this is your brain:

Presentation links 2011

2011-03-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

Copy-paste editors

Spellcheckplus
Grammarly.com
ESL Assistant (requires plug-in installation)

Translator engines

Microsoft translator
Babelfish (Yahoo)
Google translate
Langenberg's directory- different translators

Student work

Time is important, Maron
My dreams, Laura
do not stay alone, Mazen

Commercial software

WhiteSmoke
Ginger Software (Spectronics)

Overview, list of others

yourdictionary.com directory

Making fun of autocorrect

Damnyouautocorrect.com
textsfromlastnight.com

Take the survey! It's not too late!
(one for teachers, one for learners)

Grammar technology/Teacher's survey

Grammar technology/Learners survey

Writing

Leverett T. (2011). Negotiate with the elephant. Google docs; work in progress. Available https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1xCdZ7l2GArTAG1cte72I12yJwJAO92XkfHt1Qd-1Es4

Leverett, T. (2010, Mar.). Green line to the commons: Grammar technology takes esl/efl for a ride, Tom's esl closet. http://tomsources.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-line-to-commons-noticing-and.html.

Presentation bibliography (includes texting articles)

texting articles

2011-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:iFFvii2T4BIJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,36

Txtng: The gr8 db8 (book, Google books)

autocorrect

2011-03-14T17:50:00.000-07:00

Making fun of autocorrect programs

Damnyouautocorrect.com

or

textsfromlastnight.com

Pogue, D. (2010, June). Autocorrect follies. Pogue's posts, New York Times. http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/autocorrect-follies/. Accessed 3-11.

2011-03-05T18:16:00.001-08:00

Should we teach grammar?

The effects of texting on literacy (pdf)

on the market

2011-03-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

English grammar tool

Grammarly, "World's most accurate grammar checker"...

WhiteSmoke software

Where is that grammar going

2011-03-05T17:27:00.000-08:00

and what is that basket it's riding in?

Techdirt. (2010, Feb. 2). Technology blamed for bad grammar despite total lack of causal evidence. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100202/0246588002.shtml.

The following article will put you in the middle of a controversy, already well documented, as to whether Twitter and constant texting improve or detract from students' grammar. I've weighed in on that one elsewhere, but it occurs to me that it is impossible to separate out an argument whether people's grammar has improved or gotten worse, when the entire environment they are in has changed so radically.

In the article students flunk out of an entrance exam that requires grammatical knowledge; one author blames texting. A whole range of comments follows where people weigh in on the results of excessive texting.

I copied one comment (#37, by someone named "Rekrut") verbatim that I think represents the average person's take on grammar and texting in the modern world.

I never went to college, and I didn't have access to the internet until long after I'd left school. I've never sent a text message in my life.

I'll admit that at times, I've used some shorthand in messages, such as BTW (by the way), but I usually try to use correct grammar and spelling. I make typos and plain old mistakes, not to mention that my use of grammar would probably be considered terrible by most college professors, but at least I try.

Every single day that I read forums, I see messages from people who don't know the difference between "there", "their" and "they're", or "to" and "too". I see people putting "ed" on the end of words like "wake" or "bleed". People leave out punctuation and capitalization. They use texting conventions like "u", "ur" or "ther". I've seen messages that were so garbled that I couldn't even figure out what they were trying to say.

Such things may make sense when texting due to the more complicated process of typing on a cell phone, or the small size of most phone keyboards, but there's no excuse for it on the net. The people writing these messages are using desktops and laptops with full keyboards.

Go read the comments for ANY YouTube video and then tell me that you think the use of grammar is improving.

My comment to the author: It would be impossible to compare YouTube and online fora today to what we had twenty years ago, because we didn't have YouTube or online foran twenty years ago. The fact is, there is far more informal writing today than there used to be, and this gives people far more opportunities to spell things however they want.

I share the author's chagrin at people who don't know the proper spelling of to/too/two. It always seems to me that, for example, an ESL teacher aware that other ESL teachers are among his/her "friends" on Facebook, for example, would simply get the right one, even in an informal environment such as Facebook. But it's an informal environment; what kicks in an automatic editing response for me, may not do that for other teachers, and, though I had thirty years to develop that editing response, and use it pretty much all of the time (since 99% of the time it was required) - for today's teacher, 30% may not be enough of the time to make it kick in instantaneously as I would expect.

Add technology, delete skills?

2011-03-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

I am interested in the claim that technological support such as spell-check and grammar-check actually makes people lose skills. I have always tended to believe this but actually have no concrete proof, and I find it a complicated question. Someone once pointed out to me that when the printing press was invented, humans lost their ability to memorize huge works (such as The Iliad or The Odyssey) which they had previously memorized in their entirety; now, such a huge and complete memory simply wasn't necessary, so we lost it. It could also be said that with calculators we lost the skill to do huge sums, etc., and that with any kind of technological support there will be some kind of corresponding loss in what most people are able to do on their own, when measuring the population.

So, we look around, and we say, spelling sure has gone to hell, since the advent of spell-check. Actually, I've been known to say that, but I'm not sure it's true, and I'm not sure other people would say the same thing. For one thing, there is a lot more informal writing these days, so it's much more common that one is reading blogs, online fora, chat, all kinds of things that encourage a general quickening of conversation, and loosening of need for correctness. Also, technological support has crept up; it used to be, that when typing on a blog or online forum, you didn't have the support of spell-check, but now you're more likely to; also, spell check has gotten better, so, now it's able to fix errors that were routine several years ago.

An example of this was the their/they're/there problem. It seemed for a while that everybody and their brother was making this mistake; it exploded. I thought, for a while, that within the general population there were just a lot fewer people who knew the difference. But that's only partly true. Thirty years ago, only the most literate of us ever made it to print, now everybody can be published with a single stroke, so we are seeing a far more accurate picture of what the average person knows. But fast-forward just a few more years, and now the machines have become able (virtually) to fix this problem, and now again I see much fewer their/they're/there errors.

Let's do a longitudinal study of people's actual knowledge of the difference between their/they're/their. As I said, thirty years ago, only a percentage of people knew the difference, but they were the ones that always got published, and there was always an editor to catch them if they for some reason missed on their story's way to the press. The only stuff that was published was stuff that had been vetted by editors in newsrooms and magazine offices, and you mostly saw all correct usage in this area. The actual knowledge of the actual population was much more dismal. If you were to make a simple test people would have flunked it in droves, just as they would now.

So the next question: does the advent of the machine-support, giving modern writers the impression that the machine will take care of it (even when it obviously can't always do so) actually make them less likely to learn the proper rules? It would be almost as if the impression that it is being done properly in so many areas, gives the impression that grammar in general doesn't need to be learned; that it would be a lot of effort just to learn the few rules that aren't covered properly by the machine. Thus if we were to test a cross-section of the population's knowledge of grammatical rules, they would perhaps tell us that they hadn't bothered to learn their/they're/there because they had assumed that the machine would take care of it for them, as it did all other mistakes, like its/it's (perhaps the most stubborn of them), or cut the mustard, my favorite. The machine's grammar-check systems are getting better, as we speak; they are building on previous knowledge which is quite extensive, and they are more and more able to approximate what the writer wants to say, and provide it. The question is whether people know less as a result.

In mathematics the concern over the use of calculators was justified; teachers found that if they gave kids calculators too early, the kids were unable to develop the sense of when a calculation looked wrong, which was always a kind of check on one's work; the loss of this skill made kids look bad and made them come up with numbers that were grossly unlikely. Correspondingly their advice to math teachers was, give them the calculators, but not until you've taught them some basic rules of how to make simple multiplications and divisions; so, they will always be able to check their work and see if the calculator is on the right track or not. I'm not sure if this same reasoning can be applied to spell-check/grammar-check; for one thing, we are not talking about complex calculations here. You either know the right word, or you spend a lot of difficult frustrating time trying to figure out which one is the right word (spell-check), or, you get a red line and some incomprehensible advice that gives you choices, all of which look equally mystifying (to the non-native speaker)- though, to the native speaker, some clearly sound better than others. In the case of their/they're/there or hear/here, sound is of no help. The failure to know the difference is bound to peek out at some point or another, as you struggle to finish a piece of work within a time limit of, say, two hours too much.

An obvious argument is, so we know less grammar, but, we don't have to, since the machine is taking care of so much of it now. This is an interesting argument and has several aspects to it. In my field, ESL writing, an old problem known as S-V matching has virtually gone away. People used to write he go and she eat much to our great consternation as we wondered how long it would take for them to acquire the most basic grammatical signal in our language, and we fretted over so-called "fossilization" which was the force which supposedly suppressed their ability to pick up this elemental ability and integrate it into their productive systems. Now, machines change ninety-five percent of these he eat constructions into he eats and nobody is any the wiser; we teachers assume they have mastered this -s thing even though they haven't, and we occasionally see an irregularity (such as: he who swims in shark-infested waters eat carefully); but, there were always plenty of irregularities. The other day I graded maybe 35 hand-written essays for a writing assessment; there was no technology involved or allowed, and I saw perhaps the same percentage of failure to match S-V (he eat) as I always used to. I did not see people learning it better (due to the machine) or massive failure to learn it (due to the machine), or, at least, if there were clear patterns in either direction, I didn't pick up on them.

This may be an inappropriate example simply because it involves usage more than knowledge; the vast majority of ESL students at least know that they should put an -s on certain verbs and yet still fail to do so. In far more complex situations we struggle with things we don't know and thus rely on the machine even when we can't be sure that the machine will fix anything in the right direction or pick up on mistakes. The native speaker can rely on an ear that will tell him/her whether something sounds ok, but often this is inaccurate, and we see lots of bad grammar these days. I guess I could crystallize my questions as follows and say that, if you have any input about the answers, I'd be glad to hear it and am truly open to alternative explanations for the vast wealth of data we are seeing these days.

1. Has the profusion of spell-check technology overall made people's spelling (as it appears on formal documents that they want to reflect correct spelling) better or worse? In other words, does your average person have better or worse writing in formal situations?

2. Has the profusion of spell-check technology improved their actual skill, or made it worse? One could argue this either way: 1) that, by patiently correcting every non-word, it slowly teaches us to stop making them; by guiding us to change wrong to right, it makes us notice, change wrong to right, and ultimately do right; OR, by doing something for us which we should have learned on our own, it allows us to slack and be slack, for a little too long, ultimately working against us.

The above questions dealt with spell-check and the population at large. But I'd like to expand my inquiry to grammar-check technology and to a more specific population, learners of a language or of ESL specifically.

3. Does grammar-check technology have an active role in teaching native speakers (or non-native learners) rules, either correctly or incorrectly, that alter their learning pattern so that people growing up with technology are actually learning in a different way than they did before the technology? If so, is it possible that the technology alters their path in such a way that some things are learned more quickly, while others will now take longer? I am interested in entire populations here. In other words, I'd like to know if all American writers (who, by and large, all use Word on their computers) will show a different pattern than they did twenty years ago, with respect to, say, deciding how to construct complex sentences. I suspect that all writing will become more uniform in certain ways as all grammar-check programs come to agreement on certain standards; people will learn to conform to this, but, they may deliberately change other rules or disregard some of these standardizations, even come to resent them. But with the non-native population, some structures will become harder to acquire, and may move to the end of the order, just because acquiring them is a complex process and the machine stunts their growth at every step. I set this out as a hypothesis; I suspect, for example, that making present perfect is a complex process and has been delayed wholesale by the advent of technology, which prevents learners from making the intermediary steps that would show the process of acquiring it (So, on my hand-written tests, for example, I could find I have eat or I have eating, which are beginning attempts to make I have eaten, but when typing, students having typed these forms would find them corrected to I am eating or I eat and would settle for a sure thing, thus learning not to try anything new and/or to avoid this tense altogether until they have it mastered a little better). I speculate about what happens here. I don't have enough concrete evidence.

In the big picture: time provides technological developments, and puts them in our path. We open up Word only vaguely aware that we now have a conversation going with both a green line and a red line, which we ultimately must please or at least come to terms with. We grammar fanatics have no problem with this as we are reasonably confident that we know when the lines are misguided. The lines are ubiquitous; they influence every writer at every moment; they do far more damage, and have far more influence, in cases where the writer is really not confident about any of his/her language, or even intentions, or the rules that guide them. I would maintain that the lines have steady significant influence on all writing and all learning systems and that we should not carry on as if we are dealing with the same language we had, say, twenty years ago. It's somewhat like those bumps they put in the road to keep you within your lines as you drive; there is no question that they work, in that they make entire populations drive differently and more consistently and thus make driving safer; this is why they are a good investment and states such as California put millions into providing them even at the expense of a number of other things that the cost precludes. In the case of grammar-correction, steady cause-effect red-line or green-line stimuli do change our actions, I'm willing to bet on it, and I think that a steady overview of what we write, as a collective society (all pounding out our documents on Word, would be very revealing. I'd like to be more thorough, however, in finding out exactly what the results are...

recovery

2010-12-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

OK OK so I've been remiss. When the website and all my writing was washed clean, I put much of it on a blog, or at least what I needed for the 2010 grammar-check presentation. But there was actually quite a bit of it; I'm not sure I got it all. In addition, I wrote an interesting article (I thought) more or less summing up my thoughts, and putting them in readable form, for Global Study Magazine; it was accepted, but I'm not sure it was published. I will now attempt to recover some of what has gone before.

1. Grammar technology for better or worse. This is the homepage for my presentation.

2. Green line to the commons: Grammar-check takes esl/efl for a ride. This is a composite of all that I wrote before my presentation in Boston, and was in fact directed toward Boston (get the "green-line" reference?)...it includes some interesting writing, but one thing is unfortunate: the one called "grammar-check theory" is really misnamed. There IS a grammar-check theory, but it's really better stated here:

3. Grammar-check theory, this blog. The essence of this, which I'd like to carry on, is two-fold. One, our linguistics training teaches us that all language creation is rule-bound, and it is: learners have an active set of rules that they apply to what they create, though that may be variable, or developmental, or even simply borrowed from L1 (see interlanguage theory). Technology adds an important element to this. Though not all language creation goes through technology, enough does so that we must recognize a new paradigm (so to speak): Most writing is a combination of a student's original grammar, fed into technology - word's grammar-check and spell-check, if nothing else - then altered according to technology's advice, so that the final product (what we see) is a combination of the writer's rules, the computer's automatic alterations, the computer's advice and the writer's response to that advice. This theory should be written to account for the fact that, in some cases, the writer has started with native language funneled through a machine and then fed to a grammar-check program.

In addition, what students know or believe is often a product of what they have experienced from these programs (as well as other things, of course). In other words, Spell-check, grammar-check and other grammar technology have an active influence on students' learning and belief systems, whether or not they accept a teacher who actively contradicts some of those teachings. In other words, when a grammar-check program tells a student to rewrite something, the student notices, and, on some level learns, whether that machine has given good advice or not.

