[CITASA] blogs, surveillance and stuff
-
Ted, I personally am opposed to making student blogs public. Class
discussion should be protected space, IMHO, where students can take risks,
be controversial, without having to worry about the consequences.
(Professors too.) We don't broadcast our lectures. -
Amused by the ethical lecture from the L-3 Communications guy. Its been
active in the "U.S. led invasion of Iraq" (official Canadian description).
As the start of Wikipedia says:
L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LLL) is a company that supplies
command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems and products, avionics and ocean products,
training devices and services, instrumentation, space and navigation
products. Its customers include the Department of Defense, Department of
Homeland Security, U.S. Government intelligence agencies, aerospace
contractors and commercial telecommunications and wireless customers.
You can look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-3_Communications
Pause now for quote from the "Werner von Braun" song (Tom Lehrer, I
recall)
Barry Wellman
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director
Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963
Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
With all due respect, I disagree. I think that we do a disservice to
our students when we don't help them engage with the public world. I
would never require blogging in a mandatory course, but I believe that
it's completely reasonable to make public blogging a requirement of
other courses provided that it's clearly stated up front in the
syllabus before students make their choice. I see this as akin to
requiring students of ethnography classes to actually go out and talk
to people. (My advisor Peter used to require us to interact with
people on the streets of Berkeley to get over our fears of talking to
strangers in public settings. Getting over the fear of public-ness is
a skill and there's no place better than a classroom setting to learn
this skill and think critically about it.)
There are indeed consequences to being in public but I think that we
need to train students to have a public voice, especially in a media
ecology where being public is part of everyday life for many. Getting
students to think critically about the issues involved in being public
is extremely important, intellectually and practically. Furthermore,
getting students to engage with a particular technology is not the
same as getting them to engage with the medium, especially when
everything's cleaned up and pretty for the classroom.
danah
On Oct 21, 2009, at 5:11 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
- Ted, I personally am opposed to making student blogs public. Class
discussion should be protected space, IMHO, where students can take
risks,
be controversial, without having to worry about the consequences.
(Professors too.) We don't broadcast our lectures.
Barry Wellman
"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://www.danah.org/
@zephoria
Good topic...I wanted to share a few more thoughts on the issue of public
blogging in a course.
danah boyd:
With all due respect, I disagree. I think that we do a disservice to
our students when we don't help them engage with the public world.
If the course is specifically about learning to use a public voice, this
is a great idea. But, for a substantive course that is not specifically
about engaging the public, I do not see the benefit for students or
instructors if all words and thoughts are open to public critique from
anyone. Some students-- even graduate students in new media and schools of
information-- find blogging daunting even when the audience is only other
students. I agree with you on the point that putting the public blog
requirement in the syllabus is perfectly fine. My issue is more with the
pedagogical benefits of public discourse rather than the appropriateness of
blogging publicly in a course.
There are indeed consequences to being in public but I think that we
need to train students to have a public voice, especially in a media
ecology where being public is part of everyday life for many.
I was trained in a sociology program where no one used a laptop in class
ever and I never saw a single lecture on powerpoint. I also walked to
class uphill both ways and took notes on stone tablets by candlelight, so
take this with a grain of salt: Personally, I get higher quality critiques
and thoughtful consideration of course content when I assign weekly 1-page
"reaction" papers than when I use blogging. When students aren't worried
about public perception, I get as many unique ideas as there are students in
the course. When they blog on the topics I usually get three or four major
ideas and a lot of me-too's. They express more ideas when they have a
dialogue with the course content and are less worried about their public
presentation of self.
Of course, we all get fantastic stuff with blogs in class... but in many
ways it can reward those who are more comfortable posting their ideas first
and that is a real danger in a very large class. In some ways, it can
disproportionately advantage those who are already comfortable with blogging
at the expense of those who came to the course to learn new material, not
how to engage the world on the internet. This is a good justification for
using smaller blogging groups as Liz and others suggest.
Blogging is a great tool to use in class when it is tightly integrated into
the curriculum and it serves a clear purpose for the students. Like any
classroom tool (e.g., powerpoint or slide rules), I believe the purpose
should serve the course goals above all else. We have to be cognizant of why
we are choosing one format or medium over another and why we would want to
make it public or private. Public discourse of class content is arguably
sometimes one of these course goals, but in my view more as an exception
than a rule.
-Coye
--
Coye Cheshire
Assistant Professor
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
http://ischool.berkeley.edu/~coye
coye@ischool.berkeley.edu
All-
I have found this discussion both valuable and interesting. Since our
course (this quarter) is about the social implications of technological
change, we are going to use the issues raised in this and the previous
thread as material for our discussion tomorrow. Hopefully one of the
students will chose to write an entry for the blog about it, in which case I
will send a pointer to it.
