Wader's Blog

Self-organization (OSOSS)

2004-12-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

I had fun with this activity playing with netlogo and learning how to use the screenshot utility and bloggerbot to post the screenshots below. The process to post a screenshot is not as simple as I thought or should be, but it works.

Playing with netlogo was interesting. The purpose of the activity is self-organization and the model behavior would be that during the bird simulation all of the birds would flock together and go in the same direction. This could be analagous to users in Open Learning Support http://ols.usu.edu/ banding together for learning.

With the default settings in the bird simulation I found that changing the population and vision did very little to stop the birds from flocking together. What did change was the amount of time that the birds would take to start flying together. The minimum separation setting had a dramatic impact on the model. By increasing this parameter by one full patch the birds acted in chaos. We could compare this to self-organizing learners who separate themselves from each other. For example, one learner my be interested in Linear Algebra while another may be interested in Real Estate finance. To be effective, learners need to self-organize and allign themselves with their interests so that there is "minimum separation".

The same could be said of the max-align-turn, max-cohere-turn, and max-separate-turn. These settings wreak havoc on how the birds behave. Similar to minimum separation the birds need to turn together to self-organize and have similar flight patterns.

What can be learned from this? A couple of things come to mind from this experience and what I have witnessed while working with OCW and OLS. 1) There needs to be enough of a population within a community that learners can self-organize in to small enough groups that their needs are being met. Again if I am interested in Linear Algebra then I want to be able to go to an area where there are enough learners to keep my interest. 2) Once groups have organized with "minimum separation" then they need to have some common goals. These goals should come from the group, but be generally agreed upon. For example, in sourceforge, developers have a common goal to develop a piece of software. Someone sets this goal and other developers join in the cause.

I am new to self-organization but it appears from being involved in and observing some online communities like slash-dot, sourceforge, and OLS that large groups can, like David Wiley says "behave intelligently--providing that the environment can be manipulated so that cues and clues can be left".

2004-12-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

This is a screenshot of netlogo and the ant simulation.

2004-12-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is a scrrenshot of netlogo and bird simulation

MMO Take II

2004-11-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

This week as I played Lineage and read the readings I found myself bouncing around the Internet from commentaries on blogs to other MMOs to so-called “virtual worlds”. How could these be applied to teaching, learning? How could these “games” be applied to my interest of second-language acquisition?

Merrill’s Five Components

David suggested that we discuss Merrill’s five components which is a good place to start. Are learners engaged in solving real world problems? This is debatable. In lineage I felt like I was learning survival skills like how to gain the games currency which in turn allowed me to increase my armor and hopefully survival. I quickly learned that I was not going to get anywhere on my own and was working to become a pledge or get others to work with me. Similar to the students playing Civilization III in the Replaying History piece I was learning through failure. I would die, restart, come up with a new strategy, and then die again learning something new.
One may ask how transferable these skills are to the “real world”? I was learning some problem solving skills in Lineage, but reading about Civilization III seemed more “real-life” as the game seemed to be more focused on a world-scope geography and economics, rather than joining a tribe that was focused on replacing their king to the throne.

Are learners engaged in solving real world problems in MMOs? Yes and no, they are learning problem-solving skills that may transfer to real world problems. What about integration, activation, application, demonstration? I would say yes and no to these as well. I integrated and applied what I learned through experience, but again what am I learning? Are these skills transferable? Yes and no.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning in MMOs are different from the classroom. How? The games are learner-centered and allow for the learner to explore. A teacher may provide a lot of guidance or no guidance and feedback at all. I was given very little guidance in how to play lineage. I learned from experience, reading the user’s manual, and reading emails from my colleagues. Since I have never played an MMO it was a good experience to just jump in.

When evaluating whether MMOs have a place in the classroom I agree with Tazmaster who posted to Nick Yee’s Daedalus Project. “A delicate balance would have to be achieved in order for anything like his to work. Too ‘school-like’ and the kids won't want to participate. Too ‘Game-like’ and the kids won't want to do anything else”.

Language Acquisition

While I have been exploring in Lineage and looking at other games and “virtual world” environments like There and Second Life I have been thinking whether there is a place for these games in my interest of language acquisition. Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was an online place where ESL learners could go to practice their English? They could enter virtual stores and places where they could practice English with native English speakers. Unfortunately, the English in these places, similar to chat rooms, have taken on a kind of “pigeon” Internet language. But then again, is that bad? English is the language of the Internet and if the purpose of some ESL students is to learn Internet English then these types of environments may be ideal.

I was intrigued by Second Life and how there is a reputation system and users can create their own objects. It seems that communities are picking up on the value of reputation systems and an open-source environment.

I have other ideas that I will come back to….

Lineage MMO

2004-11-20T15:39:00.001-08:00

Well this week I was exposed to Lineage the Massively Multiplayer Online game. Quite an upgrade from the games I used to play when I was a kid. The premise behind the game is anything but simple and the graphics are fantastic.

