Wenger once again causes my head to throb as I attempt to decipher his thoughts. And by decipher, I don’t mean the traditional meaning of “decipher”, I mean. . . And by “attempt”, I don’t mean the traditional meaning of attempt, I mean . . . And by “I”, I don’t mean the traditional meaning of “I”, I mean . . . Geez. Why use the word when you mean something completely different instead of finding the word you actually mean? I’m sure this will look like one big mess once it translates over to Pligg, but I hope my frustration translates. I have a few issues with his definition (surprise!) of belonging and community. One page 181, he writes that “calling the viewers of a television program a community of practice, for instance, would be pushing the concept beyond its usefulness”. But what of the multitude of blogs and discussion boards devoted to dissecting each and every detail of “Lost” or “Battlestar Gallactica”? Are they not a community of practice? Read Washington Post columnist (and my former neighbor) Lisa DeMoraes’ weekly discussion “On TV” on washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/03/30/DI2008033001297.html) and you will see a definite community of practice of not only TV watchers, but of the live discussion itself, with their own inside jokes and pet names for the host. If Wenger’s distinction is they don’t fit the definition of a community of practice because they’re not all watching the show together in each other’s company, what if they twittering about it from their respective living rooms as they were doing so? Would it count then? What about attendees of a movie? Because they’re all in the theater together, does that then fit the definition? Yet I would not consider myself part of the “Go Diego Go” community of practice simply because I accompanied my 4-year-old to the show at the Bryce Jordan Center. Does that matter how I identify myself? Or as I suggested in a previous post, is it only how others define me, no matter how I might be privately identifying myself, that matters?
Very thought provoking Youtube video
Campaign.USA – washingtonpost.com
All: This article is not only interesting, but also features our favorite–Psuedo-Simon Andrew Keen!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102856.html
I’m all A-twitter
Okay, I’m sure that little riff on Twitter has probably been used a million times, but one of the main takeaways I got from the TLT Symposium was not from the content itself (though the content was really powerful) but was the use of Twitter during the day. I got on board with Twitter probably about a month ago and found it to be an interesting way of connecting with my classmates outside of class hours. As a writer, I find the activity of capturing my current activities in 140 characters or less to be a good brain exercise. It is easier than e-mail to write and read. Those of us in 597 who are in the Twitter group have shared not only interesting insights about class, but also provided glimpses into our personal lives as well. Some have shared news of family deaths and illnesses, some have shared funny stories of pets or children, some have asked technical questions, some share what they had for dinner. It varies, but the key is that it’s all in 140 characters or less. Having many of us “tweeting” during TLT was a grand experiment for me, in that it allowed me to be a fly on the wall on breakout sessions where I wasn’t physically able to be, and allowed me to share my insights and comments with my classmates without having to be physically with them, or even lean over to whisper. Or, on a less serious use, how else would I have been able to share during Lessig’s keynote that I thought Sousa’s “Infernal Machines” term would be a great name for a band? How else would Becky and I have been able to have our wiki “stud2stud” exchange? Which begs the question, is “virtual notepassing” an unintended consequence of Twitter? Several of us began wondering, via Twitter, during the sessions, whether all of this Twittering is distracting to, or impacting the presenters. I do think it impacts, but is it just that presenters need to adjust their expectations and know and assume that their audience members are doing this? Or should they demand complete attention? One of us noted that there were many laptops open during a session, but few were Twittering; they were doing other things online. My 597 group led the wiki discussion in class on 3/20 and it
was my first experience facilitating a session where so many eyes of
were on laptops, with fingers flying on keyboard. It was a bit distracting to me, but I assumed that was what the class was doing, and I was proven correct when I read the Twitter “transcript” that took place during our presentation. On the other hand, I teach Comm 471 (public relations media & methods) to undergrads and purposely schedule this to be held in a traditional classroom instead of a computer lab where most of the other 471 courses are held– mainly because I don’t want people straying into checking email, etc., during class. Am I an old fogey for wanting to do this, and am I hindering their abilities to build community with one another in the same way our 597 class has done as a result? Does the answer change depending on who is being taught? Is it okay for “adults” like us to Twitter during class because we’re generally just commenting on the content and building community, whereas younger students, like HS and undergrads, would likely be doing other things? Is that generalization fair to them? Also, with students’ developing capacity to be able to be surreptitiously texting underneath a desk with eyes generally still up front, what then? Should that bother me as an instructor? The “instructor me” from pre-597 would have said absolutely. The “instructor me” for post-597, I’m not so sure.