4. My own advice to myself was, go talk to more people; this came from the fact that, in mentioning it to only two, I got astounding insight, and even those two were merely interested but casual observers. Some of this is related here:

tell it to the machine, my latest blog post, 6-5-10

but, in fact, this blog and the writing are littered with others. It seems the influence of the machine is pervasive for native speakers as well as language learners, and it's well overdue that we start looking seriously at the effects that it has on both our perceptions and actions as we type our daily diatribes (this included).

5. simplish: unexplored possibility (11-09)

6. presentation links, (3-22-10)

7. changing grammar check (3-10)

8. Finally, the Global Study article. There's no sign of it; it's vanished. I submitted it, and it was accepted; it may in fact be published someday, or, maybe it already has. I sense that this magazine is in some trouble surviving in these rough times. It may be possible that it in fact got lost out there. But it's important to me; I will keep looking.

As I peruse my own writing, I find it disorganized, and I'm disappointed by that. I see interesting ideas, I already knew that; but, they are not presented well. Perhaps I can redo that this time. I reenter this project with several goals:

a. Widen my scope...Talk to more teachers. Talk to students also. Spy over people's shoulders. Ask the lab people.
b. Put my theory in succinct, readable form, in a good place. I need something clear to point to.
c. This time, at the presentation, be able to show how to set this stuff up and use it, anytime, anywhere. Last time I kind of fumbled; I don't actively use it myself; nor do most of us fluent writers.
d. Survey again. What do people use? Why? How much of this active machine translation from native language actually happens? Why is this a problem?

This blog remains the place where most of my ideas have ended up. In particular, notice that 3-7 are all here. I hope to keep it that way. The Tom's ESL Closet blog is not particularly readable, though it served its purpose in saving valuable resources. Unfortunately, as I've said, what I put here does not come out very well organized. Maybe I can address this problem. Stay tuned.

tell it to the machine

2010-06-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article recently that summed up what I've learned about grammar-checkers and their influence on people; it said the usual stuff: in general, they're bad for learning; in general, they are advancing but not fixing people's grammar; the kinds of mistakes are changing, and the salience of the remaining ones; the machine has an active interaction with the average writer that must be accounted for in the conception of the learner's system as a working language creating system.

So I showed this article to my friend, a guy I work with who happened to enter my office as I was finishing it. His response was interesting enough so that I will paraphrase it here and beg his forgiveness if I get any of it wrong. The words are far from exact but I believe I'm getting the gist of what he said.

"this is interesting (he says) because I definitely find it to be true that the machine influences the way I create language. I'm learning Japanese, and spending a lot of time texting on my phone, to my fiance, in both English and Japanese. So Japanese has this particle, -mo, and you use it all the time, it means something like "and". But as I use it on my phone, the phone program lengthens it out into "months" or some other such long word, and I then have to back-space, in texting, all those letters, to get back to "mo". So I find myself discouraged from using the word. I use it less, because I know what a hassle that is."

His comments to me make clear a number of interesting possibilities.

One is that we instinctively go for the short cut in a wide range of circumstances, so that if we type or chat, making short versions of words is an entirely natural thing to do, and avoiding words that are too long or too much of a hassle to write, is similarly natural. Second, the machine actually imposes a different reality on what we would assume to be a simple action, typing "mo." the machine in effect makes a two letter word into a six-stroke experience, and we can expect it to do the same in other circumstances; one other familiar example would be someone who wants to deliberately spell his/her name in lower-case letters, only to find that the machine is automatically capitalizing in these circumstances. The ogden nashes in this world have to find names (like ogden?) that the spell-checkers don't recognize; otherwise they have to battle the machines just to assert what they really want.

This brings up the final of my observations, and that is that the automatic functions of these machines are far more insidious in their overall influence of our writing in general- although, most of the time, they change, automatically, routine misspellings and typos like wierd or thier. They fix it; I don't have to mess with it, and overall, that's good, that is a positive influence on my writing. It's a negative influence on my learning, and definitely an impediment to my general ability to create new words at will. I'm always aware of that red line, and have to have a pretty strong motivation to leave it on a paper that I am, as a constant and impulsive editor, rereading constantly. The process of editing creates a conversation and the red and green lines are voices in the conversation: not nice voices, but critical voices which build up the pressure in my head.

I guess my last suggestion is that since this co-worker had interesting insight, and my wife also offered the bit about spelling one's name with small letters, it would really be good for me, at this point, to interview language learners and others who actively text, write or relate in some way to this insidious creature, and have insight on the influence it has on the mind and the writing process; I'm not sure how I'd word the questionnaire, but I know what I'm looking for, and I'm reasonably confident that I'll find significant influence. Life is a series of reactions to tiny little obstacles in the road, things that influence our behavior enough and often enough to permanently alter our perception or at least our understanding of what we're doing and why.

changing grammar-check

2010-03-22T14:02:00.001-07:00

To change settings in Word:

Open Word
Under Word, click on “Preferences”
Under “Authoring and Proofing Tools”, click on “Spelling and Grammar”

Presentation links

2010-03-22T10:24:00.001-07:00

Copy-paste editors

Spellcheckplus
ESL Assistant (requires plug-in installation)

Translator engines

Microsoft translator
Babelfish (Yahoo)
Google translate
Langenberg's directory- different translators

Student work

Time is important, Maron
My dreams, Laura
do not stay alone, Mazen

Commercial software

WhiteSmoke
Ginger Software (Spectronics)

Others

yourdictionary.com directory

other writing
Leverett, T. (2010, Mar.). Green line to the commons: Grammar technology takes esl/efl for a ride, Tom's esl closet. http://tomsources.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-line-to-commons-noticing-and.html.

grammar checkers- one more time

2010-01-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

I am about to write a big piece, basically for my TESOL presentations (below)- and they will make these basic points:

1. Teachers must adjust to grammar-checkers as a force that has influenced our writers significantly and will continue to do so. Every writing product is a combination of natural skill and technological alteration, though in some cases students may be prevented from changing, unable or unwilling to change, what they write. Even if the teacher completely rejects or denies the use of technology, the student has been influenced by previous use of grammar-checkers and thus today's students have a different view of grammar than yesterday's students.

2. A teacher's primary choice is to teach to the inherent skill of the writer, rejecting the real forces of technology that that writer would have available in most cases, or to teach to the real situation, teaching students how to use grammar-checkers effectively and even pointing out the best ones that are available, or the best ways to set the ones that are already in the average word program. I don't know the answer to this question. Each option has benefits and drawbacks.

3. Grammar-checkers have clearly influenced what we see on our daily papers. In general, simple mistakes are gone: adding -s and matching subject/verb, for example, is now a non-question, most of the time, much as basic misspellings have disappeared. But while we no longer see non-words in our papers (of any students who use spell-check consistently), the mistakes we do see are harder to analyze; it's harder to get at what they intended, because the technology has removed them a step from the error-form that would have shown this to us.

In general, any learning process that takes incremental mistaken steps to master, become much larger problems with grammar technology, because the technology will highlight all mistaken forms and bring the learner back to GO. For example, a learner needs to try "I have lived in Carbondale for ten years" and starts by writing "I have live." This is actually a partial step toward construction of the right tense. But the grammar-check doesn't allow it, and instead instructs the student to return to "I live," which he does. Present perfect disappears. Even its emergence is delayed; no step can be taken until it is a complete step.

In general, there is some confusion about what is "grammatical" and what is not. Grammar-check irons out the passive for sylistic reasons, but doesn't tell the second-language student why; students aren't sophisticated enough to distinguish what is being changed for sylistic reasons, and what is being changed for grammatical reasons. We see less or no passives, and inappropriate actives. We assume that they haven't learned it, or aren't aware of it; in fact, they may be trying it, and they may be aware that their subject is the receiver of the action. It takes them much longer to figure this out, because the influences in their lives (the technology) are working against ordinary and productive incremental learning.

4. Some general laws and practices from the world of spell-check apply. First: it's ubiquitous; it was put on our computers before we realized it, and without our asking for it. Second, the better writers use it so sparingly that they are hardly aware of the huge influence it could have on the more mistake-prone writers; thus, teachers remain largely unaware of its huge influence; third, it has not so much eliminated poor spelling, as changed the nature of it, and in fact has made much of the native-speaking world worse spellers, in their natural state, because the technology so routinely changes their poor spelling that they don't feel it's necessary to bother actually learning every word.

5. The market for making and getting people to use new and better grammar-checkers is an aggressive one, so they are getting better and using more of the true power of computers (specifically, concordancing capabilities) to help them become better. My feeling is that this will lead to an incremental tightening of the world of grammatical and spelling errors; there will be fewer and fewer of these errors, but errors will be impossible to eliminate entirely, and people will become increasingly sensitive to the ones that remain. It will soon be possible to simply buy adequate grammar, and that will be good enough for a large number of people in most situations.

6. In the absence of any comment by the teacher, the student can be expected to feel that any of these programs, even the ones that appear naturally on their word program, are probably not approved of by the teacher, and thus must be used stealthily. Students of course prefer to write at home for other reasons as well. But the difference between writing with all the time to interpret grammar-check's suggestions, and writing with the impression, however mistaken, that one should not reveal one's dependence on the technology to the teacher, creates a wider and wider gap between what is produced at home and what is produced in limited time, in a lab where a teacher is watching. This difference, I have often attributed to wives, friends, girlfriends, etc. It may actually be that the technology is acting as one of these kibbitzers, one which often knows the right answer, but not always, and certainly can't give a reasonable, understandable explanation for why one alternative is better than the other. Nevertheless, it's a force that is at work on virtually every paper, so it's one we should pay closer attention to, and help the student manage his/her relationship with it, as we would with the student's relationship to a text.

more on grammar checkers

2010-01-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Daws, N. (2007, Nov. 19). New online spelling and grammar checker. Nick Daws' Writing Blog. http://www.mywritingblog.com/2007/11/new-online-spelling-and-grammar-checker.html. Accessed 1-10.

SpellCheckPlus

Daws, N. (2007, Jan. 10). Review: WhiteSmoke Writing Software.
Nick Daws' Writing Blog. http://old.mywritingblog.com/writer/2007/01/review-whitesmoke-writing-software.html. Accessed 1-10.

WhiteSmoke 2010, commercial software

EnglishSoftware

yourdictionary.com- free online grammar checker (very slow loading)

Ginger Software - contextual spelling and grammar software

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:rhtqdiJXQ5MJ:www.ldc.upenn.edu/acl/W/W03/W03-0206.pdf+grammar+checkers+learning&cd=34&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:j3Wr6wYIkygJ:www.ictev.vic.edu.au/event/2009_Conf_Presenter_Notes/Students_evalutions.ppt+grammar+checkers+learning&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

TESOL 2010

2010-01-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Internet Fair Classics
TH or FR 2-2:50, Electronic Village
Grammar Checkers: For better or worse

This presentation will have an overview of what grammar-checkers do to learning, both good and bad, and what improvements in them can be expected to do in the future; different teaching strategies are explored, from disabling and prohibiting them entirely to learning and teaching students to work with them, even recommending the best of them.

TESOL 2010

2010-01-05T12:32:00.001-08:00

Internet Fair

Grammar technology for better or worse
2-3, Fri. Mar. 26

Writing teachers are used to the ubiquitous spell-check and the oocasional odd but inapproriate results of its consistent use. They are not prepared, however, to recognize the results of consistent grammar-check use, in two respects. First, grammar-check, even in its most primitive forms, altered the learning and perception of its esl/efl users. Second, dramatic improvements in recent years have changed what technology can do for writers, thus changing both the writer's and the teacher's challenges; for the teacher, the biggest problem is whether to teach to the student's own skills, or to accept the technology as a permanent part of the medium. This session looks at what is default on most computers, what is available and increasingly common on the market, what it does for and to students, and what exactly teachers can do about it.

Grammar-check theory

2009-11-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

Leverett, T. (2009, Nov.) Grammar-check theory. Unpublished manuscript. Available http://cesl.siuc.edu/teachers/pd/tech1c.html.

I have to admit that what I've been writing is somewhat rudimentary, but it has occurred to me that it's important to document my thinking here, because I think we're moving into a world where the grammar that a person produces is actually a complex result of several forces: the automatic functions of one's grammar-checker, with the responses to the grammar-checker layered on top of that; in addition, the grammar that any given learner carries around is a result of interplay with grammar-checkers; this exchange has basically provided some learning, if only by a rudimentary system of stimulus-response activity.

It started out with the spell-check, frankly, and spell-check is probably the best way to understand it. The student tries to spell "fate" as in "fate of the crocodile" but spells "fait" which the spell-check then corrects as "faith". The student not only believes that his word, fate, is now properly spelled, but also walks out of the situation a little closer to mistaking "fate" and "faith" as separate words. The spell-check thus simultaneously alters his production, and teaches him something wrong. This is not to say it can't be undone by a teacher or by other experience. It's to say that what is happening is real and has real effect, no matter how miniscule.

If the effect is to be understood in its entirety, it can explain more important behaviors in the esl/efl classroom. For example, students get quizzical looks when teachers explain the passive. This is because grammar-check has been ironing out passives for years now, or to be more specific, not allowing students to make them, without marking them with a green line. It is intended to remind the native writer that passive is to be avoided (as pedantic, or cold, stylistically outdated) if possible, but in effect implies to the student that it is wrong or to be avoided for more basic right/wrong reasons. The student with his/her quizzical look is in fact reflecting a combination of factors; he/she has been taught, perhaps, in several classrooms, that passive is acceptable; yet he/she has been slapped, so to speak, by a green line, whenever he/she has tried to create one. It occurs to him/her, perhaps only for a moment, that he/she doesn't know whom to believe.

The theory is recognition of simple fact: that the beliefs the student brings to the situation are a combination of factors, both classroom teaching and technological stimulus-response. In the same way, any given writing product is a similar combination. It may have no SCGC (spell-check grammar-check combination) applied to it whatsoever, because it is handwritten and spontaneous, or because those have been disabled on any given machine. Or it may have whatever is provided as a default (this would probably account for over 95% of papers done in our lab, given what I've observed); but, these could be divided in terms of their users' awareness of, and active interplay with, the programs that are there. Some students literally address every green line that they encounter; they address each one, one at a time, while writing, and struggle with it until it disappears. Others wait until a paper is done, but do the same, essentially. Still others struggle with it a little, but take a more proactive approach and decide for themselves, sometimes, to ignore it. My point is that there are degrees to which each student responds to what is there, and their final product, naturally, reflects this.

