All The Young (Edu)Punks

Pursuant to my previous post about D2L, apparently in the near future they’re going to break out of their frames. Yay for accessibility! Of course, this is according to the Twitterverse, but they’re getting their information from the Fusion conference. That is all.

OK, so the problem I’ve been having is apparently because of a MediaWiki setting. Freakin’ great. Admin level settings force the page to not be embedded. I have to wait a couple weeks to see if the admin wants to change that setting, or if I have to use some other product.

Hmm, I suppose I’ll look back at this moment in a few months with a hearty guffaw, and muse “Oh Jon, there’s such a simple solution.” These are truly “first world problems” if I’ve ever heard them. Oh yeah, Barry Dahl’s video is incredibly useful, except it doesn’t actually show how he embeds the wiki in D2L – it basically shows you how to embed stuff in a wiki which is embedded in D2L. Close to what I need. Yes, I’ve e-mailed to see if Barry can help sort out my muddled mind, but venting never hurts.

EDIT: After a brief phone call, he’s still baffled, I’m ready to tear my moustache out.

I’ve been trying to embed a MediaWiki in my proposed D2L version of my Searching The Internet Effectively course. I’d like to constrict the opening of this page to remain in the frameset that D2L exists in so students can pop back and forth between the content that’s in the course, and the wiki to add their own content. Every method of embedding I’ve tried opens the wiki in a new page. I’m beginning to wonder if the damn thing is set to automatically open in a new page…. or maybe Firefox is overriding some weird thing. First of all framesets?? Give me a break. If framesets get deprecated anytime soon (as they should) D2L is in for a major redesign. Talk about a total head-scratcher.

Also, I hate IE. I thought when I got out of web design as a career that I could learn to like, accept, ok not hate IE. Wrong. IE is crap. IE 8 is OK passable, except that when you use  the TinyMCE editor in D2L in an IE browser (IE 8 included), it strips out co-ordinates of an image map. And other attributes of the object tag. WTF??

Not that anyone is particularly following me – couple of quick updates to shock people I guess.I know, I know, good blogging etiquette is to maintain contact, but when you have very little to say, is there a point to add to the chatter? I don’t suspect that it’s good to blog for blogging’s sake… yet that’s kind of what this post is. Conundrum wrapped in an enigma packaged in a problem, neh?

1. I hate that whatever edublogs did borked my ability to track information in Google Stats. It was a good way to discover what was going on, and make new contacts, read new insightful things… yeah. Bummer.

2. I’ve been slaving away at creating, compiling and documenting “stuff” on D2L, or Desire2Learn (for those who don’t follow LMS’s).

3. I did a presentation of “research” (and I use research in quotes only because there’s no real research going on, it’s pseudo-research where we plan our research but don’t execute it) using some Presentation Zen techniques and people were really blown away with it. Thank you Garr Reynolds. I tried to be conversational, or as conversational as the subject matter (student perceptions of multimedia instruction in an e-learning) would allow. I tried to get people involved with their experiences with my subject topic, which is a good engagement strategy regardless.

3a. On the same note, um and so are my enemy in public speaking. You’d think I’d have learned that after many years presenting and practicing presentations, I’d be able to consciously stop saying ummmm. Guess not. Maybe I’ll video capture myself and see how many times I do speak of mine enemies.

4. An interesting old concept popped up again. I was watching a newish documentary called “Punk’s Not Dead” which actually does a pretty convincing job of saying it’s underground (well, shocking). I’m waiting for the documentary that treats punk like Ken Burns did with jazz… there’s a depth there that can be mined for sure. Anyways, one of the arguments of the new school of punk, bands like Sum 41, My Chemical Romance and The Used is that they are quick to embrace corporate sponsorship which they feel can be co-opted and used to promote their message. This argument has been going since Bad Brains and Husker Du (and before them, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sham 69) signed to major labels.

A nice parrallel to edupunk, some of whom reject the Blackboard LMS model and distribute the learning across several free, open resources (Moodle, Pageflakes, RSS feeds, blogs).With that said, I think there’s a value to having a centralized point of entry. Is there an answer to the criticism? Well, sometime you have to work in a system; education is certainly a system. The end result of the system is what’s important, not necessarily the means.

5. When Mohawk decided to go with Desire2Learn, the other competitors were Blackboard and Angel. Funny how in hindsight, there really was only two competitors.

6. Even though I’ve been thinking about transferring this blog, resurrecting my other blog and adding a third blog about Hamilton punk and putting them all under one umbrella/domain, I still haven’t been overwhelmingly motivated to do so. Maybe in the Fall.

Things here are busier than ever. I’ve actually taken time to keep up with Twitter (@dietsociety) which is easier and requires less context than I like to give with a thought out piece. I’ve been slugging away at an e-learning survey for the College and working on my two courses (Fireworks and Searching The Internet Effectively) that I’m teaching and working on two courses that I’m taking (Academic Research and Critical Reflection in Adult Education through Brock University and Sociology I).

