Category: communication

Autodidacts and Web 2.0 – Are Universities Still Needed?

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

“Autodidact” was, at one point, a mocking term. Someone who had taught themselves was someone who didn’t really know because they hadn’t learned in the authority-approved, academy-approved, institutional manner. They were “undisciplined” because they were outside of the academic disciplines. Yet the connotations around this word are shifting. As the web, with the immediacy of its access to information, becomes more and more a part of our lives, more people are learning outside of the traditional institutions. Being an autodidact now has more caché, and more real value.

Most people who are web 2.0 savvy are autodidacts because they have taught, and are continuously teaching, themselves about what is available and what can be done with it. All kinds of people are learning outside our educational institutions. Some are now skillful learners despite having struggled to learn inside the institutions. And inside our educational institutions, the most exciting and dramatic changes in human communication EVER are often being ignored and avoided by many who should be leaders in learning. In my opinion, universities and colleges are just not keeping up.

Don’t get me wrong; there are amazing people out there doing amazing things in their classes. I loved Virginia Yonkers’ description of a course she developed; it blew me away. It’s a course that everyone should take, IMHO. We all need to know about “communication (mobile communication technologies such as cell phones, pda’s, video conferencing), information sharing (pod and vodcasting, visual information software, blogs, pageflakes), collaboration (wikis, groupware), and networking (facebook, LinkedIn, Ning)”. I admire the hands-on action research approach she uses with her students, but what I admire most deeply is the framework she has created so her students are learning the complexities of the impact of the new communication tools – (read her post!)

Yonkers demonstrates something very important with her design of this course, something that educational institutions should be paying close attention to because it is the value-added aspect of the expensive education they are meant to provide. It is easy, now, to find information on the web, and tutorials, both free and with a price. All kinds of people offer books and videos for sale on all kinds of topics on the web. But what Yonkers offers, and what universities should/ could be offering, is a rich learning context lead by a fellow learner who is skilled in shaping learning for herself and her students. Her students are learning applications, and the communications implications of these new tools, in a rich social learning environment. (A comment of hers on her post reveals that the technical environment wasn’t that rich.)

I have taught myself at least basic use of most of the applications she has her students use. I am an autodidact where web 2.0 is involved. I chose what blogs to follow, I harvest links from Twitter and my Bloglines account, and I use del.icio.us (and diigo) to be able to re-find links I value. But when I read this –

http://connecting2theworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/lessons-learned-from-new-communication.html

Connecting 2 the World: Lessons learned from New Communication Technologies in Organziational Life via kwout

I know that I need deeper, richer, more contextual learning than I can get from being alone f2f with my computer screen. I need a learning community to bounce ideas off and learn new possibilities from. I envy Yonkers and her students. I’ll leave you with Yonkers list of what current and future workers need to know, and a question: How widespread, do you think, is the teaching and learning of these work literacies?

http://connecting2theworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/lessons-learned-from-new-communication.html

Connecting 2 the World: Lessons learned from New Communication Technologies in Organziational Life via kwout

How To Get Efficient at Using Your Computer

~ joanvinallcox ~ 4 Comments

Well, that may be a title for a book rather than a post, but I have many very smart friends who declare themselves Luddites or troglodytes when it comes to anything beyond email. I keep thinking that there must be a way to entice them into learning more about the computer and the web.