I was a lowly knight by the name of On My Honor. I had all sorts of weapons but the one that seemed to "stick" was the dice dagger that was literally stuck to my hands. I tried to switch weapons but was unable to do so because of what I believe was some kind of curse. Then I clicked on a potion to see if that would take care of it and I was blinded. So I left the game with a dice dagger stuck to my hands and blinded without able to see anything.

This was disappointing because I had good armor and was starting to get some money again to buy up even stronger armor. How many times did I die? I stopped keeping track after 10. There was a period of time where I literally was getting angry that I couldn't kill the troll warrior so my goal became to try to kill them.... well they got the best of me over and over again, but I was getting better and wouldn't waste any time killing the orcs.

My favorite creature was one that looked like rocks, some kind of rock troll or something. I say something move so I went over to investigate and got too close because the troll took one shot and layed me out, yet another death. Fortunately the healer didn't charge any money because I would always go back to them.

Interesting game and one that encourages you to keep learning. If I had only more time...

Identity, Deception, and Accountability

2004-11-10T18:34:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Wader and this is my blog. Some of you reading this may not know me face-two-face (F2F) and that may make a difference in how you trust what I am writing. Some of you reading this may know me F2F and that may also make a difference in how you trust what I am writing... you may trust it even less! =). Whichever the case, the topic of identity and how it is related to deception and accountability are interesting topics in this online world we live in.

Let’s attempt to answer some questions and ask some more while we are at it. In what manner are identity and trust related? In one of my posts below entitled "Cooperation and Incentives, Reputation and Trust" I started a dialogue around this theme and institutional reputation, but here we are focusing on individual identity and trust. In our day-to-day interactions is trust ever not part of the equation? I am typing out loud here, but let's think about a couple of events from my day. A friend of mine called me inviting me to dinner tomorrow night. I know her, trust her (and her food), so I made the commitment to be there. I know it's hard for a guy to commit to a free, hot meal =). Now let's compare that to a group email I got from an acquaintance inviting me to a party. I don't know her that well (lack of trust), nor do I know how to get there, so I declined the invitation by sending it to the group email round file. Well, perhaps not the greatest analogy, but you get the picture. We trust people in our lives and how do we trust them? We trust them through experience where they have proven their trustworthiness. Could I use trust one more time? Yes identity and trust are interrelated on and offline.

To what degree can trust be established with anonymous or pseudo anonymous individuals? Unless there is a peer rating system like Slashdot or eBay I think it is difficult to establish trust as an anonymous user. However, once a user is identified as trustworthy or reliable through other people comments then are they still anonymous? Something goes off in my brain that says it is safer to trust someone who has proven themselves online and has other users' comments to back it up. Still there is the obvious risk involved in conducting transactions with a person online who only has gold stars versus a person you meet F2F.

What are the roles of accountability and trust in facilitating cooperation? No accountability + no trust = no or little cooperation. If I have had no experience with a person (no trust), that has no record of accountability then why should I trust them? Credit is a good example of this. When I first applied for a home loan the bank pulled a credit rating on me. Without some kind of credit rating and history I would have simply been denied. Fortunately I did have a credit history and the bank cooperated with me by extending me a loan.

IRC (Incredibly, Really non-Contemplative??)

2004-11-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

I connected to mIRC and was surprised at the amount of activity going on. We all hear of chat rooms but I thought of them as specific to AOL, yahoo, or a particular website. Overall I saw a lot of activity but was offended in the content. Even though the rules were posted that profanity and adult content would not be tolerated, most of the chat rooms that I thought would be “clean” were not.

I did find some interesting dialogue that I would like to focus on. Below is a trail of the channels I actually hung out in for a while and my discoveries.

#newbies

I jumped right in to #newbies and the people there were helpful in answering my questions. Judging from the posts I gathered that several were from Australia. I learned a little “Australian” thanked them “ty” and moved on to discover this new world.

#lima
In Lima I expected to find a lot of chat in Spanish but all that was happening was people were joining in and leaving but no talking. I tried to make conversation in my “Spanglish” but no luck. I later determined that many must be talking to each other in private conversations.

#worldchat
Worldchat was disappointing in its content and I did not stay long there.

#soccer
This was a fun channel. It was no surprise that there was a lot of talk about Manchester United. What was fun to watch was how they were commenting while watching games. I thought what a fun way to watch games especially if all of your buddies are out of town. This way you still get the satisfaction on commenting on your team winning or lamenting how they are playing poorly.

#espana
I had better luck here practicing my Spanish but little interaction besides “hola” and “que pasa”. I attempted to strike up a conversation with individuals and private conversation but was unsuccessful. I did have several who tried to strike conversations with me but all of them were vile and offensive.

#philosophy
I quickly made my way out of #espana and to #philosophy where I thought I would find a happy home. Again another foul comment and I made my way out but not before I read the comment of a user who said IRC had “gotten so lame of recent”.

#christiandebate & #palestine

These next two channels are where I spent most of my time. I was switching between #christiandebate and #palestine and couldn’t help but enjoy the contrast between the two dialogues and essentially religions. In #christiandebate there was a heated argument about who would be saved while in #palestine there was news about Arafat and heated words against the US and Israel. I stayed out of the arguments as I didn’t want to disturb them nor make my presence known. I wanted to observe.

