קטגוריה: בלוגים

Even though teachers have lectured about the evils of plagiarism since 5th grade, I sometimes still find myself staring at the computer screen, unsure on whether I can copy my AP Environmental Science textbook’s definition of biodiversity or if I needed to paraphrase. Do I even know how to paraphrase that term when the textbook’s definition seems to leave no room for a more direct explanation? Teachers always tell students to reword things they write, but what if the student can’t think of another way to reword what they want to say? In this incidence, sheer laziness isn’t the factor behind it.

I should actually be working on my AP Human Geography project right now.

More than the gushing supporters, who gave us awards before we even launched.

What will be interesting to watch will be how a group of kids, basically high-school kids, step up and talk about the absolutely critical ideas that will require them to think beyond their years.

The much larger idea that is embedded in Students 2.0 is that students are about to become much more involved in how they are educated. What happens when they figure out that these tools that they understand, that they’ve grown up with, can be used to make a difference, to create pressure, to put forth a collective will?

מסתבר כי יש פער ניכר בין יפי התיאוריה לעולם המעשה.

I think there’s an inherent contradiction between the concept of the blog as a personal website and its use in school as a writing platform.

The tough part is time, of course. Jeff was exactly right in that we teachers cannot ADD blogging to what we already do. There is not enough time in the school day, nor in a teacher's life to do that. So we have to REPLACE part of our practice with blogging (or wikiwork, Tubing, Twittering, whatever).

These new tools can't be used as add ons. They have to replace existing practices.

As participatory media tools evolve (Twitter, Ning, UStream), concerns about where blogs fit, if at all, weigh heavily on my mind. Thoughts?

My concern has everything to do with exploring whether the edublog community is holding up its end of the collaborative bargain to use blogs as a collaborative tool for the betterment of education.

When I invite educators to keep a blog, I certainly do not exhort them to change the world. Such a goal is arrogant. Rather, I hope that through their own blogging and personal transformation, they will increasingly become agents of transformation. The burgeoning changes, the transformation that results from unleashing the creative power of educators previously muzzled throughout the years could bring about a change greater than what well-meaning societal change advocates might imagine.

I hope it's pretty clear that there is no such thing as "one" edublogosphere. I used to think that perhaps there was – probably before I started blogging in 2005 – but there're too many of "us" and so it becomes more than impossible to keep track of it all.

One stance I'd urge folks to consider, if they haven't already, is that we can and should accept that there's plenty we're going to miss, lots of it quite good, but that we're doing no one a service by trying to read everything or make declarations about the "proper social norms" of the "edublogosphere."

The paradox of "the edublogosphere" is that sometimes, the best thing I can do to build community/group/network capacity is to serve me, myself and I and trust that such self-service will be of use to others.

he (בריטג) buys into the premise that blogging is primarily a conversational medium. If you believe this, you've made a fundamental misunderstanding of blogging. It is a publishing medium. If what you were looking for all along is conversation, you probably will move on to something that suits your needs better.

I’m never completely sure that I’m doing the right thing…. Is this [דרך הלמידה שבה הוא דוגל] really the way learning happens? I question myself…. When I see papers like this, I worry that maybe the foundations of the work that I and other people are doing is not well grounded.

The debate:

On one side of this argument are those advocating the hypothesis that people learn best in an unguided or minimally guided environment, generally defined as one in which learners, rather than being presented with essential information, must discover or construct essential information for themselves(e.g., Bruner, 1961; Papert, 1980; Steffe& Gale,1995).

On the other side are those suggesting that novice learners should be provided with direct instructional guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a particular discipline and should not be left to discover those procedures by themselves.

Kirschner ends his response with the remark that you are not debating. That you use a monologue that you control (e.g. on your weblog).

My own belief is that my own style of dialogue and debate is more open than any alternative being proposed. I may control my own website (though I do allow comments both on my main website and on my blog) but I do not control the blogosphere or the wider internet.

Kirshner may not choose to use open and public fora for debate, but it is certainly inappropriate for him to blame me for this choice.

If his understanding of scientific debate and enquiry is that it takes place only in special fora with limited participation and paying audience, then he is in my view mistaken, and he should not blame me for the consequences of his mistake, particularly after my efforts to correct them.

I conduct my side of the debate in the open five days a week for all to see, and if Kirshner has not seen, and does not care to take part, in this debate, then it is his loss, not mine. And I would say that the advantage that I – and any others who take part – gain from this method *is* empirical evidence for the position that non-guided instruction supports learning.

this overwhelming information environment requires us to be able to distinguish information, to make decisions on what information to use and what to ignore.

Therefore, it is no longer enough to simply be able to write a coherent paragraph. We must be able to express ourselves compellingly, so that our information will compete for the attention of our audiences.

a depiction of the network, red in tooth and claw, as individual nodes compete with each other for more and more connections.

Then there is the other way, where the node processes information and communicates, not with reference to the competition, but rather, with reference to its own nature, striving to be the best of whatever type of node it is and letting the connection chips fall where they may. This sort of node uses connections, not as some sort of weapon, but in a spirit of cooperation, linking and sharing as an exchange of mutual value.

One reason for this shift is that many understand that blogging is about reading and critical thinking not the writing. Don’t get me wrong. The end product of blogging is communication; however, the real growth comes from the entire process and it starts with the foundation.

