My colleague, Erik Black, and I had a great summer teaching an Introduction to Educational Technology course to undergraduate students ranging in disciplines from telecommunication studies, journalism, sports management, public relations, and education. The course was designed to be an overview of the interplay between society, education, and technology. Lessons were divided into thematic units that covered topics such as online identity and impression management, Internet safety, learning theories and learning styles, visual and information literacy, participatory media, social networking, games, and virtual schooling. Activities included developing a web presence (learning Dreamweaver), photoshop basics, using del.icio.us and a host of student-selected social software applications.

The uni requires that I give an exam, so I thought I would share it with you all to see what you think. Erik and I are thinking of requiring one of these questions to be addressed by all participants, then having participants select two of their own choice to tackle. I have a rubric that I use to assess student's work here. If you're interested, let me know your thoughts. As always, I am amenable to suggestions.

EME2040 SumC Potential Exam Questions

1) Online identity management: are you managing your digital footprint?

Enter your name into three search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, Cuil).

    * What shows up?

    * Are you suprised?

    * What actions can you take to ensure that you do not leave to chance your online reputation and personal brand?

2) One current concept in contemporary education is 21st century skills.

Utilizing the your web-based search and information analysis capabilities, develop a personal working definition of 21st century skills, then describe your progress towards the attainment of these skills. What have you done in the last few years to add to your 21st century skill-set and what do envision doing in the future to continue to develop these skills?

3) Social Media and You

Utilizing the Internet, select and describe a freely available online application that would be useful for individuals in your 'field of choice'. Describe how you envision utilizing the application in a professional setting? Why is this application specifically relevant to your field of interest? What do current users of the application have to say about it's strengths and weaknesses?

4) Weekend at Bernie's

Using current examples from Internet, which should include links and references where appropriate, present a thoughtful structured argument for why you feel that the University of Florida is or is not the #1 party school in the nation.

5) Social Software Application Design

Facebook allows individuals and corporations to develop custom applications for Facebook users (eg: scrabulous, superpoke, funwall). If you were to design an application for Facebook, what would you design? Why is this application needed? Who would use this application?

6) Blogging as Journalism

Utilizing your Internet search skills, provide a brief synthesis of what bloggers are saying, pro and con, about the genetic modification of plants and/or animals to increase food supply in the United States and/or abroad. Provide a listing of the blogs that you visit and also verify the credentials of the bloggers who are posting. Identify a blogger who you feel is particularly well informed and has the credentials to make commentary on the topic (explain these credentials). Identify a blogger who you feel is not particularly well informed and does not have the credentials to make commentary on the topic (explain the lack of credentials).

7) Employment Screening

Employers have increasingly begun to use Web sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to screen applicants and current employees. Should employers be allowed to do this? Provide a thoughtful, detailed explanation of your thinking below. Be sure to articulate possible social, moral, legal, and ethical consequences of such actions.

8) What does it mean to be literate in the digital age?

Read the following article (NYT Literacy article) and reflect on the different arguments for and against reading books and reading online. Is there a clear correlation between the decline in reading test scores for teenagers and the increasing use of the Internet? Show evidence from the article in your response.

9) Social Media and Marketing

You work for a chain of gym and fitness centers that are ready to expand nationally.  Your boss has asked you to identify three strategies for using the Internet in the new advertising campaign. Your job is to select three ways you would incorporate the Internet into the campaign and then write a memo to your boss ranking them in priority from the most to least appropriate match for the campaign.  You need to clearly explain why you selected each particular strategy and what you think it brings to a national marketing campaign.

10) Serious Gaming

Neuromatrix is a new educational video game that's designed to teach people neuroscience. It's marketed to ages 9-15. The developer, Morphonix, writes that they "are developing a series of video games which make abstract concepts of brain science fun and comprehensible to children and teens. Many software games spur kids to use their brains, but this is the first series of video games which also teaches children the science of their brains." From the game description:

You play a secret agent infiltrating a top-secret neuroscience research facility. Your mission: to track down and root out the Nanobots that have invaded the brains of the scientists there. If you fail, the Nanobots and the secret entity that spawned them will take over the Earth, reprogramming the human brain into docile submission.

