Week Fifteen: Open Source

Provide a brief overview of the OER website.

Open Educational Resources is a database for teaching and learning. The idea of “learning is sharing” basically encompasses the philosophies of every ambitious educator, and the OER Web site seems to reflect that. If there’s not something already posted that represents your ideas about teaching and learning, then it’s about time you post it.

At first, the site is a little overwhelming, but its My Portfolio section which roped me in, because I figured it would help me bring all the resources together. The cross-categorization of subjects and grade levels says a lot about the nature of the project, and it should be a precept we more often apply to teaching and learning.

I think the site is incredible, and though it could keep me busy for hours just browsing, if I came with the mission of finding supportive education resources, I would probably find something interesting within minute. I often wonder where some teachers find the appropriate resources, videos, etc. to support teaching and learning; OER might save me some time and hassle by providing a place for it all to come together. Why reinvent the wheel if you can take it and modify it from here?

Describe OER’s member benefits. How much would it cost you to join?

It’s free to view the site’s resources, but to participate more deeply, the cost is kind of relative. It has to do with time put in and money donated. I think this is awesome, because it sets an example that value is more than just monetary cost/contribution. Right now there are two tiers of membership, and several levels of membership within those. There’s some confusing listings for membership levels, fees and benefits, but the base membership fee is $200 per year.

You can either be considered:

A. A contributing member, which means you contribute to the foundation financially in addition to donating your time coordinating OER activities at your school. If this describes you, you then can be considered a platinum, gold, silver, bronze or consortia level member. This could mean that you are contributing up to $30,000 per year and time. To be a platinum member, you are representing a government or corporation, sponsoring one or two full-time institutions in different countries.

B. An in-kind contributor, white means you donate 1 day per week coordinating OER activities and are asked to donate $100 to the foundation each year.

Some of the benefits including development voting rights, networking, forums, consulting support, collaborative wiki platform, support for international projects, etc.

Explore OER’s Materials and Recommended Resources. What resources stood out to you and why?

The categories of materials and recommended resources that especially caught my eye were:

• primary source
• full courses
• lesson plans

I love the inherent collaboration on this site, and I love that it hosts as much diversity as its members contribute.

My favorite part: featuring arts and social justice! Education need not be limited to Math, Science, Language Arts…

Summarize OER’s Community. In what ways could you become involved?

The idea of community runs parallel to OER’s goal of open education.

Sharing and collaborating makes teaching social. OER attracts all the right kinds of people: those who love what they do and want to share that love with others. The public trust is pretty awesome, too.
Some of the Community categories are..

1. -teaching and learning
2. -locallization
3. -research***
4. -intellectual property
5. -standards/certifications
6. -open sources
7. -technlogy
8. -policy*

*Categories that interest me the most..

It’s like a comprehensive, more focused, constructive, academic delicious. almost like a discussion board/social bookmarking/wiki hybrid, and it all comes together in the community aspect of OER.

What else stood out to you related to this Web site.

OER’s duality of focus on internationalization and localization, collaboration and individual application,  giving and taking. Love it!!

Describe in what ways may this resource be useful to you.

I would use OER for lesson plan ideas, both in taking and in giving. If I have an idea that I think can affect classrooms all over the world, I share it. If I’m having a little creative lull, but want to introduce a topic in a creative way, or tie in something controversial but need appropriate lens, I’ll come here.

-clf

Week Fourteen: Virtual Schooling

By virtue of our democracy, equitable schooling is a provision we offer our youth. But what happens when we can’t meet their needs equitably across county, city, state lines? Perhaps virtual schooling can step in.

Though I don’t believe virtual schooling should replace the traditional face-to-face teaching and learning experience, it certainly has potential in bridging the opportunity gap inherent in our diverse nation, with broad-sweeping standards sans accountability.

From one of the articles we learned that West Virginia sends students online to meet their foreign language requirement when the home school has no qualified classroom teacher.

By filling in the gaps of our traditional education system, virtual schooling is a blessing. And though it’s a bit relieving that virtual schooling buys us more time to solve our system’s problems, it’s also disconcerting because we are pushing back what really needs to be done. When all is said and done, the promise of our democracy insinuates the presence of qualified teachers, so schools should be required to have those. Until they do, virtual schooling is an excellent alternative.

My question is this: If qualified teachers are not in schools, and there are some that facilate online learning, but not enough to fill the gaps in schools, then WHERE DID ALL THE GOOD TEACHERS GO!?

Instead of taking courses online, we need to train quality teachers. But working with what we’ve got now, let’s look at virtual schooling as a means of educational support…. (Sorry I’m being so circular in my argument, but the process mirrors the reality.)

Not all students fit the mold we expect them to fit. They don’t all learn best by sitting at a desk in a classroom; in fact, they may not learn at all that way. The physical separation inherent in the on line classroom can offer students the freedom and openness they needed to ignite their motivation.