As I observed a person from a country in the Middle East struck up a conversation with me. We exchanged some dialogue. I asked him some questions but he or she seemed to reply with a lot of questions which made me uncomfortable. He asked me for my email address to be able to talk longer term. After my earlier experiences on IRC there was far from adequate trust there for me to give my address. At that point I ended the conversation.

Differences between how people interact on LambdaMOO from IRC.

I found IRC to be much more populated and dynamic then LambdaMOO. In some of the channels the responses to my queries were very quick. In both cases I could tell that the members were seasoned, but then how did I really know? My criteria for how seasoned a member was primarily based on the speed of their responses and the acronyms they used. This is hardly an effective evaluation. Both LambdaMOO and IRC had there own languages but I found that IRC was harder to break in to, especially once I left the #newbies and no one seemed very interested in helping my “newbieness” in the other channels.

Another very obvious difference was how IRC incorporated color in to its channels whereas LamdaMOO was very black and white and “DOS” like. In some of the IRC channels the bandwidth was taken by comments about who was entering, who was leaving, and who was changing their name. I thought “what a waste of time and resources” and thought there must be a way of filtering this out. My curiosity did not get the best of me though as with exception to the #soccer, #christiandebate and #palestine channels I became bored with the lack of strong dialogue in IRC. Perhaps the reason I became bored is the synchronous nature of IRC. One reason I like the bulletin boards and fan fiction is that they are asynchronous and allow a writer and reader to give some contemplation to their posts (although many suffer from being under-contemplative).

In conclusion, I am obviously not a big fan of chat rooms, IRC, and LamdaMOO unless they are moderated and have real purpose. Of course, this is just my own opinion and my synchronous experience is limited, but I have discovered I am more comfortable in an asynchronous setting.

Zork and LamdaMOO

2004-11-01T06:01:00.000-08:00

Zork and LamdaMOO

Playing Zork and LamdaMOO this week were interesting. The MOOs reminded me of an interactive game I played briefly in the late eighties on my family’s apple II. I remember the game because I spent a lot of time traveling through it and finally came to a point where I had to answer a riddle. There was no way around it but to answer the riddle. I spent days trying to solve it but to no avail. I got my friends and family involved but they equally had no success. Finally, I moved to other games Conan, Karateka, that were black and white, very little graphics, but for the day were a lot of fun and free to play on your computer. All on a five and a quarter inch floppy! I wonder if there really was an answer to the riddle….

The MOOs transported me back to those earlier days when all things were dos-based. I found the social interaction to vary from other environments like USENET, bulletin boards, newsgroups. On newsgroups people were interested in talking and getting answers to questions like socialisers from Bartle’s article HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS. However, according to Bartle, there are also achievers, explorers and killers in this world of MUDs and MOOs. MUDs and MOOs seem to be mostly about entertainment or socializing and not forums for exchanging information.

How does the ability to create artifacts seem to affect the way people interact with each other? Being able to create artifacts and do it with other people creates a certain level of cooperation that is different from other environments. I would say this is more similar to the Fan Fiction environment where something is actually created and users give input.

What role do the different speech modalities play in facilitating interaction? According to Cherney in her article, THE MODAL COMPLEXITY OF SPEECH EVENTS IN A SOCIAL MUD, there are two main modes of communication and commands. The “say” and “emote” commands. “Say” allows a user to do just that, say something to the other users. “Emote” is more interesting and reminds me of Instant Messenger and how a user can add a smiley face or a face that is red to show anger. “Emote” allows a person to user to see emotions like a person in real life would view another person’s non-verbal communication. This facilitates interaction by allowing a MUD user to “see” the other person and have a small glimpse of what that user is feeling.

Overall, the experience this week was another exercise in the discovery of another environment for social interaction. I wonder if the popularity of MUDs and MOOs are decreasing or increasing and if there are new users being added. Are these type of forums a thing of the past or will they survive in to the future?

Cooperation and Incentives, Reputation and Trust

2004-10-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

What are the relationships between cooperation, incentives, reputations, and trust? Reputation and trust almost seem synonymous. The Red Sox have a reputation for losing game seven or choking on making it to the World Series finals. Because of their reputation (or perhaps curse=)), I would trust and bet against them for winning the World Series. My false trust in them losing would have lost me some money this year.

A better example may be Nordstrom’s. Nordstrom’s has a reputation for being a department store that sells quality clothing. Nordstrom’s reputation is that you can always take back anything to any of their stores and they will refund your money, no questions asked. I trust this reputation and so I feel an incentive for shopping at Nordstrom’s, of course only when they have their annual sale!

Now let’s look at cooperation. The other day I was buying a book at Amazon in their used book section. There were several used books and so I naturally looked at the least expensive and its seller. The seller had a star rating but very few reviews. I then looked at the next used book and although it was marginally more expensive it had a better star rating based on more reviews. Which did I buy? The later of course and I think most people would. Did I want to cooperate and make the business transaction with the second seller over the first, yes, and why? Because I trusted the star rating system and the reputation of the seller.
So in my experience there seems to be a high correlation between these four concepts of cooperation, incentives, reputations, and trust.

