If being presented with a problem is a challenge, this has been a very challenging afternoon. To begin with, I couldn’t get my microphone to work (plug in the wrong jack, the ^&%$*&*(!! thing is broke, the moon is the sixth house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, what ever). Then after setting up my blog site, the computer tells that I have to enable cookies. It doesn’t say chocolate chip or oatmeal, just enable cookies! Well, I did. No go! So I downloaded Firefox, transfer everything from Internet Explorer, and tried again. Nada! Enable cookies! I’m willing to try sugar or even Girl Scout thin mints. Isn’t technology wonderful!!! But again isn’t this what this course is about, thwarting Murphy’s Law.
Hey, you might be saying, “How, in the name of Von Neumann, did he manage to post this rant?” Well, I’m cheating. I already had a blog on Edublog and I’m using that one, which I might add, loaded with no problems. Shelley, I feel your pain with Voicethread.
Having got that off my chest, on with blogging. I not so sure about blogging. I’m really not a chit-chatter. I don’t do small talk which to me seems to be small talk. I’m not interested in sports. Topics of politics and religion are not really an option since people become overly vexed on these subjects. So I talk NERD which makes me a bit of a bore.
So I am going to try to be Devil’s advocate on each topic, looking for the both positive and negative in each area of Internet 2.0.
Yes, blogs can set up a discourse in theory. With the ability to make comment, new perceptions can posted. But people don’t really like their view of the issue assaulted. Things can become quite personal rather quickly. Secondly, opinion is more likely to be presented rather than fact. The problem with that is that many feel that if it is in print (on paper or digital), it must be true. As educators in this ever-changing electronic medium, we will need to give our students the tools necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff, the brass from the gold; oops, I ran out of cliches’.
And that’s how I see it!
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February 18th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I must say that your blog was very entertaining. I too have some mixed feelings on blogs, but I’m tring to look at the positives. For instance, I’ll bet there are tons of people out there that would love to talk NERD with you. From my findings, which are just my opinion, there are blogs out there for everyone! Well, I hope we can get some good uses of this new Web 2.0.
http://ericbrown.edublogs.org/
February 20th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Larry…you nerd! I’m right there with you, but my name is Chatty Cathy! The one downfall I see is TIME……..I do have to do other things in life besides sit at a computer so making this work is going to be challenging for me. On another subject, I have some of the same concerns about giving students tools to use to interpret what they are reading no matter the format…….we are discussing and studying “fallacious reasoning” in (7P) class right now………what does it look like, and what does it mean? Another way I addressed this issue was my 8H edited a wiki that was created last year by another class and read/evaluated their information. We discussed whether their interpretation of the material was valid, correct and complete…then we edited the material. This improves writing skills as well as evaluating information……I will continue to read your nerd writing. It’s very educational for me!
February 20th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I must say I feel your pain. I started this response to your blog what seems like hours ago. Mozilla needed to update, cookies weren’t enabled (or were they) and I had to log in two different places to do the same task. I fear this part of Web 2.0 will drive lots of people away from it because they don’t have the time or energy to go through all this. I am already finding in week two that a one hour project takes twice as long because nothing goes as planned. And most days I don’t have the time, energy or patience to embrace it!!!
February 25th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Please don’t underestimate your ability to write blogs! Yours was the most entertaining and thought-provoking of any I have read. I’m actually a protege nerd of yours! I recently had the thought that if I had only known when I was 12 that I was a NERD, my young life would have been so much easier (not to mention fun!)
March 24th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Commenting on Thing 7 – I agree. We must still have the students up and moving about, working with their fine motor skills whenever possible – especially in science class! Keep on keeping on!
March 24th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Oops – I wrote Thing 7 but I meant THING 8 – so sorry!