Finally, a small percentage, which I couldn't even venture to guess, reflects active intervention with the system that is there. Some students, aware of how they can change or alter the settings beneath their grammar-checker, actively change or alter them, at least at home, in the privacy of their own den. Others are aware of the programs that are available on the free market, and crunch what they write through them. Again, this may happen only at home, or may happen on any machine that has the web open and available for free exchange with a word program. It can be assumed that the student will believe that the teacher won't approve of this, until it is proved to him/her otherwise; in other words, if you, the teacher, have said nothing about grammar-check programs, don't expect students to volunteer to you that they use a better one than the one your computer now offers as a default. Assume that they do it when you aren't watching. Don't assume that all do it every time, but assume that you don't really know what happens when you aren't watching, unless you have successfully disabled everything. And even then, watch out for the pin drives!

Not that this is all bad. I still say that the teacher should be open with the students about it, in any case, because all of these innovations are part of the student's world and ultimately part of what will create everything that student will write. Why not at least be able to discuss what happens, and why? Even the teacher who disables every SCGC should at least be able to tell students why, what grammar-checkers do, and why disabling them is the best option. Teaching a person how to live without a car is entirely different from teaching how to drive- which better prepares a person to live in the modern world? I can't say that I know.

Having not taken a stand on the essential question in this debate, I can say with certainty, at least, that rapid improvement in the nature and quality of grammar-checkers will not totally alter the landscape, or the theory as I've laid it out. It will simply make it harder to figure out what we are seeing.

simplish

2009-11-09T12:59:00.000-08:00

Funes-Gallanzi, M. (n.d.). English translation tool: New internet "translation" tool brings scientific know-how closer to foreign students. Global Study Magazine. http://www.globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/453/. Accessed 11-09.

Describes the frustration of using translation tools in general, but also the use of simplish (http://www.simplish.org), which will translate all articles into a simple version of English. (???)

This brings up an interesting possibility, obviously; this is one that I haven't explored.

grammar checkers revisited

2009-11-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

At first, I thought that there were basically two strategies for dealing with grammar checkers as part of the student writing environment: 1) develop the students' skills independent of the grammar checkers, either ignoring them, or treating them as an unnecessary complication, when what matters is what the student knows or can produce correctly without them; or 2) consider them part of the students' environment, in the lab, or wherever word is installed; help students to learn to handle and manage the programs themselves, and teach students how to use them to their advantage.

I have now come to see that even #2 is quite complicated. I was leaning toward #2 myself; they are, after all, an ubiquitous part of our world, along with spell-checker; they have gotten more sophisticated; students can be expected to know where they are, what they are, and how to use them to their full advantage, in any case. But, I can now divide #2 into several possible strategies:

1) deal only with the checker that is the default on whatever machine the student is using, in the lab; let them deal with the rest, at home, out of your site;
2) give students an overview of grammar-checkers with respect to maximizing their potential; show them the best that are free, on the web; teach them to find and use the best of the best, whenever they are available;
3) find out the extent that they have used them in the past, in order to be aware of the twisted view they now have of certain grammatical situations (i.e. passive); lecture them on what has happened to them and what they can expect if they continue their dependence.

This isn't all; I haven't quite thought it out yet. It seems obvious that we teachers are really concerned about the students themselves, their true skills, their success in the future. But there's only so much time in the world. Why should we beat ourselves over the head teaching -s if a machine will simply fix every single one? Should we then only be concerned about the exceptions, and teaching students to spot when the machine isn't covering their back? The world is now full of spell-check absurdities: people using what spell-check has provided, rather than what is right, thus showing off, inadvertantly, both their dependence on the machine, and their lack of real understanding of which word is appropriate. We teachers can thus spot the machine-free, the machine-dependent, and those who are in between. What do you do? Encourage the dependence, or wean them entirely? Teach to the middle, making them aware of the dependence and the problems it brings? I can't answer this question even for spell-check, let alone grammar-check, but I've come to some conclusions based on what I've learned.

One particularly instructive story involves the students who no longer capitalize "I" because "we're used to Word always doing it for us" - not because they don't know it's necessary. It's a matter of how you spend your time, and what you get used to; do you have that green line with you at every turn? Do you always respond to it? Do you keep struggling until it goes away?

Grammar checkers have automatic correction, which means that on many machines it is impossible to make i + 1, for example, because the machine will change the single i to capital, regardless of whether you intend it, until you learn how to disable the function, and the vast majority probably never learns how to disable this, or even alter it in any way.*

In the same way grammar checkers allow a variety of settings, including formal language, etc.; I have no idea (yet) what these do to their language, or whether that is ultimately good or bad for them; it's possible that the vast majority of students, like me, have and use word functions without thinking about it much, and don't alter such functions as a matter of course, and routine politeness to the majority of users of a machine. But a person who chooses to alter the functions of a grammar checker can just as easily undo what they did, if they know what they are doing, and have just a minute or two before and after writing. One problem: how can one predict whether or not one will have those minutes when finished?

Again, I'm talking strategy here. If we know the ideal machine, and feel confident that we can point our students to its correct and prudent use, will they have the luxury of using it in every experience? In the iBT? In the English department's comprehensive writing exam (here, I have no idea if we even have one)?

They will almost certainly have spell-check; every Word does, doesn't it? It would only be an extreme Luddite who would disable the entire program, wouldn't it?

In any case I can now say that the middle road: both teaching to the student and his/her skills, and being aware of the monkey and what it does, and teaching awareness of it, are necessary. There is no way to free oneself of the whole environment, and be completely immersed in either buying into the best of the machines, or rejecting them entirely.

*I have no proof of this, independent of watching my students. I can say that in general they don't even seem to try to alter the functions of the lab computers, but that may be because they long ago figured out, or told each other, that they couldn't; but I don't even know that for a fact. POrhaps they can, and don't. Or, never, in front of the teacher, if it can be avoided.

bloggers' tips

2009-08-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Tips for blogging
http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/08/blogging-english-language-teachers-tech.html

Tips for using Twitter
http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/08/english-language-teachers-guide-to.html

resources from Carla, Terrie's Twitter, TESOL

2009-03-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Academic blogging: Promoting your research on the web
http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/2009/03/academic-blogging-promoting-your.html

http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com/2009/03/pathways4collaboration-by-dafne.html
Pathways4collaboration

http://www.geocities.com/sgbonn/ResourcesandProjects.html
Make your own VoiceThreads

Example of how VoiceThreads are used
http://msu-sugiyama0608.blogspot.com

http://web.me.com/janecurtisweb/i-Caught,_YouTube._We_All_Benefit/Home.html
ESL video idea, Jane Curtis

http://zotero.com
for research writing

grammar technology cont'd

2008-11-22T13:40:00.000-08:00

I'm using this weblog to write down my thoughts as I'm mulling over a lot of different things. There is no secret here; actually all of CESL has access to this weblog, can see it, change it or whatever; furthermore, most of what I write is not secret either. As far as I know, grammar-check was installed in every word program in every computer in CESL; although some programs have the new Word, some do not, but nevertheless all have grammar-check, and it's similar, as far as I know, on each; no one has ever mentioned disabling it, or giving us the choice whether we wanted it installed or not. It's like spell-check; it's part of the machine.

Now, it's not clear to me whether that's good or bad, but several things have become obvious. One, it's influence is not minor; it changes much of what they write, much of the time. This means that not only do we not see exactly what they know or don't, we also don't see what they've learned, or whether they've learned. We have another authority in our midst, and in whatever way, everyone has come to live with this.

Let's consider what happens. I give a writing assignment at the highest level; usually there is plenty of time to finish it. Some students use grammar-check as they write; I can see them consulting the computer advisor to tell them when to change something and how to change it. Some wait until they are done, and then go through it methodically, making choices for both spell-check and grammar-check, asking the computer if they want, what's the reason. Some, I am pretty sure, never consult the reason, but nevertheless make deals with the language until the green line goes away. And some ignore it altogether; either they don't know what the green line is, or they choose to ignore it, or they run out of time. Sometimes people are inconsistent; they clearly use spell-check on one day, and clearly don't on another. This could be because of time, or because of varying perceptions of the importance of the assignment, or how badly it is necessary to spell right, or use proper grammar. After all, in many cases, there is very little punishment for using wrong grammar; I have done this delilberately.

Yet, what they produce still manages to break legions of rules. It is abundantly clear that their natural grammar is much weaker than that of similar classes that came through the system years, or terms, ago. They are not putting together simple sentences well; they have no time on their verbs; they haven't bothered to learn simple grammatical tricks like making simple comparatives (more ___ than ____). My complaints go on and on; no reason to get me started here.

I'm inclined to write out the data so that I can see it better, and see what they do, how the machine changes it, why the machine would not change some of it, and why the machine changes some things systematically, both positive and negatively (from so-called "false positives", like passives, to actives, and correct changes, from singular-plural mismatches to other things). I'm curious exactly what it is doing, and what that means to us as teachers. But here I have another problem: I have not asked them if they minded being part of a grand experiment. It is, after all, a class; my job is to teach them, not to systematically grab what they write and publish with it.

Yet, there are all kinds of things happening. One is, they are publishing quite a bit of it, making it public, with only the grammar-check and not any other human intervention. Another- they are writing volumes of things, good and bad, about all nature of things; there is plenty of data. And finally, and I'm convinced of this: they are using grammar-check on almost all of it.

One way to get at what grammar-check is doing is to disable the machine, or to make them write things out in hand. That would certainly be a possibility. And it would be a possibility for all classes, all the time. In other words, teach them good grammar in isolation, regardless of what they can get a machine to point out for them. This would be good for my study, certainly, because I would get a better picture of what they are starting out with, which I think is a picture we sorely lack at this point, especially in the high levels. But as an overall teaching strategy, I'm not sure it's the answer, because it ignores the fact that, wherever they are going, they will probably have grammar-check with them. It would make more sense to teach them how to use it well, how to put it in perspective, how to make good grammar before they put it through GC.

What to do? Good question.

passive aggressive

2008-11-20T19:37:00.000-08:00

Fourteen years ago, we taught students to use passive voice in scientific reports, because that's what scientists did. Mice were placed in a maze and were observed, etc. While making a report, the scientist removed himself/herself from the picture with the passive voice.

But the tide turned against the passive, and the prevailing opinion especially among social scientists was that it wasn't cool to deny one's responsibility, so the better writers just made those sentences active.

Now grammar-check, at least the prevailing grammar-check on the new Word 2008, has gone ahead and considered passive wrong, giving writers a green line under passive constructions and suggesting they iron them out and make them active like good writers do.

There are several problems with this. First, passive constructions aren't wrong; they're just bad style, and even then, they're not always bad style. Second, grammar-check is passing up boatloads of other bad grammar that is wrong, so it seems a little misguided to pick on something that's easy enough for a computer to find, but which really doesn't need to be changed all that badly.

Which brings up my last point. Grammar-check is being used by ESL students at all levels, all the way down to the point where they are first learning passive, but also, at the point where they are trying to produce all manner of interesting variants of good English. How are they supposed to know wrong from bad style? Obviously they don't. These days, when you present passive voice, or even discuss it with them, they look at you with a slightly quizzical look, as if to say, I know someone who calls this wrong. We have a case of conflicting authorities.

green line to the commons

2008-11-19T18:12:00.000-08:00

No sooner did I begin to focus on passive, and the interesting set of verb constructions that my students come up with daily, than this afternoon, first thing, one of my better students called me over and asked me to explain a green line that was under a perfectly grammatical passive sentence; I couldn't find any grammatical problems with the sentence, and eventually I walked away and on to other pressing business.

Several things are remarkable about the event; I will get the exact sentence as soon as possible, as I had to leave her paper at school where the printer broke down minutes before I had to leave at 5:00, thus causing a certain amount of disorganization. But, I suspect a number of patterns here, one of which is that, as I have learned, grammar-check simply doesn't like passive, even when, given a certain noun and certain verb, passive is the best option. As a line-editor I tend to take the noun and verb given to me, and make the passive correctly, because it is easier for me, wanting to write as few words as possible, to add a "was" or "is" and leave the noun and verb in place. The student, after all, has supplied the noun and verb; why should I change them? Grammar-check, however, doesn't see it that way. Why not rewrite the sentence active? It's usually possible. But it requires rewriting the entire sentence.

What happens, I believe, is that students rewrite the whole sentence, and end up with a misformed but active sentence that grammar-check doesn't mind. This doesn't mean that they started out with a correct sentence; it means that the process of negotiating with the green line ultimately led them to a misformed active sentence that, ultimately, was acceptable to grammar-check.

More about this later. A collection of these "misformed actives" will follow, as soon as possible.

more on blogging

2008-11-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

Downes, S.: Educational blogging.

this is your brain on technology

2008-11-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

ok ok so this site is getting sleepy...no posts since April. That's terrible. I have no excuse, absolutely none. I have reasons, but no excuse.

Reasons: One: too busy. Two: I wrote proposals about blogs for the TESOL ("When everyone publishes everything" was my favorite) but they were rejected for the first time; the chat one, however, was accepted. My thoughts about chat are here. But there's more to it than that.

Blogs have become somewhat humdrum; they have a little dip in popularity; they're a little too static and permanent for people. On Facebook, however, it's a happening thing, things you write disappear after a while. No pressure on you to make it a work of art, or make it permanent. So the world to some degree has left the blog media to its politics, its mommy blogs, and the static world of what we used to call "media." Using them to teach? How pedestrian.

Now in my own teaching world they are still lively; students have good ones; the classes have good ones; things happen. I still stand by them. I just take them for granted. Of course we put all our papers on blogs...why else would we write them? Of course we separate the abstract from the paper, and link it...why else would we write one? Yet, when it came time to write proposals, I was tapped out on the subject, and still am. Don't know if I want to do another showcase on the same topic...

I was drawn back to this blog for other reasons.

Spell-check: Good or Bad?

The new direction of my research is this: I am convinced that these programs, spell-check and grammar-check, influence the way we learn. I am not sure whether it is good or bad but I suspect that some elements of it are bad. Of course, one argument goes: why should we learn to spell if a machine will do it for us? It is possible that with a good enough grammar-check, we won't need to learn grammar either...then of course I might be out of a job. But I don't think this is going to happen right away.

This post contains a very simple but basic principle. This teacher is very self-aware and noticed the change in his own behavior from when he switched from a program with a comprehensive spell-check to one with a more klunky, awkward one: he learned faster with the second. The harder the work, the more you gain by learning; the more you gain, the faster you learn. Thus spell-check, by making correct spellings easily available, make people learn more slowly, or not at all.

It is well-known, I think, that spell-check has made the world into poorer spellers. We no longer see non-words on paper, but we also see a lot more wrong words, since spell-check does not tell you which one is right. And people don't look it up. Today I read about the permits in Egypt (they are famous; mummies are buried in them) and was fortunately, by context, able to figure out what the topic was. So you have people doing their best and still ending up way off base. But a more pertinent question is: does their learning catch up to them? Do they learn spelling more slowly, not at all, or what?

This is your brain: this is your brain on technology.

