TechTicker

Personal Responsibility & Self-Sufficiency

Mike Bogle — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:51:25 PST

Following on my post yesterday on individuality and diversity, there is a flip side of the discussion that needs to be covered too.

A common argument in the face of innovation or new systems – which I explored here just the other day in fact – is the lack of resourcing. Resourcing for support, for maintainance, for training and documentation. Basically the issue of how the system is to be effectively translated to a sustainable service.

This is a significant crux in the issue. When we view systems as "services" that others will support we heap an entirely new set of demands and requirements into the equation – far broader than the initial prospect of setting up or accessing the system in the first place, far broader than the aim we initially set out to achieve.

In my view there is a form of learned powerlessness or learned helplessness in the view of educational technology as a service, because we grow to assume and expect that others will be there to answer our technical questions, protect our data, and generally be there whenever we need them. We take on the role of the "customer" and IT as the role of the "vendor."

In this culture, the realities of resourcing are profound. Central units cannot know everything, support everything and maintain everything – so we are instead allocated a small set of options that they can support. If they do not meet our needs, that’s unfortunate – there just isn’t the budget for anything else.

The demand for autonomy, diversity and increased flexibility in online learning must therefore – by necessity and practicality – incorporate the notions of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency.

There’s more to it than that though. The perhaps most significant elements in the DIY Edtech, edupunk, and open education movements relate to how we work with others, eliminate barriers to connect, contribute to the broader good, and engage within a dynamic participatory landscape.

Essentially, it’s the view that technologies are media through which we engage, connect and participate with others in a deep, meaningful and dynamic sort of way. We need to recognise that viewing technology as merely a space or place we go to, or a "thing" we use to do something is too narrow and too superficial.

There is indeed a critical importance in fostering individuality and diversity, but it’s up to all of us to make this happen, and to sustain it in the long term.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Individuality & Diversity

Mike Bogle — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:22:43 PST

There is a unfortunate tendency within organisations and central units to undermine innovation on the fringe by virtue of preferences to central infrastructure and systems. "Supported systems" are seen as better than those that might exist off-site, and obsessions about web presence and branding are such that individuality and uniqueness are seen as undesirable – as if learning is a package to be purchased in a neatly wrapped box.

Well, learning is not a neatly wrapped box. It is a complex, chaotic unpredictable process characterised by extraordinary uniqueness and individuality. It is bigger than the classes we take or teach, and more significant than the degrees we seek.

It makes no sense whatsoever then that blanket, arguably arbitrary policies and procedures be implemented that dictate what systems people must use, while discouraging or preventing them from seeking alternatives elsewhere. This applies to everyone – learners, teachers, and professional staff.

We either act with learning as the priority or we don’t. If learning is indeed the priority, we need to be willing to recognise that uniqueness and individuality are characteristics to be valued, cherished and encouraged – lest we start to place the needs of the institution, the faculty or the school over those of the people within it.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Setting Up Twitter Daily Digests

Mike Bogle — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:54:34 PST

As a postmortem on the last post I wrote regarding the search for a means of auto-posting daily Twitter digests to Blogger, I wanted to report back on the outcomes of the investigation.

In the end I gave up. After many days of looking and searching – first for an easy solution and then progressively more and more complex ones as the week drew on – I ultimately realised I was developing an increasingly convoluted design merely to stay with a free public blogging service.

As it turned out this issue affects both WordPress.com blogs and Blogger/Blogspot blogs – there does not seem to be a solution in place for either platform. I have a sneaking suspicion this restriction is to combat spam abuse – because really it doesn’t arise from technical constraints. Services like Diigo have shown us how incredibly easy it is to set something like this up, the point is someone has chosen not to let us.

As proof of this, once I made the decision to go with a self-hosted installation of WordPress on my ISP, I had the solution up and running in a matter of minutes.

At a very basic level, all you need is a vanilla installation of WordPress (most commonly available through CPanel on your web host’s admin area), and a plugin like Twitter Tools, which is the plugin we ended up using.

Once these two elements have been installed it’s just a matter of configuring the Twitter Tool settings within the WordPress Dashboard area (using the Experimental Digest options), and you’re up and running.

What really sucks in all this is that the average Joe or Jane Blogger are unable to implement this sort of system because the business rules of the blogging providers are getting in the way.

