Blogging allows class participants to better know and understand one another. Also, blogging allows for more of the personal experience of each student to become part of the class knowledge; there is rarely enough time for all personal reflections to be addressed in a traditional class time. Blogging expands the space and time available for class participants to share their experiences
The following is from Shiang-Kwei Wang and Hui-Yin Hsua. “Reflections on Using Blogs to Expand In-class Discussion.” TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning. 52.3 (May 2008): 81-85
The authors studied a blogging project that was used in pre-service teacher training. What they found was that students generally liked the blogging, because it "enabled them to share knowledge and experiences as well as to express their feelings and thoughts outside the classroom discussion" (83). Those results are common and even to be expected. But there was another result that is interesting:
“From the in depth stories or postings contributed by their classmates, [students who blogged] became aware of their peers’ opinions and were able to confront perspectives on reading and diversity issues better than in the face-to-face environment.” (Wang and Hsua 83)
In this study, the authors found that the blog helped students to grapple with ideas and concepts that were not best served in the classroom. The blog, then, does not merely augment what goes on in the classroom; in some instances, it can create an entirely new opportunity for communication, understanding and growth. Students themselves were providing the "texts" from which learning occurred, not books, not a teacher's lecture, not published or peer reviwed articles. That is an incredible statement of voice and authority.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Women's Ways of Knowing and Web 2.0
In Women's Ways of Knowing, Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule describe the different possibilities of female intellectual awareness (knowing) from silence, to received knowledge, to subjective knowledge, to procedural knowledge, to constructed knowledge. It is the constructed knowledge that fits quite well into Web 2.0 capabilities such as social networking, blogging, creating wikis, podcasting, and more. In this last "way of knowing", women, the authors assert, are able to create "the optimum setting so that half baked, emergent ideas can grow" (144) and they are able to identify and use “a way of connecting to others and acquiring and communicating new knowledge” (145).
Connecting, innovating, incubating, listening, providing context, seeking, recording, sharing, and declaring: all of these activities are reflected in the technology tools that are a part of eLearning. The student who comments on a blog puts her voice into publication, into the public sphere, into a conversation with anyone and everyone who reads the blog. The student who contributes to a class wiki is physically and mentally engaged in the act of producing knowledge, of recording and communicating intellectual growth, of collaborating with others to create. The student who uses coursework posted on Open Source sites is able to control the pace and the content of her learning.
Source:
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. (1997). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Basic Books.
Connecting, innovating, incubating, listening, providing context, seeking, recording, sharing, and declaring: all of these activities are reflected in the technology tools that are a part of eLearning. The student who comments on a blog puts her voice into publication, into the public sphere, into a conversation with anyone and everyone who reads the blog. The student who contributes to a class wiki is physically and mentally engaged in the act of producing knowledge, of recording and communicating intellectual growth, of collaborating with others to create. The student who uses coursework posted on Open Source sites is able to control the pace and the content of her learning.
Source:
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. (1997). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. Tenth anniversary edition. New York: Basic Books.
The Power of Blogs in Intellectual "Ownership"
Blogs offer the opportunity for continual revision in the public sphere. The author has the opportunity to publish, then revisit the published text and change it as often as desired. This change may be precipitated by comments that viewers of the blog leave in connection with a particular entry, or the changes may be the result of the writer’s desire to sharpen and to hone their text. In either case, revision is a clear option, and one that the writer is able to take advantage of in the public sphere. The old post is replaced by the new post; the more thoughtful, cohesive “post” is what the world sees.
Writing traditional papers that are handed in to a professor is a linear, private transaction. The student writes, then gives a finished product to the teacher. Perhaps there are drafts along the way, lesser transactions of handing the draft to a tutor, to a peer reviewer, or to the professor for preliminary feedback. In any of these instances, the student is required to relinquish control over his or her document by rendering a static, finished product to an authority, thereby delimiting the development of the writing product by completing a transaction with an audience.
Writing blog entries expands the transaction between student producer and audience. In space and in time, the student is the primary agent of the text; the student’s voice remains dominant. The student never relinquishes his or her position as knower, as writer, as thinker, as reviser – as creator of the blog, “owner” of the domain. Others may comment on certain thoughts or ideas, but these comments are physically relegated to a secondary space on the Blog, the comment box. It matters that anyone and everyone can read these comments, because the comments are then subject to analysis and criticism (very unlike traditional teacher grading). The student has the opportunity to revisit and grow his or her ideas immediately by engaging these comments.
