Following the Yellow Brick Road

Connectiveness

2005-12-15T21:08:00.000-05:00

I saw this quote in one of my readings that I thought I would share with everyone for my last post specifically for Social Software Affordances at Teachers College, Columbia University ....

"To be sure, it is for the sake of special needs and interests that men unite in economic associations or blood fraternities, in cult societies or robber bands. But above and beyond their special content, all these associations are accompanied by a feeling for, by a satisfaction in, the very fact that one associated with others and that the solitariness of the individual is resolved into togetherness, a union with others".
- George Simmel

This union enables us to do things that we could not do as well alone, isolated in a world of one.

With this in mind, below is my one sentance answers (long as they may be) to questions posed in the beginning of the course.

What is "social" about social software?
Social software allows one to connect to others with similar interests, concerns, commonalities and needs.
How is the notion of community being redefined by social software?
Community is no longer bound by the physical proximity of members to each other.
What aspects of our humanity stand to gain or suffer as a result of our use of and reliance on social software?
Social software in itself is just a tool. It’s power is providing a vehicle to understand and appreciate the interconnectiveness of the world, allowing us to connect and aggregate people and information to create personal meaning and identity.
How is social agency shared between humans and (computer) code in social software?
Computer code can enable networks to form in a space (i.e. Ebay) where as it is the actions of humans that create place and community within that space.
What are the social repercussions of unequal access to social software?
Unequal access defines the “haves” and “have nots” causing a division of inequality and opportunity for individual growth and development, excluding a number of people from our network that could provide important insight, experience and contribution.
What are the pedagogical implications of social software for education?
Social software enables us to create communities of practice to promote both formal and informal learning which involves making constant connections, seeking patterns and aligning our thoughts and actions with those of others to construct meaning.
Can social software be an effective tool for individual and social change?
Social software provides an opportunity to communicate, debate and exchange information, thereby promoting critical thought and analysis necessary to produce change, both personal and global.

Contributing to the Whole

2005-12-13T20:14:00.001-05:00

We assume that people will want to contribute or be a part of a community of practice, especially in a knowledge based institution such as higher education. After all, we see the benefits and the value, what's their problem? Don't they share our passion to contribute?

Brimming with enthusiasm and a number of handouts, I bravely faced the rest of my Instructional Design group today to present RSS feeds and social bookmarking. The RSS portion of the presentation was well received but the social bookmarking, well, that was a different story. Share resources, establishing a network of rich web sites and online articles, ummmm, I maybe not ... why should they share, they found the site.

In George Siemens book, "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age", he states that knowledge development is a cycle, moving from personal to network to organization, allowing the individual to stay current in their field. Personal knowledge is just a network of sorts, which feeds into an organizational network though our work and contributions, which then cycles back to the individual. He goes on to say that connectivism allows us to create our own personal learning network made of connections to people and information.

However, there needs to be common value and willingness to be a part of a network. In a course setting such as this class at Columbia, we are all explorers in our field, willing to experience different online environments, software tools and learning communities. Perhaps we take our own community of like-minded individuals for granted. Isn't that what social software is about? It enables us to find more "people like us". There are some personal blogs that I now follow religiously, savoring and appreciating the conversations, contributions and debates. I'm not sure I would have ever met these fascinating individuals f-2-f yet they are now part of my knowledge network.

Well, it will be interesting to see who actually contributes and takes advantage of sharing resources through social bookmarking in our group. Tomorrow, a few us are getting together to propose a tagging scheme that the group can use to share. Perhaps we can sway those that are unsure of the benefits to join our own community of practice .... or maybe they just don't have the mindset. :-(

Meaningful Community

2005-12-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

Ulises commented, in reference to my last post …
“Well, I agree that there is a lot of meaningless noise out there, but one person's noise in another person's meaningful community. The question is: Is social software facilitating the formation of communities according to one's interests, or is the process of community building just as serendipitous as always? “

In looking at this question, I recall a point that Paul Dourish was making in the book Where the Action Is. In Chapter 3, he talked about the difference between “space” and “place”. It can be said that social software is enabling “space” but I would argue that it is the actions of the users that builds the community or “place”.

