Back again
This blog seems to have developed in spurts of activity followed by long lulls. What does it take to encourage more sustained activity?*
I’m currently teaching a course called ‘Teaching and Learning with Emerging Technologies’. This course encompasses a broad range of such technologies - wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc. - but also technologically-mediated initiatives such as Open Educational Resources. My main focus for the past five years (yikes!) has been on wikis, the ‘wiki way’, and their implications for education and society. This course now offers me a chance to explore my perspectives through teaching - as well as to learn from other course participants. I will also be engaging with technologies that I know relatively little about - my only actual experience with Second Life so far is of the comedic walking into the wall variety!
So, this post is both to prompt me to renew my commitment to use this space, and to show the course participants that we’re truly in this together! (And, for the curious, there’s more info than you’ll ever want to know about me on this page.)
But I’m also excited to teach and learn in this emerging field. My thesis has made me kinda fatigued about wikis (!), but preparing for this course has given me fresh perspective. Part of the course is to get out of our comfort zones, to explore and to experiment - and I’ve been doing that already! I’d love to hear other people’s experiences on using emerging technologies for education - in the widest sense of the word.
C
* This brings to mind Stephen Downes’s article on Educational Blogging. In it, he quotes Will Richardson:
“By its very nature, assigned blogging in schools cannot be blogging. It’s contrived. No matter how much we want to spout off about the wonders of audience and readership, students who are asked to blog are blogging for an audience of one, the teacher. [When the semester ends] students drop blogging like wet cement.”
As part of the course, I am asking participants to set up their own blogs. What can I/they do to sustain momentum? Personally, I have to say it’s much more motivating when people leave comments - when I feel I am engaging with someone else, as opposed to ’shouting into the wind’. As part of a course, I’ll be leaving comments on other participants’ blogs, and I hope they will do likewise. But after the course - what happens?