Writing traditional papers that are handed in to a professor is a linear, private transaction. The student writes, then gives a finished product to the teacher. Perhaps there are drafts along the way, lesser transactions of handing the draft to a tutor, to a peer reviewer, or to the professor for preliminary feedback. In any of these instances, the student is required to relinquish control over his or her document by rendering a static, finished product to an authority, thereby delimiting the development of the writing product by completing a transaction with an audience.
Writing blog entries expands the transaction between student producer and audience. In space and in time, the student is the primary agent of the text; the student’s voice remains dominant. The student never relinquishes his or her position as knower, as writer, as thinker, as reviser – as creator of the blog, “owner” of the domain. Others may comment on certain thoughts or ideas, but these comments are physically relegated to a secondary space on the Blog, the comment box. It matters that anyone and everyone can read these comments, because the comments are then subject to analysis and criticism (very unlike traditional teacher grading). The student has the opportunity to revisit and grow his or her ideas immediately by engaging these comments.
Tension between IT and Faculty
One of the challenges to envisioning a Web 2.0 focus is pushback that can occur from faculty. Especially at smaller institutions, many instructors are overtaxed in their teaching and administrative duties. Asking faculty to adopt new technologies into their pedagogy is asking them to significantly increase a workload that is already heavy....And the result can be that if and when these overtaxed faculty members do need to use some form of technology in the classroom, the IT department handles it.
At small schools, this IT department may simply be an IT person, who must support students, faculty and staff in understanding and effectively using any and all technology tools. Thus, this IT person is also overtaxed.
Luke Fernandez contributed an interesting article to EduCause Quarterly, "An Antidote to the IT - Faculty Divide", about the relationship - often strained - between IT staff and faculty. I do not completely agree with Fendandez, particularly in his concluding recommendation that IT people need to reach out to faculty more. Particularly at a very small college where there is only one IT person, this places a huge amount of effort on one end. In truth, everyone needs to be persuaded that Web 2.0 technologies are really not that scary or difficult to use, and that these technologies-moderately easy to adapt to - are essential to student success in the 21st Century.
But I want to highlight one of Fernandez's thoughts in particular because it does not, I believe, reflect this school's situation:
Fernandez writes that "From the point of view of many faculty, the growth of IT more often advances the interests and market-oriented perspectives of the administration, solidifying and securing the powers of the administration over faculty and narrowing faculty's ability to teach with a modicum of autonomy. Rather than fostering a spirit of free inquiry and creativity, IT seems complicit in the promotion of "factory" models of education where innovation and exploration are sacrificed to automation, efficiency, and the codification of standardized business processes."
If technology is embraced by all, if learning communities are formed for faculty members who are experimenting with technology, if the IT person is invited to/included in faculty committees and meetings, if the IT person is seen as more than someone with a set of skills and instead as a mentor to faculty members.....then the inclusion of technology will not, perhaps, be so fraught with tension.
At small schools, this IT department may simply be an IT person, who must support students, faculty and staff in understanding and effectively using any and all technology tools. Thus, this IT person is also overtaxed.
Luke Fernandez contributed an interesting article to EduCause Quarterly, "An Antidote to the IT - Faculty Divide", about the relationship - often strained - between IT staff and faculty. I do not completely agree with Fendandez, particularly in his concluding recommendation that IT people need to reach out to faculty more. Particularly at a very small college where there is only one IT person, this places a huge amount of effort on one end. In truth, everyone needs to be persuaded that Web 2.0 technologies are really not that scary or difficult to use, and that these technologies-moderately easy to adapt to - are essential to student success in the 21st Century.
But I want to highlight one of Fernandez's thoughts in particular because it does not, I believe, reflect this school's situation:
Fernandez writes that "From the point of view of many faculty, the growth of IT more often advances the interests and market-oriented perspectives of the administration, solidifying and securing the powers of the administration over faculty and narrowing faculty's ability to teach with a modicum of autonomy. Rather than fostering a spirit of free inquiry and creativity, IT seems complicit in the promotion of "factory" models of education where innovation and exploration are sacrificed to automation, efficiency, and the codification of standardized business processes."
If technology is embraced by all, if learning communities are formed for faculty members who are experimenting with technology, if the IT person is invited to/included in faculty committees and meetings, if the IT person is seen as more than someone with a set of skills and instead as a mentor to faculty members.....then the inclusion of technology will not, perhaps, be so fraught with tension.
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