CITations

Elizabeth Lawley, Director, Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology (New York), blogs about a conversation she had with a few colleagues, one of whom offered two reasons not to blog: A sense of obligation to keep on blogging once you've started and the need for academics to develop ideas in private, only revealing them when they are fit for review. She disagrees, pointing out that the benefits outweigh the (perceived) costs:

Yes, I feel stress about "producing" on a regular basis. Yes, I've been burned when offering ideas that weren't yet ready for prime time. But in return, I've become part of an amazing, supportive "invisible college" of colleagues, from inside and outside of academia. I've had input into ideas that have helped me shape my research agenda before I've gone too far down a blind alley, I've found people to work with on papers and conference presentations, I've found encouragement when I've been stuck on a tough problem.

This is more applicable to general academic blogging, rather than the current module blogs setup. But I feel if you're passionate about your work, you should be sharing it with the world.

I keep up with developments in educational technology out of interest, as well as to maintain this blog and to be in the know. Here are a few of the blogs and news sites I read.

Christopher Sessums' Thoughts on learning, teaching and computing
Chris is a PhD candidate and Director of the Office of Distance Education, College of Education, University of Florida. He blogs his thoughts quite thoroughly, linking to the sources he cites. His posts are more like mini-essays, where he throws out ideas and waits for feedback. Reflective and insightful.

The Chronicle of Higher Education | The Wired Campus
This is a news site which features the latest updates in educational technology in the US.

Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com
Ewan is a K-12 educator based in Scotland.  He highlights many uses of social media in the classroom, most of which are applicable or can be adapted to the higher education environment.

George Siemens' elearnspace
George explores "elearning, knowledge management, networks, technology, and community".

Kairosnews
EdTech news site.

Kevin Lim's theory.isthereason
Kevin is a Singaporean doing his PhD at the School of Informatics, University of Buffalo. He is a gadget freak and social media enthusiast advocate. He explores and shares the latest in social media and how it can be used in education. Currently, Kevin teaches at SIM. His classes make use of blogs and other read/write web tools.

Stephen Downes' Online Learning Daily
Stephen's blog is a daily annotated summary of significant developments in educational technology. One of the first edtech blogs I came across.

Tony Karrer's eLearning Technology
Tony is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower. He ponders about a range of elearning topics. He has lots to say about Rapid eLearning.

Will Richardson's weblogg-ed
Will is "Learner in Chief" of Connective Learning. He's a great resource for read/write web in the classroom.

If you're wondering how I keep track of the latest content on these blogs and news sites: I use Google Reader. I don't have time to visit each one daily, so I let the content come to me.

UPDATE Tony Karrer just listed his Top Ten eLearning Blogs.

Blogs are about conversations. While most people conceive blogging as writing your own blog, it's very much about reading others' blogs and responding.

Google the area of your interest; you'll probably find blogs about it. Then follow Darren Rowse's tips on engaging with other bloggers. Read his post.

1. Highlight what they said well.
2. Show what they missed.
3. Answer questions.
4. Summarise what others are writing.
   
5. Show how it applies to you/your students.
6. Extrapolate to the future.
7. Reflect on the past.
   
8. Build on ideas.
9. Be the opposition.
10. Ask: what if?
11. Be the Devil's Advocate.
    

Through the conversations you develop, you'll find that over time, you've built a community which can be invaluable to you.

Listen to a 5-minute podcast on the new Centre for Life Sciences (CeLS) - download the mp3 (via RSI).

On a related note, besides educational use, there is plenty of scope for new media tools to be used in corporate and public communication. The School of Business seems to be on to something, but there is potential for so much more. I wish I could share a video from BizAd Vibes, but it's not meant to be repurposed.