TESOL 2008 handout

2008-04-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Teaching writing in online and paper worlds
Writing IS Demonstration, Liberty Suite 2, Sheraton Hotel
4:00-4:45 TH April 3, 2008, TESOL Convention, NYC
Thomas Leverett, CESL, So. Illinois Univ.-Carbondale
Carbondale IL USA leverett@siu.edu

Homepage for this presentation:
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/tw.html
(also includes the following)
Communicative competence in the digital age (tw1.html)
Fitting weblogs into a coherent writing pedagogy (tw2.html)
Publishing is non-count, assignments are count (tw3.html)
Digital fluency as goal and objective (tw4.html)
Always in MyFace: Social networking becomes a necessity (tw5.html)
brb: Using chat in writing classes (tw6.html)
Space after period: Line editing as a way of life (tw7.html)

Best of times, worst of times

1. This is a story of two revolutions.
2. The first, the communicative revolution, taught that it’s impossible to separate a language from the context and the culture that it’s in. This, at the time, was applied to oral fluency, the spoken word, considered at that time to be the heart of the language.
3. The second, the digital communication revolution, has made it clear that communication will happen in whatever mode is easiest, most convenient and most beneficial for most people most of the time. Therefore, writing, and specifically chat, will be much more important for my students than it was for us.
4. A teacher can maintain that writing can be separated from digital environments; can continue to teach essays and research papers without ever putting them online or touching the online media outside of Google, Word and Wikipedia. But a teacher can’t do that and still call himself/herself communicative.

Putting writing on weblogs

5. Teachers’ greatest fears are: first, they are teaching something (technology, technical factors) that they don’t clearly understand. Second, the average writing assignment is too boring to publish and let everyone see. Third, weblogs, the web, and online communication are risqué, slightly dangerous, and scary, and truly embracing another mode of communication may be irreversible, a move toward an abyss or into a raging current.
6. Students who truly get used to publishing both on paper and online get more used to understanding things like margins, spaces, indentation, and italics, in different environments,. Their view of standards is more temporal- as it should be.
7. One objection to putting things online is the possibility of it being copied. This is a problem anyway. Online, at least, we are where we can do something about it.
8. The greatest advantage weblogs offer over paper is the link- they can link to what they are talking about; link to their sources; link their abstract to their research paper; link to their friends, etc. They can learn not to write “click here.”
9. The other huge difference between the weblog and the paper worlds is that what goes on the weblogs generally stays there as part of a permanent archive; whereas the digital appears temporary, it is really quite the opposite. The paper version, clean, stapled in the corner, rots in some dresser or closet until moving day.
10. Writing classes, sometimes many students at a time, suffer from a general paralysis: lack of confidence necessary to produce an essay or three per term, under pressure and a heavily graded situation. My response was to increase the writing by more than double, and publish it all.
11. Since weblog posts, including essays and research papers, can be found by Google trollers and others, at any time, it is useful and necessary to prepare for that eventuality, and prepare all writers for it.
12. I have become used to line-editing large quantities of writing in preparation for publishing. This goes against grammar theory that I have picked up over the years, specifically philosophies saying that it is pointless, impossible or ineffective to line-edit quantities of work; or, that students should be encouraged to be more autonomous in their editing so that eventually they just write and do it themselves, presumably effectively. I have rejected the above philosophies simply because the benefits of active and effective communication outweigh the benefits I could get with other methods.

Chat, social networking, etc.

13. Chat exists at all levels, in all forms- it can be rude, short, slangy; it can be formal, rational, reasonable; it can be used in business, education, diplomacy, etc. Social networks are basically the same; they aren’t all like Facebook. Nor will Facebook stay the same for very long. As your arteries harden, and your stereotypes develop around things like chat, Facebook, Second Life, Twitter, etc., just remember: they are what you make them…somebody out there is making them useful.
14. A recent study done with my students showed: all chat; very few chat 100% in one mode (i.e. all native lang.); very few in somewhat formal English. Over 2/3 had and used online shopping, cell phone camera, computer videocam, Facebook profile (individually).
15. Students learn technology, and learn about it, basically because their success, if not survival, depend upon it. Though the same may not be true for us, we would be foolish to willfully ignore the realities of their lives.
16. The biggest difference between the communicative revolution and this one is that, at least at that time, we were fluent in the oral language, if not in the words and methods needed to teach it. In this one, we’re playing catch-up. The best way to learn how is to get started.

Bush, J. (2001-2002). A free conversation with Peter Elbow, interview, Critique Magazine, On Writing II. http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/writing/elbow.html. Accessed 3-08.

Leverett, T. (1995). Get the word out: Making a program newsletter. ILTESOL-BE, Chicago IL, Spring.

Nelson, M. W. (1991). At the Point of Need: Teaching basic and ESL writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Seimens, G. (2004, Dec.). Connectivism : A learning theory for the digital age.
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm. Accessed 3-08.

Stevens, V. (2006, Feb.). Revisiting Multiliteracies in Collaborative Learning Environments: Impact on Teacher Professional Development. TESL-EJ 10, 2.
http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej38/int.html. Accessed 3-08.

2008-03-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

Students will

2008-03-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

1. Synthesize information from a variety of sources and then present this information in a logical, linear written format;
2. Post material on class weblog, click on time stamp, print post only;
3. Construct a mini-research paper with supporting statistics, facts, and expert quotations in proper format;
4. Set up weblog account, taking note of password, url, blog title, and privacy settings;
5. Use sufficient and concrete details to fully support thesis and topic sentences;
6. Upload word file into e-mail; download from e-mail into word file and from PC to mac; from word file to blogger and from PC to blogger; save and publish in appropriate formats;
7. Demonstrate ability to summarize and/or evaluate author’s thesis, major premise and support, avoiding plagiarism at all costs;
8. Set up links effectively, writing code if necessary, and checking to make sure they work, so that references, abstracts, and templates can be linked;
9. Demonstrate active and appropriate use of quotation, paraphrase, and citation conventions, documenting sources and avoiding plagiarism at all costs;
10. Use browsers to best advantage, knowing when browser-computer combination causes problems and when to switch;
11. Incorporate awareness of audience into writing, such that papers speak to all English speakers, as opposed to only the teacher;
12. Manage a computer’s ability to connect to a printer, setting paper size, responding appropriately when jammed or having wrong settings;
13. Effectively utilize a variety of test-taking strategies, including preparing and writing full-length supported essays with a time deadline;
14. Put essays and research papers online, formatting and linking references to sources; put all work in portfolio format, making best of work available on front page, presenting header information appropriately;
15. Demonstrate awareness and active successful use of writing conventions, i.e. thesis, topic sentences, introduction, and conclusion;
16. Use clues such as URL trunks, logos and links to determine site owners, publication dates, etc.
17. Refer to sources appropriately, finding author's name; putting it in order; distinguishing publication date from retrieval date; finding publication name and including volume and issue when appropriate; including URL only when necessary;
18. Use Google and databases appropriately; choose online sources effectively, distinguishing and discriminating among kinds of articles found in Google, databases, etc.;
19. Demonstrate ability to use grammatical forms correctly and effectively, combining sentences to best advantage;
20. Manage weblog accounts to best advantage, using privacy settings, notification features, aggregation, etc.;
21. Understand and respond to class-specific paper requirements including margins, headers, titles, page numbers, titles, fonts, etc.
22. Use Google and Wikipedia effectively, culling best sources from each, yet knowing when certain sources, reference or information is inappropriate;
23. Find author, title, subtitle, publication name and date among other necessary reference information; put it in appropriate format, demonstrating awareness of difference between APA and other convention systems, for example;
24. Incorporate awareness of online audience into writing, so that the possibility of exchange on a given topic becomes a prevalent concern;
25. Internalize editing processes, in order to be able to check and edit all writing in high-pressure situations; use spell-check effectively;
26. Demonstrate awareness of self-protecting strategies for dealing with e-mail, weblogs, social networking sites, and chats effectively;

Portfolio Showcase 2008

2008-03-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

This site is still being improved. Some of these links may move or change.

As part of TESOL 2008, this post shows some student portfolios that I am proud of, and is a gateway to other student work on weblogs in the CESL system and in others.

I have taught our highest-level writing class many times. I'll start with portfolios that show well-formatted (in my view) research papers.

RESEARCH PAPERS:
(abstracts lead to research papers)

(abstracts included)
Yuii- Wal-Mart and Women, CESL EAP2
Sosuke- Magnetism's change and the effect on life- CESL EAP2
Raeed- Nene Bird, CESL EAP2
MinHo- WalMart and a Bank, CESL EAP2
Awni- Transportation pollution in New York City, CESL EAP2

SURVEY REPORTS (QUANTITATIVE)

http://lalidaphan.blogspot.com/2008/03/internet-dating-survey.html
Internet Dating Survey - Lalida

http://rachel-dhi.blogspot.com/2008/03/drinking-survey.html
Drinking Survey- Dhay

http://www.peanutskippy.blogspot.com
Airplanes, Dominic, CED, Quebec

GROUP PROJECTS

Starbucks business plan, CESL Newstalk 075
Presidential Election, CESL Newstalk 081 Feb.-March 2008
Saluki Way, CESL Newstalk 081 Feb.-March 2008
Divorce in the USA, CESL Newstalk 081
Violent Deer, CESL Newstalk 054
New Wal-Mart, CESL Newstalk 054
University drinking culture, CESL Newstalk 065
Newstalk site: index to groups
A Look at Bullying (not SIUC, excellent, but unidentified, in terms of which class & where. Note: Student work is in the comments)

WEBLOGGING

Sub, CESL AE2
Bright, CESL AE2
Andre, CESL AE2
Faisal, CESL AE2
Hussain, CESL AE2

http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=1426&DID=10780.

Best of weblogs 081

http://thisisyourbrainonweblogs.blogspot.com/2007/03/portfolio-showcase.html
Portfolio showcase 2007

2008-03-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.ncrel.org/engauge/skills/agelit.htm
21st century skills

http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604068
TechLearning

http://bestpracticescenter.org/21stcentury.htm
21st century learning project, Alabama Best Practices Center

http://21cif.imsa.edu/resources/difcore/index.html
Information fluency

http://21learn.org/
21st century learning initiative

http://123elearning.blogspot.com/
Julie Lindsay, elearning

http://123elearning.blogspot.com/2008/03/adventures-in-online-synchronous.html
Adventures in online synchronous communication, e-learning

http://teachustech.ning.com/
teach us tech ning

http://kolea.kcc.hawaii.edu/tcc/2003/conference/presentations/margalit2_p.html
chat research

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/technology/03social.html?ex=1330578000&en=f718f182170673a4&ei=5088
Social networking's next phase

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4bdbaa60-f1a3-11dc-9b45-0000779fd2ac.html
better interactivity in business class delivery

http://www.yakkle.com/
yakkie

teachers who start blogs (baW08)

2008-03-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

http://redcamarocruiser.blogspot.com/
mary ziller, PA, USA

http://callrevolution.blogspot.com/
jeremy robinson, monterrey CA USA

http://lunas994.blogspot.com/
natasa grojic, serbia

http://callsandbox.blogspot.com/
bob cole, monterrey

http://endelvallesi.blogspot.com/
susana canelo, argentina

portfolio related

2008-03-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2008/02/29/ple-postures/
What "postures" make up your personal learning environment- Feb. 29, EdTechPost

2008-03-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2008/02/24/making-the-shift-happen/
Making the shift happen- Kim Cofino

Stevens, V. (2008, Mar. 9). New millenium professional development. adVancEducation weblog.
http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2008/03/ive-been-asked-to-propose-task-force-to.html. Accessed 3-08.

Aune, S. (2008, Feb. 3). 13 tools for tracking discussions in the blogosphere. Mashable.com.
http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/. Accessed 3-08.

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dr22kn2_24dpqdgg
Writing matrix for learning w/computers

http://englisheight.edublogs.org/
intrepid classroom

http://blog.garethl.com/
Gareth Long

http://englishvirtualcommunity.blogspot.com/
Nelba Quintana- Argentina

http://www.doris3meflcenter.blogspot.com/
Doris Molero- Venezuela

http://voicethread.com/
voicethreads

http://waoe.org/steve/tlt/sl.html
web 2.0 in 3D for language learning - Steve McC does Second Life

http://eflclassroom.ning.com/
efl classroom 2.0- ning

http://mashable.com/2007/04/22/facebook-twitter/
facebook & twitter

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/
webheads

http://blended-learning.learnhub.com/
blended learning and instruction

http://www.hyperwords.net/
hyperwords project

2008-03-12T12:53:00.001-07:00

http://educational.blogs.com/edbloggerpraxis/
edblogger praxis

Laningham (2006). developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee. IBM: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
The Long Tail

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/
ICT in my classroom

best of the weblogs 081

2008-03-12T12:38:00.001-07:00

2008-03-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

http://baw08participants.pbwiki.com/#MarshaChan
BaW08

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855
facebook consequences

http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/losing-my-facebook/
Losing my facebook

http://del.icio.us/vancestevens/blogging
vance's blog tags

http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/2007/basque1.htm
Writing in a multiliterate flat world- Vance

http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej38/int.html
Vance in EJ

http://tesl-ej.org/ej34/int.html
same but earlier

http://listeningplus.ning.com/
ning site

http://blena.wordpress.com/
Nelba's blog

http://intrepidteacher.edublogs.org/
intrepid teacher

2008-03-07T11:26:00.001-08:00

http://www.google.com/Top/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Weblogs/
Google's blogging educators' directory

http://www.elearnspace.org/resources/research.htm
elearning- everything elearning

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/cll.shtml
community language learning

http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/yet-another-reason-we-should-be-teaching-not-blocking-wikipedia/
teaching wikipedia

http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/blog-commenting-evolves/
Blog commenting evolves

the blurb- students in cyberspace

http://www.kottke.org/07/12/feed-reading
kottke-feed reading

http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/reading-ideas-instead-of-people-take-22/#comments
reading ideas instead of people- take 22

http://www.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory/?cat=1
GAM3R 7H30RY- MacKenzie Wark

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/technology/09blog.html?ex=1333771200&en=52ed112ca37ec909&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Call for manners in the world of nasty blogs

http://blogshop.blogspot.com/
bloggershop

edtech community
http://incsub.org/blog/
incorporated subversion- J. Farmer

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/
QuickShout, Nik Peachey

http://mfeldstein.com/
michael feldstein

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/
dennis jerz

http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/index.php
EdTechPost, Scott Leslie

http://www.teachinghacks.com/
Teaching Hacks.com, Quentin D'Souza

Portfolios

http://www.kottke.org/portfolio/portfolio.html
jason kottke- web design portfolio

http://blogshop.blogspot.com/2004/08/blogeducating-blogs-place-in-education.html
BlogEducating

http://eport2.cgc.maricopa.edu/published/w/ea/weaver/home/1/index.shtml
David Weaver

http://www.msu.edu/~ebyryan/teportfolio/index.html
Ryan Eby

2008-02-29T22:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000985.html
Don't click here

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html
The curse of Xanadu

http://www.bloggingblog.org/2007/11/have-blogs-lo-1.html
have blogs lost their humanity?

http://www.copyblogger.com/jazz-and-the-art-of-improvisational-blogging/
jazz & the art of improvisational blogging

http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/
big juicy twitter guide

notes from Lankshear & Knobel

2008-02-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2003). Planning pedagogy for i-mode: From flogging to blogging via wi-fi. IFTE Conference, Melbourne, July. Available http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/ifte2003.html. Accessed 2-08.

