit

      Love this as framing (thank you Naomi)!

      For the DPL19 annotators, I thought we might collectively explode the margins.

  5. Jun 2019
    1. Yes, I would eliminate grades all together. What we want is students to be engaged and thoughtful participants in their own learning. Grades are not helping us toward that.

      on grading...

  6. Mar 2019
    1. NOT READY TO LET GO: A STUDYOFRESISTANCETO GRADING CONTRACTS

      This article was included in the curriculum for the Open Pedagogy track led by Dave Cormier in the 2019 Digital Pedagogy Lab Toronto.

      In a 19 March 2019 Virtually Connecting session, Dave explained that he uses the contract in this article as a negative example — not to be adopted uncritically, but as a starting place to think about how one might generate a better assessment model.

  7. Jan 2019
  8. Sep 2018
    1. But you can see how other editorial dynamic insertion frameworks can be designed and executed. For example, in theory, the tech allows for better targeting, and as such, if you could reliably identify the location of a listener, you could deliver editorial programming or journalistic information to that person specific to her city, town, or state

      There's a lot of power inherent in this and we are wise to pay attention to how that power is used. Will we observe it deployed for good? Will the exercise of these powers be intentional and self-aware? Will average users have agency in determining how technology like this impacts them? Will average users even be afforded awareness of when they are impacted?

      As emergent as Information Literacy is as a concept and societal imperative, it will be a steep challenge to keep up with rapid technological evolutions like this in order to empower us as content consumers to at least possess awareness around how and why we are targeted.

  9. Jul 2018
  10. Aug 2017
    1. I need to change my study habits

      Forcing new mods of behaviour - thats defo what I want from my degree(s).

    2. There is also correlation, the students are learning, between perception and success.

      uhhhhh this is almost a poem or a Dandy Warhol lyric right?

    3. students could easily game the highlighting or note-taking functions. Or a student might improve his score by leaving his textbook open and doing something else.

      WTAF?

    4. data

      "some data is more equal than other data"

    5. “It knows more than my mother.”

      So many fallacies at work now. Don't know where to start. This is one of the saddest sentences here though for sure.

    6. they

      huh - I take back what I said about the author - I don't think there is any irony happening here.

    7. CourseSmart said it knew of no problems with its software

      And one must always side with the machines. Always with the machines.

    8. they know the books are watching them

      aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhh

    9. notes on paper

      but don't trust the STs #amirite?

    10. manager needed better data

      because its made of people?

    11. reams of data

      Starting to wonder if David Streitfeld was sub-writing this whole thing. His rhetoric is quite dark and foreboding.

    12. they decline to say what, if anything, they will do with it

      bwahahahahaha

    13. help prepare new editions.

      Almost sounds like soylent green right?

    14. expressions on their faces

      but did they? really?

    15. even as critics question how well it measures learning

      assuming one can actually measure learning - like for real?

    16. Major publishers in higher education have already been collecting data from millions of students who use their digital materials

      not scary or foreboding at all #amirite?

  11. Jun 2017
    1. Antigonish 2.0

      A way for the people to save the Web

      and maybe Higher Education too.

    2. M. M. Coady, Masters of Their Own Destiny: The Story of the Antigonish Movement of Adult Education through Economic Cooperation (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1939).

      Available as pdf - http://coady.stfx.ca/coady-library/MOD.pdf

      I would add "We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change: Myles Horton and Paolo Freire" Available as pdf: https://codkashacabka.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/we-make-the-road-by-walking-myles-and-paolo-freie-book.pdf

  12. Mar 2017
  13. Sep 2016
    1. the issues we grappled with in class

      I had a professor once refer to this as self-evidence assessment, that the evidence of learning is so powerful, given that it changes dispositions, forms of interaction, and that it has resonance across settings - and that this, more than a final test of project - was evidence of deep learning.

    2. I must mention that I have successfully taught this “Writing Race & Ethnicity” class in the past.

      In my experience, this type of creative risk-taking requires the experience of more traditional attempts. Like the musical improvisation, it's useful to practice scales and know "the standards" before playing with a community - of musicians, of students - in new and unexpected ways.

    3. On Wednesday, September 28th this blog was featured as the second "annotation flash mob" text associated with the Marginal Syllabus project. Thanks to all those who joined and contributed to the conversation, especially Mia Zamora!

    1. .

      As per usual, Sean gives us clear, effective, and evocative thoughts!

    2. Why would we take the web, lasso it, and put it in a corral? We can learn a lot more, and see more of the world, if we let it take us where it will.

      So well put. Just clear and applicable to life in general! #amirite?

    3. The digital asks us to wreck ourselves upon possibility.

      I may steal this sentence for a presentation I have coming up. Or I may just steal it for general use - thanks SEAN!

    4. the most valuable technology in education is people, and their willingness and capacity for invention, discovery, and reinvention.