Regardless, I agree with Barry that some of what we do in class (discussion
especially) should be classified as practice. I am reminded of my history
in rock climbing instruction, where a key to helping others learn new and
difficult things is often to lower the stakes so that they feel free to try,
to blunder, to make mistakes. On the other hand, I agree with danah, that
learning and expression in a wider social context are skills that I want to
help foster. Again, in climbing, it is often helpful to have moments,
creative projects, etc. that are higher stakes, where people can organize
their efforts to achieve more than they expected they could. One thing
about recreational rock climbing is that participants are free to color
their orientation towards climbing as more or less practice, performance,
play etc. As an instructor, I often found that it was helpful to
explicitly communicate this meta information, which is a good general lesson
for structuring these electronic assignments. I think this a big point of
Coye's comment-- that smaller, more private electronic contribution spaces
provide a key role, one that the full public blogging scene does not.
In the context of the class we have used google docs and in class discussion
as more of staging ground, practice area. Our blog posts are more
occasional contributions, and they are not strictly required, they are one
of several strategies open for participation. But they clearly are higher
stakes situations, but so far students seem positive about the experience.
I guess the punchlines are to both think about what learning goals are being
advanced and to make explicit to the students that different types of
contribution will vary across dimensions of practice, performance and
play.
Interestingly we had a great discussion in class today out our readings on
reputation systems, which I was very happy with. There was also a
sub-conversation on the etherpad chat log about the humans vrs zombies game
that is kicking off this week and when the ideal time to join the game is.
thanks all for your thoughts,
ted
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 2:10 AM, Coye Cheshire coye@ischool.berkeley.eduwrote:
Good topic...I wanted to share a few more thoughts on the issue of public
blogging in a course.
danah boyd:
With all due respect, I disagree. I think that we do a disservice to
our students when we don't help them engage with the public world.
If the course is specifically about learning to use a public voice, this
is a great idea. But, for a substantive course that is not specifically
about engaging the public, I do not see the benefit for students or
instructors if all words and thoughts are open to public critique from
anyone. Some students-- even graduate students in new media and schools of
information-- find blogging daunting even when the audience is only other
students. I agree with you on the point that putting the public blog
requirement in the syllabus is perfectly fine. My issue is more with the
pedagogical benefits of public discourse rather than the appropriateness of
blogging publicly in a course.
There are indeed consequences to being in public but I think that we
need to train students to have a public voice, especially in a media
ecology where being public is part of everyday life for many.
I was trained in a sociology program where no one used a laptop in class
ever and I never saw a single lecture on powerpoint. I also walked to
class uphill both ways and took notes on stone tablets by candlelight, so
take this with a grain of salt: Personally, I get higher quality critiques
and thoughtful consideration of course content when I assign weekly 1-page
"reaction" papers than when I use blogging. When students aren't worried
about public perception, I get as many unique ideas as there are students
in
the course. When they blog on the topics I usually get three or four major
ideas and a lot of me-too's. They express more ideas when they have a
dialogue with the course content and are less worried about their public
presentation of self.
Of course, we all get fantastic stuff with blogs in class... but in many
ways it can reward those who are more comfortable posting their ideas first
and that is a real danger in a very large class. In some ways, it can
disproportionately advantage those who are already comfortable with
blogging
at the expense of those who came to the course to learn new material, not
how to engage the world on the internet. This is a good justification for
using smaller blogging groups as Liz and others suggest.
Blogging is a great tool to use in class when it is tightly integrated into
the curriculum and it serves a clear purpose for the students. Like any
classroom tool (e.g., powerpoint or slide rules), I believe the purpose
should serve the course goals above all else. We have to be cognizant of
why
we are choosing one format or medium over another and why we would want to
make it public or private. Public discourse of class content is arguably
sometimes one of these course goals, but in my view more as an exception
than a rule.
-Coye
--
Coye Cheshire
Assistant Professor
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
http://ischool.berkeley.edu/~coye http://ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Ecoye
coye@ischool.berkeley.edu
CITASA mailing list
CITASA@list.citasa.org
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Really interesting conversation!
Andrea Forte's dissertation is an empirical study of exactly this
question: what are the advantages and disadvantages of having students
write for a public site? A number of papers are at:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~aforte
Email Andrea aforte@cc.gatech.edu for a copy of her dissertation,
which goes into it in more depth.
The short summary is: danah and Barry are, of course, both right. :-)
Students do need a safe space to make mistakes and not have a homework
they did as a sophomore be part of their 'permanent record.' (Good gosh
I'm glad my freshman attempts at fiction writing are not currently
lurking somewhere in archive.org!)
On the other hand, writing for a real audience can help students think
about notions of audience and argumentation in much deeper ways. Who am
I writing for? What kinds of sources will they believe, and what kinds
will they dismiss? It's a powerful learning approach, if handled right.