Dourish goes on to say that the concept of “place” is relative to “community of practice” also mentioned by Etiennne Wenger in Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Wenger makes a distinction between a community of practice and a club of friends or a network of connections between people.

A community of practice has an identity. It is formed by a group of people that share something in common such as a group of artists looking for a new form of expression or a group of concerned citizens working for improvement in their neighborhood. This is different than a network of friends where you could belong to a network and not know it, or neighbors who live in close proximity but do not connect with each other. Social software in enabling networks to form but I believe their power is facilitating communities of practice.

In my post regarding women seeking an intellectual community, I believe they are seeking a “place”, not just a “space”. They are looking for ways to exchange information with others, engage in discussions and help each other. Not being able to meet at work, they seek to connect through safe, secure cyber environments where they can learn from sharing interesting insights and stories.

Hope I’m making some sense here ….did I answer the question or just confuse myself?

Women in Online Communities

2005-11-27T17:40:00.000-05:00

For my last couple of posts for this semester, I am going to look at the role online communities play for women (over the age of 35). Two of my coworkers are teaching undergraduate online courses this semester and we have had some interesting conversations regarding "nontraditional" female student participation in the discussion boards. Online classes for many older female students offer the only practical possibility of completing an undergraduate degree. Because of family responsibilities and often distance, the discussion boards in these classes also offer these women an opportunity to interact with others and be part of a intellectual community in a non-threatening atmosphere. However, I started to wonder if there were digital online communities that might provide the same functions once their online course was over.

One of the articles in the Community in the Digital Age book, Gender and the Commodification of Community" caught my eye. This article talkes about the transition of www.women.com ( now www.iVillage.com) and www.gURL.com from being online community focused to providing a market for advertisers and merchants. Once a community becomes a purchasable item, it is like any other commodity and it loses it meaning as a social entity. I started looking at the www.women.com site, evaluating it in regards to providing a community that nontraditional female students could use.

I have to agree with Karen Gustafson, author of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency and Identify, that iVillage reinforces the traditional women's role as a consumer, mother and wife. A cross between the "Good Housekeeping" and "Cosmopolitan" models, I couldn't find a shred of intelligent women's commentary. Chats and bulletin boards including topics such as "walking for fitness", how men viewed women's bodies and choosing bed linens.

Isn't there an intelligent online women's community out there? The search as begun ...

An Invitation

2005-11-16T22:02:00.000-05:00

Update on my IE project ...

This week in my Barriers blog at http://barriersshu.blogspot.com/ we invited two of our students that have been working with us in Assistive Technologies, to make a comment under a post regarding their experience with technology on campus this first semester. TJ and Pricilla, terrific and inspiring students, are visually impaired.

Today, we had a demostration of the Columbia Literature Text - Workbench by Professor Richard Sacks of Columbia University. This project was being offered as a possible model for materials to support those teaching the Signature Courses at Seton Hall in particular, as well as those teaching other core courses. However interesting, shortly into the demo, we realized that this tool was totally not accessible to students with disabilities because of the number of frames used in the interface, use of pdfs and text presented in image format ... awareness!

On December 7, I am presenting a workshop to the Instructional Design Team on the use of Assistive Technologies and how we, as a team, can make our content more assessible to all students in the Seton Hall learning community.

Making progress ....

Link to Individual Entrepreneurship Blog

2005-11-13T11:44:00.000-05:00

Individual Project Blog .... Barriers

More Examples of Wiki's in Education

2005-11-08T21:03:00.000-05:00

I found a great web resource that for some reason I can't tag so I wanted to share it with everyone in the class. It is a class in writing for blogs and wikis at Bemidji State University.

I believe the class syllabus is being updated for Spring 2006 but there are tons of linked articles. Check out all the subpages. I think it is facinating that someone is offering a writing class for blogs and wikis.

An update on Donna Gaffney's blog that I mentioned in my last post. The blog had to be taken down based on a very interesting development. Because Donna and other Seton Hall Nursing students were actually "working" for FEMA, all commentary and photographs regarding their work in The Gulf had to be approved by FEMA Public Relations. The blog had actually been picked up by a National Nursing listserv, distributed to hundreds of Nursing members based on it's interest to the profession. Oh my ... we never thought. Talk about networking!