      Totally love this sentiment! No matter what tech you have, if you don't have people willing to experiment you will fail.

    5. The emphasis on technology at most universities misses the point of bringing together learning and the digital

      All too true most places :(

    6. An instructional designer is a consultant whose background and knowledge extend beyond the technological and into the pedagogical and theoretical.

      Although basic, I hope more and more people in highered start to understand this :)

  14. Aug 2016
    1. reinforce restrictive pedagogies.

      Yes: last AY, all administrative control was removed from our laptops. Faculty cannot download any software without justifying it to IT first. Cannot, e.g. download Gephi or Twine, and programminghistorian.org simply says "site unavailable."

    2. Because she's a community college student, it's likely that she is hemmed in by many invisible boundaries. When she uses journal storage (through JSTOR), she is probably using one of its smaller versions that offer far fewer journals.

      This is so very true where I work (CC), though in our system, our students and faculty can often see what they are not allowed to access: full text not available. But entire important databases are not available to our students and they don't know it, along with the missing larger JSTOR et al.

    1. that’s where we want to be heading, the place where practical user freedoms and developer capabilities meet.
    2. the route to personal cyberinfrastructure is likely to run through storage-neutral apps.
    3. You get the freedoms you want, but the freedoms you care about are actually a pain in the ass to exercise.
    1. we have moved to a “post-ownership society.” It’s all still heavily privatized, but now you own nothing. You just rent. You just borrow. You just subscribe. You just share. You owe, not own. You work, but part-time. You work, but freelance. Everything is contingent; all aspects of life, now precarious. But you’re free… You’re free from owning.

      And the most insane part, to me, is that this is all sold and marketed to people as, "We're here to make your life easy."

    2. What data and/or content can you take with you when you finish a class or when you graduate? And what can you, as Maha frames it, pass along to your heirs when you die?

      My school district has started the adoption process for Canvas and I'm taking specific steps to make sure any creative work students do is not submitted through the LMS because of this.

    1. I think the Web hit us at a critical moment in higher education where we were already struggling with doing our work less like schools and more like businesses, and the tech industry and its vendors had already begun to infiltrate us with promises of how technology could help us achieve this goal. We had already bought into student information systems (which eventually became everything information systems), and with the promise of those systems came the promise of lots of data which would allow us to become more efficient and streamlined.

      This describes the current state of K12. Instead of a 25 year history to work on, K12 has really only embraced the web in the last 10 years, and even then, a highly sterilized and watered-down version in which students are "protected."

    2. if our institutions of higher learning ignore the calls for critical digital pedagogy a vast number of K-12 educators will continue to look for shiny tools to cover up education’s most difficult problems.

      K12 culture relies on this shift as well. It isn't solely the role of higher education institutions to instill this line of thoughtfulness.

    3. Who pays for it? Who has access? Who controls our information?

      I find it interesting that Snapchat is used as the example here. The company relies on user data to continue to function. If our students are creating on these platforms, are we not asking them to, as a result, sell themselves? Or is it a non-issue because they're on the platform already? What of the content that's created?

    4. I scanned my graduate school syllabus to find when we planned to cover such controversial material. Nothing. I wondered why my students were so much more critical and reflective than the faculty at the university.

      Is this often left uncovered because there is no way to "cover" the topic in a traditional graduate school experience?

    5. the Luddite hammer has to be brought down again on a number of currently dominant assumptions about education.
    6. Designing for discovery is tricky business

      Indeed, it's almost an oxymoron.

    7. Having just finished a year working at an educational technology company, I’ve also seen from that side how learners become quantities on a spreadsheet, numbers on an infographic. I worry that researching learners and learning is not the same as knowing learners and learning

      Especially coming out of the (shared) biographical context here, I'm interested in further discussing this idea...

    1. volunteer

      So this is an opt-in project.

    2. NSF’s Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies program

    3. unobtrusively

      This claim certainly needs to be troubled...

    4. nonprofit, open-source

      Some of us had a conversation on an inferior conversation tool called Twitter earlier. Does the non-profitness, openness of the project save it from some of the critiques leveled there? I don't think so. I especially appreciated how @JenProf complicated the idea of what open means there.

    1. So I’d like to take a few moments to define the professor-student relationship.

      Similar to what @BMBOD has said, why must this defining be done from one side only? Why can the relationship not be negotiated with all the parties involved? If I were in a relationship where one person took it upon him/herself to define it for me, without any input on my part, I would quickly recognize there is something seriously wrong with the relationship.

    2. whether you choose to learn anything — is up to you.

      But the tone of the article suggests that the only thing students can "choose" to do is to listen to the prof and follow the relationship as defined by the prof. So there is very little room here for things being "up to you [students]."

      I am reminded of how I and some other faculty in my experience have reacted when we are told how things are going to be from above, without any chance at input. Depending on the context, sometimes the reaction has been very negative--why can't there be more collaboration in this power relationship? Why can't we have a say?