Write a letter to your school principal explaining why you want to incorporate this game into your curriculum. What would be the costs, benefits, risks, and potential consequences associated with using the game?

On the other hand, if you do not want to see such a video game used in your school, provide a rational argument against its adoption and inclusion.

11) Fielder's Choice

Throughout the summer you've been introduced to many different topics, the majority of which have only been covered in a cursory manner. Select a topic, concept or idea that was discussed in class or in the online materials that you are not familiar with and find interesting. Utilizing the Internet and your web-based search and information analysis capabilities, develop a personalized learning plan for gaining a better understanding of this topic. Provide links and references that will demonstrate that you have given critical consideration to the concept and have used the social affordances of the Internet.

What happens when punk rockers get old?

Well, they change, right? And they start country bands, take side gigs as movie and t.v. actors, and become law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. Oh, and they do spotlight interviews for the Sundance Channel.

Uh-huh.

Well, if you don't already know of him, meet John Doe.

John fronted a band in the early 80s called "X." Their sound was rich, snarling, ready for a fight. The first time I heard X was on MTV when I was 15. I had learned to play the guitar well enough to put together a handful of bar chords. And while I tried to emulate Jimmy Page and Angus Young, X stepped on stage and rearranged what rock music was in my mind. They weren't punk in the sense that they threatened "Anarchy in the USA," but their music, lyrics, and stance were clearly a reaction to the music heard on Top 40 radio. While punk music packed a lot angst, it was music aimed straight at the kids. It said, "Hey you! You don't have to listen to that shit on the radio. Rock the f_ck out! We did it. So can you." Bands like X, the Minutemen, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, started as art school boys and girls getting together and finding a means to express themselves through a web of music and recordings, creating a platform to spread their message world wide.

This sense of youthful idealism, this sense of me and my mates against the world, against the system, against the improper use of power and authority, could be channeled through amplifiers, through the gift of music. What fun! I subsequently started and/or joined a number of musical outfits all in the name of Do-It-Myself. Similarly, it was this same ethos, this same sensibility, that led me to teaching, of changing the world one or two kids at a time.

I also bring this story up as it relates to changing the face of education through participatory media. The changes many of us want to see, have to come from the kids. They start small as garage bands playing locally. Like musical hits, some changes take immediate traction and spread far and wide quickly, ushering in wider audiences and broader acceptance. Thus, the key to educational change, I believe, is one band of kids at a time. They don't need me or you or any educational technologist to tell them what to do. They will simply do it.

The same goes for you, you old puke.

I have been listening in to several conversations of late that have been pondering our collective fate in light of new social media affordances. It's not just politics or education or celebrity news that's driving this train. It seems the potential to organize, act, and solve problems has never been greater given new social media applications. And given the relative trajectory of social media adoption across the globe, things appear to be potentially getting brighter.

Since we have the ability to organize in a ridiculously easy fashion (Paquet, 2002), the next step involves developing new forms of group leadership. Managing people, activity, and information is no small feat; thus, while new social tools are re-vising the way we do our work, new organizational models are required that, for the most part, have yet to be invented. I look forward to reading the research that examines how to best manage and leverage new media applications for social action in profit and non-profit arenas. However, with the pace of new application development and deployment being what it is, it seems difficult in many cases to stay on top of rigorously assessing these new media applications, hence functional research is often years off.

A different solution might be turning social media research over to the users themselves. This is precisely how the notion of action research evolved. Imagine having school children studying the effects/affects, and impacts of social media in mathematics, biology, economics, in literature, as well as the communities within which they participate. Imagine K-12 school children using social media to study social media and the world they live in. Of course, teaching children how to set up, validate, and evaluate experiments with rigor and aplomb requires teachers to be capable of doing such, as well. So the reality there points back to the caliber and quality of educational professionals and what we are doing as a country to ensure that we are providing our youth the best education possible (and not simply what they can afford). As such, it is my belief that school curricula need to be re-written to allow learners and educators to become researchers of, as well as producers of knowledge and information, and not just consumers thereof.

So, if this is something you believe in, you might ask yourself: What am I going to do to alter this reality?

