The walls are within the academy, not without.
(paraphrasing Barbara Ganley, Keynote: Ecotones and
Crossroads: Re-imagining the Spaces of Learning in an
In-Between Time, Computers and Writing,
June 19, 2009)
If all this sounds postmodern, that’s because it is. And blogging suffers from the same flaws as postmodernism: a failure to provide stable truth or a permanent perspective.
(My revision of Andrew Sullivan, “Why I Blog”)
“[The diverse range of media we engage with] reward the capacity to make connections and to see patterns – precisely the kinds of skills we need for managing an information glut.”
(Jamais Cascio, “Get Smart/er“)
June 20, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Elizabeth,
Brain is swirling and trying to process all the questions and perplexities you just brought up (p.s. I hope you come to F5 b/c we are going to digging and diving into much of the same things you presented and I’d love to have your voice there!)
Some thoughts now:
- Are we dealing with the issues you brought up about bringing a space of play (blog) into a space of academia (non-play, school) because of the inherent structures of school?
- As we try to bring these tools into the classroom in order to ____ (do something different, these tools are awesome and we want to explore them, improve writing, and other valid reasons), until the structure of school/education changes, we really aren’t helping?? Or, as you mentioned, we might even turn students off to these tools/spaces?
- What ARE we doing when we blog IN the classroom? Why do we view play and school as binaries? Is it good practice? Just a tool to bait and bribe buy in from students?
- We see genuine value in blogging and social network writing and communicating. Do our students? How much does their awareness need to be involved (or is their awareness a factor) in order for these tools to be successful?
Whew, I still can’t articulate all that I’m thinking. Hoping to keep talking to you here. Thanks!
Shana
June 21, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Shana, I think your questions about play that you guys raised in your session and that I’ve heard so much about over the last few days are really important.
I think we’ve got to let go a bit of our authority (as several people have said here) and allow our students’ play to enter into the classroom. They’re figuring out how to make these technologies do things that are valuable, and I think we’re too often just imposing institutional authority and taking the play out. I think our intentions are good and we actually want things like blogging to make “work/school” more fun (more like play). But I think to do that, we need to bring our students into the discussion of what we’re going to use the tech for.
Instead of me saying, we’re going to blog our reading responses, I need to say: we’re going to blog. Why? What do YOU think the blog can do for us? For you? I’m really interested right now in the idea I’ve been hearing about letting go of authority – I think your panel really raised that question and opened a space for more discussion of that.