      Why should our students feel differently?

    3. I’d like to be your partner

      I am surprised, as throughout the article you enforce the power hierarchy of "student and professor." Not of peers. Not of partnership.

    4. You’re welcome to follow me on Twitter, if you like, but I won’t follow you back.

      If this doesn't speak to a one-to-many view of knowledge transmission, I don't know what does.

      I particularly enjoy Twitter as an academic tool because of the ability for conversations, connections, and negotiation it affords. Not following your students back enforces that knowledge is not up for discussion (which, as an academic we know to be untrue) and that your students are not capable of having peer level conversations and content. Which I'm sure they are.

    5. that’s not what education, and certainly not higher education, is all about. I’m here to help you learn.

      This may be the only thing in which we agree on.

    6. Our relationship is much more like that of doctor and patient. My only obligation: to tell you what you need to hear (not what you want to hear) and to do what I think is best (not what you think is best).

      As a patient with chronic illness, who sees a lot of doctors, this statement troubles me.

      Many of us feel that doctors are obligated to do more than "tell us what we need to hear" and CERTAINLY are obligated to do more than they think is best. If I did not negotiate my relationship with doctors, if I did not push back and advocate for myself, I would not have any quality of life. I would be missing organs, and I would not have correct diagnoses.

      My doctors are not above critique, above feedback, and above working with me to find the best solution. And neither are professors above working with their students.

    7. like whoever or whatever is on your phone at the moment

      If your class is interesting and engaging, the students wouldn't be paying attention to what is in fact more important to them in the moment. Perhaps they are on a back-channel conversation about the class.

    8. I regret that we cannot actually be friends

      Hollow words here, you don't in fact regret this based on the entire tone of this article.

    9. And, second, it appears to need some defining, or redefining. I used to think the boundaries and expectations were clear on both sides, but that no longer seems to be the case. The truth is, I wonder if college students today truly understand the nature of their relationship to professors. Perhaps their experiences with other authority figures — high-school teachers, parents, and bosses — have led them to make assumptions that aren’t quite accurate. Or perhaps students are just not too thrilled with authority figures in general. That’s always been the case, to some extent. But it seems to me, after 31 years of college teaching, that the lines have grown blurrier, the misconceptions more profound. So I’d like to take a few moments to define the professor-student relationship.

      If, in 31 years of college teaching, the boundaries and expectations for student-teacher relationships has not changed or evolved then I am concerned. The world does not stand still. As I would hope your pedagogy has grown and fluctuated within your time as a professor, your relationship with with students should as well.

      With relationships comes negotiation. Even within power hierarchies. It seems to me that if expectations and boundaries are not clear on both sides, then you too should make adjustments.

      Moreover, no two relationships are the same. Relationships are defined by the interacting objects.To make a blanket statement about the professor-student relationship simplifies the nature of relationships and those participating in them.

    10. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      Just the tone of this article, then?

    11. Some of my colleagues

      Good to recognize that others may disagree on this one

    12. most college professors

      Given the stats for adjuncts i really don't think "most" profs "enjoy" academic freedom

    13. Unfortunately, some of their information was outdated or just plain wrong

      There is really no reason to bash high school teachers just because they didn't know what YOU want students to do in college. There is a lot that students learn in school that is not college level not because high school teachers are bad or wrong but because that's the level kids need to know at high school! I can see the importance of saying "it's not high school anymore" but there's no reason to make it the teacher's fault.

    14. I’m not a cable network or streaming site.

      What have students done to warrant this?

    15. And by the way, please keep in mind that I’m not trying to offend you or tick you off. I actually like you quite a bit, or I wouldn’t even bother having this discussion.

      I wouldn't have known from the tone of this article!

    16. between people like you (students) and people like me (professors)

      Any other two categories and this would sound extremely racist or discriminatory. There is already a power hierarchy in place. So this is just emphasizing it. Also - I don't like how this generalizes everything coming up next as if all professors should agree with you. Other professors may wish to be friends, parent-like, etc. It is your prerogative to have a different relationship with your students. But please don't set their expectations for OTHER professors all over the world

    1. connect to issues of identity and difference that are pressing within the US.

      Yes, there is a tendency to consider the US as monolithically privileged in these conversations. It is not. I live in a rural area that is extremely lucky to have any utility service at all. If it were not for the New Deal in the 1930's and the development of rural telephone and electic coops, there would be no internet in the boondocks. if we had to electrify the boondocks today, certain political elements would shrug and say, "I got mine and the devil take the hindmost." We are not all the same in the US.

    2. You can watch live (or recorded) at this YouTube link (we hope YouTube works or at least streams well enough in your country).