It does not follow that because some practice is widely engaged in outside of school that it should be addressed, or even taken account of, within school. -par. 2

Young people's out-of-school practices in developed countries are increasingly mediated by wearable, communication and information technologies. This in turns means that social practices for young people are becoming less and less "land locked" in the sense that they are always "plugged in" to the internet and/or other communication systems in ways that are highly portable, mobile and flexible. This has profound implications for schools in terms of decisions to be made about new technology investments for students, the integration of new technologies into classroom practices, professional development for teachers, and so on. -par. 29

As more and more people come together in cooperative, yet distributed, collective action around popular causes (e.g., voting in government elections), affinity groups (e.g., tracking celebrities in New York City), and a range of social needs and services (e.g., offering a relative stranger a ride to work), they will need to rely more and more on being able to make character evaluations on the run. As Rheingold succinctly puts it, "[r]eputation marks the spot where technology and cooperation converge" (Rheingold 2002: 114). The often temporary nature of collective action--such as the short-term relationship between buyers and sellers on eBay, or between news item and comment posters and readers on Plastic--means there is little time for establishing trust via traditional methods that in the past have included observing someone's actions and interactions over time. Instead, other people's collective feedback on the quality of interaction with someone or the integrity or usefulness of a point of view espoused by a person will become the principal means by which to judge whether or not a person, or what they have to say, is trustworthy or not. -par. 53

People interested in "being (thoroughly) digital" will need to know how to participate efficaciously in reputation systems as these systems become more and more integral to online and ad hoc i-mode communities. This will include tacit agreements to participate actively in the system, taking responsibility for leaving a rating score and feedback comment following each successful transaction or engagement, knowing when to cut one's losses in order to protect one's positive reputation scores, and so on. -par. 58

Being literate in reading reputation systems includes being alert to instances of reputation cheating and fraud. -par. 59

Given the epistemic potential of blogs, it is not difficult to imagine how blogging could become a potent dimension of school-based learning. This would require getting beyond the kinds of "pretend" research activities (classroom "projects") that typically prevail in school curriculum work, and beginning from significant problems that call for serious data collection and analysis. In such contexts blogging could be made into a highly sophisticated form of learning that engages directly with systematicity in searching for noteworthy or useful information. This would include being able to differentiate among types of data--such as well-used, quirky but useful, outdated, misleading, etc. Blogging as learning/Learning as blogging could also become an integral component of processes involved in developing point of view in relation to new topics, events and issues, of auditing this development in ways that are visible to the user and relevant others, and of generally pursuing meaningful purposes characteristic of expert-like research. -par. 77

Consequently, if school weblogs were approached from the standpoint of providing potential audit trails of knowledge built up over a period of time, they could contribute powerfully to promoting knowledge production, as well as enabling reflection upon and evaluation of how this knowledge was arrived at. A blog that records links, commentaries, and informed analysis, and that is open to being read by and commented upon by interested others, can become an objective artifact of collegial activity: one that is mediated by experts and learners in mutually beneficial ways. Blogs have much potential for promoting reflection on one's knowledge trails across the internet. Understanding where one went in an online search and why one went there thus becomes a key component of a blog, in ways that are not so evident and are not necessarily available in 5-part essay writing. Interested others could suggest to the blogger alternative trails or routes through a knowledge structure built around an interest in a particular topic, field or issue. This kind of engagement defaults to encouraging the blogger to regularly update and evaluate his or her point of view on a topic or issue when feedback or comments from others challenge the blogger to produce persuasive arguments, crisp analyses, and so on. At the same time, these interested others could also feed alternative angles and perspectives into the mix that can then be followed up on by the blogger. In these and other ways research as blogging, and blogging as research, could potentially become potent pedagogical approaches to writing. -par. 79

from references:

Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. Atlantic Monthly. July. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm. (accessed 2-08

Doctorow, C. (2001). My blog, my outboard brain. Blogged 31 May 2002. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/01/01/cory.html. (accessed 2-08).

Ito, M. (2003). A new set of social rules for a newly wireless society. Japan Media Review. March 13. 1-4. http://www.ojr.org/japan/wireless/1043770650.php. (accessed 2-08).

2008-02-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

http://englishpower.wordpress.com/
English Power, Nina's blog

sources on blogging for teachers

2008-02-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.kassblog.com/index.php?itemid=557
Richard Kassissieh, Collaborative Composition Technologies, Jan. 25, 2008

http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2008/02/04/towards-reflective-blogtalk/
Towards Reflective BlogTalk, Konrad Glogowsky, teachandlearn

http://blog4educators.blogspot.com/
blog4educators.com

http://esleflsisterclasses.edublogs.org/
esl/efl sister classes

http://esleflsisterclasses.edublogs.org/2008/01/19/potential-tools/
Potential tools for esl/efl sister classes

http://explorations.bloxi.jp/
The Journey: On learning and teaching, Carla Arena

http://internationalexchange.blogspot.com/
international exchange

Java Akshay, Tim Finin, Xaiodan Song, Bell Tseng, Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communitites (August 12, 2007). http://tinyurl.com/2geq48. pdf

http://paulallison.tumblr.com/
Paul Allison, New Journalism

http://edtechtalk.com/
EdTech Talk

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/
Teachers teaching teachers, weekly podcast

http://carlaraguseo.edublogs.org/
Carla Raguseo

http://feevy.com/
feevy

http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/
13 tools for tracking discussions in the blogosphere

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/23/9-benefits-of-twitter-for-bloggers/
9 benefits of Twitter for bloggers, Darren Rowse

my questions

2007-11-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

Referring to the questions below, I have a number of comments as I've been mulling over some things my daughter said over the phone, as well as some things said by Eric, who patiently answered all questions thoroughly, but covered it up fairly quickly with rapidfire daily posting.

I'm not sure my daughter will actually answer them, although she might if I bug her enough, but she gave me lots of inspiration in a phone call, after I'd written the questions, but before she'd even seen them. She was the inspiration of the questions in the first place, because it was my impression that she was running out of material, but also because she really hauls in the visitors, makes an art out of it almost, though it often seems to me that her topics are either pop-culturish (nothing wrong with that I guess) or brushing on banal. But it turns out that even body parts, not to mention television stars, haul in the visitors. She says to me, you want linguists to visit you, right? But they're not going to come in when you write about Krashen or Chomsky, because other things will come up first on Google. But there are certain things you can put in your blog, that they'll type, that will make you come up first every time.

In fact, I've found a few of these. Words that begin with vowels is one. I ruminate on the process of finding these, seeking them, using them more, etc.- all of these things, she does, in her own way, in her own realms. She enjoys it. And in that way, she becomes a little better at blogging, a little better-known, too. I'm jealous. By studiously avoiding any of these tactics, I remain more true to my own thoughts, but more obscure too. Maybe just as well.

Here's another interesting thing she said: most of these people are very temporary visitors. What you really want is readers, and they come from a recipricatory process. You comment on theirs, they comment on yours. And that shows you've read it. You go out and comment on lots. And they come visit you, and visitors to theirs, come also. By developing these relationships, you get an audience of readers. And that's who you write for.

Now I still basically write only for the four or five readers that I have, without ever knowing about this reciprication idea. I'd never thought of it that way. But Eric brought it up too.

It's partly because I live in a world where 95% of the blogs I work with are class related- there's no reciprocation involved there. Students comment if you require them or goad them, or sometimes if you just point out that it's possible. I'm not actually sure how often they comment on each others' - not often, I'd guess. Usually when I grade them, at the end of the term, very few people have commented. But some do.

My daughter and I are "site-meter-readers"...and care, possibly too much, about the paths people use to find us. More later. I'm fascinated also by Eric's answers, but I want to read that more carefully and respond to each answer. Meanwhile I eagerly await any or all answers that are still out there. Maybe my questions are too long. If so, I encourage you to answer only part.

2007-11-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

All serious bloggers, I implore you to answer these, on your own weblog, or wherever you like, and point me to the answers. I'm genuinely curious. I originally put them on my personal weblog, where I've only gotten one serious response so far, but then I put them in better form on my professional one, where I also provided my own answers. I eagerly await yours!

1. Do you find that blogging tends to make you frame your life experiences in the same way that carrying a camera tends to make you frame the things you see- it makes you look at everything, and say, I wonder if I could blog about that?

2. Do you engineer your posts in any way to attract more audience? If so, how? Do you include words that will attract search engines? Do you write posts about hot, frequently-searched public persona?

3. Do you check who has come to visit you? Do you notice what words they used to search and find you? Do you notice how long they actually spent on your site? Do you take the words they used, and use them again, or keep using them?

4. You know how important pictures are when you open up a site. Do you choose your pictures in order to hold visitors, or do you just put in there whatever you can? Do you look for free pictures, take them yourself, or shamelessly steal them from Google Images like everyone else?

5. Do you feel bad about bumping people from your blogroll? How important is a template to you when you visit blogs? Do you really admire people who list thousands of blogs over there, or would you rather see someone who just has maybe ten or twelve best friends and relatives?

6. Do you really visit all those blogs you list under "daily reads" or "blogs i visit?" do you read them? this seems like a herculean task. How much time can a person invest in being in the citizen's media, a regular?

7. Has blogging changed your writing? Your perspective? Your alliances? Your likes/dislikes? Your politics? How has it affected the way you see things?

cartoon

2007-06-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

from xkcd.