Now the question is asked, are reputations any more important in facilitating cooperation online than offline; why or why not? I believe that while reputations are important in any transaction, reputations carry a greater weight online then offline. Offline people can meet in person and can ascertain trust through all of the intangibles of meeting with the person. Online a buyer is at the mercy of the rating system. When I buy something from eBay the only criteria I can measure about the seller is their rating. Interestingly, Kollock reports in the Production of Trust in Online Markets that there has been great success using the rating system on eBay:

The efficacy of these reputation systems to manage the risks of unsecured trades seems to be impressive. Two years into its history (summer 1997), eBay released a report stating that of the 2 million auctions that occurred from May through August 1997, only 27 were considered to involve possible criminal fraud (these cases were referred to the US Postal Authority for prosecution as mail fraud). The report by eBay also stated that over 99.99% of auctions attracting bids were successfully complete (reported in Hughes 1997; the same low levels of fraud were also reported by eBay’s CEO in an October 1998 article – Chervitz 1998).

In his article Reputation Systems Resnick says, “reputation systems shouldn’t work, yet they do”. I concur with his statement. Personally I have never given any ratings on sellers and it makes me question how does this reputation system sustain itself? Are the sellers also buyers and vice versa so that they are making comments about each other? I have only been a buyer, but I would expect if I were a seller of a many goods that I would have a greater appreciation for providing feedback. Today I am just a consumer of the marketplace and the reputation system and expect to receive the good just like I would if I were buying at Nordstrom’s. I imagine that someday I will not receive the good or it will be in a condition I will not expect. Will I then take the time to complain? So far I still trust the system.

Fan Fiction

2004-10-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

I went to Books/ Lord of the Rings and found three authors whose writing I enjoyed. Here are the pen names, URLs, and descriptions of one of each of their stories.

Lord of the Rings

1) Chaos Chao, http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2036896/1/
Bilbo escaped the clutches of his neighbors and relatives at the very end of his 111th birthday...see his adventures on his way to Rivendell, and the new friend he meets on the way...(a VERY original character btw) FYI, Leggy and Gimmi and Aragon cameos!

2) Dimfuin, http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2092835/2/
Character study on Faramir: After Faramir and Eowyn have been married for 14 years, she dies suddenly and Faramir is thrown headlong into what is, was, and might be. Join me as we ride an emotional rollercoaster with our favorite hero...

3) Hollyshort111, http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2086201/1/.
ok so what would happen if there were 4 people tracking the orcs? well this is what i think would happen the 3 friends meet some one they did not expect to meet and they meet Legolas's long lost sibling oh just read to find out more R&R

Here is the URL to my piece that I wrote to LOTR. I had a lot of fun with this. Let me know what you think: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2097451/1/

Why is fan fiction so popular?

It's a good question why fan fiction is so popular. I enjoyed reading the writings especially about LOTR, but would I take the time to write my piece if it wasn't an assignment? I don't know that I would. It was fun and helped bring out bring out the creative part in me, but I may not be the audience that fan fiction is looking for. I believe that fan fiction is popular because there are a lot of aspiring writers out there and what would be a better way to get some feedback and new ideas?

Another reason it may be popular is the chance that a writer feels that they may be discovered. For example, I was talking to Preston and John at the dinner on Thursday night and we were talking about Jibjab. The guys created their first production "This Land is Your Land" and it became so successful they appeared on Jay Leno, created another production, and now I understand they have been given a contract to create a feature film movie. People put in money to win the lottery, why not put in your submission on fan fiction? =). I know not a great analogy but it is what I have now.

Now how can these factors be harnessed to improve formal instructional uses of technology? If I am an English teacher, why not recommend to my students to submit to fan fiction. There may be some liabilities here, but initially I think it would be a good idea. Another idea may be to have a grade school or university create their own fan fiction with a prize for the winners. Let the teachers give constructive feedback because they will not flame the students.

I wonder if this same model could be applied to MIT's OpenCourseWare? How about a place where university teachers could submit their writings or examples for their classes? Would teachers be willing to do this? Or if MIT created a mirrored site where content could be submitted and reviewed by other teachers. MIT, USU, Rice and the other universities in the consortium could all submit their writings or have classes linked together. Teachers from other universities could submit theirs and make comments. I am sure this is nothing new to you David, but I wonder if a site like this has potential.

In summary, this has been a fun week learning about, reading, and writing to fan fiction. I am excited to know that my first fiction has been published!