The teacher in the Florida Virtual School video said that her online classes demand more personal relationships with her students because  of the multimedia approach embedded in the curriculum. She talks to her students online and on the phone, and when she’s working with them, it’s all about the one teacher and one student, with no distractions from the rest of the class. She can identify strengths and weaknesses much more quickly because there’s no clock ticking or threat of the bell for the class to end looming. She said, “If I need two hours, then I take two hours.” And that’s a beautiful thing.

Allen D. Glenn, from University of Washington’s College of Education, said, “I never realized how many of my students’ questions I never answered until I taught online.”

I like the term “blended learning,” where one type of education supports and builds on another. I don’t think virtual schooling and the traditional classroom have to be a zero-sum game; with blended learning, schooling can be both/and instead of either/or.

Before closing, I want to include some of the discussion board posts from this week’s readings:

-”I have taught F2F courses and been frustrated with the difficulty I’ve had getting students to open up and share. 

This semester I’m teaching online for the first time and am thoroughly enjoying the kind of thoughtful, open discussions and sharing that I find rare in my F2F courses.”

-”You are going in for major heart surgery. How many of you want the cardiologist to have gotten his/her degrees from excellent online education program? The IRS is prosecuting you in a major tax-fraud case, one that may bring jail time? How many of you want your attorney to have gotten his/her degrees from excellent online education programs? Right.”

• I see both sides. There’s something authentic about being face-to-face when interacting, and if so many adults readily express their grievances about the erosion of meaningful communication due to online alternatives to phone calls and letters, then why are they not disturbed by online courses?

Questions:

1. Although virtual school can arguably help bridge the opportunity gap, in what ways does it replicate inequality embedded in the system? (ie: One way I am thinking of is access to computers and necessary resources. In bridging the gap, this also furthers it.)

2. How can virtual schooling attract more university support by adding to the institution’s merit and student life?

3. How can we shatter the stigma associated with online education in comparison to face-to-face, live schooling? (Perhaps if people understand that online students are receiving the same quality education as traditional students then online education can garner support and fuel different fields and subjects.)

4. Are students missing out if they don’t make face to face relationships with classmates? What is the role of socialization with peers in genuine, authentic and meaningful education? How important is it in shaping citizens and professionals, and how can we fulfill that part of our education with online courses?

-clf

Week 12 Readings: Games & Sims

1. In what ways can games be useful in supporting real-world skills and knowledge?
Besides training for manual skills, games shape flexible and responsive workers who take cues from social subleties that become less subtle when they’re part of a game’s strategy. If a game simulation of aviation, X-Plane, is good enough for the Federal Aviation Administration training, then I’m all for checking out the implications of gaming to training processes.

I think games’ saving grace as a teaching tool is their tendency to feed off of people’s natural inclinations.

Some of the qualities all games share are immersive graphical environment, interactivity, competition and risks,  which means they trigger our like for simulation, participation in a social activity, desire to be the best at something and addictive, love-hate relationship with failure.

2. In what ways can serious games promote learning?
What most stuck out to me in the readings was the idea of “learning to be instead of learning about.” Though this fits beautifully into the context of gaming in teaching and learning, I think it’s an umbrella theory that applies to all meaningful learning. It implies my favorite theme: context. Instead of learning about the community, learning what it means to students and what their part is in it will likely be a lasting lesson for a class. In other words, students experience more meaningful understanding when learning to be a leader than when learning about leadership. Being, in this respect, is synonymous with doing, and we all know that with doing comes understanding, as practice makes perfect.

Gaming provides “accidental learning,” or learning that’s implicit. It’s interactive and experiential, and presented in the way our younger generations like best: instant gratification.

3. In what ways might you incorporate games into a learning environment?

Some of the examples from the readings were especially interesting and ideas I had yet to think up:

• In higher education: To accelerate time for science experiment; To illustrate the psychology and various states of mental illnesses; and to teach language (the least inventive, but still relevant example)
• In elementary and secondary education: To support learning and act as a kind of teacher aide, in making the lesson more learner-centric and individualized
• In training (in this case, in retail and food training): To build strategic thinking thinking and analyzing competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, by partaking in an interactive customer service-based game

4. How are civic learning opportunities measured?

[Note: Civic learning opportunities (such as simulations of civic or political activities, helping others, and debating ethical issues) promote localized/civil outcomes among youth.]

The Pew study revealed from its findings that teens experience both pro-social and anti-social behavior in games. Sixty three percent of teen gamers reported “people being mean and overly aggressive while playing,” and 49 percent  reported “people being hateful, racist, or sexist.” The element of surprise here, in contrast to most publicized studies about gaming and civic behavior: Among the teens that reported this behavior, almost three-quarters said that good manners checked poor manners, as another player asked the aggressor to stop at least some of the time.

The research also showed that, although parents are checking in on their child’s gaming, they tend to monitor boys and younger kids than others. This is something we need to be cognizant of, because, in and outside of formal education, we often replicate the inequality we rail against.

5. In what ways is gameplay related to/not related to teens’ interest or engagement in civic and political activity?
I think gaming appeals to teens because of its innate sociality. In terms of civic engagement, the Pew article had this to say:

Neither the frequency of game play nor the amount of time young people spend playing games is significantly related to most of the civic and political outcomes that we examined.