How blogging affects the academic ecosystem

2007-05-30T14:55:00.001-07:00

2007.05.18 20:57:38 ThomasLev joined the room.
2007.05.18 20:57:50 DennisOl: Here's our presenter!
2007.05.18 20:57:51 ThomasLev: Hello all
2007.05.18 20:57:53 NinaTL joined the room.
2007.05.18 20:57:57 DennisOl: Hi, Tom.
2007.05.18 20:58:01 ThomasLev: Hi Dennis! Hi Nina!
2007.05.18 20:58:10 NinaTL: I just popped into the WiZ room to let them know we are waiting here.
2007.05.18 20:58:19 NinaTL: Tom! Welcome!
2007.05.18 20:58:27 NinaTL: WiA*
2007.05.18 20:58:29 ThomasLev: WiZ?
2007.05.18 20:58:43 NinaTL: Is this where you will do your talk on blogs, or in WiA?
2007.05.18 20:58:55 ThomasLev: I was planning to do it here- but I could change
2007.05.18 20:59:17 NinaTL: Let me tell Monica and Carole you are here then. Or do you want to go there?
2007.05.18 20:59:17 ThomasLev: How many are over in WiA?
2007.05.18 20:59:22 NinaTL: Just 2.
2007.05.18 20:59:34 ThomasLev: Let's stay & I'll wait a minute
2007.05.18 20:59:39 NinaTL: I'll go and fetch them if you like.
2007.05.18 20:59:44 ThomasLev: thanks!
2007.05.18 20:59:49 NinaTL left the room.
2007.05.18 20:59:59 MizmercGst1 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:00:16 MizmercGst1: Where to now for WiOAC
2007.05.18 21:00:24 ThomasLev: Hello & welcome to the WiOAC presentation
2007.05.18 21:00:26 DennisOl: This is the place.
2007.05.18 21:00:26 ThomasLev: you're here
2007.05.18 21:00:36 MizmercGst1: Well, that wasn't too bad...
2007.05.18 21:00:38 ThomasLev: We have some people coming over
2007.05.18 21:00:45 MizmercGst1: okay
2007.05.18 21:01:02 MizmercGst1: any audio?
2007.05.18 21:01:11 DennisOl: Not here.
2007.05.18 21:01:11 ThomasLev: no audio, no pictures
2007.05.18 21:01:12 MonicaV joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:01:14 ThomasLev: sorry
2007.05.18 21:01:15 CaroleMc joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:01:22 ThomasLev: I'm still kind of low tech that way
2007.05.18 21:01:23 DennisOl: OlÃ¡, MÃ´nica.
2007.05.18 21:01:26 ThomasLev: Hi Carole
2007.05.18 21:01:27 CaroleMc: Hello Tom, everyone
2007.05.18 21:01:29 ThomasLev: Hi Monica
2007.05.18 21:01:29 MonicaV: Oi Dennis!
2007.05.18 21:01:35 ThomasLev: Thanks to Tapped In
2007.05.18 21:01:36 DennisOl: Tudo bem?
2007.05.18 21:01:37 MonicaV: Hi everyone! Hi Thomas
2007.05.18 21:01:48 MizmercGst1: text chat, this is positivly medival
2007.05.18 21:01:51 ThomasLev: WiAOC- it's great!
2007.05.18 21:01:52 MonicaV: Tudo Ã³timo, Dennis... But it's 1 a.m. here...
2007.05.18 21:02:01 ThomasLev: bear with me
2007.05.18 21:02:08 DennisOl: Oy! 1 AM?!
2007.05.18 21:02:09 CaroleMc: 2.00 pm here in Victoria, Australia
2007.05.18 21:02:14 MonicaV: Yes...
2007.05.18 21:02:17 MizmercGst1: don't worry, I touch type fast, I'll live
2007.05.18 21:02:19 ThomasLev: it's 11 pm here in Illinois
2007.05.18 21:02:20 DennisOl: 9:00 PM in Phoenix.
2007.05.18 21:02:30 MizmercGst1: and same in Sacratomato
2007.05.18 21:02:39 DennisOl: I'll be back in a few minutes . . . .
2007.05.18 21:02:47 CaroleMc: we've had glorious rain here - much needed in our drought stricken rural areas
2007.05.18 21:02:51 MrsdurfGst4 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:02:56 MizmercGst1: Hi Lisa
2007.05.18 21:02:59 NinaTL joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:03:01 ThomasLev: Hello all!
2007.05.18 21:03:03 MizmercGst1: Hi Nina
2007.05.18 21:03:04 ThomasLev: Thanks Nina
2007.05.18 21:03:09 NinaTL: My pleasure!
2007.05.18 21:03:14 MrsdurfGst4: am i in tyhe correct place?
2007.05.18 21:03:23 ThomasLev: This is it-
2007.05.18 21:03:28 ThomasLev: you
2007.05.18 21:03:31 NinaTL: As a volunteer here yesterday and today I did not have any opportunity before now to actually be of service :-)
2007.05.18 21:03:32 ThomasLev: are here!
2007.05.18 21:03:34 MrsdurfGst4: ok...cog=ffee and brb
2007.05.18 21:03:51 ThomasLev: just got my coffee- just put kids to bed
2007.05.18 21:03:58 ThomasLev: have my notes & ready to go
2007.05.18 21:04:07 NinaTL: Tom, why did you select this hour to present? I might fall asleep in the middle
2007.05.18 21:04:12 ThomasLev: I've been doing research on academics who blog & pay the price
2007.05.18 21:04:19 CaroleMc: I've been reading your Blog on Blogging, Tom
2007.05.18 21:04:27 ThomasLev: less interference here- I have very young children
2007.05.18 21:04:36 MrsdurfGst4: ok, audio?
2007.05.18 21:04:39 NinaTL: Please share the url of your blog, Tom
2007.05.18 21:04:41 DennisOl: Good choice, Tom.
2007.05.18 21:04:42 ThomasLev: This is your Brain: This is your brain on weblogs
2007.05.18 21:04:46 DennisOl: No audio.
2007.05.18 21:04:49 NinaTL: no audio here
2007.05.18 21:04:51 MizmercGst1: I was looking at it before this Tom
2007.05.18 21:04:53 ThomasLev: http://thisisyourbrainonweblogs.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:05:00 ThomasLev: My own is here:
2007.05.18 21:05:06 ThomasLev: http://tomleveretts.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:05:13 ThomasLev: this presentation is here:
2007.05.18 21:05:26 ThomasLev: http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/hb.html
2007.05.18 21:05:27 MizmercGst1: And I thought it was interesting that one case, Daniel Drezner, is now tenured.
2007.05.18 21:05:27 MonicaV: I had a quick look too, but I'll have to go back to check the posts and links...
2007.05.18 21:05:54 ThomasLev: His fame eclipsed his misfortune
2007.05.18 21:06:16 CaroleMc: I'm really interested in the notion of 'transparency' in the blogosphere
2007.05.18 21:06:35 MizmercGst1: Juan Cole still hanging in the wind?
2007.05.18 21:06:35 NinaTL: Whose is the first blog?
2007.05.18 21:06:43 ThomasLev: He's still at Michigan
2007.05.18 21:06:45 DennisOl: I also gave it a quick read, but will spend more time on it later.
2007.05.18 21:06:49 MrsdurfGst4: privacy vs. transparency
2007.05.18 21:06:59 ThomasLev: Privacy is losing
2007.05.18 21:07:10 ThomasLev: I don't know whose was first, Nina
2007.05.18 21:07:11 MrsdurfGst4: indeed it is
2007.05.18 21:07:21 MizmercGst1: Well, what is private when you blog?
2007.05.18 21:07:21 DennisOl: I have to leave again. Sorry.
2007.05.18 21:07:23 MrsdurfGst4: like the digital immigrants
2007.05.18 21:07:25 NinaTL: This is your brain on weblogs
2007.05.18 21:07:29 NinaTL: Whose is that?
2007.05.18 21:07:31 GwenC joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:07:35 CaroleMc: blogging transparently is a growing trend globally
2007.05.18 21:07:35 MrsdurfGst4: all things (and us) grow old
2007.05.18 21:07:46 ThomasLev: There are a number of anonymous ones- but nothing is truly anonymous either
2007.05.18 21:07:49 NinaTL: Hi, Gwen, are you here for Tom's presentation?
2007.05.18 21:07:54 ThomasLev: Hi Gwen
2007.05.18 21:08:17 ThomasLev: What I'm saying is that transparency is a worldwide phenomenon- in gov't, etc
2007.05.18 21:08:17 GwenC: Yes I am. I had to brew myself a strong cup of coffee. now I'm ready
2007.05.18 21:08:27 MizmercGst1: I started anonymously...
2007.05.18 21:08:33 ThomasLev: it's a response by people to new conditions
2007.05.18 21:08:38 ThomasLev: and new necessity maybe
2007.05.18 21:08:42 MizmercGst1: I think you've got a point about transparency...
2007.05.18 21:08:44 CaroleMc: having a blog these days is just as practical as having a CV
2007.05.18 21:08:45 MrsdurfGst4: in an age where it takes literally seconds to find one on the web, what is the point?
2007.05.18 21:08:57 MizmercGst1: But what to put on teh blog carole?
2007.05.18 21:09:15 CaroleMc: yes selective blogging in several blogs is what I prefer
2007.05.18 21:09:17 MizmercGst1: I'm job hunting (elementary teacher), and I wonder if I should have muzzled myself the last few months
2007.05.18 21:09:23 NinaTL: I have about seven blogs :-)
2007.05.18 21:09:36 ThomasLev: Or the last few years- it all sticks around
2007.05.18 21:09:38 MrsdurfGst4: muzzled?
2007.05.18 21:09:41 NinaTL: Most of them inactive
2007.05.18 21:09:44 MonicaV: Seven? All active, Nina?
2007.05.18 21:09:49 MrsdurfGst4: are you cattle?
2007.05.18 21:09:52 MizmercGst1: I haven't blogged longer than say, December
2007.05.18 21:09:57 ThomasLev: I have about ten-
2007.05.18 21:10:02 ThomasLev: active
2007.05.18 21:10:04 NinaTL: Class blogs stop when the class is over
2007.05.18 21:10:08 MonicaV: Wow..
2007.05.18 21:10:13 NinaTL: Four of those
2007.05.18 21:10:16 ThomasLev: I recycle those, & don't count them
2007.05.18 21:10:18 CaroleMc: blog 1 for collaborative team reflective practice; blog 2 for mentoring and coaching online; blog 3 for digital storytelling - these are my most active blogs
2007.05.18 21:10:28 MizmercGst1: I have only about 4, but I teach in self-contained.
2007.05.18 21:10:30 ThomasLev: sounds good!
2007.05.18 21:10:30 NinaTL: One reading blog--active when I have time to read (i.e. not recently)
2007.05.18 21:10:37 ThomasLev: I've been organizing notes on blogs too
2007.05.18 21:10:46 ThomasLev: putting blogrolls on them
2007.05.18 21:10:48 NinaTL: I like Carole's clearly defined blogs
2007.05.18 21:10:49 MrsdurfGst4: my kids are begging to have blogs continue past the school year
2007.05.18 21:10:51 MonicaV: Yes, I've been doing that too...
2007.05.18 21:10:55 NinaTL: I do that in wikis
2007.05.18 21:11:00 MonicaV: ... saving my notes on blogs, that is.
2007.05.18 21:11:08 NinaTL: saving notes
2007.05.18 21:11:11 MizmercGst1: Thomas, I think back though to a vignette in What Color is your parachute.
2007.05.18 21:11:21 ThomasLev: tell about it!
2007.05.18 21:11:22 CaroleMc: I like that strategy o fyours Tom - notes that you can send folks to read. I use a similar process with my collection of wikis too.
2007.05.18 21:11:26 MizmercGst1: And the guy talks about sending out a bright red resume...
2007.05.18 21:11:49 NinaTL: What sort of response did he get?
2007.05.18 21:11:55 MizmercGst1: And that is the wrong color, but he wants to stand out to the place that will be looking for a red resume.
2007.05.18 21:12:08 ThomasLev: I sometimes feel like blogs are gardens full of flowers
2007.05.18 21:12:12 NinaTL: Is there such a place?
2007.05.18 21:12:15 CaroleMc: Nina, I have an orderly brain and I like to keep things in separate compartments - both inbrain and blogs :-)
2007.05.18 21:12:17 ThomasLev: they need to be weeded constantly
2007.05.18 21:12:23 NinaTL: me too Carole
2007.05.18 21:12:24 MizmercGst1: So I may express opinions on my blog, but I want to be somewhere where I can express well stated opionos.
2007.05.18 21:12:37 MizmercGst1: So I should go back thomas and take out stuff?\
2007.05.18 21:12:46 NinaTL: Tom, shuld we settle down and listen to what you've prepared?
2007.05.18 21:12:46 MizmercGst1: That doesn't "age" as well?
2007.05.18 21:12:49 ThomasLev: if you're looking for a job, maybe
2007.05.18 21:12:58 MizmercGst1: Sorry yes...
2007.05.18 21:13:11 CaroleMc: I use my blogs as part of my 'reflective practice' and enable my mentees to see that development - so no I don't weed often.
2007.05.18 21:13:12 MrsdurfGst4: the beauty of a blog is its permanence
2007.05.18 21:13:17 ThomasLev: Only your enemies will read the whole thing...
2007.05.18 21:13:30 GwenC: so true
2007.05.18 21:13:31 ThomasLev: it's a deceptive thing
2007.05.18 21:13:42 ThomasLev: they appear temporary but they stick around forever
2007.05.18 21:13:45 MrsdurfGst4: what country are you from Thomasx?\
2007.05.18 21:13:48 ThomasLev: USA
2007.05.18 21:14:00 ThomasLev: Illinois
2007.05.18 21:14:05 SaadiyahD joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:14:05 MrsdurfGst4: so why did you choose tappedin?
2007.05.18 21:14:19 ThomasLev: Actually I'm comfortable with it, & very short of time
2007.05.18 21:14:21 MrsdurfGst4: why not elluminate?
2007.05.18 21:14:22 NinaTL: Hi, Saadiyah
2007.05.18 21:14:33 ThomasLev: we webheads are hear every Sun. am (IL time)
2007.05.18 21:14:41 ThomasLev: I like elluminate
2007.05.18 21:14:41 DougSy joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:14:43 NinaTL: The virtual rooms required expertise or coaching
2007.05.18 21:14:45 AidenY joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:14:45 NinaTL: Hi DOug
2007.05.18 21:14:49 NinaTL: Hi Aiden
2007.05.18 21:14:51 MrsdurfGst4: ah, a webby!
2007.05.18 21:14:52 AidenY waves to all
2007.05.18 21:14:55 ThomasLev: but don't understand it as well
2007.05.18 21:15:01 DougSy: HI Nina, and all
2007.05.18 21:15:13 MizmercGst1: Thomas on transparency...
2007.05.18 21:15:16 ThomasLev: again I apologize for the Stone Age medium
2007.05.18 21:15:17 JoseMR: Is there any audio
2007.05.18 21:15:17 ThomasLev: ok
2007.05.18 21:15:20 JeffC: Andy Carvin posted to wwwedu@yahoogroups today. He was talking about creating a wiki to post comments regarding the upcoming revamping of the NCLB legislation. So far only myself and one other have posted to his blog: http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/05/could_wikis_help_achieve_conse_1.html
2007.05.18 21:15:20 CaroleMc: Tapped In chats are nice and easy to manage - I've been visiting here for a few years now
2007.05.18 21:15:30 GwenC: About Permanency, I think the permanency needs to be stressed to students -in blogs and wikis. It's scary to google your name and get homework from a year ago come up
2007.05.18 21:15:36 MrsdurfGst4: I miss the audio...turning into a citizen
2007.05.18 21:15:38 ThomasLev: no audio, sorry
2007.05.18 21:15:50 NinaTL: I love Tapped In--but it's harder to herd the cats
2007.05.18 21:15:54 NinaTL listens to Tom
2007.05.18 21:15:54 ThomasLev: Thanks Jeff
2007.05.18 21:15:54 JoseMR: I am streaming for worldbridges. Now I see
2007.05.18 21:15:59 CaroleMc: LOL Gwen - that is scary but interesting.
2007.05.18 21:16:01 JeffC: Now... when you've got a top educator asking for comments about pathetic legislation (you should read what they say about what "tech standards" should be... you know you've got problems.
2007.05.18 21:16:10 MizmercGst1: I didn't realize how much of class was "visiable" on blog.
2007.05.18 21:16:13 DougSy: lol Nina, re cats
2007.05.18 21:16:16 MrsdurfGst4: yes, steve dembo has a presentation about online resumes
2007.05.18 21:16:27 JeffC: btw... I recommend everyone here click "Actions-- Detach"
2007.05.18 21:16:29 ThomasLev: I agree and have been doing that more
2007.05.18 21:16:40 MizmercGst1: much nicer.
2007.05.18 21:16:42 JeffC: and detach your chat box and perhaps make the text larger as well.
2007.05.18 21:16:46 DougSy: excellent tip Jeff, I'd forgotten
2007.05.18 21:16:53 MizmercGst1: This is feeling a litlte like that video on if a class were held in chat...
2007.05.18 21:16:57 GwenC: homework and introductions(meant for that class) are visible
2007.05.18 21:16:58 JeffC: Well... I have been on Helpdesk here for about 10 years.