      Ever consider using Periscope or one of its variants for doing adhoc livestreaming from #digped? I know I am fond of laying extra work on youse guys, but perhaps we need to have a streaming jockey at conferences--and there only job is adhoc, getting the flavor of the conference, person on the street interviews.

    3. There are learners inside the US for whom language or technology access are immediate practical barriers; and learners whose experience is continually affected by educators with a poor understanding of their cultural context or their personal priorities.

      And from the scale of the classroom to that of a school system, such practical barriers and poor understandings also manifest as political barriers and priorities - and as noted, often to the detriment of learners.

    4. We also want to challenge the tendency to call something “global”

      I'm eager to learn - and contribute to a conversation - about alternative ways to frame such collaborations.

    5. working as academics means international-first, not as an afterthought

      I'm curious - when we work as academics, what identities, practices, and commitments do we intentionally foreground? Asked another way, what stance (such as "international-first") shapes our work?

    6. including in quite critical ways

      Is it helpful to specify what critical means here? For instance, reading so far, critical might refer to:

      • about critical education issues, generally?
      • critical of US-centric view of ed tech?
      • critical of something associated with digped?
    7. We can work together in English, but we’ve had to look things up to fully understand their meaning. And even though we’re familiar with each other’s work, it turns out we’re still unfamiliar with important elements in each other’s political, cultural and national context.

      also so much love for each other grew out of this, so difficult to capture in writing. We became virtual office mates sharing our daily lives with each other, experiencing much joy and pain and intellectual stimulation all together

    8. International Something: Why You Should Care #DigPed

      Hope folks will annotate this post :)

    1. for people to live in a a society that is free and fair, they need both access to information and the ability to communicate freely
    1. The image represents all participants converging to create a mesh of resources and opportunities.

      Not quite. There are two other classes of participants: lurkers and virtual connectors. I am one of the virtual participant who is both allied to one of your inner circle of participants, @vconnecting, and as a free agent. For example, I wanted to share the keynotes via the video annotation cloud program, Vialogues.com. For some reason they are unembeddable, Your cloud tag of participants has an impermeable boundary that keeps my message from getting through. I finally did make contact with @cogdog and Alan tweeted out some support. As of now...no response. Is this because you have a pre-set mesh, is it because the IRL demands of the institute demand inner focus, or is it because designing for virtual participation was at best an afterthought?

    2. people making connections in serendipitous ways.

      I am drawn to the work of James C. Scott, Seeing like a State. The best summary of his idea of legibility is on V. Rao's web site Ribbonfarm. Since we can also annotate with images, the one on that site from Scott's book is dispositive.

    3. Thanks so much for doing this Chris. For those of us who are connecting virtually these road maps help us quell the FOMO and embrace the JOMO.

    4. ways in which institutions marginalize people

      My attendance as a virtual participant makes me connect with the marginalization of those who are on the outside looking into #digped. It is unconscious for the most part and mitigated by the work of folks like Virtually Connecting. I understand the distraction and pressure on organizers to satisfy the needs of those who signed up and attended. In truth, they are in the first class seating. Unless you do serious pre-planning or a separate virtual institute, well...you get what you get. It does, however, violate my own personal online ethos

  15. onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com
    1. Aesthetics matter: interface design shapes learning.

      Yes! And Blackboard is soooooo unattractive!

    2. Can we stop talking about digital natives?

      Teacher Bill Ferriter's thoughts on the label digital natives- "We've inadvertently handed over all ownership and discredited our expertise, y'all—assuming that spending our formative years with notepads instead of iPads means we've got nothing to add to conversations with our students about how technology empowers learners."

      http://blog.williamferriter.com/2013/01/18/building-a-bridge-for-the-digital-natives-in-your-life/

    3. Can we stop talking about digital natives?

      I agree with this. This ignores the varying backgrounds of students. Just because many students come to college having had access to digital tools, smart phones, etc. that does not mean all students have. In fact, potentially rural schools or under-funded schools may not have computer labs or be able to provide students with access to digital tools.

    4. Can we stop talking about digital natives?

      I guess we can stop talking about it. I mean we've learned now that students raised with ipads/iphones in their hands still don't know how to use technology to learn.

    5. Place is differently, not less, important online.

      Wondering the ways place is different, but important online. Is it important that one student does her assignments while at work, and another does it at the table at breakfast eating breakfast with his son?

    6. Openness is neither neutral nor natural: it creates and depends on closures.

      This is such an important shift from open and closed as dichotomous ideas. It's necessary that we ask what closures come with openness

    7. The 2016 manifesto

      How many people think they might share this with their students this fall? I think I will.

    8. Online teaching should not be downgraded into ‘facilitation’.

      Administrators: take note! Please!

    9. Remixing digital content redefines authorship

      I feel like if they are going to make this statement that they should mention the varying degrees of creative commons licenses.

    10. Automation need not impoverish education: we welcome our new robot colleagues.

      Audrey Watters had something different to say about this idea of automation at last year's DPL Institute.