The Elusive Aim of Daily Twitter Digests to Blogger

Mike Bogle — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:49:05 PST

I’ve been beating my head against a basic technical question for about a week now and have made zero progress on it thus far. So in keeping with the way I’ve always coped with this sort of thing, I’m going to put pen to paper – in this case fingers to keyboard – and write about the issue in the hopes of realising something I’ve overlooked.

The fundamental objective is to develop a process of capturing a day’s worth of Twitter posts, and auto-posting them in digest form to a Blogger/Blogspot blog.

The logic behind this is to help with a note-taking, record-keeping process that we are responsible for, in which we can quickly jot down points through-out the day via Twitter, and have an easy way to review and summarise them later.

You could of course suck in the RSS feed for an individual account, pass it through Posterous, and then autopost it to Blogger, however this would create a new post for every single Tweet, which is not what we’re after.

Yet despite this, for the life of me I cannot locate an easy way of implementing this system.

With WordPress the solution is quite straightforward – there are any number of plugins that can be integrated to the base blog software that will do all this for you. Unfortunately with Blogger no such plugins seem to exist. So what is exceptionally easy in one platform is increasingly becoming a complex system design process in the other.

Google Alerts

I’m was looking at Google Alerts as an option, however doesn’t seem to do what I need it to either. While I can seem to get Alerts sending me daily email digests of posts “from:http://twitter.com/mbogle” the daily digest option is unavailable when you select “deliver to feed.” You end up with the same itemised stream of updates that you started with.

Yahoo! Pipes
The other possibility I was considering was trying to set up a “pipe” using Yahoo! Pipes, and see if this might do the job, but having looked at the system I’m finding I’m just smart enough to design a solution – or indeed determine if it’s even possible – so the constraints of my technical skills have more or less scuttled that possibility.

More investigation required…
At this point I’m coming up empty-handed no matter which way I turn, so I’ll just have to keep looking. Ultimately I find it amazing that no system exists yet for Blogger that will let you do this.

Not sure why that is, but if you’ve got tech skills it would seem to be a good opportunity.

If I can manage to figure out how on earth to do this I’ll post the solution here. Otherwise if you happen to know a way I’ve overlooked PLEASE post a comment or trackback here and enlighten me.

Mike, out.

Innovation and Sustainability

Mike Bogle — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:11:30 PST

I’m in a bit of a quandary over something I need to think through here.

I think diversity in educational technology is important, nay, essential to online learning. By this I mean choice; choice to explore different systems, different tools and networks; interact through visual mediums, auditory mediums, textual mediums, virtual mediums too.

Learning is diverse and unique – so too should be the spaces in which we learn.

But in increasing choice we also introduce additional factors that each carry their own implications. Foremost on my mind in this respect – particularly at present – is support and training.

It’s here that I become completely at odds at myself. I do not believe – for even a second – that admin and business processes should dictate what we learn, how and where. Yet at the same time these elements continue to exist and someone needs to deal with them.

For the moment at least, I am one of those people, and I’m constantly tearing my hair out these days in the wake of a neverending tsunami of requests.

The demands created by some of these systems – especially the monolithic, bureaucratic, evil ones – is truly astounding. Likewise the ongoing need for assistance and support – from basic questions to last-minute, 11th-hour emergencies is never-ending. The more systems that exist, the more support requirements that exist.

Thus I arrive at my current dilemma: How do we support diversity, flexibility and opportunity in education and educational technology in a sustainable manner that doesn’t work people to the brink of exhaustion? There must be a way!

On the fringe of innovation this question is a non-issue: We support each other, we relish challenges and opportunities to push the envelope. We don’t need training; we train ourselves. The uncertainties and challenges that arise along the way are part of the fun and part of the learning. We constantly tinker and poke because we can’t envisage not doing it.

Everyone isn’t like this though – in fact I’d say that most people aren’t. Some people like to observe, and repeat, and follow and mimic – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

What it does mean though, is that support and training needs to exist for them – someone needs to be there to help.

So I throw this question out to you all. What do you do, what do your departments, institutions and organisations do, to support innovation and creativity? Is it sustainable or unsustainable; is there real flexibility or are business rules and policies starting to overshadow everything?

I’m truly curious, because there must be an answer to this predicament. I dont’t want to believe that we must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that some people must miss out because there is insufficient support. Or am I being naive?