But since no research supported behavior that undermined civic and political activtiy, it’s kind of a wash. I think it depends on who you talk to and what games they’re playing or their kids are talking about. Those who play Grand Theft Auto are not necessarily delinquents or thugs, but then again, how many children who played Schoolhouse Rock grew up to aim for political positions? There’s not enough longitudinal evidence to support either, but also I don’t think there’s enough correlation.

 

-clf

Week 11: Hidden Agenda

CAUSES

About this study

I chose to analyze the basis and the hidden agenda of the Causes application, built by Project Agape, because it’s one of the few applications I enabled on facebook. Because, in its application description, it cites “equal opportunity activism” as its goal, I chose Causes as my entering point into the study of whether there are hidden agendas behind all applications, even those that are “democratizing activism.”¹

I found my sources by searching through Google for causes+facebook app, and then looked to news/opinion pieces once I understood the data and the facts. I found some conflicting numbers, but collected generally consistent information.

Causes: How it works

Based out of Berkeley, California, Causes was created to make use of the huge circles of online friends that share social networks (the app is connected to MySpace, too) as a communication medium. ²

As with many other sectors, NGOs have taken a hard hit in the wake of the recession, which has forced the organizations to get creative with getting the word out for backing. The Causes app allows 501(c)(3)s in the U.S. and Canada to register to the application, so that users can support them by joining and inviting others to join thereafter. Through membership to a cause, users collaborate to stay in the loop with news stories, events and fundraising efforts of the respective organization. All monetary donations are sent to the Network for Good to distribute. ²

By inviting friends, sending gifts and actively participating in the facebook “community” via various applications, users can earn karma points, which they can in turn use to buy small gifts or donate to a cause. (Here’s where they get you. The 6^th graders on facebook may be less interested in donating their points to One.org than in banking and getting a prize. This is besides the fact that “karma” is not supposed to be about what you can get out of the deal.)

Joe Green, one of the application’s founders, said, “People are much more altruistic if they get social credit for it. The social incentive is to show on your profile how many volunteers you’ve recruited or how much money you’ve raised.”²

Causes data

Causes is free for users and non-profits alike, but it costs organizations staff time to develop and maintain their pages. The word is out though, and though there’s some debate over the success of the app, more and more people are becoming a part of the trend. There are currently 35,291,157 monthly active users, a figure that’s growing at a daily rate of 0.28. 3 It’s numbers like those that make Causes the third-most popular of the more than 52,000 applications on the site, according to The Washington Post. As of April, 179,000 orgs have enlisted the app’s help since its inception. ²

The monetary success is less chart-topping, though. Only a small number of participating organizations have raised $1,000+ and only185,000 members have donated funds. Fewer than 50 of the more-than-100,000 gorups have hit the $10,000 mark and only two (the Nature Conservancy and Students for  a Free Tibet) have raised $100,000. ²

And, although I chose to include the word “only” as a qualifier because those numbers are mere fractions of the number of people considered “users,” I’m hugely impressed with the power of this app. Sure, only two charities raised more than $100K, but those donations are funds that didn’t exist for two good causes before.

One blogger echoed my sentiments in posting this (and please excuse her poor spelling and grammar): “I’m sure there are other meausres, but you get the point, what measures we use to define success will utlimately define us and while dollars in might be easy to measure it’s not alwasy the best one to use.” ⁵

Educational value and impact

As far as lessons go, the value of philanthropy is up there with the best of them. Causes’ slogan says it best: “Anyone can change the world.”

I always write about access and this application provides access to those that can’t afford to donate money to a cause and/or, for some reason, cannot give of their time to that cause.

The lesson here is that supporting a cause can mean more than just donating money. The blogger I cited earlier also wrote this:

“Causes on FB enables us to tell our own world – distinct from the world -  about the issues, campaigns, orgs that they are passionate about. We can bring our networks of friends, our ingenuity, our passion, our time, our expertise to support causes.  It enables lots and lots of people to learn about causes and to share them with their friends easily, quickly and inexpensively.” ⁵

Controversies

The first thing that made me question Causes.com, which is the site of the developers, was the .com suffix. Trying to be a believer but being an inherent skeptic, I couldn’t help but wonder how an agency focused on philanthropy, and allegedly unfocused on commercialism, why was the domain not a .org? I then learned that a third party distributed the funds.

Most of the controversy around the Causes application is whether the app really accomplishes what it seeks to or is a big waste of time.

One side cites the stats: Fewer than 1 percent of social network users that have joined a cause donated money to the cause.

The other cite cites the numbers, too, but takes on some optimism with the “It’s better than nothing” point-of-view: More than 3 million users support the cause “Support the Campaign for Cancer Research”,” to which $61,440 has been donated. This about $.02 per user. ⁶

Other connections

Many of my sources cited Obama’s huge success in online fundraising for his Presidential campaign as a reason why Causes should be more successful.

“Green” marketing, soliciting and fundraising was also a common thread. By taking to online social networks to do the job, NGOs save money and trees!