Wiki's and Blogs Gaining Ground

2005-10-19T21:38:00.000-04:00

This week I want to talk about a couple of interesting Blogs and Wiki’s that we set up at our university, a result of my Blogs and Wiki’s workshop for faculty. On Monday, I set up a Blog in Blogger for a Nursing faculty member, Donna Gaffney who is taking a number of Nursing students to Louisiana for the relief effort. For this trip, she is sending photos from her picture phone directly to my email. I am resizing and retouching them in Photoshop, then posting on her Blog . Blogger also has mobile posting that we want to set up for her when she returns. You can also set up Flickr to receive mobile phone photos and then upload them to Blogger but there is an upload limit per month. We anticipated that she would be sending more than the allowance permitted.

Blog text can be sent through the cell phone directly to the blog. Since Donna is not an experienced text messenger, we decided that she would record audio directly into her phone and then add commentary when possible or add text directly into her blog when an internet connection was available. What an exciting use of a Blog in Nursing education … so cool … and everyone can read about their experiences as they are happening!

Back at the university, we have a committee that is using a wiki to work collaboratively to design a course. This course is one of the Signature courses for students at Seton Hall so quite a number of faculty from diverse content areas are working together. Their objective … to define what a “Journey in Transformation” will look like for a student. It is exciting and rewarding for me to see faculty actually using a technology tool that I recommend for a collaborative team project such as this.

I also have a faculty member using a wiki for a class in Ecology on campus. The students are recording their lab data from out in the field onto a Wiki. Working collaboratively, they interpret their findings, drawing conclusions and making recommendations for community and scientific action.

Onward and upward!

Issue Entrepreneurship: proposal

2005-10-12T22:47:00.000-04:00

Investigation of Assistive Technologies that Support Students with Disabilities

Background:

Assistive technology can be defined as any device that increases, maintains or improves the functional capability of a student with a disability. With 6.5 million students being served through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1997, this relatively new field can be confusing and overwhelming for instructional designers and educators alike. This proposal focuses on educating Seton Hall content developers on accessibility issues and standards outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) along with the investigation of assistive technologies that support course delivery on campus. Since we all have special needs in some shape and form, this study would ultimately benefit all students in the Seton Hall University community, forming a strong and enhanced academic system.

It is important to note that assistive technology is not about creating separate multimedia content or curriculum but making them available to all students. Research has shown that one reason schools and universities are still being challenged is the fact that implementation of mandates traditionally has been the responsibility of a few isolated individuals. Since Seton Hall University endorses the team model in curriculum development to include members from the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center, along with faculty and other members of the academic community, this proposal will be presented to the Emerging Technology Roundtable for adoption during the fall of 2005-2006.

Objectives (include, but are not limited to) :
Investigation of assistive technology that supports the visually impaired student for the fall of 2005
Creation of a Blog to promote communication and community to focus on emerging accessibility issues
Use of a wiki to provide a group work space to document resources available to faculty, Disibility office staff, students, Instructional Designers, and administrators
Discussion concerning the promising benefits of assistive technology
Observation of a range of assistive technology devices in use
Identification and exploration of key questions … What are the issues around assistive technology? How can assistive technology enable special needs students to be empowered? How can technology promote achievement and increase academic success? What can we do as the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center to further support faculty and students with assistive technology?
Presentation of accessibility issues and standards to content developers at Seton Hall
Identification and examination of effective frameworks and successful assistive technology initiatives at other higher education institutions
Hold a Showcase on awareness of accessibility through the Emerging Technology Roundtable and the Office of Student Disabilities (i.e. speakers, presentations by students on use of assistive technology at SHU, legal issues, etc.)
Development of a partnership between the TLTC and the Student Disability Office on campus

Thoughts anyone?

Reflections on Workshop

2005-10-09T19:50:00.000-04:00

The workshop that I presented last Friday on Journaling, Blogs and Wikis (see post below) was attended by nine faculty from the Colleges of Nursing and Education. All had heard of blogs and wikis and were interested in finding out more about them. Everyone used private journaling in their class (student-faculty) along with the discussion board. Participants felt the discussion board was not perfect but did a reasonable job in creating community in their classrooms. Most considered journaling as private reflection tool.

