I’ve been deep in thought, planning a set of resources to support a community project, and have been struggling with how to best position these resources to best reflect a dynamic, engaged, face-to-face set of communities.
My initial reaction was that the communities need to exist first face-to-face, and that any online resources are supplementary and intended simply to continue and extend their conversations. The online resources are not the community. I think this part is pretty obvious.
This is a response to Cole Camplese’s great post “Should it all be Miscellaneous” - which was, itself, a response to the Penn State Web Conference (which, in turn, sounds like it was a fantastic gathering of PSU folks).
Go read Cole’s post before reading any further. It’s worth it. I’ll wait.
Really. I’ll wait. Go read it. Seriously.
OK. You’re back. Took long enough. Great post, eh? Here are my thoughts in response:
I’ve been looking for something to fill this need for awhile now, but haven’t found a decent solution.
We’ve got students coming to class with web-enabled devices (laptops, iPod Touch, iPhone, smart phones, etc…) and it makes sense to take advantage of this stuff wherever possible. Instead of making students buy and lug around yet another piece of gear, I’m looking for an effective way to provide assessment and response functionality via a web browser.
Last night, I nuked my blog. At first, I was just doing it to make a point, but I quickly reached a point where I was almost convinced I was going to leave it nuked. I was going to toss the albatross overboard, and start fresh.
But then I got an email from someone I’ve never met (although I’ve exchanged a few emails with him over the years). He convinced me to put the blog back up.
On thinking about edupunk, it strikes me that I’ve been drawn to a group of people that have embodied it for years. People that are open. That prefer to DIY. People who share, remix, mashup, and generally operate in the spirit of what is now being called edupunk. Here are my edupunk heroes, who inspire me every day (in no particular order). There are lots of other people that inspire me constantly, but when I think EDUPUNK, these are the people that really push me.
Instead of talking about edupunk, or philosophizing about what defines punk culture, Alec just went ahead and lived it. His EC&I 831 course was serious hardcore edupunk, before the term was coined.
He ran a grad course, completely in the open. He invited a whole bunch of people to join the class, where students and guests discussed and explored ideas and strategies, and shared the combined output. He modeled some serious DIY chops, drawing on more free (and non-free) bits of tech than I could track, and pushing the students into the driver’s seat as part of the process.
It’s a movement away from what has become of the mainstream edtech community - a collection of commercial products produced by large companies. Edupunk is the opposite of that. It’s DIY. It’s hardcore. It’s not monetized. It’s not trademarked. It’s not press-released. It’s not on an upgrade cycle. It’s not enterprise. It’s not shrinkwrapped.
There’s been much handwringing about the “edublogosphere” not flocking to follow self-proclaimed leaders. That people are disgusted because other people don’t clamor to follow someone else’s lead because they say they are leading something. I’m not going to link, or point fingers, or name names. I’m going to keep this post short, because I could very easily devolve into full-on rant mode.
Leadership is earned, not taken. You’re not a leader just because you say so. People shouldn’t be compelled to follow you just because you make a bunch of noise. If you are a leader, people will follow you. If you’re not a leader, they won’t. Get over it.
Twitter’s been flakier than usual this week, and supposedly the twitgineers are busy fixing database borkage and scaling stuff up and twiddling bits and furiously adjusting the machine that goes PING!
And yeah, they’ve had investors temporarily filling bank accounts to pay for the lavish web 2.0 drug binge parties development of a more robust and scalable nanoblogging platform.
But… Where is the money really coming from? It’s not advertising. It’s not subscription fees. The only other reasonably viable option is that they’re building it up to hope to sell it to some web 2.0 behemoth. And I can’t see why Yacrosoft! would pay $millions for it. Or anyone else, for that matter.
The 3 days in Saskatoon for TLt2008 were absolutely fantastic. It’s fun turning into “conference D’Arcy” - the side of me that is ever so slightly less antisocial and reclusive - the side that seems to show up at conferences. Not sure why that is, but it’s something I’ve noticed for years now. Maybe it’s the sense of being “away” - one part vacation, one part safe place to let loose.
I’ve been collecting some links to interesting educational simulations to show faculty members. There’s some great stuff out there. The list is NOT comprehensive, and I’m not including LOTS of great simulations. This is just the list I give to faculty members asking about effective educational simulations.
Sharkrunners (a Discovery Channel simulation for biology - tracking sharks using real data)
Mediated Cultures World Simulator (really cool non-technical geocultural simulation - thanks to Alan Levine for sharing the link to this one!)
Physics simulations by the University of Colorado at Boulder (thanks to Jennifer Jones for sharing this link!)
