dotedu » Blogging

Blogging set to peak in 2007

szanne — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 03:05:46 +0000

I can imagine there’s some truth there. I think the people who already write, who already think aloud through writing, will continue. I like reading the blogs of people I know. Almost none of my friends blog unfortunately. I still get most of my cutting edge info from blogs, so there’s a benefit that would keep me reading those I do.

social software, web 2 and transactional distance

szanne — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:07:23 +0000

Christopher Sessums does some nice reflecting on the social software/web2 paradigm in this post.
He only touches on transactional distance though.

“A transaction is a mutual exchange between parties. Moore recognized that in a course high in structure, such as a pure lecture course, there is generally little dialog between educator and learner and transactional distance is maximized. Conversely, as dialog is increased, the structure decreases, thereby minimizing the transactional distance between educator and learner.”
While the theory is used in distance education I wonder to what extent it can also be applied to web 2, particularly in the edublogger domain. It might be worth exploring one’s experience of geographical distance as a starting point. I’ve often shared a personal story in support of distributed learning, the one about interacting more with my mother since email. For the past 28 years we’ve lived no less than 3,000 miles apart and in many ways I’ve never felt closer to her as a result of email. A colleague shared a similar story about being separated from her partner for over a year.

There’s a lot to chew on. There’s personality type/learner preferences. I think maturity and psychological development play a role too in that until fairly recently working adults were the primary consumers of distance education (I like the term distributed learning). However, Pam Tate at CAEL points out the profile of an adult, for educational purposes is rapidly changing.

And then there’s the comparison to our experience of transactional distance in familiar educational settings. How does that experience of TD impact learning in a 500 seat classroom? For some learners I can imagine it’s perfectly acceptable and preferred. I’d guess though that they’d be above average students, more field independent, and intrinsically motivated.
Add to that scenario, virtual office hours and a thriving online exchange of discussions and group work. In the former, the lecturer is actually available more often because the technology makes that more feasible and cost effective. In the latter, the technology enables pedagogy that is impractical in a face to face setting. The other student, the one who’s more field dependent, now has a place to land.

Ethics: News vs. Opinions in the blogosphere

szanne — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:41:56 +0000

Is it news or opinion/voice? Bloggers aren’t professional journalists to be sure, but there’s something very satisfying in getting the “other” story. If you’ve been at an event and then watched it on the nightly news, it becomes obvious why this is so important to nurture. I think the BBC is on the right track with their announcement of revamping their site to include reader content. Spending even a small amount of time in the blogosphere helps you get quickly oriented to who’s who, what’s legitimate and what isn’t. Sure students need to somehow learn how to decipher all this; but the paradigm has changed and is changing. Legitimate sources exist now that are found only on the web. We know too that history books are neither “objective” nor unbiased. True though that some person’s opinions I could give a hoot about and so too their blogs. But I want the choice. Like the choice I have to get my “news” from outside the US.

What kinds of jobs can students expect …?

szanne — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:39:32 +0000

Well, according to Friedman’s “The world is flat” it’s more about what they can’t expect. Here’s another way to look at it: 7 new trendy jobs. One is blog editor…
Blog editor: I blog, you blog, we all blog apparently, judging from the proliferation of blogs in the past two years. The success of influential ones like Wonkette.com has companies wanting in on the perceived edginess of the blogosphere.
“Blogging” is not only starting to creep into people’s job descriptions, but recruiters are starting to see blog-related job listings.
One on Monster.com seeks a blog editor “to manage and moderate blogs for clients and to write for the company blog on PR and new media topics.”

Thanks to colleague Marie Flatley for sharing this with me!

The evils of constant reblogging

szanne — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:09:33 +0000

Here to read. What a great post. It’s about having a voice; it’s about linking NOT quoting. It’s about thinking topped with a dollop of spell check. I got to this post via this one. If I’m going to get involved in this scene differently than I do on my other blog I’ve got to get people over here. Frankly I’m relieved to read Mr. Veloso. I started a post yesterday, thinking of my intended audience, and froze. I didn’t know what and how to write. Should it be more neutral, informational? I got immediately bored which is in part why I froze (from boredom) while writing a post on Are 21st century skills right brain skills? I didn’t have anything to add really, I wanted to be a part of a conversation.