Blogs, Syndicated

Plans for the semester…

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Hi all. Boy, if I’m going to get this “academic web presence” spoken of last week, I am going to have to change my name, trying to register domains related to “Mark Smith” just doesn’t work out well. I do have two middle names that I could deploy, but that seems pretentious so I should probably just change my name to Excelliadon Superiorisoph… This may have the added benefit of affording me entry into the insular communities of Mirkwood as well… For now, I have dug deep into my array of nicknames and at last alighted upon a suitable pseudonym.

With introductions out of the way it is time to start thinking about “plans” for the semester. My plan for coming up with a plan is to muse through it in this post, and hopefully by the end of it some thoughts will have crystallized into actionable items.

One thing is for certain, I want to make sure that the work and production involved in this class serves and/or is used in my Thesis which, ojalá, will be done this semester… Fortunately it seems like a lot of the angles taken in this course dovetail quite nicely with my thesis project, so this may in fact be possible.

The subtitle for this particular special topic, Digital Cultures is quite fortuitous for me because my thesis research is geared entirely towards examining the intersection of digital and, (boy do we still call it analog?) cultural spaces. Specifically the way in which participation on webforum communities can influence or interact with a persons identity, lifestyle, capabilities, etc, outside of that space. So I’d like to use this class in part to examine the rate at which identity construction in one space bleeds through to the other… How much of our online persona do we carry into offline interactions? How much of our offline persona, co-constructed through a million painful childhood embarrassments, do we jettison the moment we go online? Is there profitability to be found in adjusting those measurements throughout our lives? Is it possible to use online spaces as a sort of “dry-dock” to intentionally reconstruct sections of your overall identity, before pushing the retrofitted product back into the sea of everyday life? If the “dry-dock” scenario is a possibility, what advantages does it offer over trying to do the same sort of reconstruction tasks while “at sea” so to speak? Is their a benefit to be gained in utilizing a separate (but connected), specialized community for this sort of work?

Here are some of my initial ideas for things to do that will be useful and learny, presented in bullet point form:

-One way I am interested in leveraging this course towards my thesis is in using the connections (our learning is so connected here!) built in the course to reach out to more interview subjects… This seems like an excellent opportunity to interview a diverse group of people about how their experience in an online community supporters their identities as learners, their learning process, and their sense of community membership. It could be particularly interesting to see if people notice significant contrasts between what we could call insular learning (traditional classes) and this crazy mooc-connected thing we are trying here. Will there be unforeseen drawbacks to this approach? Hidden benefits? Candy? So that is one thing: moar data!

-Poking through the digital resources section of the course site, I am definitely drawn towards the Rheingold article, this seems like it could fit in nicely and perhaps be a jumping off point towards other readings. Of course I won’t know that for sure until I read it, but for a first self-assigned reading you can’t beat 6 pages with pictures. From reading the big colorful excerpts, it seems like this could be useful in drawing the contrast between online and offline communities/socialization/persony-stuff.

-I’m also overdue on reading “Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds” by Holland and a bunch of other people, so this would be a good place perhaps to read about that and consolidate my thoughts/reactions in blog form. Perhaps using the blogs to connect the book’s material to this digital/online angle that my project and our course are taking.

So that is a start at least… More to come soon!


Blogs, Syndicated

E.T.! It’s Working! #ConnectedCourses

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 I am thrilled about the upcoming launch of the Connected Course September 15. Our hope for the course is that we will be able to network and support each other as we imagine and take advantage of the potential of the open web. While I promise a longer (and more thoughtful) blog post soon addressing the reasons I will be participating, I wanted to quickly post the course link and share the resources available for those of you interested in joining us. Check out the great pre-course blogging support provided by Alan Levine, Jim Groom, and Howard Rheingold:

More soon! And thank you to the colleagues working on this endeavor!

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

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As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading