Learning Beyond Limits: Open Source Collaboration in the Classroom
April 22, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Adam Heidebrink
What happens to a student paper or project after the individual turns it in or presents it in class? Where does it go? What, ultimately, is at stake for the student when s/he sits down to apply his or her thoughts to paper? What mediums do these thoughts and ideas travel through and whom they reach? What impact does their effort make beyond the classroom? These are questions of vital importance to every educator and pedagogue practicing today. Yet, in many cases, the answers to these questions are not particularly noteworthy. Students’ efforts in the classroom ultimately solidify into one definitive mark or grade, which too often denotes the end of the assignment’s life. There is, of course, a small percentage of student projects and papers that make their way into a conference or journal; but more often than not, they will end up archived on a hard-drive, somewhere, for a little while, and then deleted.
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What happens to a student paper or project after the individual turns it in or presents it in class? Where does it go? What, ultimately, is at stake for the student when s/he sits down to apply his or her thoughts to paper? What mediums do these thoughts and ideas travel through and whom they reach? What impact does their effort make beyond the classroom? These are questions of vital importance to every educator and pedagogue practicing today. Yet, in many cases, the answers to these questions are not particularly noteworthy. Students’ efforts in the classroom ultimately solidify into one definitive mark or grade, which too often denotes the end of the assignment’s life. There is, of course, a small percentage of student projects and papers that make their way into a conference or journal; but more often than not, they will end up archived on a hard-drive, somewhere, for a little while, and then deleted.
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Twitter Theory and the Public Scholar
March 23, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
The most important benefit of Twitter is its open compatibility with the best web sharing practices. The ability to drop a link (especially shortened ones) into tweets means that Twitter’s 140-character limit is actually a fallacy. I can write a 2,448 page manifesto and direct people to it with one 10 character link built on bit.ly. We can attach an image to tweets that do not impact the character limit. (For example, my students sometimes take pictures of our notes on the board that can be tweeted to other class members.) Twitter users can quickly review the metadata of other users following or replying to them, and make decisions about whether to encourage or refuse interaction.
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The most important benefit of Twitter is its open compatibility with the best web sharing practices. The ability to drop a link (especially shortened ones) into tweets means that Twitter’s 140-character limit is actually a fallacy. I can write a 2,448 page manifesto and direct people to it with one 10 character link built on bit.ly. We can attach an image to tweets that do not impact the character limit. (For example, my students sometimes take pictures of our notes on the board that can be tweeted to other class members.) Twitter users can quickly review the metadata of other users following or replying to them, and make decisions about whether to encourage or refuse interaction.
Read More...Trading Classroom Authority for Online Community
January 05, 2012 | Filed in: Online Learning
by Pete Rorabaugh
Early web commenters referred to the Internet as a primitive, lawless place like the "Wild West." Plenty still needs to change to make certain parts of the web more civil and useful, but some aspect of the "Wild West" spirit is applicable to a discussion of student-directed learning. Too much civilization and society makes us compartmentalized and complacent. The West was a challenging place for European immigrants because it required an expansive sense of responsibility. You could no longer be just an apothecary or a cobbler. You had to provide for your own food and shelter from the resources around you; you had to decide just "what to do" with all this freedom.
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Early web commenters referred to the Internet as a primitive, lawless place like the "Wild West." Plenty still needs to change to make certain parts of the web more civil and useful, but some aspect of the "Wild West" spirit is applicable to a discussion of student-directed learning. Too much civilization and society makes us compartmentalized and complacent. The West was a challenging place for European immigrants because it required an expansive sense of responsibility. You could no longer be just an apothecary or a cobbler. You had to provide for your own food and shelter from the resources around you; you had to decide just "what to do" with all this freedom.
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