The concept of the wiki seemed a little easier for faculty to grasp than blogging. As best practice, I chose the CNMTL Social Justice Wiki and the Romantic Audience Project Wiki from Bowdein College. In the discussion that followed, the most interesting comments regarded plagiarism, of all things. One faculty member was concerned that students would cut and paste content from the web into the wiki. While that is certainly possible, that is not different from other student work. Another was hesitant to make her class wiki public, fearing that someone in the community would copy their material. Obviously our preaching on copyright abuse was being heard but perhaps my explanation on the benefits of community in the classroom was slightly misunderstood.

It is interesting that Ulises mentioned in comment to my last post below … “Blogs allow for a more constant formation of identity and the creation of a more personal space: their look and feel reflects the personality of the author, and all the author's content is collected in one place (as opposed to being dispersed across a discussion board), which gives a sense of ownership and responsibility.” This past Tuesday we participated in the ELI teleconference, Tomorrow’s University Students: Technology Trends Among Teens. One of the points they made in their presentation was that the students of today are using technology and the web to find their identity. In a nationwide survey of online teens, they found that 15 % have their own web site, making them producers as well as consumers. In their use and relationship to technology, student were interested in self-expression, trying on different identifies in a very positive sense. In the freshman e-Portfolio project on our campus, we find students linking to their “My Space” and their “Blog” in surprising numbers. Even in the case of less technical freshman, the top question has been how to customize their Welcome page by the addition of color, pictures, quotes, and backgrounds. It is the job of the Instructional Designer to help faculty incorporate educational opportunities and experiences into their classrooms to provide avenues for this self-expression to support and promote teaching and learning. The creation of student spaces, either as a blog or wikis is one viable way to achieve this.

Why Blog?

2005-10-03T22:25:00.000-04:00

I read a number of great articles last week in preparation for a workshop I am giving this Friday to Nursing faculty at our university on creating community. One reading that stands out, applicable for commentary this week, is The Potential Use of “Blogs” in Nursing Education by Margaret Maag Ed.D., RN.. Since my Nursing faculty use private digital journaling and course discussion boards, I am anticipating the question in their minds will be why blogging? I was hoping this article could provide me with something substantial to support use of this new technology.

Maag did an excellent job of describing blogging tools available. I discovered some features available on Blogger that I was not aware of such as generation of an e-mail when a comment had been posted. I also didn’t know that a post could be sent to an email account if desired and that open invitations could be sent to others to join the blog. These are all features that will be helpful for my Issue Entrepreneurship project. Other useful informaion included a wonderful Reference section with associated web links provided.

Disappointing was the lack of pedagogy pertaining to blog use in a Nursing curriculum. Most of the benefits mentioned, the improvement of written communication skills, sharing of experiences and ideas, and demonstration of knowledge to specific learning objectives could also be applied to journaling and discussion boards. There was only passing reference to Vygotsky’s educational theories on social interaction and little mention of the concept of “community” and “social” learning outside of the bounds of a course management system.

Being the skeptics that my faculty are, I am not sure they will buy the concept of community learning outside of a course management system. Amitai Etzioni, in the chapter On Virtual, Democratic Communities in Community in the Digital Age, questions whether communities can really exist in cyberspace. Even though there is much evidence of strong social bonds being formed online, he feels that the reason online communities fall short of face-2-face communities is the way they are set up. Typically chat rooms are anonymous and exchanges tend to be brief and intersected by other exchanges in the same “space”. He notes some successes have been accomplished in special interest groups or with members belonging to the same occupation. Also worthy of mention is online relationships and community leading to face-2-face meetings and friendships.

In considering Etzioni’s thoughts, one possible use for bogs in Nursing Education could be creating community between courses. Blogs could be used for Nursing students specializing in areas such as Crisis Management, Acute Care and Geronotology. They could provide a means for students to exchange information on resources, societies, professional workshops, employment and national exams. Perhaps they could even provide a way for cross disciplines to interact between working professionals in the field, and students in both Nursing and General Medical Education, thus creating teams of students similar to what is found in the health care environment of today.