Hidden agenda

Money, like every other application. But this time the hidden agenda might actually be a good one..

This is not to say users shouldn’t be a little wary. In the “About Causes” decription on facebook, biased rhetoric seeps through. This is the first sentence (I’ve bolded the phrase that sets of a red flag for me), “Facebook Platform presents an unprecedented opportunity to engage our generation, most of whom are on Facebook, in seizing the future and making a difference in the world around us.” ¹

It later states, “Any Facebook user with a little passion and initiative can create a cause, recruit their friends into that cause, keep everybody in the cause up-to-speed on issues and media related to the cause, and, most importantly, raise money directly through the cause…” ¹

But then again, if there ever were an acceptable platform for exploitation, raising money for registered non-profit organizations is definitely it.

Sources

1: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/about

2: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103786.html

3: http://statistics.allfacebook.com/applications/index/mau/

4: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/28/causes-reports-on-its-first-year/

5: http://afine2.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/wash-post-disses-causes-on-facebook/

6: http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/04/new-causes-application-looks-to-raise-money-without-donations/

-clf

Week 10 Readings: Participatory Divide

What would your ideal school look like?

Would your school have a specific focus like a magnet school? Who would be in charge of the school?

No specific focus, because I feel like a brilliant mathematician, when placed in a performing arts magnet school, could lose his math genius in being enveloped in the arts for four critical years. It would be a broad-based, regular-focus school. There would be an administration for office purposes and organization, an honor court (staffed in part by faculty, in part by students and in part by PTA members)

Is it big or small?

As big as possible to reach its goals, but no bigger until it’s ready to sustain growth.

Would it be year-round?

Summers off, with individualized projects to monitor progress and stream learning into the other months. Maybe I feel like summers are a time to not be in the classroom because I am a product of a somewhat-standard education in terms of organization (although I went to a private school that I felt equipped me to take on the world as myself and not as a mold of something my teachers thought I should be), but I think we have to give families a time to take a break from the day-to-day and do a lot or a little in whatever ways work for them to enjoy life. Hopefully students can learn about themselves that way. For me, summers are my time to find myself and regroup my thoughts, goals and feelings for the year ahead. I’ve learned more about myself in traveling than I have ever learned about myself in the classroom. That said, the school should align itself with summer programs for continued learning and for fun, because most people don’t get to pick up and leave for the summer. (I realize I am very fortunate for those opportunities afforded to me for those summers.)

What would a typical day for students be like?

I don’t really think there should be a typical day. The predictability of the school day is part of the flawed system now. Kids like to shake things up sometimes, and they’re going to be more likely to learn if they’re engaged in something they may not have fully foreseen. That’s not to say the class is a circus; of course, days will be structured. Students would have courses that they registered for, the school would still meet the state’s broad standards, and standardized testing would still have to occur if it’s a public school, but standards-based education would have no place here. Results-driven is a fine thing to be, and many successful classrooms and projects are, but this school would focus more on results that actually matter and are indicative of individual learning. There would be a lot of collaboration between classes, a lot of one-on-one time (even if it has to be after school) and open classroom discussions, where children don’t have to be afraid of speaking up. There would, however, be a dress code/uniform that wouldn’t hinder creativity in jazzing up the basic school shirt and pants/shorts, but would level the playing field, per se, for student’s of lesser means. And I would try to contract some local clothing shops to carry all the gear, and not one of those awful rip-off monopolies that carry uniforms for full districts and make you wait in line for hours while they’re irritated to watch lines grow…

Who would you hire to work with the students?

I would hire business professionals, writers, actors, people who know what they are talking about because of life experience and/or passion for the subject that can’t be extracted from text or videos online. I would conduct a normal hiring process, but put the word out within the community that the democractically run school is looking for people looking to inspire knowledge-hungry students. I think the job sells itself, if described accurately, and would do its job in attracting the type of educators we are looking for. Accountability is so important, so what better way to make teachers accountable for the students’ learning than to have the students vote on whether the teacher should return. I realize students can be nasty sometimes and that louder students can sway the beliefs of more subdued students, but if we are so heavily relying on trust and the sense of community and democracy, then this is the best way to go.

Would you use grades like conventional schools? No.

How would student work be assessed?

That would be up to the teacher. If we run into a problem with the assessments or the achievement, then the administration will step and in and intervene, working with students to fix the problem. I think there should also be a student board (like student government, but more of a problem-addressing body than a club-related one) that addresses these issues on behalf of the student body.

What role would digital media play in your school?

As great a role as it does in each subject area in the real world. The hard part about making school relevant to real-life is that real-life skills are changing and transforming so rapidly, but if we create flexible, responsive, adaptive learners, who know how to use digital medias relevant now, then we can watch them grow to incorporate newer digital medias as they pop up in relevance.

What role would parents and community members play?