    11. Face-time is over-valued.

      I'm not sure we need to say this to defend the value of digital pedagogy. I'd rather view it all as more of a continuum than a differently valenced dichotomy depending on your POV.

    1. an opportunity to take ownership of a process that was inherently theirs

      That course design is a process is "owned" by students rather than professors is provocative--even if, as Chris suggests, it ought to be intuitive. Allowing students to modify a course according to their unique interests and methods of learning also ensures more personal involvement and investment in the class.

    2. I had, in effect, been committing teaching fails every semester before I even met my students. I was robbing them of an opportunity to take ownership of a process that was inherently theirs, and I was imposing an order of instruction on them simply because it was the order that I thought made sense.

      This is effectively about discovering and allowing student agency. I wonder if there are students who struggle with agency, i.e. who are uncomfortable without the rules and pathways explicitly defined.

    3. we could tell you which way makes the most sense for us

      This takes work and self-reflection. It's great when students can do this.

    4. minds to explode

      mind exploding now

    5. I called for the same show-of-hands survey.

      I always worry about peer pressure when using the public show of hands survey. Other ideas for how to do this without it being so public?

    6. grad students created a syllabus and collection of assignments, ready for use in their upcoming courses.

      Fantastic tool!

    7. sense

      good insight here.

    8. How, then, can we create courses that are appropriate to the students’ abilities, sensitive to the students’ needs, and responsive to the students’ learning styles?

      I know i am working with a prof who is interested in their students when they tell me they don't know how they are going to teach until they have met the students. Unusual, but it does happen

    9. Reading this for the first time, with Chris in the room...

    10. we know how we learn by now

      I can see labor contingency making this a bit more scary. I also wonder how many students push back against this notion?

    1. Political Collective Action

      Do we know if there is a chapter on public health in this book (re: mobile media)? A personal interest of mine.

    1. Playful pedagogy aims to put learners in a flow state—that utterly absorbing state where, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi puts it, “nothing else seems to matter” (6).

      Dewey in Democracy and Education on a similar tip:

      In their plays, they like to construct their own toys and appliances. With increasing maturity, activity which does not give back results of tangible and visible achievement loses its interest. Play then changes to fooling and if habitually indulged in is demoralizing. Observable results are necessary to enable persons to get a sense and a measure of their own powers. When make-believe is recognized to be make-believe, the device of making objects in fancy alone is too easy to stimulate intense action. One has only to observe the countenance of children really playing to note that their attitude is one of serious absorption; this attitude cannot be maintained when things cease to afford adequate stimulation.

    2. provide examples of games as pedagogical tools.

      I'll be attempting to roll out a "Reacting to the Past" role-playing game in my Early American literature course this fall. I've been considering ways to incorporate a digital aspect to the classroom performances, perhaps by way of encouraging out-of-class blog/newspaper "wars" between opposing sides.

    3. playful pedagogy uses rules as constraints that foster creativity, rather than stifle it. ¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Thi

      This is the way @jessifer talks about writing in the space of a Tweet.

      How to encourage creative rule "breaking" or evading?

    4. crafting transfers the classical rhetorical values of argumentation and persuasion to domains beyond writing and language

      I've also discovered that students assume more accountability and take more pride in "crafting"-type assignments like collaborative Wikis, Genius annotations, &c.

    5. mistakes, failures, and most importantly, second chances

      Crucial point that I find myself struggling to sufficiently explain. Often students seem reticent to write (and/or revise) drafts, and resist integrating free writing practices into the all-important "product" at the semester's end. That's not the students fault. After all, what assignments tend to make up the largest percentage of their final grade?

    6. different for every student, rather than a straight shot toward a desired destination

      Our conceptions of assessment will be transformed with "play" and process at the center of learning. No more word and page counts, or "mastery" of the argument/essay.

    7. Course objectives, learning assessments, grading rubrics, and so on.

      Absolutely! Now how to be "playful" with the requirements of an academic bureaucracy? There's surely a fine line/happy medium I can't seem to toe or grasp in my own course designing efforts. Hence, my syllabuses range from hierarchically stuffy to shamelessly irreverent.

    8. games, performances, and other “not serious” pursuits that stand “outside ‘ordinary’ life,”

      The "ordinary" as confined to the logics of commercial life and biological maintenance? Is this always true of "play"? (And isn't it a Silicon Valley ethos to introduce"play" into the ordinary life of labor--even if cynically?)

    1. feminine and feminine with unscientific and undisciplined. Why use a term, soft, that may begin the discussion of difference with a devaluation? Because to refuse the word would be to accept the devaluation. Soft is a good word for a flexible and nonhierarchical style, open to the experience of a close connection with the object of study. Using it goes along with insisting on negotiation, relationship, and attachment as cognitive virtues. Our goal is the revaluation of traditionally denigrated categories. We do not argue that valuable thinking is not soft; we explore ways in which soft is a valid approach for men as well as women, in science its well as the arts.

