Links
Archives
Friday, November 25, 2005
|
This is a ... ...funny sort of article. It’s from Georgetown University and should make a blogster like UD happy, which it does, sort of, but at almost every turn I’m saying No…no…no… Starts with the title: The Cogs of Blogs Blah. Then: A generation of students even more "wired" than their predecessors will soon arrive at Georgetown and other colleges and universities across the nation in the next few years. And they expect to communicate -- academically and personally -- in ways unheard of even a decade ago. Lose the scare quotes on wired. And why are we framing this in terms of what students expect? They come to the university with a faculty having its own expectations. Evidence is starting to mount that this is a real phenomenon -- a March 2005 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, for example, states that 32 percent of American youths between the ages of 8 and 18 already have created a personal Web site or a Web page. The study also shows that home access to the Internet for this age group has risen from 47 percent in 1999 to 74 percent in 2005. Pedestrian writing style, to be sure, but no real problem here. Just stats. One of the ways in which academia has responded to these changes is to reach out to students with the technology that is most familiar to them. The blog, for example, is beginning to change how academic information is communicated, and, in some instances, how professors teach and conduct research. Again, it ain’t (or it shouldn’t be) about reaching out to students. The university is not the phone company. It’s about having thought about and evolved things, etc. "All faculty want students to take more responsibility for their own learning," says Randy Bass, director of Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) and an associate professor of English. UD waves hand energetically. Bass ignores. UD waves hand obnoxiously. “Uh, yes, Professor Soltan?” “I don’t want students to take more responsibility for their own learning. That’s code for they get to make up the curriculum and shit. I’ll take responsibility, happily.” "Tools such as Weblogs provide the ideal environment to foster that. I don't know anyone who uses blogs to substitute for the professor or course materials. What blogs do provide is a flexible and accessible space for students to play with ideas, turn them in the light, expand them through dialogue with each other, and make them their own." Typical American over-selling. There is no “ideal environment,” buster. On the other hand, I like the “play with ideas, turn them in the light” image. Let’s jump ahead a bit… Oh, here’s something: "Blogging platforms are, from my perspective, more user friendly and, for an increasing number of students, more intuitive," Nexon says. First time I’ve heard the phrase “blogging platform.” This guy is farther along, jargonwise, than I am. Have no idea what it means to call these platforms “intuitive,” though. It’s a long article, and I won’t reproduce all of it, but it goes on to say a lot of wonderful things, actually, about the growing scholarly and pedagogical importance of blogs. To which I say yes. |