A big one. The school is a government entity, not just in terms of funding and in technicality, but also in its role in defining and reinforcing the identity of the community. I went to private school, so our students’ education was not funded by the government, obviously. But the community had a vested interest (or should have, anyway) in the quality of our education, because some of my friends were the ones becomign equipped with the tools to organize walks for autism, races for the cure, donation drives, regular soup kitchen visits by the senior class and movements against texting while driving that go all the way to state legislature.That’s why education needs to be at the forefront of community issues. So, how do we make people other than students care? Get them involved, giving them vested interest, and letting that interest trickle down and out. PTA needs to have some hands-on responsibility and to offer flexibility for working parents who can’t offer a fixed time to get involved. Community members should be encouraged to get involved (I think there should be a PR member of administration to get the word out on what’s going on in the school) and invited to pitch new ideas for involvement. Parents should be in-the-loop on their child’s progress (maybe this is where digital media should come in).

…And one last thing

Going along with the theme of empowering children to empower themselves, and the profound transformative effect of one-on-one attention, this is a video one of my roommates sent me: http://www.girleffect.org/

(It’s the same idea as Heifer International, which I heard about in Bill Clinton’s book on tape. Here’s a link to that project, too: http://www.heifer.org/).

-clf

Shopping and Consuming: Readings from Week 9

My Grandy sends me forward e-mails just about every other day. Send this to ten women you care about; please support our troops; the more people read this, more awareness spreads. You know what? She’s right. And even though those e-mails are sometimes silly, I still read them because I know Grandy has taken the time out of her daily e-mail routine in the morning to send them to me.

Point being: Grandy has a morning e-mail routine and enough ladies to forward all these e-mails to. Grandy is 74 and an embodiment of the Pew Insititute’s statistic that 45% of the 70-75 demographic is now online. Grandy and her peers make up the largest age-demographic increase in Internet use since 2005, and judging by the growing list of recipients to those forward e-mails, they’re still signing on in large numbers.

It’s the younger generation (Internet users between ages 33 and 44, otherwise known as Generation X), though, that looks to the Web not only as communicators but also as consumers.

The Business Week article “Does social media sway online shopping?” (linked correctly here: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2009/08/does_social_med.html) says though both social media and e-commerce are at the forefront of online activity, their playing fields are still pretty separate. According to studies, about 17% of social network users have looked to other Internet users within that social network for advice on what and what not to buy. But it seems that those who do seek advice are generally pretty serious about taking it: 74% of people who received feedback were influenced by what others told them.

The first time I skimmed this article’s graphs and data I didn’t classify myself as someone who has vetted to other social network users about online purchases. Then, upon further investigation of what that really means and where it can take place online, I realized I have in fact sought others’ feedback many times. And, turns out, I am a statistic, too. The Business Week charts point to technology and entertainment as the main topics of online conversation, and those are pretty much the only categories to which I have applied the overlapping mediums.

In the comments section to this article, I found a little more to which I could relate: Victor thinks forums are the best way to get information; Jack thinks larger purchases are more likely to create feedback requests; Jeremy says reviews and forums are social, and that he thinks the scope of  “social media” should be broadened to include them; Michelle agrees (and so do I); Sarah calls herself a “Value Hunter,” since she searches for coupons and incentives for smaller purchases online (I’m with Sarah, too. I have to admit, I’m a little addicted to RetailMeNot.com, where I found a coupon yesterday for $20 off my dog’s flea medicine).

ReadWriteWeb’s “Social media and shopping: A growing trend” focuses on the same idea that online shopping and social media still primarily live in separate realms. And statistically, they do. But just because the article cites Internet Retailer’s findings that only 39.3% of retailers use social networks to market to young consumers (Generation Y aka me) doesn’t mean that social media and e-commerce are so far removed from one another.

I found this quote in the ReadWriteWeb article to be the catalyst to my dissent about this: “While it’s encouraging to see web retailers reaching out to the youngest shoppers in this way, those number still seem sort of low. Do only 39.3% of retailers need to sell to Generation Y customers? We think that number should be higher.”

This is the point of view of someone with vested interest in either selling goods online or making money from online business advertisements. To me, as an occasional online consumer and frequent social media participant, this is not a bad thing. Exposed to advertisements even when they don’t even realize it, when watching movies with business plugs or branding in the backgrounds of memorable scenes, music videos, day-to-day celebrity news, billboards, bus spreads, and just about every other publicly viewed domain, children should be able to engage in social networking and media without being targeted as consumers or being manipulated into purchasing items they probably don’t need. (Obviously, this is an assumption, not based on any kind of research or polls. But if they needed the item they probably wouldn’t have to be marketed to, right?)

The article states that, as of Oct. 4, 237 companies actively use social media for marketing. The authors are hopeful that the number of companies on that list grows, but I don’t really care. As a matter of fact, I hope that the number doesn’t grow. If online shopping isn’t the biggest game in town, then some of the Mom-and-Pop businesses that are taking such a hard hit during the recession, as Americans look to monster-sized companies like Wal-Mart for lower prices (and sometimes lower standards for customer service, lower quality, etc.), might feel a little hope again. Wouldn’t it be nice to support out own local businesses, pump money into out own areas and channel out sales tax into our own public schools by shopping live and in-person?

So, in answer to these questions, here’s what I have to say:

Have you ever vetted purchase decisions with your friends or online friends?

