James Farmer: Webpublishing

Introduction to blogs in education

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 03:01:39 GMT

Nice summary / introduction to blogs in education... these could do with being collated sometime! [links by Jim Flowers: Blogs and Education & Bill Brandon: eLearning Entrepreneur]

Beyond Blogging: Where Next with Blogs and Blogging

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 02:54:15 GMT

Jenny gives a real cool rundown on Liz's presentation: "Beyond Blogging: Where Next with Blogs and Blogging."

Fave quote:

"How many of you with you could Google your office? I can Google my brain (via her blog)."

Fave idea:

"Liz is on a campaign to stop using the word "blog" because she thinks it's an ugly word... "The term "weblog" will become meaningless because the software can be used so differently and for different purposes. Just because something is called a "book" doesn't mean it's like every other book. We need to start thinking of this as a medium.""

Purdue Blogs

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:37:10 GMT

Anne points to a good article overviewing the use of blogs by some Purdue instructors.

Very interesting as have been Anne's accounts of weblog use and development by the groups she's working with. If you're not already, RSS Edublog Insights and keep up with the story... here's the feed.

Password protected RSS!

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:18:25 GMT

Manila: Password-protected RSS feeds. [Scripting News]

Hey cool! Maybe Manila 'aint about to croak out just yet!

Instant RSS?

Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:28:37 GMT

"Hillel Cooperman, while demonstrating the new "glass" interface of the new UI (code-named Aero) asked the audience "who will be the first to blog about this?" Someone in the audience yelled "Scoble."

Well, that's quite an honor.

He was showing a new sidebar part in Longhorn that displays RSS feeds in real time." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Hey, guess Microsoft could be making me happy for once :OP Wonder if this really is IM RSS, if so, COOL!

RSS, Blogging & Email

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 04:02:59 GMT

Just had the strangest late reaction to Greg's comments that RSS and blogging are separate... strange because it's about 6 months since the event!

Greg said that RSS and weblogging are separate beings and shouldn't be confused... what just came to me is that really blogging without rss is lost and vica verca.

Or we're just back to email newsletters, no?

RSS in yr sidebar!

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 03:41:16 GMT

Alan's doing some funky things with RSS feeds and sidebars realted to my blogrolling post.

Woof woof :o)

Breezy Presentation

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 03:20:46 GMT

Great Breeze presentation of connecting learning objects with RSS, trackback and weblogs. Alan Levine, Brain Lamb & D'Arcy Norman kick off!

This is just as interesting for the presentation as it is for the content... pay a visit! [via carvingCode]

Instant Blogging

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 23:37:32 GMT

So, I'm with some major players for a major CMS right now and I'd like to send out a "Does anyone have any questions they want to me to ask?" post but because blogging doesn't have that IM capacity (rss is v. asynchronous, isn't it?) it's pointless really.

Somebody build an RSS IM device, please, then I can IM my subscribers for stuff like this... even better collaboration / sharing methinks!

Coup de pedagogue

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 05:20:08 GMT

Ahhh, nothing better than using terrible French!

More to le point :o) Have just published my third (and last) bit on the potential of personal publishing in education over at Xplana...

Basic Summary: It's the pedagogy, stupid ;o)

It might seem glaringly obvious but it's an understanding that I've come to fairly slowly, but I do reckon I'm right!

I guess what PP really needs is for someone to subversilvely incorporate it into the mainstream... win them over from within... heh, that could be fun ;o)

Here are the three articles:

The Potential of Personal Publishing in Education I: What’s doing & who’s doing it?
The Potential of Personal Publishing in Education II: How’s it going & what’s working?
The Potential of Personal Publishing in Education III: Where to now?

I've learnt a hellofa lot along the way, thanks for all the thoughts!

Stanford Wikis / Weblogs

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:34:36 GMT

Mmmmm... check this out!.. Stanford using wikis and weblogs "Several classes at Stanford have started relying on multimedia-intensive collaborative websites. A quick browse through the gallery and you will find classes that either rely on blogging or run entirely "wiki style" [Metafilter via Dale Pike]

Can Manila Crack It?

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:20:45 GMT

Tom Hoffman says of Frontier/Manila:

"Sure, people like David Carter-Tod and others are doing good work on extending Frontier, but it is a dying platform. Regular weblog tools aren't designed for the kind of enterprise integration and complex roles needed for large scale deployments in schools"

and adds that:

"Now that Atsushi Shibata has ended the drought by writing COREBlog, it is a little easier to make the case for Zope as a large-scale weblogging platform. "

Which is interesting, not so much because I know 'owt about how Zope could work here but because you can't help but get the feeling that there's something about Frontier / Manila which, while making total sense to the initiated and weblogthoughtful, doesn't seem to catch the first time user... there's a logic behind it which works really really really well but that logic seems to need to be learned rather than building on the majority of peoples pre-existing logic on how a web-content / blogging tool could be used.

