Gavin Sade: Weblogs as Open Constructive Learning Environments

You’ll be interested in today’s Blogtalk paper… emphasis by me!

Gavin Sade: Weblogs as Open Constructive Learning Environments

Abstract

This paper presents the authors experience using weblogs in a final year Communication Design class entitled Contemporary Issues in Design and Technology, at the Queensland University of Technology in the Faculty of Creative Industries. Students in this class actively contributed to a weblog for the duration of the semester, with this activity being integrated into both formative and summative assessment. The experience provided a range of insights into the weblog phenomenon.

This paper will explains the purpose of the class, and why the weblog was selected as a suitable online environment for student activity. The experience resulted in a number of observations that have lead to the development of current approaches to using weblogs in learning and teaching. Finally the paper suggests that the focus on providing centralized web services to support activities like blogging, may not be ideal for the purposes of creating authentic learning experiences. It advocates that such learning experiences are best achieved within a ‘healthy’ Information Ecology (Nardi and O’Day), or learning blogosphere (Gibson), grounded in a constructivist pedagogy, and where there is recognition that information systems are not value neutral. [read the full paper]

Kodak moments – weblogs, ease-of-use, innovation and more

This post deserves far more consideration than I’m about to put into it… but what the heck, as will become clear that’s kinda the point :o)

Reading Hugh this morning quoting himself saying “The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they’re cheap and they’re easy” [note to self, quote oneself more :o] got me thinking about how I was explaining the impact of blogs a bit back in terms of Lawrence Lessig’s thoughts on the impact Eastman’s Kodak camera in 1888:

“We furnish any-body, man, woman or child, who has sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button, with an instrument which altogether removes from the practice of photography the necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of the art.”

OK, it’s far from new to talk about the mass amateurisation of publishing or, indeed, of nearly everything but I don’t think it hurts to revisit exactly what it is that makes weblogs special, once in a while, and for me the Kodak experience is the ideal metaphor.

What Kodak cameras didn’t do was get rid of professional photography… they probably caused a fairly significant decline in the employment of professionals but at the same time the explosion of interest in photography that arguably came from this innovation more than compensated.

But what it did do was empower millions to create a new genre that has shaped our perceptions, environment and culture as significantly, perhaps, as any technology.

And it’s this empowerment and darn-simple-ease-of-use which is what’s so scary for established systems and organisations. It’s scary for advertisers because it’s far from hard to do it well and right, it’s scary for rubbish publications because all of a sudden there are alternatives that don’t rely on a near monopoly of publication for success and it’s scary as hell for traditional power-communication structures because the avenues of mass communication (especially in the academic world) have been carefully guarded at the top (especially internally) and that’s about to change now we all have our own church door!

It’s also scary for the education technology providers because all of a sudden lil’ old me can whack together online learning environments without much trouble at all, because weblogs and weblog-esque CMSs (like Drupal) are starting to iron out the inefficiencies which they make their money from and because we’re building and developing what we want… rather than what you’ll give us.

To publish full RSS or not to publish full RSS

I was pretty chuffed when Derek Powazek actually posted a comment on my whinge about him not providing full RSS feeds… so chuffed, in fact that I’ll reprint it here:

“I prefer to only include excerpts in RSS, because I don’t want my content to appear elsewhere in totality. If someone wants to excerpt it in a rss reader or on a website, that’s fine, so long at there’s a link to the rest. But if I had full content in the feed, then what’s the point of the website?

I make a website, first and foremost. The RSS is icing.” – Derek Powazek

Which made me think, and comment that, for me the RSS feed is more the flour than the icing, going along more with Scoble’s unsubscribe / subscribe policy of favouring full feeds.

But then in pops another Darren piece on copyright infringement by blogstars:

“BlogStars is one of those blogs that is really not a blog. It is a public News Aggregator, disguised as a blog really that publishes other people’s RSS feeds – in full.”

Which made me think… well… I guess that my CC license prohibits reproduction for commercial purposes… but I’ve got no trouble (actually I rather like it) if, say, Judith cites me (and Weblogs Inc are ads ahoy!) so wouldn’t me objecting, on a license front to, say, blogstars citing me (like they ever would :o) be hypocritical.

Am I, by publishing a full RSS feed in essence agreeing for my work to be syndicated somewhere else?

Part of me thinks that I am… and makes me wonder if I should do summaries instead (more palatable for the reader too?)

Whaddya reckon?

The problogger

Yesterday I was lucky enough to meet with Darren Rowse, the man behind problogger, Athens blog and plenty more besides!

It was great meeting up & having a real live talk with someone as deep into blogs as Darren (he’s also just round the corner from me!) if he’s able to make it to Blogtalk we’ll be happy monkeys indeed!

So… today I thought I’d have a closer look at problogger and see what there was there and have spent most of the morning getting blown away, granted it’s about earning money through blogs but if you’re looking for a better guide to creating a good, readable, sticky and effective blog… look no further, you’ve found it!

The first ton of posts that has got me thinking about design are How to Keep First Time Readers to your Blog – Parts I, II, III & IV.

Following that are two excellent posts on increasing the longevity of key posts, parts I & II.

There are also pointers to some excellent Blog herald articles on making your blog sticky (here and here).

And add to that Adding an ‘About’ Page, Purple Cow Blogging & The 4 Secrets to an Effective E-Newsletter and you’ve got the best guide to the design and conduct of blogging that I’ve come across so far.

Expect to see at incorporated subversion some better page designs, other relevant posts links, an email this post button, a funky ‘ask a question script, lots more graphics and a rework of the about pages real soon… might even go the old e-newsletter route too… I think I was in a bit of a doldrum but feel more like a kid in a candy shop now… thanks Darren :o)

Blogging in education taking off the right way…

Excellent stuff.

Brian has got funding to go Drupal & MT crazy at UBC… oh the seething jealousy ;)

Derek points out the enormous potential of Elgg in a ‘Blogging as VLE’ context... I’m thinking along VERY similar lines, especially with K12 in mind… more on that when I’ve got a bit of time.

And D’Arcy is doing faculty wiki / weblog sessions like a camel with three humps at Ucalcary.

Good things everywhere!