Blogs, Part the Second

2004-10-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Back again for another week of blogging, these are the five I want to look at this week:

Total Hrs.=5

1) Bill Brandon Position: Editor, The eLearning Developers' Journal Blog: Elearning

2) Anne Davis Position: Georgia State University - Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education. Blog:EduBlog Insights

3) Maish R NichaniBlog: elearningpost

4) Ray Schroeder Position: Professor of Communication - Director of OTEL Blogs: Online Learning Update, Techno News, Educational Tech

5) David Wiley Position: Assistant Professor - USU Blog: autounfocus

OK, after having spent some time visiting these blogs I had one comment that I will touch on and then go to two topics that interested me Cutting Edge Technology and Ways to Use Weblogs in Education. I will conclude with what I believe makes an educational use of technology interesting.

Commentary

I followed the order of blogs above and found when I reached David Wiley's it was like coming home. Why? Obviously because it is home. I have been exposed to David's research and thoughts so that it is second nature to visit his site, read about other people I KNOW, visit notes from the IT conference I WENT TO, and get in to the discussions about topics I AM FAMILIAR WITH. Does this mean the other blogs are not interesting, no, simply that we all gravitate to what we are familiar with. What does this mean to me and blogging? In my limited experience with blogging I conclude that like anything else, when you have a face and experience with the people behind the writings it becomes all the more interesting. For example I enjoyed reading the commentary from AVS on David's post, How Technology Will Destroy Skills http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/index_html/2004092401 because I know AVS and I am familiar with his opinions. So this whole experience led me to the Ah-ha... blogs are that much more effective and interesting when you know the people. No wonder there are links to other colleagues blogs. It's a fraternity/ sorority. I know... just call me master of the obvious.

Cutting Edge Technology

The top cutting edge technology topic that grabbed my attention was an article from Red Herring http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=10870&hed=I%20work,%20therefore,%20IM which was a link from elearningposthttp://www.elearningpost.com/

"A recent report by Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that 11 million people use an IM service at work, and 53 million have used it at home or in the office.... By the end of this year, IM conversations will generate $131 million in revenues. But by 2008, that figure is predicted to jump to $413 million, according to the Radicati Group, a technology market research company in Palo Alto, California".

It is not suprising to me that IM is taking off, we use it in OSLO (myself, not as much), however I am curious to know what IM'ing is work and what is play? How are these companies using IM to be productive? For laggards who are late to adopt IM'ing in a company does that shut them out from the "inner-circle"? Who encourages IM'ing in an organization or does it just become a defacto standard? Interesting....

I also found a cool paper on open source in education http://www.opensourcesummit.org/open-source-200408.pdf that I want to be recorded here in my blog to refer back to. The paper has a link to several open source projects, notably: uportal.org, theospi.org, dspace.org. The paper is an easy read and one that I feel like I could refer my colleagues to to understand open source in education , its implications, and how to get involved.

Ways to Use Weblogs in Education

I found the Edublog Insights blog to be helpful especially the post Ways to Use Weblogs in Education. I am struggling to know how you would bring a weblog in to the classroom or with colleagues. The lists I copied at the bottom of this post will help me out when I go back to teaching at BYU-Hawaii.

I like the idea of having a class blog that will replace my web site syllabus, etc. Blogs are much easier to update then having to go to dreamweaver or another tool and then ftp the files up to the server. Using blogger or another service will allow me to update the site on the fly and I am sure there are more sophisticated programs. It could also replace the need to use a webct discussion board and the likes.

I think it will also be interesting to introduce my students to the blogs and have them create their own and start linking them together. Certainly knowing how to blog and share work is a skill they could take in to the workplace or furthering their education. Will there someday be a class called blogging 101? All kind of possibilities.

Educational Use of Technology... Interesting?

Let me again state the obvious, yes I believe that educational use of technology is and can be interesting. The proof is in the continued growth of elearning, wikis and blogs. There were several articles from the blogs that were stating numbers about how elearning is continuing to grow. Is elearning growing largely because it is new and interesting, or is it because it is filling a niche? A niche catering to students or business professionals who can't make it to campus for whatever reason. I would argue both, but back to what makes educational use of technology interesting. Besides the fact that it is new it is no secret that technology is allowing students, like myself, to find more information about topics that interest them. For example, when I don't know a word during a lecture I just jump on m-w.com. Not only can I get the definition but I can find synonyms and listen on how to pronounce the words. This type of utilitarinism is what makes technology in education interesting to me. Blogs are new, will they also become more and more useful to the general public? Or will something else replace them? Can I afford not to read blogs and use them? I haven't had enough experience to give a good assessment now, but I expect I will in the near future....

>>>

Ways to use weblogs in education
You might like to create a reflective, journal type blog to...
reflect on your teaching experiences.
keep a log of teacher-training experiences.
write a description of a specific teaching unit.
describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn't work.
provide some teaching tips for other teachers.
write about something you learned from another teacher.
explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes.
share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom.
provide some how-to's on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class.
explore important teaching and learning issues.