Not online, no. But I have read the forums on cameras, iPods and downloadable software.

In what ways do you use the Internet when considering making a purchase?

-Shoptoearn.com/Shoptoearth.com

-Coupon codes

-I’m indecisive and I like being outdoors, so online shopping is a nice way to ruminate about potential purchases (it offers some leeway for buyer’s remorse) and a great excuse to avoid the mall.

In what ways has social media shaped your decision about purchasing an item/items?

This summer when I was looking to buy a new camera (after I asked a stranger abroad to take a picture for my friends and he walked away with mine), I looked up lists and forums about the best cameras for my purposes. In shopping offline, I worked off those lists to choose which camera to buy. I also checked online to compare prices of TVs, which helped me get a better idea of where to shop in-store and where I’d be ripped off, when I moved into an apartment this year.

-clf

An article that links back to Week 7 Readings (Creativity and Play)

Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html?ref=education

Readings from Week 8

Webopedia.com defines “digital divide” as “the discrepancy between people who have access to and the resources to use new information and communication tools” and those who do not.  More specifically, though, it extends the definition to include “the discrepancy between those who have the skills, knowledge and abilities to use the technologies and those who do not.”

Inherent in the digital divide is access: to computers, to the Internet, to the networking available through both of those and the opportunity for socioo-political activism that the online world magnifies.

In the given article, the Pew Institute highlights an issue we’ve alluded to since the beginning of this course. Because of access (or lack there of), the well-educated are more likely to participate in online political activities than are ordinary civilians of a lower SES or of less education. But this research extrapolates some data of which I was unfamiliar before: online participation in blogs or social network sites is a whole lot less correlated with SES or education level.

Here’s what this could mean: The digital divide may have the potential to bridge the gap between civic engagement of the rich and that of the poor, but it also could increase that gap because of poor distribution of access. The future is uncertain.

As danah boyd said in the panel we watched a few weeks ago, the Internet is a tool of mirroring and magnifying phenomena that exist offline. With that in mind, the Pew Institute’s finding that those who use blogs and social networking as media for civic engagement are more politically active in offline activities should not come as a surprise.

What do we have here, then?

I think we’re looking at a hopeful little cycle…or traces of one, at least. Those who are inclined to partake in political activity are the ones who are finding ways to partake in politics via technology; meanwhile, those who partake in politics online are more likely to participate in other forms of civic engagement offline.

At whatever point of that cycle we (educators) decide to step in, we are charged with the challenge of accessibility: that huge stifling roadblock. No matter how we cut it, access is key. The more available technology is for our students, the more available opportunity is for them.

Now, time for some role play: You work in a school where only half of your students have high speed access and computers at home. What could you do to bridge this digital divide? How might you use social media to change this situation and get kids and their families decent computers and high-speed access?

• -Use whatever resources and contacts you’ve got, garnering support through bottom-up social action
• -Rally people; stand on street corners with posters; lobby
• -Call companies, write letters; make a project out of it, having all the students send cards to companies
• -Register a non-profit or hop on board with one that already exists and work with them so that efforts can be concentrated locally
• -Make a Web site for donations or have a blog with information on how to take part or to donate
• -Twitter the word out; make a facebook group and a fan page
• -Send letters to families to organize fundraising and awareness events
• -Invite the PTA and the community to take part
• -Send press releases; garner local media
• -Request open lab hours in the computer lab or library of the school and encourage students take part; have an after school program and volunteer to work for free in the beginning until the school has funds for it
• -Teach social media, have the students take part in the effort to get computers and Internet into their homes. Show them why they should want to have access, so that they can take the matter into their own hands, too.

It sounds far-fetched, but sometimes the most abstract goals produce the most concrete benefits.

Anne Frank said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I’ve seen that precept hold true, lately, too. Here are some ways to do so (note the common thread here is spreading awareness):

• -At Gator Growl on Friday, OAR made a shout-out to openyourarms.org. Sure, they had access to a stadium full of listeners, but they still employed the most basic of plugs: word of mouth. I went home, visited the site, signed a pledge in support of American troops in Afghanistan and then posted the link to spread the word via twitter.
• -UF’s emergency tests use text messaging to inform tens of thousands of students of important safety and weather information. Teachers could align with mobile campus or other companies like it to mass-inform people instantly.
• -E-mails and listservs. People rarely take the time to unsubscribe. Tacky as it sounds, organizations can monopolize on that. I know I’m more informed because I get e-mails to my phone. When the organizations that urge for legislators to repeal Prop. 8 in California e-mail me and that e-mail comes directly to my phone, I am obviously more likely to be informed about the situation of that organization and of that issue than I would otherwise be.
• -Freerice.com; thehungersite.com; one.org. Whether clicking on these sites really means donating rice or books or trees or whatever else to people and places in need, I don’t know. But for the few clicks a day it takes, I’m willing to take that risk. With a medium for people to get involved, teachers can trust that people will, so long as they get the word out.

-clf

Readings from Week 7, Creativity and Play

Creativity and play are not just important in our lives; they are vital to our lasting, meaningful interactions and our existence.