Identity is in the eye of the beholder . . .
Wenger’s discussion on identity talks about how we’re all the sum of our parts– we have many different identities, depending on where we are, who we’re with, what we’ve experienced, etc. What if there’s a big part of your identity that you’re not even aware of? Does it still contribute? Who gets to decide one’s identity? My sister works in retail, but she is also a Realtor. If someone asks her what she does, she says she’s a Realtor. If someone sees her working at the mall, they have assigned her an identity of mall worker, whether she wants it or not. I may think that I am an accomplished professional and that I produce good work in my job; I may even have the evaluations to prove it. As a result, I have “accomplished professional” as part of my identity. However, if I am a jerk to work with, or if my work is substandard and my boss is just conflict-averse and passes me along with “good” evaluations, and everyone at work knows this except me, is “accomplished professional” still part of my identity even if my co-workers would vehemently disagree? We talked in another post about ratemyprofessors.com. There are probably many professors at Penn State who receive decent SRTEs and feel they have earned the identity of a great professor. Some of that group may not even be aware of ratemprofessors.com. If they are trashed in that environment, but they aren’t aware of it, is “great professor” still part of their identity? I realize this brings up a bit of a “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” head-hurter, but since this is Wenger we’re talking about, it seemed appropriate to bring up.
My Friend Flickr
I don’t know what it is about this blog that makes me keep coming up with references to ancient popular culture, but it is what it is. Anyway, here is my response to the “Teaching with Flickr” assignment. In my role in management education, I would use this slideshow to tee-up a small group discussion exercise on workplace dynamics and leadership. Perhaps with an overarching question as “What would be the advantages and disadvantages of the leadership styles exhibited by the “boss” in each of these workplace-focused TV programs?” The set would be accompanied by a handout that describes the characters and the jist of the shows for those who are not familiar. This could be supplemented with Youtube clips of the characters that demonstrate their behaviors. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24132892@N08/favorites/show/
Now I see where Madonna got her idea . . .
Anyone of a certain age may recall during the heyday of MTV that they actually used to play music videos instead of Real Worlding and pimping people’s rides. One artist who always raised the bar for the video industry was Madonna from back in the day. After reading Nardi & O’Day’s description of Metropolis, I recalled Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video. That Madonna. Always trying to educate us! Anyway, I appreciated the connection and the depiction of the fear of technology replacing human interaction, which I think we as a class have wrestled with a lot. The discussions of cloning brought home the moral impact of technological advancement and though it seems hard to make the same kinds of argument for, say, the proliferation of “Twitter” versus the advancement of cloning, I can see where the slippery slope begins. I really liked the term “inattentional blindness”, as I think many of us suffer from that. So many things are in our field of view, and we know that they are wrong and something needs to be done, but we can’t think about it because it is so complex that if we started trying to figure it out, we’d never leave the house. Seems that they’re saying that just being aware of the blindness is enough to cure it. I’m not sure I believe that, because there are lots of motivations in people out there that may not include “the common good” among them. Their discussion of the atomic bomb points that out quite well. But who are we as educators to be the ones to decide where to draw the line with technology? We can decide how to incorporate tools into our field, but we are not necessarily the ones creating them. Seems that we are all responding to market demand, and this course is an excellent example of that. Here we’re taking tools that were developed to serve other needs and repurposing them for our needs (kind of like the front of the refrigerator, I suppose). But how do we as educators become part of the “participatory design” for technology designers? Are educators at the table? Would we be able to ring the bell about the potential consequences of some types of technologies’ impact on our students? The Winner example of the snowmobile use in Finland was great in illustrating the unintentional consequences. Could educators do the same? Or would we be told to get back in the classroom?
Please don’t eat the daisies . . .