'Owever, Dan Mitchell (who does has a heck of a lot more experience regarding Manila) says"

"it is fairly easy to customize Frontier/Manila installations, yet allow the users easy control over their content. It is also very scalable: new users can do useful work with a minimum of training"

Which is interesting... apparently code for such developments such as Weblogs at Harvard is on the way soon (Yay! Thanks Dave :o) is on the way soon but I'd really like to be able to flex some of the underlying logic of Manila to make it, well, as simple as Radio. Perhaps a Manila 'light' radio-esque type of approach? [tanks to Weblogg-ed News for popping these together :o]

More than one tool round here

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 03:54:20 GMT

Dan talks about a basic strategy for providing faculty web presence. And notes that the main problem is "many of the discussions are not so much about which tools to provide, but about which one tool to provide". Oh, you don't know how much I agree!

Here are his 3 prongs:

A basic and easy web-based content-management system is a first priority. Most faculty members simply need to create a few web pages that can quickly and easily be updated, and possibly post some other file types for downloading. Frontier from Userland (and its Manila component) is the one I am most familiar with. Yes, it is a "blogging" tool, but it does a lot more than that, and I can vouch for the ease with which faculty can adopt this solution.
A learning management system is needed by some faculty members, particularly those who provide standalone online courses and/or need integrated grading features. In my view, while this type of software is necessary, it is not the best thing for most faculty members.
Support for "traditional" uploaded static sites is needed for those who use web design tools (e.g. Dreamweaver) to create their sites. Fewer and fewer faculty members will choose this path, but it is fairly inexpensive to support them. [dan mitchell's teachnology weblog]

Self-organized working?

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:09:09 GMT

Silly me, forgot about Seb Fielder's Blogtalk article "Personal Webpublishing as a reflective conversational tool for self-organized learning".

Also tho' check out this latest post Edublogging: getting started and what the future may be.

"...So, here we are coming along with these Webpublishing tools and practices and tell these good folks: "Oh, forget about anything you have learned about formal instructional contexts. What you really want to do is putting half-digested thoughts, unpolished products, stories of your struggles and mistakes, and your personal questions, worries and the occasional insight on the World Wide Web, for anyone to see. "

This is a major perturbation (to use a term from Piaget) for quite a few people. And being a rather robust mature human organism, adult learners surely hold a bunch of coping strategies to fight such perturbation off and to keep there current system running.

What can we really do to promote more self-teaching and self-organized learning?

Can personal Webpublishing practices support a development into this direction?

Or do we need to treat some "attitudes and sub-skills" as explicit pre-requisites for turning personal Webpublishing into a tool for personally meaningul learning?" [Sebastian Fiedler Seblogging News]

Good questions!

[The anal in me asks "When I'm quoting someone should I italicize them, indent them, just "" them or wot?"]

Blogs: the stickiness factor (.pdf).

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:55:53 GMT

Hurrah, final version of Lilia's blogtalk paper :o) And some reflection.

Why it's not working

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:41:49 GMT

[Ahhh, the perils of my aggregator... I wish it'd display posts in reverse order (i.e. oldest ones first) then this wouldn't happen... sending Radio wishes....]

Bill answers my question about current uses of weblog in education... "why don't they get used more?" And, I think, may have hit several nails on the head. Lordy, go read it... here are a few samples:

"Not too many students ever did all that much with paper-and-pen journals"

[Although I would say that that's a lot to do with audience... whenever my students shard their journals - with someone other than me - or kept open email group journals... different things happened!]

"Weblogs are no easier than journals or lab notebooks to keep and to do well. Two-thirds of people give them up, I think because a good weblog is a hard thing to make, and because it can consume a lot of hours. The technology involved with most weblog tools (well, ALL weblog tools) is very distracting"

[!]

... thanks for some amazing thoughts Bill, much appreciated!

The reality of communication

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 01:05:21 GMT

"If Jimmy is interested in working with lizards, studying herpetology at Utah State University, and collecting movie posters from the 1940s, he's unlikely to find someone else in the class (or school, or state) that shares any of his interests. If it's assigned, a classmate will dutifully comment on his stuff (in person or online), but there's no engagement or true exchange taking place.

The power of the network only kicks in if you open it up to the wider web, where Jimmy might connect with Suzy on the other side of the country, who happens to be fascinated by lizards and movie memorabilia -- perhaps she's never heard of the program at Utah State University, but if you connect those students, they both increase their research and knowledge base in their shared interest areas." [Jeremy Hiebert's headspaceJ

Too true, a fairly apt summary of my interest in personal publishing and online education too! Can you formally connect though? Can you manage this process? Hmmmmmm...

.LRN

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 00:50:08 GMT

".LRN is an open source enterprise-class suite of web applications and a portal framework for supporting course management, online communities and collaboration. Originally developed at MIT, .LRN can be used to support a range of applications, including course management, e-learning, and research communities."

And, apparently (well according to Blesius) now with "miscellaneous additional packages like weblogs and aggregators" which sounds cool! One this that does get me a bit is this 'weblogging in a protected environment' thing which so many people and places seem to advocate and which feels so very very wrong! [Link thanks to EBN]

Personal Publishing in Education... What's Working?