Plato said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

Stuart Brown (in his TED lecture) said, “Nothing lights up the brain like play.”

My father is an attorney who has been conditioned by society, by his family and by himself to find joy in his work. His secretaries very well may think he is an all-business kind of guy because their interactions are with his work persona, John P. Fuller, JD. To me and to those who know him best, my dad is a goofball. He skips and does karate moves in the parking lot; he mocks me, asking “who are you?” when I tell him I love him. At play, he is a dynamic, creative and childish version of himself…in the best, most enjoyable way.

Sir Ken Robinson in the TED video pointed to the unpredictability of play in opening doors that our traditional system of education slowly hacks away at. Because children aren’t afraid of being wrong, they take risks; they play.

In the lecture, Robinson said something that particularly stuck out to me,”If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Consider Robinson’s argument that we educate ourselves out of creativity and play by stigmatizing our mistakes and perpetuating a system that makes a villain out of mistakes. I have been thinking alot about purpose lately and a few nights ago, this question popped into my head: what is the purpose of our education?

I’m not sure that we even really know what our general goals, aside from out standards, in educating are youth are. Since the current educational system is oriented around subjects that shaped youth into players in the Industrialist game, calling it outdated and self-confining is generous at best. Maybe if we can define education, its goals and its major components, then we can begin to unravel the thick layer of problems that surround the education system.

Broadening the definition of education and incorporating multiple facilities could embrace students’ differences and creativity, which as the system exists, are often viewed as behavior problems or learning disabilities.

I have a good memory. My grandparents used to call me Files, Jr. (my aunt Jodi is the original Files). But for some reason, the first most vivid memory that came to me in reading the prompt was one of a summer afternoon when I was 12 or 13.

Where: In Ford Park in Vail, Colorado.

What: A water fight amongst Me; my younger sister, Courtney; my two first cousins who grew up with us as stand-in brothers, Spencer and Grant; my mom; and my aunt. We had been biking through town all day and stopped for a picnic. I was soaking wet and shivering because we were attacking each other with frozen, water-filled Gatorade bottles. I was the oldest of the children in the clan, but the thinnest little beanpole who looked about 3 years younger than I was, and I was wearing my favorite red T-shirt.

Why this memory sticks out from the rest: Last Saturday, Spencer took his SAT’s. He drove in his black Honda Civic…by himself…to take a college admissions test. How weird. Grant is 14, and he is a stud. His eyes glow, his laugh is contagious and his voice makes me want to squeeze him in an enveloping hug. Courtney, like Spencer, is 16 and precocious. She used to test her limits, give my mom a run for her money. Now, she’s an A-student, a role model, the life of the party and the kindest soul I know.

My childhood memories pretty much go like this and build to where we are today. Courtney, Spencer and Grant are my family and my friends. They look to me for guidance and I look to them for reassurance. My role as their caretaker and their role as my peanut gallery has shaped my character, from the summers in the Rocky Mountains  when we shared a set of two bunk beds to the older summers we shared at sleepaway camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to reality, which sprawls us all over the country, from South Florida to Southern California.

Since my grandma is a creative writing teacher (she was mine in 4th grade) and my family’s just plain cool, I have always had a close relationship with play and creativity. By encouraging me to journal my thoughts, by allowing me the freedom to be silly so long as I can also be responsible and by letting me take an active role and stake in my informal education, my family has overseen my transformation into a dynamic college junior. I explore my major and my minor and my interests, changing the angle of my career goals bi-weekly.

In all types of educations, play is important because it opens the door for students to invent their own outlets to compartmentalize their new knowledge. Student creativity can pave a path that a teacher may have not even foreseen. If incorporated in the classroom, but even further, in the education system itself, then we can redefine education and cater to the current demands of our society and our youth. In doing so, we gear our students to take on what we perceive to be in the future and let them stray so that they can create what they may, whether within the framework of that perception or, ideally, far beyond.

-clf

Readings from Week 6: New Media Literacy and Participatory Culture

Participatory Culture

1 and 2. The video is a definitional tool but also an embodiment of the definition it provides. It’s participatory, collaborative and informal but also educational, visual and accessible (because it’s on YouTube). People, who are basically acting as stand-in experts, are using collective knowledge to define something, each inputting what they can. “Textbook” definitions aren’t so cookie-cutter anymore thanks to participatory culture, and this video exemplifies as it defines that concept.

3. More than half of all teens have created media content and one third who use the Internet have shared what they’ve created, according to the document. I’m only 21, and this makes me feel like a technological dinosaur! Believing in the popular assumption that tech-savvy was the skill set of the near future, my parents signed me up for weekly computer lessons, during which Mark the Computer Guy used two desktop Macintosh computers to teach me and my best friend what I now know as “media literacy,” throughout elementary school. (sidenote: Mark probably should have worked as a computer programmer or something. He was a nice man, but completely ill-equipped to teach.) I was a master at Put-Put, the game that put my computer skills to the test, and typed fairly well because of Mavis Beacon. I was one of the more tech-savvy kids in my class, I’d say. Now, a little more than a decade later, children of the same age have their own YouTube channels, blogs, MySpace band pages, photo sharing usernames, etc. In a short time (without touching upon discrepancies such as the Participation Gap), the shared culture associated with the Internet has harnessed the busy minds of young people to teach transmedia navigation (their ability to follow information that is coming at them from a whole lot of sources) and contribution and gathering of collective intelligence (group work to the Nth degree. “Two minds are better than one” principle taken to the max). The Internet has become an educational tool (when used as so) that incorporates play, simulates experiences students might otherwise be sheltered from and provides opportunities to network, negotiate and practice judgment and multitask.

4. Podcasts, about which I don’t know much but am about to learn (I see we use this tool in Lesson Plan 3); wikis; blogs; flickr; most social media outlets. I especially like the Personal Learning Journals as a way to assess understanding and monitor progress. (Before this class, I hadn’t thought much about it, but it’s something I really want to incorporate in my future classes.)

Media Literacy

1. Short and sweet. I liked the first one better, but Henry Jenkins was in the first video sharing just about the same information. From the two videos, New Media Literacy is the things people need to know to be creative thinkers, workers and citizens. (I like the citizen point, because I think flickr may not be a tool most educators would normally consider as a tool in shaping responsible and competent citizens, but pooling information with students from across the globe, or even nearby, provides perspective and awareness to young people through social media). I like this point from Henry Jenkins, the media scholar at MIT in both videos: previously,  society was used to thinking of literacy as a skill of individuals, but new media literacies realign that definition to cater to the skills of groups.

2. New media literacy is the set of skills we need to function in the current media environment, how to interact with information, with media, with culture, with today’s lifestyle. One of the contributors points to the molding of creative artists and citizens. Media literacy has now taken on a whole new connotation because, in evolving, media has become participatory and reactionary. Whereas before a small number of people were employing this skill set to market and cater to a large number of people, now large numbers of people can cater to other people alike and different from themselves. As one of the other contributors said, “We’re not really just consumers anymore.”

New media literacy means practicing:

judgment (finding information and deciding whether that information is reliable), negotiation (knowing how to cater to different norms), appropriation, play, transmedia navigation, multitasking, visualization, etc. …

…and the one I like most: citizenship in providing an outlet for skills that connect people on a large scale.  With a mastery of new media literacy, students are players in the game that’s at the crux of their generation’s shared culture.

Media Literacy Education is wrapping up these principles into educational settings. It’s harnessing all these extra-curricular lessons and values that are commonly looked at separately from instruction and incorporating them in teaching and learning.

3. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or compensation when the situation permits.  Because there haven’t been any big court decisions in reference to applying fair use to education, teachers can be more public and use copyrighted materials more freely than most others. There was a sentence that especially stood out to me: “But copying, quoting, and generally re-using existing cultural material can be, under some circumstances, a critically important part of generating new culture.” (P6) Like most concepts, fair use in policy is much more complicated than fair use in practice. It’s flexible and open to interpretation because “new creation inevitably incorporates existing material.” (P6) Basically when copyrighted material is used in good faith for the purposes of teaching or inspiring new material, then it is being used fairly in the educational context.

Creative Commons, an amazing resource that creates a comfortable, trusting community for those who are looking to share their genius with personal stipulations, offers these licensing options (and combinations of these options, too):

Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work –and derivative works based upon it –but only if they give credit the way you request.

Share alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work– and derivative works based upon it– but for noncommercial purposes only.

No derivative works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

4. Creative Commons, supported by the Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke Law School, is grounded in the mission to find the “delicate balance” between what is and what is not explicitly protected as intellectual property of its creator.

The speaker that opens the short video’s discussion asks:

What does it mean to be human if we don’t have a shared culture? What does  shared culture mean if you can’t share it?

Another said, “Creative Commons is designed to save the world from failed sharing. Simple way for creators to say “here’s the freedom to use my work.”

License can cover anything that copyright covers; so that’s what Creative Commons offers those who want to share but don’t know how to protect their contributions. Choosing “Share Alike” means allowing others to borrow your product and asking the borrowers to offer the product to the next interested party under the same terms.

CC is an integral part of new media literacy because it provides something so integral to growth and progress: accessibility. It is laying the foundations for a global society with interconnected global citizens. It connects artists in Singapore with a classroom or just an interested party halfway across the world. It fosters creative invention and media literacies while providing guidelines based on the creators intentions for creativity to parallel connection and growth.

THIS IS SO COOL. I’m really interested in comparative education, so this is a tool I can totally see myself using. Creating a global classroom, understanding freedom with respect to responsibility, finding that balance between the two concepts: CC is that bridge.

5. Some classroom ideas:

1. Flickr-enhanced vocab lessons (http://www.joewoodonline.com/five-fabulous-reasons-to-se-flickr/)
2. Discussion groups for art history
3. Flat Stanley lessons. This is a great way to connect an elementary class with the world.
4. Current events (ie: talk about the recent earthquakes in Indonesia and Samoa and http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanredcross/)

-clf