Related media coverage

• NUS research now under one roof (Straits Times)
• Forays into Life Sciences – S’pore ready to adjust focus if needed: Tony Tan (Straits Times)
• Biomed industry needs time to grow: Dr Tan (Today)
• New scheme to attract young researchers to continue their research (Berita Harian)
• Important research programmes under one roof (Tamil Murasu)

Henry Jenkins, Director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program puts forward the concept of the YouNiversity, suggesting that blogs will play a central role:

Blogs represent a powerful tool for engaging in these larger public
conversations. At my university, we noticed that a growing number of students were developing blogs focused on their thesis research. Many of them were making valuable professional contacts; some had developed real visibility while working on their master's degrees; and a few received high-level job offers based on the professional connections they made on their blogs. Blogging has also deepened their research, providing feedback on their arguments, connecting them to previously unknown authorities, and pushing them forward in ways that no thesis committee could match. Now all of our research teams are blogging not only about their own work but also about key developments in their fields.

via /Message via theory.isthereason

Original photo by Matt Kaliner from here, reproduced under a cc by 2.0 license.

Semester is back on track after the Chinese New Year break. I hope it was a good one for all of you.

Instead of pointing out something blogging/web 2.0-related today, I will introduce a website called Arts & Letters Daily.

As the title implies, AL Daily features "some of the best writing on the Web" (so claims The Chronicle of Higher Education, which runs it) relating to the Arts and Humanities. It is updated six times a week.

I can't find an email subscription service there, but if you would like to get updated on the latest content daily, you can subscribe to their RSS feed

Heard of The Long Tail? Chris Anderson's Wired article, now a expanded into a book, explores:

The theory... that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

About Me, The Long Tail blog

The popularity and power of blogging, as well as other social online media, fits squarely into this. The clip above, from FORA.tv, is a presentation by Chris Anderson explaining The Long Tail.

FORA.tv itself is a demonstration of efficacy of The Long Tail. It is something like YouTube for the thinking person (although that is slightly demeaning because FORA.tv's features trump YouTube's). Not exactly mainstream stuff, but it definitely has its niche. Would we have seen this in the pre-social media internet?

Fleck and Mojiti are two online annotation tools that I've been exploring. They help web surfers to refer others to precise points in a web page or video respectively, as well as to add descriptive notes.

Fleck can be deployed in several ways. You can start annotating other websites by putting the desired URL into Fleck's input field. There are other ways of integrating Fleck with your browser, from bookmarklets to browser extensions (the latter method requires registration, but the service is free).

You can see an example of a Fleck-ed page here. (Wait a while for the annotations to load.)

As you can see, once you annotate a page, Fleck provides a unique URL so that other users can see the annotations. The annotations exist on a separate layer from the website. It does not cache the website. That is, if the website changes, your annotation might not point to the right content.

Nevertheless, it's a nifty tool.

If you haven't clicked the Fleck example above, please do so. I've annotated Mojiti's front page to tell you more about what Mojiti does. In case you don't have time: it allows you to annotate online videos.

UPDATE 22 Feb | Just came across this via LifeHack. zpeech allows you to run a discussion/comments thread about any website on the website itself.

UPDATE 11 Mar | TechCrunch points to four other annotation services besides Fleck.

The Biomedical Multimedia Unit at the University of Melbourne has come up with a preliminary report which details first-year students' use of  and engagement with technology (kudos to collegewebeditor once again).

The report has this to say about blogs:

It may be surprising to some in the University community that more than one-third of first year students have kept their own blog in the last year and well over half (57%) read others' blogs. The educational possibilities of blogs are beginning to be explored... and it is important for academics and faculties to be aware of this public form of self-publishing and online interaction.

In NUS, we have already set out to explore academic blogging with the establishment of NUS Module Blogs. However, more will need to be done to help students discover how to push the boundaries of learning with the latest tech tools. The report further points out that:

In a recent US study of undergraduate students' uses and perceptions of technology in their learning, Katz [in Caruso & Kvavik] (2005) concludes that:

'freshman students arrive at our institutions with a set of electronic core skills. Such skills include communications (telephone, email, text-messaging, and IM), Web surfing (not to be confused with research skills), word processing and video gaming... these young people can make technology work but cannot place these technologies in the service of (academic) work.' (p. 7)

It is not that first year students are incapable of using technology for specialised, context-appropriate purposes... The critical point is that while first year students might use technology in a range of ways and may, apparently, be digitally literate, we cannot assume that being a member of the 'Net Generation' is synonymous with knowing how to employ technology-based tools strategically to optimise learning experiences and outcomes in university settings.