What are your expectations? How are you going to make these changes happen? Who do you need to better educate? What's is your timeline? What resources will you need?

Somewhere in the distance, I can hear John Henry's hammer ring.... Just don't swing yourself too hard and I look forward to reading your results.

I admit it. I like reading poetry. (Occassionally, you will find ink running from the corners of my mouth -- that's when I've been damn busy eating poetry). In Symbolist sense, I could not resist drawing connections to the U.S.'s current Middle East situation and the one depicted in Yeats' The Second Coming. While I normally shy away from voicing my political views in public (aren't they obvious?), I couldn't resist drawing connections.              

    THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Past || Present parallels

Without stretching allusions too far, Yeats draws a picture of the best of times, and the worst of times, all centering on the moment at hand.

So what is our job? What are we the reader to do? Are we inspired to go along with a fighting spirit? How should we choose to face the anarchy and passions that surround us?

What if our passions are misguided?

Perhaps there is a plan in Yeats' work. A plan that sits beneath the surface awaiting its turn. Perhaps the plan is located somewhere in the Spiritus Mundi, our universal consciousness, somewhere before the mind's eye, passing from generation to generation. Similarly, the U.S. may have a plan to resolve tensions in the Middle East, but they are not apparent, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."

My favorite lines that I believe best captures the current executive branch's throes:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What happens when our passions are misguided -- when things fall apart?

Surely some revelation is at hand. Could that revelation/revolution be tied to the many pieces loosely joining across the Web? Religious connotations aside, the "Second Coming," the next historical cycle that is upon us, is built upon more than a set of tools. Perhaps this shift is more representative of a "coming together," of people joining together, sharing, and conversing across time and space.

While I have only given Yeats' work a brief, post-positivist rub, his poem leaves much to consider. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Reference:
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War.
It can be found in: Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.)
Retrieved 16 June 2008 from http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html.

Links for managing group wikis, lurking, and feeding others while building your vocabulary [indubitably!]

Creating a Participatory Knowledgebase: 3 Best Practices
From Michael Idinopulos's Blog on Social Software in the Enterprise

This falls under the keep it simple model of thinking about structuring online group projects and resources in a wiki:

1. Structure by topic, not by org chart.

2. Lead with what you want, not what you have.
Don't let your wiki be only a dumping ground for everything you know already. Create space to allow insights to be shared, trends developed, a space where new thinking can take place.

3. Link link link.
Cross-link to broaden your reference sources.
 

Lurking cont'd

Online Social networking as Participatory Surveillance by Anders Albrechtslund

From First Monday Volume 13, number 3, 3 March 2008

A fun, somewhat academic romp through social networking and the social aspects of surveillance. Albrechtslund notes that the concept of social surveillance is not necessarily negative nor is it free from danger. Rather, he argues that online social networking presents us with an opportunity to rethink acts of participation, observing, and being observed:

"What can we learn about surveillance through social networking? Characteristic of online social networking is the sharing of activities, preferences, beliefs, etc. to socialize. I argue that this practice of self–surveillance cannot be adequately described within the framework of a hierarchical understanding of surveillance. Rather, online social networking seems to introduce a participatory approach to surveillance, which can empower – and not necessarily violate – the user."

Social Action -- FreeRice.com: Tiny App, Big Idea

From Web Social Architecture-The Mad Science of Online Community:

"FreeRice is really elegant. It's not trying to do too much: Users take a vocabulary quiz. Correct answers add to the user's score and to the size of the donation. Each question loads a new ad. The revenue from the ads funds the donation. Perfect!"

FreeRice's mission is two-fold: feed people, improve your vocabulary. Seriously! And the site seems to be working.

Simple. Elegant. Fun. Practical. This site feels like a model for entrepreneurship for all the right reasons.

[Note: Triggering Town is the title of a brilliant book by the poet Richard Hugo which I encourage you to read, even if you don't write poetry, but love writing.]

Individual/social aspect of sharing
I've been thinking a lot about the notion of sharing (on the Internet), how it can both serve an individual's self interest and contribute to a larger social knowledge base. Tagging bookmarks on del.icio.us, for example, is one way we serve our own interest (cataloging our links) and contribute to a collective interest (the application provides links to others who have found and tagged the same item).