My experience … says that we should always see writing as bundled with reading and reflecting and community. To say that blogging is all of the above is simply saying that writing should be seen through the writers’ project model: writing alone is not enough. Writing IS critical reading and listening and reflection and PROCESS, not product. Good writing has context in experience and community. The fact that blogs provide a magnificent set of tools to accomplish this does not mean that using blogs "just" for writing is wrong. It means that you are not teaching writing as you should if you do not include all the phases of the PROCESS.

with microblogging services … the mundane is the message

Some people are blaming Twitter for interfering with their blogging, which seems a bit strange. People start communicating through a channel that allows only short bursts of text, and they feel conflicted about not being more reflective. Then they write about that on their blogs. And I end up reading it and thinking about how twisted things can get. But that’s OK. ‘Twisted’ is lots of things I like.

Twitter creates group behaviour. It creates boundaries. It creates cliques.

The fact of the matter is that Will has maxed out how far this online community can take him intellectually. He's gone as far as he can without embarking on serious scholarship of the kind that just doesn't take place on blogs. And by that I don't mean that serious scholars don't blog (although few do in this discipline), but in particular they don't blog about the foundations of their discipline. We blog about things that are current, not fundmental (unless they overlap). It is the nature of the medium.

why is it always assumed that the more comments there are on a student’s work, the better?

if you go to a conference or a presentation about Web 2.0 in education, it will only be a matter of time before a speaker says something along the lines of:

“How many people see your students’ work? Maybe 30? Perhaps 50? Look at this!! My students’ work was viewed by 200,000 people, and this one here has received 5,000 comments! Think how useful and great that is.”

I think that this is a rather superficial approach to say the least

The only point in doing anything in education is for its impact on learning.

The truth is, I probably haven't read your blog in weeks. Months maybe.

And I don't expect you to have read mine.

I don't want to lie any more. I don't want to feel guilty any more. So let me tell you flat out: There are too many blogs I like and too many people I like to making "keeping up" a reasonable expectation, any more than you should expect me to keep up with Pokemon characters or I should expect you to keep up with Bollywood movies. I'm not going to feel guilty any longer about my failure.

הפעם היחידה שכתבתי מה שרציתי בפוסט בלי לחשוב פעמיים היתה בפוסט הראשון.

עשיתי את זה מכיוון שלא האמנתי שמישהו שם בחוץ קורא אותי. מהרגע שקיבלתי את התגובה הראשונה הבנתי שאני לא כותבת לעצמי, אלא שיש אנשים שיכולים לקרוא את מה שאני כותבת ולהגיב.

להערכתי הזהירה, הזכיר גינת את המילה "חתול" בהטיותיה השונות שלושה עד ארבעה מיליון פעמים. השעות הארוכות בהן אולצתי להיחשף לחתולים משוטטים יכולות להיחשב בנקל לספארי ממושך עם קירשנבאום בלב המאפליה האפריקנית. מאות מליצות, נרדפים, חידודים וציטוטים מעולמו של דיוויד אטנבורו והכול ברצינות תהומית, חף מגרם יחיד ובודד של אירוניה או הומור עצמי. בשלב מסוים של הצפייה פשוט פרצתי בצחוק ואמרתי לבת זוגי שמייד יגיח יגאל שילון מאחורי אחד הארגזים, יוריד את מסיכת החתול וילאט למצלמה "מיאו בייבי" א-לה- טלי סאבאלאס המנוח.

מה באמת ראינו שם מה ה"אמת" הגדולה של גינת? שוט אחד. צילום אחד ויחיד של חתול שנובר בארגז יחיד של בשר… היטיב לסכם את העניין אהוד אשרי – מבקר הטלוויזיה המוכשר בתולדותינו – כשכתב הבוקר "ההר הוליד חתול".

לא סביר שתמצאו בכל "28 שנותיה ואלפי תחקיריה" (נא לשאוג בבס פומפוזי) אף תחקיר שראה אור ועסק באחד מהגורמים החזקים והמשפיעים בחתוליה שלנו – בדיוק כמו שלא היה בדעתו של גינת להוציא חוזה על שופרסל במקום על טיב טעם. להסתבך עם נוחי? לא בגן של גינת. ילדים חכמים בגן של רפי, מתעסקים רק עם מי שחלש מהם ומלחכים פינכות במסעדות פאר עם כל השאר.

התבטאויות מהסוג הזה אינן מקובלות עלי. למשרד פרסום יש חובת נאמנות כלפי לקוחותיו. חובה זו דורשת כללי התבטאות אתיים ברורים, התבטאויות מסוג זה חורגות מכללים אלה

a "place" where I can wrestle with ideas, argue, challenge, think, and rethink. A "space" where I expose my raw and flawed thinking about information communication technology, teaching, and learning for critique.

I’ve been trying to find posts of critical analysis on the ULearn07 conference many of our teachers attended in Auckland during the school holidays. I wanted to read any critique of the new learning on offer. So it was disconcerting to read through the 427 Ulearn07 Hitchhkr links and find so little analysis and so much flocking sentiment. If I was reliant upon Hitchhikr alone for feedback on the conference I’d be tempted to conclude that ULearn07 attracted educators of such similar minds that they shared the same emotional response to all the experiences on offer – or perhaps I must conclude that blogging about an educational conference induces a Josie Fraser described homophily in educators.