You might like to start a class blog to...

post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments and other pertinent class information.
post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.
communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students.
post prompts for writing.
provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games.
provide online readings for your students to read and react to.
gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them.
post photos and comment on class activities.
invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice.
publish examples of good student writing done in class.
show case student art, poetry, and creative stories.
create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning.
create a literature circle.
create an online book club.
make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills.
ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions and written work.
post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students.
build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take.
link your class with another class somewhere else in the world

You can encourage your students (either on your weblog using the comments feature or on their own weblogs) to blog...

their reactions to thought-provoking questions.
their reactions to photos you post.
journal entries.
results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit.
their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class.
You can have your students create their own weblogs to...
learn how to blog
complete class writing assignments.
create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing.
express their opinions on topics you are studying in class.
write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest.
discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them (You, the teacher, can learn a lot this way!).
write about class topics, using newly-learned vocabulary words and idioms.
showcase their best writing pieces.
You can also ask your class to create a shared weblog to...
complete project work in small groups, assigning each group a different task.
showcase products of project-based learning.
complete a WebQuest.

Blog Hopping

2004-09-29T10:22:00.001-07:00

Total hrs: 5

I am interested in computer assisted language learning (CALL) as it applies to English as a second language (ESL). Here are the five blogs I want to follow this week:

1) http://duber.com/oncall/ Jim Duber's interactive journal that discusses issues and trends in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).
2) http://blinger.org/index.php linguistics and ESL blog
3) http://www.esl-blog.com/ ESL blog, news, reviews and opinions
4) http://thenewtanuki.blogspot.com/ A teacher using blogs to teach, disseminate info on ESL
5) http://wjreagin.motime.com/ A beginner blogger in ESL

So my first hour today Wed. I spent just searching for good blogs to follow. I spent a considerable amount of time on livejournal but didn't like it. The search functonality was not very good. I searched on ESL and it gave me a long list of communities that were not related. I found that going back to the tried and true Google, seach for 'CALL and blog' worked the best. Tomorrow I will dive in to the blogs and follow David's instructions for the exercise:

-Look for patterns across the blogs you read each day. Do you see signs of a distinctive culture among the bloggers, like common practices or common jargon?
-Post the following to your blog:
the URLs and names of the five blogs you followed, and
a short piece of writing describing your reflections on the culture of the blogs, blogging, and bloggers you followed

As usual you can expect me to think out of the box here though and may not follow all of the rules =). Who knows what path this will take me down....

10/1/04

It's Oct. now... crazy. So I jumped in to Jim Duber's blog http://duber.com/oncall/ and found that he doesn't talk about CALL very much at all... disappointing, but I then found myself jumping from idea to idea and before I knew it I didn't know how or where I started. Is this what blogging is about? Some kind of serendipitous or not so serendipitous trip through another persons thoughts and ideas?? I found myself at rebecca's pocket blog about the histories of blogs http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html which I found interesting because David had assigned us that reading in his blog. Then I also found myself at megnut.com which is a blog by Meg, not Meghan, who helped to found Pyra that as far as I can tell really started the blogamania with blogger. So then I thought do all blog roads lead back to there beginnings? Is someone reading my thoughts right now with exception to David? Do I really want to let my thoughts be known to the world?... even though realistically who will really read this?

This blogging business is interesting, but I am not exactly sold on it... yet. What is it more then just an html page? Is that the simple beauty of it? A packaged web page that is easy to publish for those who care not to read html for dummies? Yet is a blog more? Just like usenet and bulletin boards allowed groups to have voices, bloggers allows one to be THE voice for their own bulletin board. Is this the evolution from "I don't agree with my newsnet group, so I will create my own!". Other users can still post to a blog but only if you let them and then the originator of the blog is still the talk show host who comes on every day with a new topic.

Now "new variation topic". I am a journal writer. I have kept a journal since I was 11 yrs. old. I haven't written in it everyday but atleast every three months of my life since then. Now I am 34 yrs. old. That's 23 years of experience. Perhaps that is why blogging does not seem as novel to me. Does the fact that the rest of the world can read this blog give me any more incentive to write to my blog and not my journal? Does it give me a greater sense of self-importance?... indeed I think it may.... I may have to come back to this thread. The cool thing is that it is recorded and I CAN.

But back to the assignment (told you David I would go outside the lines).

OK so I jumped in to http://blinger.org/index.php/weblog/C4/ the blinger and I first thought, now there they will have some unbiased information about CALL and ESL, but the first thing I read was:

"I'm not going to debate politics. I'm just going to state that I am all for Kerry. Unfortunately I am not American and cannot vote. But if I could vote I would definately be voting Kerry".

So much for either... but let's give it a chance, after I first give my return to that post about my opionion of Mr. Kerry's politics.... =). Blogs: Free speech live and semi-anonymous.

OK, this is disappointing.... The site is supposed to be about linguistics and I am finding links to everything from blahblahblog to North Korean zone. If there is anything I find consistent about peoples remarks are that they are their own opinions and difficult to read if I am looking for some "meat" about CALL and ESL. Maybe I am going about this wrong? Are blogs just to be blogs of ideas, and websites are websites for information? Am trying to keep my mind open here. Will continue tomorrow....

10/4/04

I did some more blogging over the weekend and want to record thoughts. In the first place I got a post from blinger which you can read below and provided some good feedback. One point of feedback from Blinger was to put my comments in most recent first. Blogger does this automatically, but for the purpose of this assignment/ postI thought it would be best to have all my comments in one post and chronological order.