2007.05.18 21:17:16 MrsdurfGst4: i did...bad eyes
2007.05.18 21:17:19 JeffC: Miz... if you registered... you could create your own K-12 class here ;-)
2007.05.18 21:17:29 MizmercGst1: My kids couldn't go...
2007.05.18 21:17:35 ThomasLev: I see students & teachers as on an inevitable path toward transparency
2007.05.18 21:17:40 NinaTL: So Tom, how has blogging changed the academic ecosystem?
2007.05.18 21:17:52 ThomasLev: we're not hiding anything, are we?
2007.05.18 21:17:53 KathrynFB joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:17:56 MizmercGst1: I asked how many had computers, and it was about 2/3rds. How many had a working one with internet, only about 1/3
2007.05.18 21:17:57 AidenY: Thomas, in my Listening/speaking class in Taiwan, we're focusing on global warming, our project is 'virtual movement against global warming' and we're using blogs and other cmc tools to raise awareness among asian students
2007.05.18 21:18:09 GwenC: everyone is hiding SOMETHING
2007.05.18 21:18:12 MrsdurfGst4: from whom are we hiding, Kathy would ask?
2007.05.18 21:18:19 ThomasLev: I think global warming is a good example
2007.05.18 21:18:22 AidenY: I'm very interesting in what you're going to share with us today
2007.05.18 21:18:26 AidenY: interested
2007.05.18 21:18:28 ThomasLev: the world needs to organize FAST
2007.05.18 21:18:39 KathrynFB: sorry, just came into the room, trying to get the gist of the conversation,
2007.05.18 21:18:40 ThomasLev: and needs to root out people who are hiding something
2007.05.18 21:18:42 KathrynFB: Hi
2007.05.18 21:18:48 ThomasLev: Hi Kathryn!
2007.05.18 21:18:52 NinaTL: Hi Kathryn
2007.05.18 21:18:56 CaroleMc: Tom, do you think blogging will make academics more visible and their pedagogy more transparent?
2007.05.18 21:19:00 KathrynFB: Hi Thomas and Nina
2007.05.18 21:19:02 ThomasLev: I'm talking about transparency
2007.05.18 21:19:03 NinaTL: Welcome to Tapped In and WiZOC
2007.05.18 21:19:04 ThomasLev: yes
2007.05.18 21:19:07 NinaTL: WiAOC
2007.05.18 21:19:10 AidenY listens to Thomas
2007.05.18 21:19:11 KathrynFB: thanks
2007.05.18 21:19:13 SaadiyahD left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:19:17 GwenC: by transparency , you mean honesty?
2007.05.18 21:19:22 ThomasLev: people who put stuff online put back pressure on people who don't
2007.05.18 21:19:24 ThomasLev: yes
2007.05.18 21:19:26 JeffC: I don't see things transparent... indeed... I see things as amazingly atavistic. You can't talk seriously about blogs when half the districts in this country filter them.
2007.05.18 21:19:37 JeffC: It took me three years to get Tapped In unfiltered in my local district.
2007.05.18 21:19:40 MizmercGst1: So is the answer less or more transparency...
2007.05.18 21:19:44 ThomasLev: letting people see what you're doing
2007.05.18 21:19:53 ThomasLev: I think people see through the barriers
2007.05.18 21:19:56 MizmercGst1: You warn me about what I'm putting up for my job hunt...
2007.05.18 21:20:12 ThomasLev: true
2007.05.18 21:20:13 MizmercGst1: But if we are all transparent, then the little things I put up won't stand out.
2007.05.18 21:20:22 CaroleMc: I agree with that - letting them see what you're doing - is a learning journey revealed and new knowledge is captured from that.
2007.05.18 21:20:24 GwenC: but in todays culture where everyone wants to sell their knowledge, ithat isn't gogn agains the currents
2007.05.18 21:20:28 MizmercGst1: NOW they do, cause I'm one of the few teachers they can vet online.
2007.05.18 21:20:32 NinaTL: Well, we all need to understand that when we write, there is an audience.
2007.05.18 21:20:44 NinaTL: We write differently for different audiences.
2007.05.18 21:20:46 MizmercGst1: But when we all wear miniskirts, they can't haul us in for breaking the dress code.
2007.05.18 21:21:02 NinaTL: Only trouble is, with a blog you can't choose your audience--they choose you
2007.05.18 21:21:06 ThomasLev: In one sense if every applicant is good they'll take the one they know the best
2007.05.18 21:21:08 MizmercGst1: Yeah, that is true nina, but for now, andyone talking is sticking out.
2007.05.18 21:21:12 MrsdurfGst4: i am not wearing a mini skirt!
2007.05.18 21:21:20 MizmercGst1: It was an analogy.
2007.05.18 21:21:28 ThomasLev: not to mention one that knows the technology
2007.05.18 21:21:39 MrsdurfGst4: i would hope so - i would look terrible
2007.05.18 21:21:45 MizmercGst1: I'm pretty sure my current admin has no idea about my reflection blog.
2007.05.18 21:21:54 MizmercGst1: Or blogs in general.
2007.05.18 21:21:57 MrsdurfGst4: oh mine does
2007.05.18 21:22:02 NinaTL: I'm just saying we need to be aware that when we blog, anyone might read it: our students, our potential employers, our parents, our colleagues, total strangers...
2007.05.18 21:22:13 MrsdurfGst4: his daughter is in my class
2007.05.18 21:22:14 CaroleMc: it is part of the turtle syndrome - sticking your neck out (blogging transparently)
2007.05.18 21:22:29 NinaTL: If our students blog, we need to make sure they understand that also
2007.05.18 21:22:39 AidenY: I like that one, Carole :-)
2007.05.18 21:22:39 ThomasLev: I agree with that
2007.05.18 21:22:44 GwenC: can't blogs be used as much to expose yourself as a smokescreen? (Sorry, playing devils advocate a bit)
2007.05.18 21:22:48 MrsdurfGst4: i have never been good a diplomacy
2007.05.18 21:23:03 CaroleMc: the turtle is clever too - cos he/she knows when it is time to pull his head in
2007.05.18 21:23:04 MrsdurfGst4: they could
2007.05.18 21:23:05 MizmercGst1: But Thomas, isn't it an issue of groups too?
2007.05.18 21:23:15 ThomasLev: I think people see through fakeness
2007.05.18 21:23:17 MizmercGst1: If we all get more transparent, then you don't stick out...
2007.05.18 21:23:37 ThomasLev: Actually as we all get more transparent the people who are silent stick out
2007.05.18 21:23:41 MizmercGst1: But for now, only some of us are, and we're in the spot light.
2007.05.18 21:23:46 MrsdurfGst4: i stick out in any crowd
2007.05.18 21:23:47 MizmercGst1: Yes, exactly!
2007.05.18 21:23:50 ThomasLev: like people who don't have phones
2007.05.18 21:23:57 CaroleMc: here in my 'neck' of the woods most of my colleagues know of me by my online writing long before they meet me
2007.05.18 21:24:04 MrsdurfGst4: i don't have a phone
2007.05.18 21:24:19 MrsdurfGst4: or a tv
2007.05.18 21:24:20 MizmercGst1: My online world and my professional world are so seperate in some ways now.
2007.05.18 21:24:23 NinaTL: Where is your neck of the woods, Carole?
2007.05.18 21:24:31 CaroleMc: Victoria, Australia
2007.05.18 21:24:33 MizmercGst1: I feel like I don't have transparency in myself sometimes...
2007.05.18 21:24:35 JimTGst5 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:24:36 NinaTL: Alice, that IS unusual!
2007.05.18 21:24:39 ThomasLev: A related point that I'm working on is that the relationship of writing to speaking has changed
2007.05.18 21:24:43 NinaTL: Hi, Jim, welcome
2007.05.18 21:24:56 ThomasLev: though that's really a different presentation
2007.05.18 21:24:57 NinaTL: In what sense, Tom?
2007.05.18 21:24:59 CaroleMc: yes Tom, listening, curious to hear more on that
2007.05.18 21:25:02 MizmercGst1: Well, what level are we all teaching at?
2007.05.18 21:25:18 MrsdurfGst4: transparency in yourself....how would that work?
2007.05.18 21:25:21 JeffC: the lowest common demoninator of high stakest testing.
2007.05.18 21:25:24 NinaTL thinks she already asked Carole that today and apologizes for her memory lapse
2007.05.18 21:25:30 ThomasLev: if people meet each other through writing now (chat)
2007.05.18 21:25:33 MizmercGst1: Jeff, I'm at a PI school, so I know...
2007.05.18 21:25:41 ThomasLev: and there are chat dialects, etc.
2007.05.18 21:25:46 DennisOl left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:25:59 ThomasLev: then writing becomes more important and more influential
2007.05.18 21:26:03 ThomasLev: also more casual
2007.05.18 21:26:15 ThomasLev: and we only use speaking for limited things
2007.05.18 21:26:17 NinaTL: My students are very casual about their writing when they blog
2007.05.18 21:26:17 JeffC: speaking of chat... what percentage of schools have speech to text installed or use it for their K-6 students?
2007.05.18 21:26:27 CaroleMc: Tom, this line of thought is of great interest to me. I've long advocated the need for more teachers to learn the art of 'writing' before they blog
2007.05.18 21:26:28 NinaTL: no idea, Jeff
2007.05.18 21:26:39 JeffC: i'd say probably less than 3%.
2007.05.18 21:26:47 MizmercGst1: I don't
2007.05.18 21:26:49 JeffC: and yet... as we all know... kids don't type well...
2007.05.18 21:26:53 NinaTL: for special needs students?
2007.05.18 21:27:05 MizmercGst1: Well, they acutally type at same rate they write...
2007.05.18 21:27:06 JeffC: and if we want them to write... they need to discover their own voice... so why not let them talk to the computer?
2007.05.18 21:27:12 MizmercGst1: I think there was a post on 2cents about that
2007.05.18 21:27:21 JeffC: they type at maybe 5 words a minute... they talk at least 100.
2007.05.18 21:27:30 CaroleMc: Authentic voice in a blog is an important issue - it empowers the blogger.
2007.05.18 21:27:35 MizmercGst1: No, they type at like 20, and write at 20.
2007.05.18 21:27:38 ThomasLev: My son types 87
2007.05.18 21:27:41 MizmercGst1: So they type as they write.
2007.05.18 21:27:41 ThomasLev: but it's all chat
2007.05.18 21:27:49 MizmercGst1: No, typing...
2007.05.18 21:27:52 JeffC: so... the system that tells them to type gets them to stifle their thought process... 2nd graders do *not* type 20 wpm.
2007.05.18 21:27:53 ThomasLev: he has his own language
2007.05.18 21:28:03 MizmercGst1: They also write less than 20 wpm
2007.05.18 21:28:06 JeffC: not to mention encompassing various learning styles...
2007.05.18 21:28:12 JeffC: yes... but they can all *talk* faster.
2007.05.18 21:28:15 MizmercGst1: I'll get the link to the 2cents piece.
2007.05.18 21:28:18 MizmercGst1: Yeah, true.
2007.05.18 21:28:20 GwenC: speaking and writing being two different langauges practically, I don't know if I would encourage a speach to text type program. Am I missing the point ?
2007.05.18 21:28:32 MizmercGst1: Well, that's what we're doing now.
2007.05.18 21:28:35 JeffC: and... the tech is here that would allow them to really blossom... it's integrated into XP... but virtually no one uses it.
2007.05.18 21:28:48 NinaTL: Really?
2007.05.18 21:28:53 CaroleMc: voice chat tools are much more prevalent here in Aussie elearning because of the needs of different learners (those who are keyboard challenged for instance)
2007.05.18 21:28:54 NinaTL: I have XP
2007.05.18 21:29:00 JeffC: when we get students to write... we get them to slow down their thinking... which is both good and bad.
2007.05.18 21:29:12 NinaTL: My daughter is "keyboard challenged"
2007.05.18 21:29:13 JeffC: we *never* let them all talk at once in class... yet... with headsets and mikes... they could.
2007.05.18 21:29:17 ThomasLev: I never thought of that, Jeff
2007.05.18 21:29:24 NinaTL: If she could do speech to text it would be very helpful
2007.05.18 21:29:24 JeffC: *all* K-6 students are keyboard challenged.
2007.05.18 21:29:25 DougSy: the problem with XP voice recognition is the time it takes to "teach" the computer
2007.05.18 21:29:46 MizmercGst1: Here: http://www.stager.org/keyboarding.html
2007.05.18 21:29:49 JeffC: of course it does Doug... but if you start at the beginning of the year... give them 15 minutes to get it started... it improves.
2007.05.18 21:29:53 DougSy: I've always found I've had to edit extensively (so haven't "stuck with it")
2007.05.18 21:29:59 ThomasLev: thanks for the link!
2007.05.18 21:30:00 GwenC: keyboard and written language itself - youÂ´re right
2007.05.18 21:30:02 JeffC: how much time do kids waste trying to type in stuff on the keyboard?
2007.05.18 21:30:04 MizmercGst1: NP
2007.05.18 21:30:10 DougSy: point well taken
2007.05.18 21:30:16 MizmercGst1: How much time do they waste with pencil and paper?
2007.05.18 21:30:22 ThomasLev: by the way members in TI get the transcript which I will forward to anyone if you write me at leverett@siu.edu
2007.05.18 21:30:22 NinaTL: Mine: a lot
2007.05.18 21:30:23 JeffC: and... how many thoughts are lost in the frustration?
2007.05.18 21:30:38 CaroleMc: So Tom, what do you suggest for those keen to explore blogging, how to prepare, start, maintain and update their blogs?
2007.05.18 21:30:40 DougSy: re time, we've talked about how voice (spoken) makes the learner more concious of composition
2007.05.18 21:30:49 DougSy: especially for 'casts
2007.05.18 21:30:58 MizmercGst1: Really, I wouldn't think so?
2007.05.18 21:30:59 DougSy: be they "pod" or "web"
2007.05.18 21:31:12 DougSy: they want to "make it sound right"
2007.05.18 21:31:16 ThomasLev: First, keep in mind it's like dressing up- wear what you want everyone to see
2007.05.18 21:31:32 ThomasLev: because they're always watching
2007.05.18 21:31:33 MizmercGst1: But is that phrase, and sentence composition, or overall?
2007.05.18 21:31:39 MizmercGst1: Overall structure.
2007.05.18 21:31:41 JeffC: i'm a firm believer in text... and when people podcast, i'd really like to see textural transcripts available as well. why? because for one, there's no way on earth i'm going to sit and listen to a 2 hour podcast, when i can scan and search it if it's in text version in about 5 minutes.
2007.05.18 21:31:50 GwenC: but wihtout the interface that spoken inchange provides, the written word many times is not comprehensible. Are you talking about an interchange.. not properly a blog?
2007.05.18 21:32:04 MizmercGst1: I listen to podcasts without text ALL the time...
2007.05.18 21:32:11 MizmercGst1: ANd usually multitask through them.
2007.05.18 21:32:16 NinaTL: I agree, Jeff. I don't listen to a lot of podcasts because of the time factor
2007.05.18 21:32:19 MizmercGst1: But I'm an N of one
2007.05.18 21:32:24 ThomasLev: people scan a lot mroe
2007.05.18 21:32:29 ThomasLev: they stop when they want
2007.05.18 21:32:34 ThomasLev: they need & love control
2007.05.18 21:32:45 MizmercGst1: That's how I first heard of Drezner, lol
2007.05.18 21:32:47 NinaTL: We are all control freaks
2007.05.18 21:32:49 MizmercGst1: Bloggingheads.
2007.05.18 21:32:54 JeffC: well... that's one approach... but again... real time listening... uh... yeah... multitasking through it? well... again... you will get through a tenth of the material if you have a 1 to 1 correspondence in going through audio archives.
2007.05.18 21:32:57 ThomasLev: they keep their finger on the backbutton
2007.05.18 21:33:00 DougSy: that's what the ffwd button on the media player is for "scanning" podcasts ;)