Do Singaporean students' attitudes, skills and experiences with technology mirror their Australian and American counterparts? There is some anecdotal evidence that they will likely be similar. The challenge for educational technology departments and progressive educators is to open their eyes to the possibilities.

Original photo by Wesley Fryer from here, reproduced under a cc by-sa 2.0 license.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 License.

The University of Warwick, one of the most innovative universities in terms of social software usage and social networking prowess, has been producing short video news items and putting them on YouTube. The video above, discussing the phenomenon of Chinese support for the England football team, is one of the many which focus on research outcomes, current affairs analysis and campus events.

It is not a mere marketing tool, points out Alice Lau, from the University of Glamorgan's Learning Zone:

The aim of the project despite what everyone might think, is more than just advertising. To them, it is about communicating the research work in the university to the wider community in a very different way. It also provided a new channel for researchers to reach new people.

Warwick's iCast has high quality production values, suggesting a concerted and deliberate effort to put these bulletins out. While NUS may not choose to go this way to promote its research (although, in my personal capacity, I don't see why not), I think it trailblazes a way for individual lecturers to innovate in their teaching and personal branding.

Now, where is that camcorder...?

The video about Web 2.0 I posted a couple of days ago keeps on popping up on the blogs that I read.

NUS student, November Tan, highlighted it too, reflecting on how she uses the read/write web to help build environmental awareness and interest in Singapore's rich biodiversity:

Indeed, the way the environmental "movement", ideas of conservation, of environmental awareness, outreach, sharing, inspiration, motivations, passing on of information in Singapore has changed tremendously and in fact expanded by leaps and bounds thanks to the wonders and beauty of Web 2.0.

For example, I can upload my photos of my beachflea trip to Hantu and tomorrow somebody searching for "hantu" tags might be introduced to the beauty of our southern shores and from there he might then see my blog and then linked on to the many issues by looking at tags, through del.icio.us or other such aggregators. Somebody can then submit it to tomorrow.sg or any other blog aggregators and then the word is spread. Likewise, photos and videos can be linked and shared with ease on a user-created wikipedia entry on Pulau Hantu and then contribute the information they have on the great biodiversity on Hantu and then linking other bloggers like the Hantu Blog, they find out about reclamation projects. That is the beauty of Web 2.0 connectivity.

Inside Higher Ed examines this viral video hit (cheers to collegewebeditor), interviewing Michael Wesch about it. He makes an interesting point regarding how the video came about:

As part of an article on Web 2.0 that is intended to appear in a journal of anthropology, Wesch created the video to appear on the publication’s Web site.

“I was trying to explain this stuff in the traditional paper format, and I thought, ‘This is ironic,’” he said. “I can illustrate this much better in a video.”

Likewise, if you're passionate about what you teach, blog about it. Use all the technological tools you have at your disposal to find new and more effective ways to make a point. Michael Wesch did and the results are there for all the web to see.

Like Instructor Alex Mitchell over at the Communications and New Media Programme, Associate Professor Adrian David Cheok, Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, gets his students to blog.

The MXR Blog is a group blog running on Mambo, where team members of various projects report on their progress and reflect on their learning. While Alex lets his students create their own blogs and subscribes to their RSS feeds for updates, Adrian maintains a blog platform on the Mixed Reality Lab servers so that all the blog entries are in one location.

Although NUS Module Blogs are by default for staff posts only, we can enable student posting. However, there are a couple of caveats. The most important one is that our blogging platform, Community Server, does not distinguish between posting permission and blog management permission. That is, if you can post, you can also manage the blog. Enabling student posts will require a great deal of trust as they will be able to edit and delete each others' posts and comments (among other things).

Also, group blogs are less effective in classes with large attendance. If you have a small class and have specific learning outcomes in mind, then a group blog becomes more suitable. Let us know if you have any ideas for a group blog for your module.

Numerous educational technologists and social media advocates have linked to this short video titled The Machine is Us/ing Us.

It is the work of Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Wesch, from Kansas State University. The video summarises the revolution that is the read/write web, including rss feeds, blogs and wikis.

It'll take just five minutes of your time.

UPDATE The original video links pointed to a beta version. I've updated this post to point to the final version.