Ultimately, having researched this for several years, my conclusion is
that you shouldn't do it all the time, but when appropriate it's a
potentially powerful approach. But students need lots of explicit
training in what it means to write online, what the risks are, and how
to actively manage their online self presentation.
Andrea is home now playing New Mom, but will be starting as an Assistant
Professor at Drexel this spring.
-- Amy
Ted Welser wrote:
All-
I have found this discussion both valuable and interesting. Since our
course (this quarter) is about the social implications of technological
change, we are going to use the issues raised in this and the previous
thread as material for our discussion tomorrow. Hopefully one of the
students will chose to write an entry for the blog about it, in which
case I will send a pointer to it.
Regardless, I agree with Barry that some of what we do in class
(discussion especially) should be classified as practice. I am reminded
of my history in rock climbing instruction, where a key to helping
others learn new and difficult things is often to lower the stakes so
that they feel free to try, to blunder, to make mistakes. On the other
hand, I agree with danah, that learning and expression in a wider social
context are skills that I want to help foster. Again, in climbing, it
is often helpful to have moments, creative projects, etc. that are
higher stakes, where people can organize their efforts to achieve more
than they expected they could. One thing about recreational rock
climbing is that participants are free to color their orientation
towards climbing as more or less practice, performance, play etc. As
an instructor, I often found that it was helpful to explicitly
communicate this meta information, which is a good general lesson for
structuring these electronic assignments. I think this a big point of
Coye's comment-- that smaller, more private electronic contribution
spaces provide a key role, one that the full public blogging scene does not.
In the context of the class we have used google docs and in class
discussion as more of staging ground, practice area. Our blog posts are
more occasional contributions, and they are not strictly required, they
are one of several strategies open for participation. But they clearly
are higher stakes situations, but so far students seem positive about
the experience. I guess the punchlines are to both think about what
learning goals are being advanced and to make explicit to the students
that different types of contribution will vary across dimensions of
practice, performance and play.
Interestingly we had a great discussion in class today out our readings
on reputation systems, which I was very happy with. There was also a
sub-conversation on the etherpad chat log about the humans vrs zombies
game that is kicking off this week and when the ideal time to join the
game is.
thanks all for your thoughts,
ted
On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 2:10 AM, Coye Cheshire
<coye@ischool.berkeley.edu mailto:coye@ischool.berkeley.edu> wrote:
Good topic...I wanted to share a few more thoughts on the issue of
public
blogging in a course.
danah boyd:
With all due respect, I disagree. I think that we do a disservice to
our students when we don't help them engage with the public world.
If the course is specifically *about* learning to use a public
voice, this
is a great idea. But, for a substantive course that is not specifically
about engaging the public, I do not see the benefit for students or
instructors if all words and thoughts are open to public critique from
anyone. Some students-- even graduate students in new media and
schools of
information-- find blogging daunting even when the audience is only
other
students. I agree with you on the point that putting the public blog
requirement in the syllabus is perfectly fine. My issue is more with the
pedagogical benefits of public discourse rather than the
appropriateness of
blogging publicly in a course.
There are indeed consequences to being in public but I think that we
need to train students to have a public voice, especially in a media
ecology where being public is part of everyday life for many.
I was trained in a sociology program where no one used a laptop in class
_ever_ and I never saw a single lecture on powerpoint. I also walked to
class uphill both ways and took notes on stone tablets by
candlelight, so
take this with a grain of salt: Personally, I get higher quality
critiques
and thoughtful consideration of course content when I assign weekly
1-page
"reaction" papers than when I use blogging. When students aren't worried
about public perception, I get as many unique ideas as there are
students in
the course. When they blog on the topics I usually get three or
four major
ideas and a lot of me-too's. They express more ideas when they have a
dialogue with the course *content* and are less worried about their
public
presentation of self.
Of course, we all get fantastic stuff with blogs in class... but in many
ways it can reward those who are more comfortable posting their
ideas first
and that is a real danger in a very large class. In some ways, it can
disproportionately advantage those who are already comfortable with
blogging
at the expense of those who came to the course to learn new
material, not
how to engage the world on the internet. This is a good
justification for
using smaller blogging groups as Liz and others suggest.
Blogging is a great tool to use in class when it is tightly
integrated into
the curriculum and it serves a clear purpose for the students. Like any
classroom tool (e.g., powerpoint or slide rules), I believe the purpose
should serve the course goals above all else. We have to be
cognizant of why
we are choosing one format or medium over another and why we would
want to
make it public or private. Public discourse of class content is arguably
sometimes one of these course goals, but in my view more as an exception
than a rule.
-Coye
--
Coye Cheshire
Assistant Professor
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
http://ischool.berkeley.edu/~coye <http://ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Ecoye>
coye@ischool.berkeley.edu <mailto:coye@ischool.berkeley.edu>
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