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Communication Strategy: A work in progress

Mike Bogle — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:52:53 PST

I’d hoped to flesh out this post further today but I’ve been gobbled up by a series of different events and haven’t had a chance to come back to it. Rather than sit on the post and lose momentum though, I’d like to throw this out for comment, suggestion, criticism, or insight into other people’s experiences.

Background

One of the ideas that came out of my latest performance review was the need to develop a communication strategy to facilitate engagement with the wider faculty community. Traditionally I’ve had little need for a communication strategy – or so I thought anyway – I’d just communicate. However with the scope and scale of my role being as broad as it is I’ve come to realize that I need something more formally articulated in place to ensure I’ve considered everyone’s needs and perspectives (as much as possible anyway) – but more than that, to ensure the rest of the faculty is familiar with the channels through which I’ll be attempting to interact with them.

Importantly too, I’m finding that mediums through which I have traditionally interacted with others – most notably blogs – are starting to be neglected in the wake of a seemingly never-ending stream of day to day requests. “I’ll just address this one last thing and then post a blog update” has a tendency to extend ad infinitum until I’ve run out of time – and when blogging is as much about modeling use as it is about communicating, there is an importance on embedding the activity in everyday practice and making it a priority.

This post, therefore, seeks to lay the basic groundwork for what will become the communication strategy. It’s also intended to help gain a reality check on whether my aims are too ambitious or rather if it is something I can properly implement in a productive and meaningful sort of way.

I find the informality of blogging frequently helps get formal documentation going, so blog I shall.

The Bones

By both necessity and design, the communication strategy I have in mind will span a variety of modes and formats, each of which is included to facilitate different sorts of opportunities and outcomes. These include online and face-to-face; individual and group; synchronous and asynchronous; text-based, audio and video.

Face-to-Face: One-on-one – addressing specific needs or questions; brainstorming on ideas, projects or issues; supporting change agents
Face-to-Face: Groups/Workshops – introductory information sessions for broader faculty community; training in use of technology; identify innovators and change agents; encouraging cultural change (slowly)
Online: Announcements, updates and other information (blog); explode-list emails for important announcements/news
Online: Workshop resources (wiki) – supplemental material; recorded sessions; aggregated blog; workshop schedule and sign-up/EOI sheet
Online: Workshop recordings – Lectopia (podcast), YouTube (upload Lectopia podcast (get raw recording instead?).

Secondary Agenda

As I said before, this communication strategy is not simply about engagement with the faculty – as important as that is – it’s also about modeling the practical uses of different technologies and demonstrating how they can be integrated into everyday practice to enhance the overall experience as well as reach a broader audience.

In that sense there are some clear underlying objectives that should also be articulated, namely:

Openness/OERs – Everything I produce to be licensed freely under CC-by; demonstrating sharing and reuse; contributing to global knowledge-pool; discussing why you share and what the benefits are;
Interactivity/Learning Networks – exploring and supporting online learning as much as online teaching; diversity of information, opinion, and discussion; opening up the classroom;
Distributed systems/Alternatives to the LMS – demonstrating different systems and models as an indicator of diversity and opportunity

Points to Consider

As I said, this is only my first go at articulating this strategy, so I expect it to grow and evolve over time. That said there are one or two very important points to consider in all this that will really need to be present for this strategy to be successful.

Holistic Implementation:

First and foremost the strategy needs to be holistically implemented and integrated. The offline elements will need to constantly reference the online elements in a relevant, meaningful way that clearly depicts a complete multi-modal cycle.

For instance, the wiki or blog should be referenced or used during workshops in a relevant way (not a superficial “oh yeah, there’s a wiki too”). The purpose of this is to help people start to engage in and with these spaces as a matter of habit, to the extent that they start to become mediums rather than just sites or destinations.

Fostering Collaboration, Discussion and Networks is Phase Two:

Secondly, the online element of the strategy as it exists so far is still very logistical and content-focused – perhaps too much so. There is little emphasis on soliciting feedback and/or inspiring discussion, or of anything collaborative – online or face-to-face.

It seems to me that these ideas introduce the need for an entirely different strategy that addresses not simply how to connect with the faculty, but how to encourage the faculty to connect with itself, and with others outside of it.

At this point I’m inclined to call that portion Phase Two and come back to it; it’s going to require a great deal of thought. So perhaps I’ll focus my immediate attention on getting these preliminary elements in place and plan – in say 6 months – to develop a second strategy for fostering growth of networks and creating spaces and opportunities for relationships to develop.