Wed, 08 Oct 2003 00:19:05 GMT

Here's my latest xplana piece which basically asks of weblogs in education the question 'what's working?' and to an extent 'why?'

I think that throughout my attempts to clarify what personal / social publishing can do for education I've always run up against this... if these are such free, liberating, personal tools then why don't they get used more? Originally I figured I'd got it wrong, that I'm not losing that 'control' thing that dogs so many teachers, but now I'm coming to think that in fact I'm recognising how this 'radical freedom' doesn't quite cut it and that our society (and ourselves???) demands structure, meaning and guidance...

Hmmm... still not too sure though, help!

More edublogging thoughts

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 02:21:38 GMT

Spike Hall posts an interesting collectoion of thoughts and summaries of thoughts here. For example:

"Think of weblogging as a major self-teaching tool, a learning-to-learn tool. Even if the student learns only to use the weblog as a self-reflexive journal it has the potential of enhancing self-teaching. If we take that capacity and add to it the self-directed research and collaboration opportunities that are increasingly available on the web, we are talking about a major self-uplift machine."

Which is cool! Well worth a read.

Small point of frustration though is this edublogging thing, I'm edublogging now (I think.. I'm writing a weblog about education I guess). I don't think learners edublog, I don't really even want learners to learnblog, I'd much rather they just blogged.. hmmm...

Weblogs in formalized learning

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 03:48:27 GMT

Jeremy Hiebert points to Seb & Seb talking about the difficulty of integrating blogs into formalized learning.

Which is pretty relevant!!! ;O)

Jeremy has some good things to say about commitment, writing something meaningful and the way in which some DBs work.. and others don't. Perhaps what interests me most though is the thoughts he has at the end of his post:

"maybe it's just a matter of finding topics in the curriculum that kids could care about, giving them simple tools like blogs, and letting them express things in ways that are meaningful to them"

As this resonates and resonates with the problem that blogs in formalized settings probably won't work... the whole network (see CoP post below) expression and exploration thing has potential in that it transforms, subverts and revolutionizes our traditional concepts of learning and teaching.. in this new context, where learners build their learning, where we 'facilitate' and don't 'teach' and where courses aren't assessment driven is where blogs will work.

Try tacking blogging onto a standard, rote-esque course and it won't work. Look at your whole approach, reconsider the 'course' bit, think what you want from blogging and how that reflects what you want from your course and how you can get that... and things could really kick off.

More thoughts about weblogs in education

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 01:48:14 GMT

Dan Mitchell continues the development of this idea with an nice exploration of weblogs in education. We're on the same path Dan :o)

Semantic and social networks

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 23:47:35 GMT

Stephen cites a very interesting article in relation to all this network stuff. The paper, "Network Analysis of Knowledge Construction in Asynchronous Learning Networks" gets into some real quality network analysis and most interestingly the difference between:

Content/Semantic (knowledge, disagreement, sharing etc.) networks & Social (power relations, cohesion etc.) networks.

Stephen summarizes:

"The hypothesis, a constructivist principle, is that "knowledge is constructed cooperatively through social negotiation." So one would expect that the dynamics of the social network would be reflected in the (emergent) semantic network."

... structure and meaning

[will probably need another month to chew over this!]

Actor-Network Theory, Connectionism and Reality

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:40:00 GMT

Have been thinking about / developing a (meager) understanding of how networks are formed in this webpublishing world and relations between this and teaching and learning.

I guess my first foray into this was scribbling down some stuff on how personal and collaborative publishing (as you can probably guess, I'm not progressing much on my 'what should I call this?' front) 'enhanced' knowledge networks and the following attempt to define it a bit better. I think what I was basically trying to say is that we construct knowledge through networks... so, if you can facilitate those networks then you're onto a good thing.

On a basic level, it's a bit like the difference between class where people work individually and talk only to the person sitting next to them and a class where there's group, plenary, pair and individual work.

After that Stephen commented with a pointer to this whole connectionism thing... "a movement in cognitive science which hopes to explain human intellectual abilities using artificial neural networks " and was talking to a colleague yesterday who is a great believer in actor-network theory... "You do not go about doing your business in a total vacuum but rather under the influence of a wide range of surrounding factors".

And that's really got the cogs whirring... the neural networks stuff is pretty mindboggling but I find it pretty easy to accept that it's not only our minds but also ourselves that are linked in this kind of network. However, add to this (or develop on it with) the concept of the "radical indeterminacy of the actor" and think about applying this to critical analysis of the development, spread and potential for personal publishing... and things start looking pretty huge.

Good lord I don't want to get all Carrie here ;o) but could the success of personal publishing, rss and the like basically be put down to these factors... my pops always says all new technology is regressive, and in doing this are we perhaps coming closer to the core of what we are?

Or am I just getting a bit hippy on a Thursday afternoon ;o)