I know I don’t help them by whizzing around the screen and doing stuff in front of them (but knowing that doesn’t always stop me from doing it). I know telling them how easy it it just causes the, voiced or unvoiced, response, “For you, maybe” and cynicism. I created my thesis, Following the Thread, as an exploration of how I managed to move from hating and fearing the computer to my current absorption with it. I discovered some things:

Then

  1. I was forced to use the computer as part of my job. Having no choice is very motivating.
  2. I learned from my students. I could make “deals” where I earned my teacher “cred” by coaching students in their writing, and they earned their learner “cred” by showing me how to use wordpro and the web. (It worked in the mid-Nineties but it might not as much now.)
  3. My college had ongoing half-day hands-on tutorials that I could take over and over till I “got” it. I think was especially useful because using the computer and the web required a fundamentally different understanding, and I needed a lot of guided repetition before it started to make sense to me. In a way, it was like learning a new language where it takes a while to “think” in it. Before I could get “fluent”, I had to grasp the pattern, and it was radically new. (I find it interesting that many ADHD sorts “get” this new pattern faster than the more academically inclined. My most helpful students were often dyslexic and really struggled with writing, but they grasped computer and web understandings very quickly.)
  4. Having real-life projects drove my learning. I found weekend courses on creating web sites excruciating, but I was happy to work on material for my teaching all weekend till I figured out how to make stuff work. (I soon discovered a great passion for WYSIWYG, the essence of user-friendliness in my opinion;->)
  5. Having a loose network of friends with expertise in different aspects of using the computer and the web allowed me to ask for help when I was stymied for too long. Joining the committee that created P.D. events to help teachers learn how to use the web for teaching (and volunteering to share what I knew) was a great leap forward for me, because I had a more structured network of experts to get help from.

Because I was one of the pioneering teachers on the web, these approaches helped me learn, however, I think the landscape and culture have changed, and some of the approaches would no longer work.

Now

What changes in this list might work now?

  1. Having a strong reason/desire for having to use the web is essential. If a group decides to use a wiki, or a family decides to set up a Ning network, or friends start using Facebook or Flickr, that might be the kind of pressure that encourages learning. Work demands are always “encouraging”.
  2. Learning for social reasons also creates a situation where you can learn from others; asking questions from your fellow learners or the group’s “experts” works really well. (I remember, when I was learning wordpro, just asking my cubicle neighbour the same question over and over, and she graciously answered me over and over.)
  3. Repetition is highly under-rated as part of academic learning, but dancers, musicians, athletes understand its value. If you want to learn something that’s difficult, repeat it as often as you can. Using Slideshare, you can repeat watching presentation as often as you want.
  4. Agree to take on web projects that stretch you. (Make sure someone can answer your questions; ask either someone you know or make sure you know where the “Help” button is – it might help.)
  5. Having a network of people you work or play with is still very helpful. The biggest change since the early stages of my computer and web learning is all the help that is now available online. Search for sites to learn from and bookmark blogs that offer on-going tips for whatever it is you want to learn. If you follow a few blogs regularly, and comment occasionally, you may find yourself part of a “community” and comfortable asking questions in comments or by email.

My blog is aimed at providing helpful information for those who are learning more about using the web. Finally, I suggest you set up a del.icio.us account, if you haven’t already, and an RSS reader, either Bloglines or Google Reader to use the web to help yourself learn about it.

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Talking to Editors

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment
A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.

Image via Wikipedia

Last night felt like summer in downtown Toronto. I was one of two speakers to the Editors Association of Canada in the beautiful Women’s Art Institute, and enjoyed giving my rather rushed presentation. (There’s a rigid deadline when the building must be cleared.)

I always enjoy presenting, especially about how useful and easy it is to use web 2.0 (aka social web) applications. I put the PowerPoint (visuals only) up on SlideShare for those who want to review the info.

Three Years After my First Wiki

~ joanvinallcox ~ 3 Comments

In 2005 I taught an undergrad university course on computers and communications. I used JotSpot, then in beta, a wiki I had discovered through Stephen Downes‘s OLDaily newletters. JotSpot worked really well for the class and, as I got to use it for free, I wrote up a report on the experience, which is attached: Using JotSpot.