      This is possibly my favorite argument of the article so far! Yes! It's soft. Why is softness something we devalue? Instead of appreciate? Doesn't everyone (in real life) prefer softness to hardness? Flexibility to rigidity? In many contexts anyway

    2. Lisa and Robin came to the programming course with anxieties about not "belonging" (fearing that the computer belonged to male hackers who took the machines and made "a world apart"), and their experiences in it only served to make matters worse

      Story of my life. Ne er felt i was in the right place in a comp sci department

    3. Women's access to science and engineering has historically been blocked by prejudice and discrimination. Here we address sources of exclusion determined not by rules that keep women out, but by ways of thinking that make them reluctant to join in

      Ib some ways this is MORE important - because ppl assume solving access problems is enough. It isn't

    1. This piece reminds me that concerns about equity in making (and, broadly, the so-called "Maker Movement") have become the focus of some very sharp learning scientists. Here are a few examples: Making Through the Lens of Power and Culture

      On Equity Issues in the Maker Movement, and Implications for Making and Learning

      Makeology book, Vol 1 & 2

    1. there is always an aspect of coercion to design

      The word "coercion" has historically been a negative word to me - to be coerced is to go against one's will. Many negative examples are presented here - what are positive examples of coercion in design? I lived in Portland, OR for many years and volunteered with the City Repair project whose mission is to "place make". Here are examples of PDX intersections "repairs": http://www.cityrepair.org/intersection-repair-examples/

    2. Today, we have since become so habituated to public lighting that our primary association with street lights is that they deter criminal activity and make us feel safe.

      Is that really a false assumption? I'm totally on board with the overall argument here--big Mike Davis fan!--but feel this goes a step too far.

      Austin's moon towers were supposedly a response to a late-nineteenth century serial killer), but have not prevented youth from gathering, indeed they have occasioned such gatherings:

    3. Designs that are unpleasant to some are put into place to make things more pleasant for others, and that latter category might just include you.

      I'm really excited to see how we turn the argument of this essay toward the design of learning technologies and courses, specifically in how we might locate tacit power relations in seemingly innocuous (sometimes "unpleasant") interfaces...

    1. it’s this pattern of a work reacting to itself and its environment that gives it the spark of life.

      I look forward to this new frame to my design work allowing one to capture this precious moment when a design pattern reacts to itself... or perhaps it is too elusive to in fact "capture"?

    2. If you find them as powerful as I do the context will eventually present itself.

      I appreciate the invitation to read for emergence & discovery

    3. the way a sentence arises from grammatical templates/rules

      Or the way a poem/argument emerges from the form of a sonnet.

    4. work on architecture,

      Seems like architecture will be a valuable metaphor for our conversation about instructional design.

      Interestingly, Alan Levine opens a recent blog on Domain of One's Own with a nice architectural metaphor for that great project:

      Like a small stubborn, unique, old fashioned house surrounded by modern monolithic mega modern glass and steel structures, the Domain of Ones Own project started at the University of Mary Washington stands out as one hope amongst Educational Technology’s adoration of mega scale, management, analytics, automation, and tall tall towers of data, data, data.

    1. stock responses

      Our "thoughts and prayers"...

    2. and 35 (just above the Virginia Tech massacre, the worst mass shooting in American history).

      And this all changes, now, with Orlando.

    3. In a very real sense, my theory about bots as a form of civic engagement grew out of my own creative practice

      Reminds me of my experience contributing to the Civic Media Project.

    4. despite not saying anything legible, @ClearCongress has something to say

      Might we be edging into Dylan territory here?

    5. from the Huffington Post

      This opens an interesting conversation about whose data and measures are more reliable. Given that we're in an election cycle, I've turned frequently to 538, how about others?

    6. I am unfairly applying my own criteria to it, but only to illustrate what I mean by the terms topical, data-based, cumulative, oppositional, and uncanny.

      I appreciate reading this and wonder how other criteria might change our understanding of protest. And a question for Mark: Why were these five criteria chosen, were any discarded, and have any been added since this was published?

    7. where Chuck teaches

      Chuck authors a wonderful blog.

    8. the bot takes no stance

      Yes, though isn't this stance reflective of the individuals who create the source material, in this case news headlines? I'm curious about the interplay between human processes (from editorial meetings, to the creation of that which is newsworthy) and the automated - and how, to borrow from Mark, this reflects conviction.

    9. and the daily horrors that fail to make it into the news

      While these may be "horrors" of another variety, I'm reminded of the recent effort by James Fallows at The Atlantic to chronicle "The Daily Trump: Filling a Time Capsule" so that readers might recall what remains so shocking about our daily political machinations.

