Category: Uncategorized
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Wikipedia: a model of a rational discourse
Review of:Hansen, S. Berente, N., and Lyytinen, K (2009) “Wikipedia, Critical Social Theory, and the Possibility of Rational Discourse.” The Information Society, 25: 38-59, 2009. The authors of this article look at the phenomenon of Wikipedia –the “open” knowledge repository of the Internet–as an example of what critical social theorist Jurgen Habermas called “rational discourse.” In…
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Why blog? It allows for more and better thought, authors say
Nardi, et al (2004) provide an overview of the web-blog, or blogging phenomenon of Web 2.0. In general, it affords bloggers a platform for expressing views that are more subjective than the more transactional wiki article or bulletin board posting. While the frequency, purpose, and tone of blogs vary widely, all blogs have certain key…
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Open your eyes, old teacher! — Meg Ormiston's keynote at the Concordia Univ. Chicago
I was privileged to hear new-literacies proseletyzer Meg Ormiston this morning at the 34th annual Concordia University Chicago Reading Conference, “Lighting the way with multiliteracies.” Her keynote message was admirably simple: “Reading and writing have changed. We must change with them.” She reiterated it for the elderly: “Hey–old people in the room–we have to change!”…
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Feeling rather Puritanical about my faith–my faith in Education, that is
And if there were a church of Internet faith, a puritan would read from the book of wikipedia, the repository of global knowledge not tainted by commercial sin or secret self-interest. Institutions like Encyclopedia Britannica by contrast are tarted up like a Popish whore. I got the ad that follows from EB, which (for younger…
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"Open" resource of professional development
Not able to attend the national conference “EDUCON 2.2″ in Philadelphia, I joined via twitter (which anyone can do using the instant filters of #hashtags!). Twitter, freely accesible and community-sourced, could be called an “open” resource. Twitter functions at these events (and sports events, I’ve found) as a rich “back-channel” of communication that anyone can pick up. Using…
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Why I wished to Diigo with my students
I remember getting my first masters degree in the pre-Internet era. Research was done in large buildings called “research libraries” and documents were all “hard-copies” that one found on shelves or via plastic micro-fiche. The “site” of information was on these shelves, or other linear devices.If you didn’t have a lot of money for xerox…
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Reflections on the current course: Critical Educational Practice
Snap, crackle, pop! This is the course I was looking forward to — not surprisingly, it is taught by the department chairperson, Professor Pate. There are several things to praise: her selection of readings–mostly online (what? no ridiculously-priced texts?), mostly up-to-date, and only significant ones, not a stinker in the lot (yet). She has us…
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So, maybe the secret to attracting followers is to not seek them?
This inspiring tale of the “Tech Junkies” at Bozeman High School in Montana provides an answer to the question that has made the straight-forward proponent of tech wondering: “Why aren’t more people impressed with this cool new technology and collaborating with us?” In short, the answer is, “Don’t seek them; just follow what you know…
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Are video games finally getting educational?
This article on the THE website explains that, at least in one district, video games have been adapted to math instruction, with good results. According to the director of mathematics in the Austin, Texas district where the use of these games was piloted, “What we saw next was amazing–our students were not only succeeding, but truly…
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Honestly, today's internet research demands a bigger pipeline
or a faster speed than what’s available to American institutions of higher learning, given my experience at Concordia-Chicago. I clocked it. And on my 2007 MacBook with hi-speed wi-fi connection, getting a search done at the Klinck Memorial Library EBSCO was a tortellian fifteen minutes. That’s fifteen minutes when I might have been reading, analyzing,…
The Wikiness 