Lurking
In this regard, I have developed a fascination with the literal idea of lurking. On the outside, it carries a kind of creepy connotation, lascivious even. Another way to think about this type of non-participatory viewing might include spying or espying: we act as watchers, we take notes, we peek around the corner catching a glimpse of our target stepping into a cab. It almost sounds melodramatic. As I recall (trans. no authority), the term lurking as it relates to cyberspace dates back to a usage associated with MUDs and MOOs where people entered a room and then said nothing while others chatted all around them.

Social networking as (e)spyware?
Yet, when you begin to really look closely, lurking and espying represent a large amount of what happens on the Web. I am not suggesting any malicious intent is necessarily involved by those who prefer to look rather than participate. Social networking sites encourage us to search and browse, to share and compare. That's what friends do, right? RSS and aggregators, for example, automate our ability to eavesdrop on conversations around the globe. But on the Web, eavesdropping is necessarily encouraged. And what we're seeing on the Web is not secret, per se. Eavesdropping on the Web is a way to learn things you might not learn if you were directly looking for a particular answer. On the Web, voyeurism is implicit and might not necessarily symbolize a deviant act. [Of course, it can be quite the deviant act when people use social networking sites for purposes other than interacting truthfully.]

Friends
Friends share. So people who don't share are not your friends, right? So what do we call people who we share with who are not our friends? Residue? By standers? Neutrons? What greater affect does not sharing or participating create? Global warming? War? Famine? A surplus of antique lamps no one will buy on eBay?

Agora
Ideally, the various social and participatory applications available to us can serve us as an agora, not necessarily a marketplace, in a capitalist sense, but more like the Greek verb ageiro which means to gather. The Web affords a means of convergence of commercial and civic life that can be more than about buying and selling merchandise--it can also serve as a place where people can freely examine a wide range of ideas and ideals. Which we are doing now.

Reflection as Action
But the next step requires us to be reflective. The Internet and Web have afforded us an opportunity to re-examine and re-define our morals, our communities, our nations, and the globe. But will these conversations be limited to only a few? What mechanisms are in place to encourage and support a wide range of thought and activity? Perhaps now that we have the ability to connect one-to-one-one-to-many, we should begin thinking about how to harness this collective social power and turn it into meaningful social action, promote open and meaningful dialogue, and serve as a platform for experimentation built on a wide range of perspectives. This is already happening in many ways and will, no doubt, continue to grow and become part of the water. But it should never be taken for granted. If the last U.S. presidential regime has taught us anything, it's that freedom is just another word for everything to lose.

Is the tent too big? Is there such a thing as too many voices in a democracy?  I think we need to explore these ideas more and continue to experiment on smaller scales to see how social software can serve as both a personal learning environment (PLE) and support positive social action.

As always, your thoughts and corrections are encouraged.

Setting

I recently sat down with Marilyn Ochoa, a university humanities and social sciences librarian, to talk about libraries and the Read/Write Web.

Marilyn shared an issue with me that I found fascinating, one I wanted to share with a larger public. She asked, (I'm paraphrasing) How close should the library be to students? I found this to be a wonderful, chewy question.

Full disclosure: I heart libraries and librarians. The librarians I know and have worked with I find to be amazingly resourceful, creative, knowledgeable, and natural problem-solvers. Most have this ability to dig, research, and find information and sources I might not have considered on my own. They are professional search engines. As an educational researcher, I consider librarians an essential part of my network--I would not be able to do my job as effectively without them. Yet here's the rub: how many students, graduate, undergraduate, primary, secondary, realize what valuable resources libraries and librarians can be?

In our conversation Marilyn understood where I was coming from. She's part of a team that is investigating ways in which students and professors, both on- and off-campus, utilize their resources, their resourcefulness.

Libraries

So what is a library? Conventionally, libraries are defined as a room where books are kept, a collection of literary documents or records kept for reference or borrowing. They are depositories, collections, catalogues, sometimes even museums. Some libraries are also shrines, e.g., a presedential library. Some are like tombs offering the remains of a dead, literate class. Libraries also offer the public a space to meet, interact, listen, view, discover and share with others.