Frequent readers will know that I am a wiki enthusiast, favouring Wikispaces for its ease of use and cheap cost and PBWiki for its ease of use and visual attractiveness. However JotSpot was adopted by Google, and has now been released as GoogleSites, and I have to say it looks very good, at least in the videos

Google Sites, the grown-up JotSpot, looks very interesting and useful, plus it’s free! I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Daniel J. Solove’s “The Future of Reputation”

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

The Future of Reputation is an interesting overview of what is happening to humans today as we become more and more enmeshed in our communications technology and culture. Solove says:

In the past, oral gossip could tarnish a reputation, but it would fade from memories over time. People could move elsewhere and start anew. The printed word, however, was different. As Judge Benjamin Cardozo wrote in 1931: “What gives the sting to writing is its permanence in form. The spoken word dissolves, but the written one abides and perpetuates the scandal.”90 In the past, people could even escape printed words because most publications would get buried away in the dusty corners of libraries. The information would be hard to retrieve, and a sleuth would have to devote a lot of time to dig it up. The Internet, however, makes gossip a permanent reputational stain, one that never fades. It is available around the world, and with Google it can be readily found in less than a second.

This is how our reputations are formed and found currently.

The Future of Reputation is available online for free – http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text.htm

Tipping Towards Brevity

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment
Felt Tip EP album coverImage via Wikipedia

My (New) Blogging Pattern

I used to try and blog once or twice a week – and felt badly if I failed to keep my blog current. My earliest blogs were long ruminations, almost essays, using academically correct formatting and referencing. I actually kept two, sometimes three blogs, trying to keep my professional, academic, and personal interests separate. At that time, I got many of my inspirations for what to write about from reading the blog posts I collected, using RSS, through Bloglines.

Too much! It turned a pleasure into a “should” and felt prison-like. Over a period of time I moved to one dominant blog, leaving behind a few orphans. I created a WordPress blog, because I could add niftly little widgets and make my blog both look attractive and work as a repository for much of my life on the web.

This setup was more comfortable, but when I got busy, I still neglected both my Bloglines and my blog.

I joined Facebook, because I read about it on blogs and in newspapers, and my daughter told me to;-> I found aspects of it interesting and handy, but wasn’t all that keen on some parts of it so I took (take) a conservative approach. However, through Facebook I discovered Twitter. And I’m hooked. I love eavesdropping on the partial conversations and I scavenge news and info through the links. If someone seems to be using Twitter without contributing, or is just boring, I stop following them. It’s easy, like sliding away from the bores at a large, noisy party. Then I followed the web metaphor, and I linked my Twitter stream onto my blog. And, copying something I’d seen on other blogs, added my del.icio.us saves to my blog.

The tipping point that I recognized this week was that, although I am continuing to semi-neglect my Bloglines and its inspirations, I now collect the stuff that intrigues and feeds me through Twitter. Then, using my online bookmarking tool, del.icio.us (and diigo, too) I share it. The items I save to del.icio.us now automatically create posts on my blog even when I don’t compose and write one up. I write less, but share as much, I think, but in a briefer, more discontinuous manner. I am, however, increasingly taking the (brief) time to annotate the links I save and share, to create more context.

Maybe my attention span has shortened, or maybe I’ve moved to the efficiencies (Twitter and automatic posting of saved items) that the web creates and encourages. Whatever the rationale I use, I have definitely tipped over into a new pattern of keeping up and sharing.

I think, (I’d appreciate feedback here) that my blog is still useful to others, at least to those who share some of my interests, because what I collect from Twitter (and from time-to-time from my Bloglines account) winds up on my blog through the del.icio.us posts.

It’s what I do now, and I enjoy this pattern.

Social Maps: How the Digital People Keep Connected

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

This video by Loic Lemeur is intimidating, inspiring and irritating.

  • Intimidating because he has such wide ranging use of the social media;
  • Inspiring because I get some idea what I want to spend more time with; and
  • Irritating because it pauses every few seconds and you have to wait for it to go on.

found through my Bloglines – http://www.cybersoc.com/2008/04/pulling-your-so.html h/t Robin Hamman