More on this as I continue to ponder it. In the meantime if you have thoughts, opinions, similar experiences or words of caution to share please leave a comment.

Opening up, bit by bit

Mike Bogle — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:30:03 PST

One of the things I’m growing to treasure about my new role is the degree of trust and opportunity I’m shown on a regular basis. Not only am I asked to provide my opinion and input into matters of educational technology and online learning, I’m also sincerely listened to; and when I propose suggestions or ideas, more often than not I’m allowed to run with them.

My most recent suggestion was to organise an information session for the faculty on use of openly licensed materials (Creative Commons) as an alternative to traditional copyrighted ones.

There is still a quite significant reliance on materials that are quite restrictive in what you can do with them – and many people find that a transition to online spaces is not particularly seamless when they realise they’re not necessarily allowed to just digitise stuff and throw it on the web.

Certainly there is a need to learn about our obligations regarding copyright, but my thought is that we need to be expanding the conversation to include materials that are more flexible and accommodating and can go where we go.

Creative Commons licensed materials and the like do of course have conditions and restrictions of their own, but generally speaking this is a world apart from the rabbit warren of legalese and litigation that we see in the realm of traditional copyright.

In the case of open licensing, the focus seems to be based far more on good faith, sharing and flexibility than on locking things down. Indeed it’s far more in keeping with the type of nurturing, empowering atmosphere we are – or should be – seeking to foster in learning and teaching, really.

So I’m going to try to introduce this idea into the faculty, not just as a way to facilitate access to open resurces, but also as a subtle introduction into sharing and openness. My hope is that seeing open education in action – if only in a basic way – by virtue of the use of shared resources instead of copyrighted ones, academics will start to recognise the implications of doing things differently, and that this will, in turn, lead to further opportunities that expand the walls of the classroom out that much more.

Bit by bit, little by little. Small steps and small moves, but moves nonetheless.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Revolution!

Mike Bogle — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:12:35 PST

Here’s a random thought I’m going to throw out to the winds in the last few minutes before my train arrives at the station. Leigh Blackall and I have both voiced feelings of frustration and pessimism about the prospect of true innovation and real, meaningful, lasting educational change occurring.

Rather than dwell in isolation about this, each fighting their own seeingly futile battles against a multi-headed, hydra-like system, perhaps it’s time to come together to mount an all out frontal assault – together, all who want to see things different and empower the people.

I have absolutely no idea what this would look like or what form it would take, but clearly we can’t do this alone. We need to act together…

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Buzz

Mike Bogle — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:06:10 PST

With start of session edging closer and closer by the day I’ve been largely functioning in my own private bubble lately, completely unaware of what is going on in the technology world. So when logging into Gmail yesterday I was quite surprised to be prompted about the chance to try out a new service called Buzz.

This is old news by now of course, but it wasn’t to me at the time. So being the inquisitive sort I am I tried it out.

While I’ve only managed to experiment briefly – as in a few minutes here and there – my reaction to the tool is largely positive. Buzz integrates a social layer into Gmail, and enables people to share and discuss topics in the same way they do on services like FriendFeed, Facebook and to a different degree Twitter as well.

Connecting the dots

One of the more interesting aspects of the tool to me is how it pulls together different Google projects, many of which – such as Profiles, commenting on shared items from Google Reader, and the ability to post brief Tweet-like updates – were pretty isolated, unpublicised and underused as individual initiatives. Buzz seems to tie them all together in a much more useful way, in particular through its integration with Gmail.

And at least for me, this offers a clear alternative to sites that I’ve been trying to get rid of for ages – namely Facebook – but had no viable replacement for.

I don’t like Facebook, at all – second only to Blackboard on my shit list in fact – but I’ve found myself unfortunately tethered to it the last few years in the absence of another space in which to engage in the same sorts of activities.

There are also people, such as Ed Webb in particular, who have managed to avoid being sucked into the blackhole of Facebook and stuck to their idealistic guns, and yet whom I really want to connect with more. My hope is that Buzz might provide such a space.

I want a space where I can casually stay up to date with the research activities or general musings of my colleages and friends, gain access to the resources they’re sharing or reading, and importantly engage in threaded discussions that are easy to follow over time – that is, they retain a historical account of the conversation thus far.