Commentary for Week 1

2005-09-25T17:54:00.000-04:00

For my review this week, I read the The Space Between: Creating a Context for Learning written by J.C. Herz appearing in EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 3 (May/June 2005): 30-39. http://educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0531.asp

In this article Herz states that the space in-between old and new holds the most opportunities for teaching and learning. She states that we need to create spaces where people can feel part of a community of learners, living in a “landscape” of knowledge. One aspect of this space “between” is the change in focus from the individual student to a group, creating a community of learners. These thoughts are not new. I have seen this shift in educational research and best practice within the last few years. The effectiveness of group learning was identified in 1987 by Chickering and Gamson in the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education (1987) as described in the Second Principle, “Good practice encourages cooperation among students”.

Learning can be enhanced in teams
Learning can be collaborative
Hands-on learning with others can enhance retention
Critical thinking is enhanced when one works and responds to classmate’s opinions

Yet, I have found faculty hesitant to incorporate group learning into their classes. Historically “messy” to assess and organize at the undergraduate level, I have seen undergraduate faculty shy away from collaborative projects, unwilling to put much weight on these activities. I always found this an interesting contrast to the workplace, where the ability for an employee to work effectively in a team is a highly desirable trait. It is my hope that new technology tools developed for group activities can provide more accountability and make group learning more quantifiable so faculty feel comfortable including these activities in their classes at the undergraduate level.

As Herz points out there needs to be a shift from learning content, or from the information itself, to the flow of information between groups of learners, building on existing information by linking to new constructs. We know by the time undergraduates get to campus, they know how to learn in the traditional classroom. They also know how to Google for information as Hertz also states. I agree with Hertz that it is the “between” that holds the most promise and provides the challenge. It is the synthesis of the old, into the new that is uncomfortable for most but very intriguing.

An interesting “between” perhaps can be found in social software. Even though some faculty would state that undergraduates are not quite mature enough to work effectively in groups or that content acquisition is not adequate in such classrooms as survey courses, the actual flow of certain types of information between students is quite strong. Characteristically they are a very socially connected group. Tied together by numerous technologies, undergraduates are very effective builders of community. My hope is that we can tap into this skill, redirecting it towards building learning communities in and out of the classroom. Coupled with well developed technologies focused on collaboration, undergraduate faculty will then feel more comfortable in incorporating group learning activities into their face-to-face and online classrooms.

Chickering, A. W., Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, March, 3-7.

Chickering, A. W., Gamson, Z. F., & Barsi. (1989). Inventories of good practice. Milwaukee, WI:Johnson Foundation.

2005-09-18T14:23:00.000-04:00

Biography

I became involved with technology many years ago when I worked for a major Health Care network in northern New Jersey as an educator. The hospital was computerizing major functions and needed professionals with clinical backgrounds to install and conduct training. I moved into Information Technologies where I became a Systems Analyst, working with technologists, nurses, and physicians to incorporate new technologies into their work routines to improve patient care.

As the years went by, I started to consider other challenges. The hospital was building their internet presence and developing a corporate intranet. I enrolled in a Web Designer Certificate Program at Rutgers and took a position as a web designer in Public Relations and Marketing for the organization. It was a terrific job, very creative and I loved working with people.

Health Care was going through major changes at the time and the environment for all of us quickly became unstable. Corporate was outsourcing many functions and started laying off. With college looming up for my daughter, I started to look to more stable environments for work. I took a job as the Coordinator of Online/Distance Education at a community college and started at Columbia University in the Ed.M. program in Instructional Media and Design.

I soon moved on to Seton Hall University where I am today, working as an Instructional Designer. I love my job there where I work with students and faculty on a daily basis. In some ways, my job is still the same as it always was ... helping people incorporate technology into their personal and professional lives.

Self Portrait
Watercolor and Colored Pencil
Transformative Learning
Columbia University, Spring 2005

2005-09-17T21:59:00.000-04:00

Introduction

We don’t always know what road to take, sometimes there isn’t a map. At times our compass doesn’t know north from lost. The road is sure to be full of adventures. But, similar to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, perhaps what we seek is with us all along.

Colored Pencil
Fostering Transformative Learning
Columbia University, Fall 2004