I was suprised to get an email from him/ her. I sent him/her an email to find out how she/he found out about my blog. I'm interested to get that response.

I went to the the esl blog http://www.esl-blog.com/ which is full of posts and resources by James Trotta. There were not any posts from anyone else though even though James illicits responses. This begs the question, how does one get their blog out to people?

The New Tanuki http://thenewtanuki.blogspot.com/ is another interesting site for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) users. Similar to the esl blog there were a lot of links to other helpful sites and a few posts by the author Aaron, but little interaction from other users. I am starting to see a pattern here. It appears that some people have blogs for the purpose of having their own customized web page. A place where they can go to get to their favorite links or direct others to their favorite links. Since blogs are so easy to create this could be a real purpose, but they also allow for interaction from others through posts. However not much happening on the blogs I am going to.

http://wjreagin.motime.com/ This blog professes to be "Where China, ESL Teaching & Technology come together...". The author, Jason Reagin 'wjreagin', gave an interesting post about "seven basic blog posting formats". Since I am a beginning blogger I found this post particualary interesting and read through it. He also had a long list of links including 'rebecca's pocket' apparently a popular blog.

Patterns

So again, an interesting blog telling a little about the author, sharing their favorite links, and making posts with very little responses. It is interesting to me that they advertise their blog to be about ESL and yet there are few posts about ESL. Rather their posts are about personal ideas or non-related items while their links take readers to ESL topics and information.

My list of five blogs is a small sampling, but it has given me a taste of how blogs work and some of their patterns. From this exercise I am deducting that blogs are personal, dynamic websites that are always being updated and allow for outside responses. Sometimes they advertise a certain topic and yet the authors do not always write to those topics and freely post about any ideas that they have. For a new blogger who is used to surfing websites to get information this can be frustrating. However, blogs are not websites, nor are they newsnets. They are more like my journal for Instructional Technology, I label the journal Instructional Technology but often I fill the journal with ideas from anywhere. This has been an educational exercise.

Thread Mini-Analysis--Is the universe infinite in size?

2004-09-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the URL http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=aul74v%2489h92%242%40ID-105134.news.dfncis.de&rnum=46&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dquestion%26start%3D40%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Daul74v%252489h92%25242%2540ID-105134.news.dfncis.de%26rnum%3D46

OK, I had a fun time finding a question that I thought was interesting and not just a checkbox for this activity. After looking around for a while I found that just typing 'question' in the google search brought up a number of questions to which I found this one, which is neither simple, ordinary, but quite interesting to all of us in this universe.

Is the universe infinite in size?

A user named watcher posted this question and then followed up with these others:

If we assume there is a limited amount of matter then what is beyond that?
Is there just empty black space that goes on for eternity?
Did empty space always exist or was it part of what the big bang made?

Whether you believe in a supreme being or the "big bang" or don't want to use brain matter discussing something to which no one knows the answer today--one must admit the questions are intriguing. There was enough intrigue to the questions that four others joined in to the discussion. Here is how the threaded discussion took place with user names and dates.

1 watcher Dec 28, 2002 -2 Brian Gaff Dec 28, 2002 \-3 Gordon D. Pusch Dec 28, 2002 -4 Robert Weekly Dec 29, 2002 \-5 Aaron Desilet Jan 24, 2003

Interestingly four of the five posts were within two days. I wonder if most of the discussions to questions posed happen within two days? The fifth post was almost a month later. How did that user find the discussion or come across it? And yet here I am in the year 2004 viewing these posts. It could be an interesting study to examine the life of a threaded discussion. Perhaps in years ahead someone might actually have a new theory for if the universe is in fact infinite or not. Will usenets and our blogs serve as time capsules? Will they be similar to the way old textbooks today stand as guardians to older thoughts whose time has come and gone? Some things to think about....

So back to the discussion. Watcher posted these questions because he said [the questions are] "giving me sleepless nights". The next four authors then offered their opinions. Did they answer to help another person who was experiencing insomnia over some poignant questions or was it because they had the same questions and wanted to answer them? Let us look more closely at the posts.

Brian Gaff says "I am sure there will be some answers here, and I look forward to reading them, but I do have some thoughts". His comments suggest that he too is curious to know the answers to the questions and wants to contribute with the anticipation that others will also contribute.

Gordon Pusch is more methodical in his post. He doesn't give any reasons or indication of why he is answering the questions. He simply answers the questions as if it is his duty to answer them. Did he answer the questions because they were simply asked and he has some knowledge in cosmology so that he was intrinsically compelled to share his answers? Without talking to him directly we will not know.

Robert Weekly paraphrases an article from Discover Magazine that says, "Apparently, the Universe is just one of those things that happens from time to time". Then he comments about the quote, "A very clever wording I thought". His remark suggests that he had something to say that was from another source and insightful so like Gordon Pusch he may have felt some sort of need to share knowledge.