Twitter is fantastic for synchronous discussion, but not particularly accommodating in terms of recall of the conversations that have already occurred. You need something that captures all sides of the discusson for that. Twitter, in it’s native form, really just portrays one thread in the conversation via the user profile; but even that is peppered across a slew of individual Tweets.

What is ultimately required, though, is sufficient community interest and uptake. Otherwise Google might end up with another fantastic tool, like Jaiku, that is devoid of activity.

Criticisms

That said, I have a few key criticisms of Buzz so far as well.

First and foremost, Buzz adds contacts to your profile automatically and I don’t like that at all. Being prompted with a list of people I know or may know is fantastic because it helps me identify contacts I want to connect with, but leave it at that – don’t assume I want to link up with every email address in my address book.

Secondly, new contacts in Buzz are also automatically added to you Google Reader subscriptions. Again, being prompted with a list of people I may want to follow is great; automatically subscribing me is not great.

Particularly in the case of Google Reader, often times people’s shared items are passed through to Buzz already, in which case I’ve more than likely already seen the material and don’t want to see it again. I say leave choice to the users.

All that said, these are still early days for Buzz, so more shall undoubtedly be revealed over time.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

Reflecting and Strategizing

Mike Bogle — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:40:07 PST

Generally speaking one of the themes that’s become abundantly clear to me in the faculty over the last two and a half months is the relative lack of awareness of the diversity and opportunity that exists in online learning and online engagement. In practice this has meant that that environments that are looked to and adopted in terms of eLearning and educational technology are fairly generic, and so too is the manner in which they are frequently used.

This is no criticism of the staff mind you, merely an observation.

The big question for me, though, becomes what to do about it. I’ve vowed from the beginning not to become a harbinger or preacher of technology, trying to mindlessly convert people to join some sort of “online revolution.” Certainly I believe there is extraordinary opportunity in online environments – and technology more broadly – to support and empower the learning and teaching processes, but the key is not mindless adoption, but relevant, strategic implementation and the realization of personal meaning and significance that educational technology has for each individual.

Content is still King

I’ve also noticed the degree to which content is still king (or queen) in the classroom. Most of what is discussed and demonstrated revolves around the structuring and delivery of content, not what the learners will be doing with it, how they’ll be synthesizing it, interpreting it, deconstructing it, reconstructing it, and in particular interacting with one another and with the broader world beyond the classroom.

Based on comments from the staff, a key factor for many academics seems to be lack of time – lack of time to learn new systems or acclimate to different online dynamics; to establish the online presence or hub for the course; to help students understand the systems; to moderate or monitor the conversations or debates that arise in their wake.

The immediate technical concerns and logistics seem to be preventing much experimentation or innovation from occurring, and limiting much of the use that is occurring to content delivery.

This is not the case universally of course, and there are some fantastic, key initiatives that strive to facilitate openness, foster diversity, encourage people to reach beyond the classroom and think bigger and broader than just content and courses to include broader notions of digital or network pedagogy – however these would seem to be a small but crucial minority at present, and much of the rest of the faculty still operates on a much different, far more content-based model.

As a result, for good or for bad, in practice the discussion on educational technology still tends to boil down to tools and systems rather than pedagogy or broader notions of online literacy.

What to do about it?

So the question remains, what to do about it. Experience has shown me that some form of basic training is going to have to exist; there are simply too many gaps to do otherwise. In several notable instances I’ve tried to leap straight into the broader discussions on use of educational technology and how it fits within the broader learning process only to be met with blank stares and basic questions of tool functionality.

Clearly, support needs to be available for staff who need assistance learning the basics of the systems.

That said, I think it’s critical to start cultivating a culture where people feel empowered and confident enough to experiment with new technologies on their own – and to recognize that challenges and mistakes are all important components of the learning process that are as much an opportunity for growth as they are an immediate inconvenience – but not every one will fall into that category.

And yet it would be a tremendous mistake, I think, to get hung up on the basics and the button pushing and ignore the broader concepts and discussions on what online learning is, what it looks like, how you cultivate it, and what implications it has for the learning process.

We need to leave space for blue-sky creative musings and theoretical contemplation, not just functional practicalities of software use.

Two-pronged approach

So what all this points to, really, is the necessity of a two-pronged approach – one that addresses the need for development of basic software skills and digital literacies and yet also broaches the broader themes of digital pedagogy and properly situating educational technology within the learning process.

[Next Post: Exploring the specifics of the plan…]