    10.  ideas that when applied to K12 or higher ed appear to be little more than neo-liberal efforts to pare down labor costs and disempower faculty

      Here's Jill Lepore's wonderful The Disruption Machine, my favorite critique of Christensen's schtick.

    11. automatically

      I'm curious why this automation matters, and how this relates to various human ambiguities - such as the nuance of meaning and interpretation - that invariably inform how we protest, why, for whom, and under what circumstances.

    12. whose expressionistic lyrics by this time resembled Rimbaud more than Guthrie
    1. we talked about the importance of adopting practices that keep complexity in our educational processes,

      This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Patricia Williams's The Alchemy of Race and Rights:

      That life is complicated is a fact of great analytic importance.

    2. That’s hard to do.

      And a positively (and positive) anti-corporate logic. Witness the rhetoric of "solutions" so pervasive in at least Silicon Valley tech and edtech.

    3. we should make space for things that don’t fit into our tidy conceptions about education.

      Here's perhaps an interesting take on this issue form someone working on the tech side of edtech, trying to build tech for teachers and students, and help them leverage that tech for teaching and learning:

      As I say above, it's obviously hard to market this kind of "untidiness." When people are "shopping" for technology for the classroom, most don't want things that half work or might work or try it and let us know what works/doesn't. That only goes so far.

      Don't get me wrong, the early adopters of both products I've worked on were just the kind of people who wanted to be part of that kind of experiment and by collaborating closely with them, I believe I've been able to direct product development in both projects towards a more authentic pedagogical value. But that process doesn't, at least I don't think it can, "scale"--a term I realize has it's own problematic ideology.

      But I also get frustrated with this lack of tidiness because I want to offer a good product/service/experience to my educational users. I don't want to disrupt the teaching and learning process that should be the focus of everyone's energy in a classroom by my own tool's buginess. I don't want to suggest that a tool can be invisible, but I also don't want a tool to be the focus.

      Despite my hesitancy about "untidiness"--no doubt further entrenched by my own anal retentiveness--I'm really interested in how edtech, or perhaps indie edtech, might actually incorporate this kind of philosophy. As long as centers for teaching and learning, and teachers and learners themselves, are on board, I don't see why it can't work.

    4. but you can’t actually “increase dancing”

      I'd argue that YouTube has increased dancing, but I'm mostly just using that as an excuse to share this video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNEkZ7bvZw8

  16. Jul 2016
    1. beyond the tyranny of proximity and provincialism

      I am TOTALLY going to start using this phrase re: online spaces in general. Huzzah!

    2. Would the spaces where novel ideas can emerge unbound by efficiency or productivity be eliminated, the consequence would be no less than the simultaneous destruction of all non-actual possible worlds

      Yes! I love this idea of the "non-actual possible worlds" being the stuff of higher education. The multiversity.

    3. What is now useless can open up whole new worlds tomorrow. And even if it never does, it is beautiful, in that it has the markings of the play of possibility that is life and mind.

      Education should open up the possible, not constrain to the already known.

    1. The three day experience of the #DigPed PEI Institute was an experience that I felt stretched all in attendance.

      "...stretched all in attendance" - very well put. It shows that no matter what you brought to the Institute, you grew in some way. You stretched yourself into some new spaces. Well put Mark.

    1. None of us, students and faculty included, have really figured out how to live, learn, and work in the emerging digital media-cognitive ecology. So it is certainly true that we can struggle to accomplish various purposes with technologies pulling us in different directions

      What could educators do to better prepare students to interact with digital media that leverages tech to go far beyond what paper and pen affords (tools, skills, etc.)?

  17. Jun 2016
    1. Twitter as a tactical public allows for abuses, and for defenses of power and privilege. It also allows for bodies marked by race, gender, class, queerness, disability, and intersections of these and other identity facets to publicly resist being made to stand in the gap. It forces a reckoning with the ways that casual, even ephemeral public speech can reinforce the marginalization of others. It has become a space less tolerant of speech unwilling to account for its own power relations and assumptions.

      As we are talking about what we want to discuss with our students about putting their voices out in the open public, and maybe sharing cautionary tales with them, I think these four sentences are also so important to include. Let's talk more about marginalized voices as well as those who may not be acknowledging their privilege.

    2. Twitter in particular has become a means by which many scholars create and curate public identities and share their work and that of others.

      This in itself can be a quote one uses when introducing Twitter to academics, I think

  18. May 2016
    1. that good courses don’t end — can’t end — for a multitude of reasons; that the digital world is embedded in the “real” one; and that networks are promising but very, very hard to make truly public.
    2. Digital tools offer the opportunity to refocus how power works in the classroom.
  19. Apr 2016
  20. Mar 2016
    1. What occurs when we decide that agency and not expertise is the core principle of learning is that we must, as teachers, learn to see the very best in students.
    1. helping people to visualise their practices so that

      We're finding that V+R mapping is helping educators to visualise & reflect on their online practices, to share their perspectives on learning spaces, digital identities & openness, and to consider how these insights might inform their teaching practices. This post summarises our first V+R workshop with Donna & Dave last year - work is continuing, with both students & staff. https://catherinecronin.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/marvellous-mapping/

    2. It cuts both ways and it's disenfranchising across the board.

      This is such a powerful point. Angry as we may be about the dangers of the DN narrative, we need sensitivity when working with people to deconstruct it. I'm thinking of staff who feel overwhelmed (e.g. increasing workload, info overload, pace of tech change, ruthless institutional policies) and may find in the DN narrative (always on offer, sadly) some form of comfort. The V+R process is a wonderful way of breaking through this - particularly when accompanied with humour & sensitivity (& plenty of coloured markers & coffee :) ).

    3. Institutions can approach educational technology in two very different ways.

      Here I worry that the conversation comes back to that old argument about Techne vs Episteme. In education it seems to me that a focus on either of these is problematic and I have been considering if a focus on Phronesis could be the answer.

    4. we who work in higher education do have a certain level of expertise around what's possible.

      Yes, but I think it's less about our expertise and more about the inappropriateness of the customer-service model when applied to students. "The customer is always right" is an unfortunate approach for universities, where failing and experimenting need to be valued. If anything, the professorial expertise might be best at revealing mastery and consumerism as flawed models for critical inquiry and research.

    5. And if we lock all our content away behind paywalls and password protection, we're not giving the public an opportunity to see the work of a university either.

      Yes. I think of this is terms of open access to research, and the role institutions should play in supporting gold and green OA, but also in terms of the operating procedures of our public universities. As schools switch to slicker but more internal communications platforms (Slack, Yammer), I wonder if we will become even more insulated. Love the idea of public universities operating in the open: teaching, research, and administration.

    6. Educational practice first

      reminds me of @lisaMLane 's Pedagogy First that I discovered in 2011 and finally managed to get back into and finish in 2014.

      yes Pedagogy is always first, May be like an artist's idea or feeling that then can be expressed in so many different ways. ( Metaphors are tricky and never perfect but ..) :)

      Technology can inspire new ways of augmenting/expanding/personalizing/connecting etc. :) pedagogy and learning.

    7. It's about what you do and why you do it, not about who you are as a person.

      And

      It allows for the possibility of growth, change, and even failure. Opposed to - you were born this way and that is just the way it is.

    8. so that

      This is a great reason for doing this kind of workshop but it also seems to me that there is merit in doing something like for the simple point of self-reflection.

    9. because

      Because it is never a good idea to limit (or celebrate) someone based on who, where, or when they were born but rather to judge them based on their character.

    10. It's a ridiculous metaphor.

      Let's call it what it is - It's an ageist metaphor.

    11. set up a barrier for members of academic staff who are then being fed a line about how they're dinosaurs and will never get it. It cuts both ways and it's disenfranchising across the board.

      This is an excellent point. I had it when I hear someone call themselves a dinosaur, and I hate it more if they do so and it's their main motivation for learning ed tech...

    1. Call-Out Culture

      It's sad. something that I never really expected to happen in educational circles, not at that level.

      I think it happens on blogs too sometimes that it starts looking like the political discussions I come across under some articles.

  21. Feb 2016
    1. etworked scholarly participation can be a powerful site of new contacts and resources and conversations for a scholar, as well as new conventions (hello #hashtags!) and new public audiences for research. Increased citations, media gigs, collaborative research opportunities, invited talks and keynotes, and a variety of other academically-valued material effects can stem from active and sustained networked engagement.

      That's a pretty good way of summing it all up - should probably think of specific examples to use... should I consider mentioning these things in our Twitter workshop - value of Twitter for faculty (what about the shifting nature of Twitter - would it affect that?)

  22. Jan 2016
  23. Nov 2015
    1. What’s not there can at times be even more helpful than what is. Embrace the silence and let it speak for you.

      Nice way to round out the feels here - and cool to have a space between this and the final quote. Nice work @chris_friend

    1. People in networks cannot be told what to do, only influenced through other nodes (people) due to their reputation. If people don’t like you, they won’t connect. In a hierarchy you only have to please your boss. In a network you have to be seen as having some value, though not the same value, by many others.

      Have felt odd using collaboration in open networks for some time now.

    2. there was little privacy in the village, as there seems to be no more privacy today

      great point on common behaviours

    1. The moral moment is when the text calls on the reader–on me–just as the patient calls on those who offer care. The here-I-am of the writing is a generous offering of self as witness. The generosity calls for a response of here-I-am from the reader. … The dialogue of author and reader is the beginning of other dialogues; in the multiple sites where medicine is offered and received, where care is given, and where healing occurs.

      Great Arthur Frank quote