Finally, Aaron Desilet starts off his post with "I understand that I am no scientist but this subject bothers me". Remember his post was a month later so we could speculate that he was surfing around google groups and this discussion struck a chord with him. His post would then be out of a need to explore a question that he had had with the hopes of finding answers.

In summary, we have a couple of people that appeared to post out of some sort of duty to answer questions while the other three, including the authors appear to post out of curiosity. I am, of course, making very broad statements that are based on a small sampling but I would submit that in larger discussion groups the reasons for answering questions are not so different. Duty, curiosity, altruism, quest for knowledge could all be motivations for contributing to these forums or it could be a combination of them all. Whatever the reasons, google groups appear to be alive and well with activity.

My history of the Internet: A Tale of Premosaic Days

2004-09-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

David:

Still getting used to the blog, am enjoying the exercise. I posted the history assignment last week under Hello World. So here it is as its own post. I also spent another 1.5 hrs. on the yahoo groups and participating in them. I answered questions like how anonymous I want to be or do I post my real name? Should I post a flame message to another's message I strongly disagreed with or reply more civilly. good exercise

Here is the history...

I tell my students that I did my undergrad pre-Mosaic which to them is like saying prehistoric. My first introduction to the Internet was in college with a tool called Gopher. My friend Matt introduced me to it by saying. Check out this cool thing I can do on the computer. I can go to the University of Wisconsin and view some writings that a student put on a server there. My interest lasted for a few minutes but not much longer as my intrigue for Gopher was thwarted what a slow animal it was… a feature that in the early years I had to accept. I came across social software in the way of bulletin boards. To many of my peers, bulletin boards became a source of exploring the universe whereas I thought of them simply as a gossip board. What did turn my head was email. I was a recent graduate and employee at a networking software company. My friend Brandon yelled over his cubicle to come see what he could do. I thought he may be showing off one of his stupid human tricks when I saw that he had a crowd of people around his computer. A few rows of cubicles was another employee who was yelling down to us and saying, “I sent it!” That week you would have thought our department had discovered a new planet as the novelty of sending messages back and forth became the focus of our entertainment. Little did we know then how networked games would change our working lives. Today the Internet is my lifeline for work, study and maintaining contact with my social circles. If my cable modem line goes down for any reason, I may as well use my laptop as a TV-dinner tray. Like my students I find myself wondering what life was like pre-Mosaic.

Usenet/ Newsgroups for the semi-new newbie

2004-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

It is Monday morning and I have not spent enough time on this assignment (only 1.5 hrs). Unfortunate because I like the "get involved in the community" format David and I enjoy these types of forums. In defense I have used newsgroups and bulletin boards many times and hours before (don't know if that counts) so they are not new, but never have I used google groups and I will dedicate my blog to that.

I found Google groups very cool. There are a LOT of topics, more than I expected, although upon closer examination you can see that some of the groups are defunct or others have very little postings (articles). I find it interesting that they use the term "articles". Almost like there is a lot of research that goes in to them, but the opposite is true. Most posting appear to be personal opinions and very strong ones at that.

So my overall impression of the newsgroup archive is that there a great quantity of groups, but the guality of posts and groups are limited. I wonder what kind of impact blogs and other social software mediums have had on newsgroups? I would imagine they have had a dramatic impact and the number of posts.

I looked at the rec.sport.tennis, soc.religion.islam, soc.religion.mormon, and talk.politics forums. They were all interesting and again there were strong opinions and some good questions posted that created dialog.

>>>

I jumped in to the google groups dialog this week spending a couple of hours and posting my first message to soc.religion.mormon. I am no longer anonymous!

>>>>
Total newsnet time= 5 hrs.

David and fellow bloggers. It's now Friday and I was happy to realize that when I thought I was behind I was really ahead. I spent my next two hours, to bring it to a total of five on google groups searching out what has become a so-called phenom, Napoleon Dynamite.
Though I haven't seen the movie, in two hours it feels like I have. I searched on Napoleon Dynamite and it took me all over the map and throughout different users groups from alt.fan.elvis-costello to alt.support.autism to rec.sport.pro-wrestling. You wonder why this film is being compared to the Blair Witch Project as it is grossing 30M and has stuck around for over 4 mths. and progressively moving up to #9 this week.... to quote Napoleon "frickin sweeeet".

Has this online newsgroups contributed to this fame? I can't see how it hasn't as there has been very little advertising. Word of mouth, especially here in Utah where I can't get away from the quotes, are certainly helping. My nieces and nephews quote the movie like I quoted Star Wars or Rocky at their age. Certainly this movie is not worthy... but is it??

The movie has a pretty cool website http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/napoleondynamite/epk/index.php and has branched out to t-shirts http://www.flippinsweettees.com/ and even posters http://www.art.com/asp/display-asp/_/id--19119/Aff--CONF/CTID--59561476/RFID--054402/TKID--0/posters.htm

Is this movie taking on a cult status? Am I contributing with my blog to its cultness? Would it have gotten anywhere without newsgroups and the Internet?

HELLO WORLD

2004-09-06T14:56:00.000-07:00