I’m also involved in the work that goes into preparing for Connections ‘09 which is our in-house e-learning development conference (primarily for faculty at the College). We’ve already announced our new partnership with Desire2Learn, so training for that will occur soon, then the real work begins… ah not a lonely moment. I suspect I’ll try to participate in CCK09, and I’ll be meeting George next week as he’s the keynote for Connections. I’m sure he loves the name of the conference!

Well, it’s not week 6 anymore, it is in fact week 7. I have to say I was skeptical coming in to using Twitter, not believing it to be very useful at all. In fact, I’ll have to conclude that it is useful – just not in a work sense for me. I don’t think I’ll get much out of Twitter for work – except a link here and there to new websites, maybe a few days before Ed Tech Weekly gets to them (which reminds me, need to listen to that soon). In connectivist terms I’m strengthening some connections as well as gaining a bit of depth behind the ideas that people have put forth.

With all that said, I like it, despite the almost constant barrage of marketing (which is like real life, I suppose), it’s a fun diversion from work, or to tap into some other level of work-related thought. So my conclusions? Well, useful informal tool – that could have some learning application (you could run a daily message from a Twitter account to broaden vocabulary, or to clarify jargon). I would be interested to see if students would feel that it was an infringement of their personal space, creepy treehouse syndrome if you will, seeing as Twitter can be a one-way subscription – the account broadcasting can be a generic non-receptive node.

Really interesting article in the Guardian (which I found out about through a twitter post by Guardian Tech) that shows several levels of usage – one that seems to be common is to promote a business or product. It’s interesting at some levels because business, marketing and advertising has been looking for the perfect 15 second soundbite to sell a product. The same sort of thing happens with RSS feeds, about 150 characters are scrolling by on my desktop widget….

Another side to using Twitter is that you can follow your favourite celebrity (although whether or not it’s actually them is another story). A few NBA stars, like Shaq and Chris Bosh, are using Twitter – of course both are fellas with a good sense of humor… so maybe that’s telling.

So, as the pattern of adoption settles in (rabid initial use, followed by less use as one tries to conceptualize how and why to use, which will lead into either disuse or adoption and continued use), I’ve maintained my ability to use twitter at least once a day. I don’t post everyday. As I’ve said before I’m more of a reflective learner/user, I need to be able to think about what the purpose of the tool is or the reason for using it. I’m still not sure why I’m using it, but I do get why other people are using it.

One of the uses that others use Twitter, is to share information – I do not tend to forward these on to my “followers” because most of them are connected already to the source. It’s interesting to see my RSS feeds drop a new tidbit of information, then my Twitter account update with a new tweet with that information as well. Seems that I’m following the same sort of sources as my friends on Twitter.

I suspect that at some point in the near future, the next big social app/web 3.0 thing will be the convergence of your multiple digital selves being able to be managed in one spot. Your Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, blog posts, real life friends, online friends, colleagues and maybe your learning environments all become one. They won’t necessarily interact, though. For instance, my e-learning circle could be separated from my punk rock record collecting circle, so that people from one circle aren’t able to browse my entire life, just the parts from which they came – unless I allow it. Facebook already does this (and Livejournal did this ages ago) by allowing people to be put into groups and based on which group you’re in dictates what access you have. I suppose that takes away from the voyeur aspect of social networking sites – the ability to get a sense of the person you’re looking at.

Hmm. I’ve been really hammering at my department to start thinking mobile. It’s kind of an uphill battle, but I think that overall it’s one worth fighting. For instance, we know that the developing world is mostly using mobile technology to access websites and connect. I know that Asian and European countries are way ahead of us in 3G phone usage and technology. If we are to market this institution as a place of education for the international student, it would make sense to hit them where they actually look.

I’ve been pushing to investigate ways to broadcast SMS video clips (initially I thought for second language learners, but anyone who needs vocabulary growth can benefit from it). Now, I know that you can do SMS text broadcasts (providing you know the numbers of the recipients). I know very, very little about SMS, cellphones (hell, I don’t even own one) and most of that technology. I do understand that for learning to be effective, you have to give people the options to take it whenever they can. If they’re on the bus, this gives them a twenty second clip to study. If they’re going somewhere, they could get a link to browse the clip later.

So my experiment continues. I try to log in to my twitter account once a day at least, which is not the optimal method of using twitter I’m sure, but it’s what I can do. Usually, I do it at work, I mean I do work in e-learning services right? It’s work yeah?

Some quick observations – brilliant way to spread a website virally. In fact I can see that niche being filled nicely. It was kinda cool to be able to respond to some people who I respect and get a response back. Sort of a quick phone call or instant message (coincidentally, two other things I don’t really like doing – talking on the phone or using IM software like ICQ or AIM). Twitter seems far more interactive. Alec Couros posts his student’s work to his twitter account, I go check some of them out, comment and leave a link here. Web connections happening quite organically. No wonder marketers have jumped on board quick.

One downfall is the lack of context. Unless one posts several tweets one after the other in quick succession, then there’s not much context to draw from an individual posting. I always love the why and how, maybe that’s why I’ve always thought about the career choices I’ve made and will make. So I can see the allure of a quick posting that may not need much elaboration – sort of the thing that my RSS feed gives one is a good tweets.

I’m actually enjoying the interaction so far. We’ll see if I continue to enjoy it, or will it become cumbersome?