They may be members of someone’s community of practice! Who knew flowers were so busy? After reading the Coda, I immediately set out
to ask the tulips I had bought for my wife from Wegman’s how they felt about
the article. They were aloof, actually,
and really no more responsive than my computer was when I asked the same
question of it. In fact, the cursor just
sat there, blinking at me, as if it was waiting for me to tell it what to say
in response. . . . All kidding aside, this
additional Wenger assignment did little to change my opinions of his work. Perhaps it’s just because I am relatively new
in my doctoral coursework, and haven’t been exposed to many theorists on
education, but I wish there was a little more black & white. If it’s there, and I’m just missing it, please
enlighten me.
Funny that Wenger starts out his chapter on locality focusing
on the same issues that we debated on Thursday about how to define community
(which, by the way, should have been sponsored by CATA for as much as we
focused on buses and bus drivers). To
me, though, his definition was a bit waffley.
“A community of practice can be defined by having the following 14 characteristics,
except when it doesn’t.” He states that
the definition can be “stretched” to accommodate almost anything, which does
not contribute to our goal of creating a shared understanding of the term. Like
Betsy, I’m still trying to figure out the big reveal here, the “and this is
important, because . . . ” Perhaps it’s
coming in a later assignment.
I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV
My apologies to Wenger enthusiasts, but I have to say I am not a fan. It’s not what he says, but how he says it. I find myself wondering what kind of dirt he must have had on his editor to allow the book to get published written this way. Must have been pretty incriminating . . . He uses “I will” so often that I keep inserting “For my next trick,” in front of it in my head as I read. Makes it a little more entertaining for me. The boundary objects of the Web 2.0 world certainly exist– they’re just not as “physical” as some of the really exciting examples Wenger used such as claims forms. It seems our Pligg site is a very appropriate example of a boundary object for our community of practice. We can always share it with others outside of the community to help them to understand what we’re doing either through sharing the link, or, if I were to want to share with my 78 year old mother for some reason, print it out and let her read it. I responded to the “brokering” identity as he described it. As a salesperson, I am a true broker in terms of facilitating the exchange of goods & services between my organization and my client. However, I find that I am a broker in many other aspects of my life as well. It’s my natural tendency when meeting new people to try to figure out ways to “broker” with them– did we go to the same schools, do we vacation in the same place, do we know anybody in common, do we both like PSU football, etc.? Also in light of our
conversation in class pay particular attention to pgs. 113-121 and his
discussion of practice.
Paging Oprah Winfrey . . .
As an instructor of Comm 471: Public Relations Media and Methods for the College of Communications, I spend a great deal of time in my class focusing on how to influence audiences, whether they are internal employees, government, consumers or the media itself. The Rogers article on diffusion of innovation covered lots of the same issues. My thought when reading about the boiling water in Los Molinas is that the first thing Nelida should have done was find a good publicist. That publicist would have known who the village’s answer to Oprah was and secured her endorsement of the water-boiling initiative. Once the rest see someone they respect or admire doing it, it makes it easier for them to justify adopting it as well. We’ve all heard about authors and entrepreneurs who are nobodies before Oprah takes an interest, and all of a sudden are mega-millionaires. Same concept here. Does Oprah really know better what’s good for us? Or does she just have the biggest microphone? Peer pressure plays a big part in diffusion as well. When I was in junior high school, many of the A-lister young men of my age carried their books and school supplies around in a large army green canvas sack, tossed over the shoulder like Santa’s bag of toys for girls and boys. I have no idea who thought this was a more practical solution than a traditional bookbag or backpack–everything in there certainly became a big mess once inside– but I remember feeling inadequate that I was not among the elite that was allowed to carry my stuff around in this way, and desperately wanted to have one. We can tie this back to our MIT discussion. MIT has thought it prudent to put all of their course content online. If I’m a school who wants to emulate and be associated with MIT, wouldn’t I want to do what they do? On a smaller scale with an education focus, if I’m trying to get a school to adopt my technology, wouldn’t I start with a well-respected faculty member to help sell my case instead of aligning with the angry instructor who ties up every faculty meeting with a litany of complaints?