An ancient edublog
Someone (can’t remember who) was asking me the other day about closed-off journaling tools (limited audiences / student-teacher) … naturally I wasn’t too receptive to the idea and muttered something about ‘point’ and ‘might as well use Word’ but there are some good solutions out there too. Elgg is an obvious one with it’s access permissions all set up, and I just came across this Drupal module that would seem to do the same.
So there you go, have fun pointlessly using the web ;)
“Internationally acclaimed children’s author, Trevor Romain will be facilitating writing workshops in Wellington on the Sunday March 19; after his speaking engagements at the upcoming Blog Hui (March 17-18) weblog conference.
Workshop programme:
9-12, How to write memoirs
1-4, Writing, publishing, and marketing books for children$49 per half day session, $90 for a full day session.
Venue: Turnbull House – a stately architectural period piece managed by the Department of Conservation. It’s located in Bowen Street (opposite the Beehive), between the Terrace and Lambton Quay; in downtown Wellington.
You can register online here, or email workshop@bloghui.org.”
One of the nicest conferences I’ve recently been to was ODLAA 2005 but not so much for the presentations as the ridiculous number of fascinating people there who not only had interesting things to say, but were all up for saying them until the very early hours. One of them, Terry Anderson, was also good enough to take up my offer of an edublog and today that is the source for one of the most interesting reflections on blogging as a genre in the academic world that I’ve yet to see… Adrian take note!
After posting for four months and with 12 entries on the clock (none of them related to holidays ;) – “Is anyone really interested in seeing flicks and commentary about what a wonderful holiday I had last summer” – Terry runs over ego boosting, immediacy and rewards in some detail commenting that:
The Blog also allows me a venue for rebuttal and engagement with the reader that are perhaps possible but very rarely done directly in academic journals. Thus, feedback and immediacy demonstrates very high relative advantage for Blogs.
However, what of the quality of that feedback? First, one has to discount the plague of spam that seems to be the most popular genre of comment posted to my blog. The responses I get are quite varied and usually consist of short snippets of feedback. Now this lack of detailed response may be due to the somewhat mundane and perhaps pedantic nature of my posts, but I have not gotten the type of in depth feedback I would expect to get from editors and reviewers of a peer reviewed article. More typically other bloggers use a reference to my posting to begin and expand their own thinking. So one can conclude that blogging response is more generative than comprehensive or authoritative.
Anyway, the whole article is well worth a read and added to that the fact that Terry is also the editor of IRRODL makes you wonder if we could see any sort of meeting of the genres anytime soon?
Check it out, the incsub stable is now part of the most excellent 2web group:
2web is a group of Australian bloggers and entrepreneurs who are passionate about web 2.0. What we all have in common is that through our businesses and blogging we develop, implement and evangelise web 2.0 ideas around web services, open standards, new media, blogs and the web as a platform.
It’s an honour and a serious frickin pleasure to be able to be part of a group including Ben Barren, Cameron Reilly, Nik Cubrilovic (along with Ben the serious dynamo behind this), Darren Rowse, Alan Jones and Richard Giles. Yeh, it’s not exactly a stormin’ gender mix but with any luck that’ll change over time.
Two things which I like about this first up are that I feel I can now say ‘2.0’ without feeling too self-conscious (because it is 2.0 goddammit, it actually works as a definition) and that it’s making me feel a good deal less jealous about all your hook ups in Canada & the US. Ha!
Most excellently Blog Hui is just over a week away :)
Am looking forward to a fascinating get together with an amazing set of people and, apparently, I’m green to go for ‘facilitating’ a BlogWalk which should be fun given that I haven’t been to Wellington before!
Here’s the abstract of the paper I’m presenting, together with a revised bio… let me know how I come across!
See you there hopefully, if you haven’t already booked… please do so now, especially so that the sole supporter of this event (BTD was backed by a Uni!!!), the emphatic Lynsey Gedye, can get as close to possible as breaking even!!!
You may also be interested in some fascinating writers’ workshops by Trevor Romain… at $49 a pop… that’s about the best writers workshop that you’ll ever ever get!
Am having trouble commenting on Stephen’s news… here’s what I wrote:
“Bloody hell, that’s screwed up… am just guessing here but my estimation of the NRC just disappeared.
For the record, loud and clear, in not appreciating he work that you do, whoever / whatever organisation is responsible is firstly kicking themselves in the teeth and secondly demonstrating what absolute drongos they are.
Nuts. Insane.
It won’t take long for you to get past these idiots though, now they’re a problem but in no time at all they’ll be insignificant specks in the rear view mirror.
Take your time and know that you’re much appreciated, valued and have a greater contribution to make than they could ever even understand.
In solidarity, James”
Congrats to winners of the eSchoolNews Blog Awards (.pdf????). Check ’em out: Applied Science Research, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, Eduwonk and AssortedStuff.
Me, I’m all for bringing these together with the edublog awards, one question though: What’s with the ‘judging panels’? By all means construct a shortlist… but panels… hmmmm, isn’t this the ultimate democratic medium?
Normally I wouldn’t bother with stuff like this… usually when somebody goes out of their way purely to be antagonistic the best thing to do is to leave them alone. But heck, I’m in a bad mood today (don’t ask!) and given that:
all these self-congratulatory, mutual back-slapping blogs, apart … [make] me want to reach for the nearest bucket
It seems quite appropriate, wouldntyasay?
Indeed, as it’s evidently quite possible to present:
a well-argued case, backed by facts and figures, which, broadly speaking amounted to…
[after three other fairly obvious points] …… Much of the software we laud is actually anti-educational: it institutionalises short attention span, and provides a raucous, cacophonous environment which is anything but conducive to learning.
I think it only fair to ask a similar question to Stephen, specifically, what ‘evidence’ and what ‘measurement’ is there is any way to support this tripe? I mean, come on, I’ll accept that funding has been misplaced and to a degree wasted across the globe on ICTs – in EVERY industry I might add (education is not alone here) – but what’s this ‘raucous, cacophonous environment which is anything but conducive to learning.’ How exactly did you come to that conclusion?
Now it does seem a little unfair for me to get too into Clare here as this is no direct citation but rather Terry Freedman’s non-present summary but what the heck.
I’m guessing that this sort of crap has much more to do with Clare’s own experience of education, his own understanding of what is and is not ‘educational’ or ‘conducive to learning’. I’m just guessing here (and do correct me if I’m wrong) but I’d imagine that this is harking back to Clare’s own formative ‘educational’ experiences of quiet study, extensive conjugation and, you never know, a fair bit of back-slapping too. In short I’d say that this sort of reactionary comment not only highlights Clare’s utter lack of understanding of what ‘learning’ is but also demonstrates his utter disregard for who it is who is doing this ‘learning’ thing. It’s the worst kind of teacher that teaches the way they were taught because it’s the way they were taught, and the best who unlearns how they were taught and makes decisions based around who their students are as well as who they are as a person.
Funny really, I would have thought that Terry Freedman would have a better understanding of the ‘raucous, cacophonous’ learners that are increasingly swamping out institutions and organisations. Strange too that these kinds of unqualified criticisms can be levelled at tools which are, to be frank, much less cacophonous than the grating of a pile of exercise books ready to be hauled home on a Friday. Odd that anyone would consider this a challenge… but there you go.