Other ways to think about a library

Enter the Read/Write Web. Given the general affordances of many Web 2.0 applications (i.e., communication, aggregation, sharing, collaborative opportunities), Marilyn asked how these might be incorporated to better support library users? While there are a compendium of sites and communities associated with what is affectionately dubbed Library 2.0, I thought it would be fun to approach Marilyn's question from a participatory media angle.

Participation

While participatory media, the Internet, and World Wide Web have given us new tools to engage the world and each other, we as a public have not yet as a whole adjusted to the ways of the Read/Write Web. Perhaps this is because many of us are having to unlearn the way we grew up participating with the world. However, for many students today, being "online" is not an add-on; it is part of who they are.

Tech Savvy

Is Web 2.0 still for the tech savvy? How does one stay on top of the myriad of new applications being brought to market each day providing us new ways to engage and participate online? Who has time to keep up with such a fluid and dynamic market? How often can we be expected to pick up these new tools and add them to our resource lists?

The Library is People

Given that the Internet and World Wide Web have shifted the way many people/learners/teachers/researchers access information--information we used to physically go to the library for--what role should libraries and more importantly librarians play? The more I think about it, the more I begin to wonder how often students or the public associate a library with people?

Before I entered the field of academic research, I used to consider the library as a giant, well organized book stall, part museum, part galleria, part social gathering space. For me, the library was about books, resources, and text-based artifacts. It was a place to study, a quiet place; for me, it was not about people.

Presence

Given the participatory features associated with the Read/Write Web, how close should a library be to students? What kind of presence should a library have?

Interface

Another personal disclosure: I heart bookstores. I especially like the ones where there's an employee's favorites section. I like to see what books people are in to. If I have a question about a particular topic or particular genre, I look around for Patrice who is into contemporary American fiction, or for cookbooks I can ask for Ronald.

Similarly, when I read the music review section of my local newspaper, I like to see the picks from a variety of writers and their perspectives. This helps me broaden musical knowledge and tempts me with new artists. For me, books and music are part of my identity. Like food, I am what I read and listen to.

What if library homepages were designed to include a "hot topics" or a librarian's faves section that catches my eyes when I hit their site? What if library's worked more like Amazon, providing me book reviews, both publisher and user generated, and recommendations associated with topics that I am interested in? What if libraries offered opt-in newsletters keeping me informed of artifacts associated with the areas of interest I select?

A library Internet site could be a combination of Wikipedia and Amazon. A school library could also provide links to specific courses, so I could see required readings, read reviews, and find helpful resources associated with course topics?

The Read/Write Librarian

Librarians are topic specialists. Their interests range the span of the human imagination. And they can all be connected to you through the Web. Yet how do we design an interface that can make all this information usable?

Where everybody knows your name: Libraries as user communities

I recently had a thought of a library as designed a la user generated content. Imagine a space where librarians upload mp3s, pictures (png, jpg), text (links to texts, outside sources/links), movies (mpg, mov, wmv). Associated with each file "pile" is a place for users/librarians to add comments, additional links, photos, user feedback/conversation.

There could be a linked discussion board, a top 100 popular piles link, search, find user, contact, settings, sign in/signout. Users could have an option of tagging content providers with rewards for the files they provide--approval points, disapproval points. These tags could also include a "this is controversial" tag (e.g., tmbo--this might be offensive) to alert users to a topic that could be considered taboo or offensive to some.

Each user could have a profile page. Users could upload to the various "piles." Their good and bad votes tabulated. A list of the last 20 files you uploaded by date with comment count a break down of votes by file.

Rather than being a popularity contest, which it will be for some, voting on files indicates community value, rank, authority, and shows a commitment to supporting the community.

Ultimately, it is not about votes--it's about comments. What makes comments valuable is when they offer something,  anything, witty, clever, insightful, silly, a pat on the back, a challenge to duel. It is also about community, about a place where I can go contribute, receive, check in with people, hang out with people. Where everybody knows your name.

Et tu?
So, I've given you a peek at my thoughts about the Read/Write library. What are your thoughts? Can you point me to examples of what you see as exemplary library sites? Have I completely missed the mark on this one? Your thoughts, links, comments and advice are always appreciated.