2007.05.18 21:33:05 MizmercGst1: Well, it's letting go that lets things happen
2007.05.18 21:33:06 MrsdurfGst4 left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:33:11 CaroleMc: I like that point Tom - step 1 - select your preferred blogging style of writing - Step 2?
2007.05.18 21:33:19 MizmercGst1: Jeff, I'm willing to live with it.
2007.05.18 21:33:41 WonderfGst8 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:33:48 MizmercGst1: I re-listen sometimes.
2007.05.18 21:33:52 ThomasLev: I do separate styles into different blogs
2007.05.18 21:34:03 ThomasLev: on an informal one I mark it- every sentence
2007.05.18 21:34:23 ThomasLev: no caps
2007.05.18 21:34:29 ThomasLev: I'm not sure that's good advice
2007.05.18 21:34:34 ThomasLev: but it helps me
2007.05.18 21:34:52 ThomasLev: actually the reason I'm doing this is that I love blogging- it's done a lot for me
2007.05.18 21:34:55 MizmercGst1: My style on my class blog is different than my reflection blog, but I have a voice that comes through both of those. And I use CAPS sometimes to make a point
2007.05.18 21:35:02 CaroleMc: interesting that - its a less formal style that is more like conversation that ebbs and flows
2007.05.18 21:35:12 JeffC: I like the idea of podcasts... as well as desktop sharing, etc... but in this age of information overload... yeah... if you want to slow yourself down online... listen to podcast archives... but again, as with this conference... I wish there were textural transcripts available of all the audio presentations.
2007.05.18 21:35:17 ThomasLev: and I wouldn't want to lose it- or lose other things that are important to me
2007.05.18 21:35:18 MizmercGst1: not on class blog. I'm breaking students of the ALL CAPS HABIT (arghhh)
2007.05.18 21:35:25 JoseMR: I keep both a reflection and classroom blog
2007.05.18 21:35:27 NinaTL: I wouldn't want to model no caps for my students. They are case-challenged as it is
2007.05.18 21:35:38 MizmercGst1: ditto nina
2007.05.18 21:35:47 JoseMR: This is the case with 3rd graders also
2007.05.18 21:35:47 JeffC: just pry the CapsLock key off their keyboards!
2007.05.18 21:35:51 ThomasLev: students have to read very carefully to find my personal blog
2007.05.18 21:35:59 CaroleMc: hmm, i think there is merit in allowing different structure in a blog , as we do in an SMS text message
2007.05.18 21:35:59 MizmercGst1: It's just a couple girls,
2007.05.18 21:36:00 ThomasLev: they find lots of other stuff first
2007.05.18 21:36:00 PerryGst9 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:36:10 ThomasLev: but they do, occasionally, find it
2007.05.18 21:36:12 JeffC: Hi Perry
2007.05.18 21:36:13 JoseMR: I go back edit comments for spelling and grammar
2007.05.18 21:36:16 MizmercGst1: so funny, like the same types that would "heart" their "i"
2007.05.18 21:36:17 JeffC: I'm on Helpdesk if you'd like assistance.
2007.05.18 21:36:19 PerryGst9: Hi jeff
2007.05.18 21:36:19 NinaTL: Hi, Perry
2007.05.18 21:36:30 PerryGst9: Hi Nina
2007.05.18 21:36:41 JeffC: Are you here for the WiA Conference or something else, Perry?
2007.05.18 21:36:49 MizmercGst1: Hoping Nina is not offended since she has an "i" in her name
2007.05.18 21:36:52 PerryGst9: For the conference
2007.05.18 21:36:55 JeffC: cool
2007.05.18 21:36:55 ThomasLev: Welcome to the WiAOC
2007.05.18 21:36:55 NinaTL: Perry is presenting at Alado in 20 minutes
2007.05.18 21:37:04 JeffC: excellent
2007.05.18 21:37:04 JoseMR: We are here for the conference
2007.05.18 21:37:11 NinaTL: I don't put hearts over the i in my name
2007.05.18 21:37:17 NinaTL: Actually too i's
2007.05.18 21:37:18 HelenA joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:37:18 ThomasLev: I am presenting - in my own clunky text-chat kind of way
2007.05.18 21:37:22 NinaTL: Nina and Liakos
2007.05.18 21:37:22 MizmercGst1: I thought so, but ya never know.
2007.05.18 21:37:24 ThomasLev: but I do have sites to peruse
2007.05.18 21:37:30 ThomasLev: and especially welcome comments
2007.05.18 21:37:30 MizmercGst1: okay,
2007.05.18 21:37:34 WonderfGst8 left the room.
2007.05.18 21:37:44 MizmercGst1: So thomas, I agree it's part of the general transparency movement.
2007.05.18 21:37:52 ThomasLev: ah, thanks!
2007.05.18 21:38:01 WonderfGst8 joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:38:01 MizmercGst1: And now it is in transition...
2007.05.18 21:38:21 MizmercGst1: so this means that the rules are being written, and some folks are road kill in that process...
2007.05.18 21:38:30 WonderfGst8 left the room.
2007.05.18 21:38:32 MizmercGst1: but as more folks, get more transparent...
2007.05.18 21:38:48 MizmercGst1: things will settle out and get real...
2007.05.18 21:38:55 MizmercGst1: Summary?
2007.05.18 21:38:56 ThomasLev: my sense is that traditionalists are in shock
2007.05.18 21:38:56 HelenA left the room.
2007.05.18 21:39:04 ThomasLev: but will fight back soon enough
2007.05.18 21:39:06 MizmercGst1: Also a side chat from Jeff on keyboarding
2007.05.18 21:39:07 NinaTL left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:39:07 NinaTL joined the room.
2007.05.18 21:39:11 DougSy: Thomas thanks for this--most of my synchronous online interaction as of late has been VoIP and I'd forgotten the power of text
2007.05.18 21:39:11 MizmercGst1: Ya think?
2007.05.18 21:39:19 GwenC: They will fight back... or adapt
2007.05.18 21:39:29 ThomasLev: well I'd like to know
2007.05.18 21:39:30 MizmercGst1: I think they will try to set up rules...
2007.05.18 21:39:34 CaroleMc: adapt or perish
2007.05.18 21:39:36 ThomasLev: that's possible
2007.05.18 21:39:36 JeffC: btw Mizmerc... members here automatically receive transcripts of their sessions here.
2007.05.18 21:39:51 MizmercGst1: Hey, I think he's pushing membership, lol
2007.05.18 21:39:54 KathrynFB left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:39:59 JeffC: I would recommend that any WiAOC conference participant register here... there are weekly meetings... yup.
2007.05.18 21:40:12 JeffC: It's free... ad free... and you haven't begun to see the possibilities of Tapped In! ;-)
2007.05.18 21:40:13 MizmercGst1: But that will not impress me, since I'm not text oriented. I'll consider anyway
2007.05.18 21:40:34 MizmercGst1: So...how will they, and do they fight back?
2007.05.18 21:40:36 ThomasLev: webheads chats are great-
2007.05.18 21:40:38 JeffC: Well... you could always use text to speedch.
2007.05.18 21:40:42 JeffC: or even speech
2007.05.18 21:40:45 ThomasLev: but they're Sun am IL time
2007.05.18 21:40:45 MizmercGst1: there ya go!
2007.05.18 21:40:47 DougSy: lol
2007.05.18 21:40:54 NinaTL: I also come here for chats with my students and ex-students
2007.05.18 21:40:59 ThomasLev: I'm collecting stories
2007.05.18 21:41:00 JeffC: although i kinda like the word "speedch"
2007.05.18 21:41:10 ThomasLev: One way is just to characterize blogs as non-serious
2007.05.18 21:41:18 DougSy: that's conversion at a faster rate Jeff
2007.05.18 21:41:24 MizmercGst1: Well, I'm a lowly elementary teacher at a Program IMprovement school...
2007.05.18 21:41:27 NinaTL: Some blogs are very serious though
2007.05.18 21:41:28 ThomasLev: frame them as drivel
2007.05.18 21:41:28 JeffC: yup
2007.05.18 21:41:35 ThomasLev: oh I agree, absolutely
2007.05.18 21:41:38 MizmercGst1: My blog is DEAD serious...
2007.05.18 21:41:42 GwenC: Thomas, the transparency - openness mkes the whole academic areana more democratic as well as honest... non-serious? non-stuffy
2007.05.18 21:41:45 CaroleMc: the use of text conversation like this one is empowering - anyone 'speaks' at any time; it also engages with those who like the multi layering of conversations; the eyes are darting all over to draw the threads together - its fun
2007.05.18 21:41:46 JeffC: how would you like to have your students collaborate with other classes Miz?
2007.05.18 21:41:54 NinaTL: Several of mine are seriously dead.
2007.05.18 21:41:55 ThomasLev: I agree Gwen
2007.05.18 21:42:15 JeffC: again... for those who haven't done so yet... click the Actions menu in this frame and click Detach... maximize your chat window.
2007.05.18 21:42:22 JeffC: also Actions-- Larger Text (for us old folks).
2007.05.18 21:42:25 MizmercGst1: Jeff, lets see how this thread goes...
2007.05.18 21:42:38 MizmercGst1: Then I'll discuss collaborating...
2007.05.18 21:42:47 ThomasLev: Actions speak louder than words?
2007.05.18 21:42:53 JeffC: Well.. I'm into audio myself in a different way... I'm heading out to sing some karaoke in a few minutes.
2007.05.18 21:42:55 NinaTL: I recently discovered you can click on larger text again and again and it gets larger and larger each time
2007.05.18 21:43:01 JeffC: Rock and roll works better on a mike than in text.
2007.05.18 21:43:09 JeffC nods to Nina.
2007.05.18 21:43:18 GwenC: not if I'm on the Karoke
2007.05.18 21:43:23 MizmercGst1: Since I'm the most tech advanced at my site, I use reflection blog to share issues/triumphs, and it gets me to people who are at my level and can help.
2007.05.18 21:43:24 JeffC: That's particularly useful if you want to desktop share, Nina.
2007.05.18 21:43:25 NinaTL: Learn something new everyday!
2007.05.18 21:43:30 ThomasLev: karaoke kind of puts the two together, doesn't it?
2007.05.18 21:43:37 PerryGst9: With the larger font, I can now read what is going on :)
2007.05.18 21:43:45 JeffC: yup! I read it on the screen and sing it on the mike!
2007.05.18 21:43:51 NinaTL: Very useful, Perry! :-)
2007.05.18 21:44:13 JeffC: Since the text scrolls very fast here... and we're not using the top frame... it's a must.
2007.05.18 21:44:16 JoseMR left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:44:21 MizmercGst1: But, my kiddos are not at the stage where they will pick up my blog. Maybe in a few years, maybe next years class...
2007.05.18 21:44:38 ThomasLev: I would love to read some of these blogs people are referring to, if you don't mind flinging them into the arena
2007.05.18 21:44:43 JeffC: also... if you want to have a private conversation with someone... double click their name in the Here or Online tabs to the left to open a private chat box.
2007.05.18 21:44:53 ThomasLev: Here are a few of mine...
2007.05.18 21:44:57 MizmercGst1: http://nicholaselementary.edublogs.org
2007.05.18 21:45:01 NinaTL: http://nliakos.wordpress.com is my reading blog
2007.05.18 21:45:02 MizmercGst1: class blog
2007.05.18 21:45:05 JeffC: if you put up a url, it's clickable... however... hold the Ctrl key down when clicking.
2007.05.18 21:45:17 ThomasLev: most recent student blog: http://siucceslnewstalk.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:45:17 JeffC: or accept popups from this site (best)... otherwise your popup blocker might log you out.
2007.05.18 21:45:23 MonicaV: I don't have a personal blog, but the class blog I have with my students is at http://projectplatypus2.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:45:27 MizmercGst1: okay, ctrl not working in firefox
2007.05.18 21:45:29 ThomasLev: professional: http://tomleveretts.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:45:35 JeffC: are you on a Mac, Miz?
2007.05.18 21:45:40 MizmercGst1: nope
2007.05.18 21:45:40 ThomasLev: personal: http://tlevs.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:45:45 NinaTL: http://ninas1stblog.blogspot.com is my first and sporadically continuing reflective blog on web tools
2007.05.18 21:45:48 MizmercGst1: just a cruddy xp laptop
2007.05.18 21:45:52 JeffC: what happened when you control + click?
2007.05.18 21:45:58 CaroleMc: http://coachcarole.wordpress.com/ is my blog for networking
2007.05.18 21:46:01 MizmercGst1: I will have to copy and paste later
2007.05.18 21:46:12 JeffC: Miz... Actions-- Send to Pasteboard
2007.05.18 21:46:19 NinaTL: Get Tom to send you the chatlog, Alice.
2007.05.18 21:46:22 DougSy: here's an "action research" blog project I'm involved with at OISE/UT http://grail.oise.utoronto.ca/journal/team/aggregator.cgi
2007.05.18 21:46:28 JeffC: that's the only way you may copy/paste elsewhere... plus a way for you to get a transcript of this session.
2007.05.18 21:46:28 MizmercGst1: not a darn thing
2007.05.18 21:46:42 JeffC: are you sure it didn't open another window?
2007.05.18 21:46:44 ThomasLev: I'll send anyone the transcript if you write me at leverett@siu.edu
2007.05.18 21:46:48 MizmercGst1: man, NOW I want a transcript, lol
2007.05.18 21:46:50 ThomasLev: nonmembers to
2007.05.18 21:46:53 ThomasLev: too
2007.05.18 21:47:05 NinaTL: Members will get their own.
2007.05.18 21:47:05 JeffC: charge them a dollar for it through Paypal, Thomas.
2007.05.18 21:47:06 MizmercGst1: http://mizmercer.edublogs.org
2007.05.18 21:47:14 NinaTL: lol
2007.05.18 21:47:16 ThomasLev: do you bloggers find that the process takes you in?
2007.05.18 21:47:22 MizmercGst1: YES!
2007.05.18 21:47:23 NinaTL: What do you mean?
2007.05.18 21:47:29 MizmercGst1: It always has with technology
2007.05.18 21:47:33 DougSy: it took me a while to find my "public voice"
2007.05.18 21:47:33 NinaTL: I get pretty obsessed
2007.05.18 21:47:42 ThomasLev: well, I want to keep talking to the public
2007.05.18 21:47:46 MizmercGst1: Back when I started html coding, I could lose a day doing a page
2007.05.18 21:47:47 ThomasLev: I think about it more & more
2007.05.18 21:47:48 DougSy: with text, and then again with audio
2007.05.18 21:47:55 GwenC: I feel wrapped up in it. Yes. Do you see the resistance to blogging as an attempt to control voices? or is that paranoic? Should it be an objective to instruct our students/collegues as to the transparency aspect and the strength of it? How?
2007.05.18 21:48:29 MizmercGst1: And I used to spend mucho time setting up an access database for my class the first year I taught. It'sb ecause I could control the technology. and it was so crazy that first year.
2007.05.18 21:48:45 ThomasLev: good questions, Gwen
2007.05.18 21:48:50 MizmercGst1: Yep
2007.05.18 21:48:53 NinaTL: When we blog with students I think we should relinquish some of that control.
2007.05.18 21:49:04 NinaTL: But sometimes students won't post if they don't have to.
2007.05.18 21:49:09 JeffC: I spent a month in Fortran class in 8th grade doing punch cards to print up a banner of my name.
2007.05.18 21:49:18 JeffC: Anyone else here want to go back to Univac?
2007.05.18 21:49:23 NinaTL: not me!
2007.05.18 21:49:32 MizmercGst1: I tried to find the string that connects why I blog on MY blog, with what I want my studetns to learn on their blog.
2007.05.18 21:49:51 MizmercGst1: NO! I did VMS abit on some legacy systems..
2007.05.18 21:50:05 MizmercGst1: and they still had punchcards the first time I took SPSS as a freshman
2007.05.18 21:50:07 ThomasLev: Actually one thing we do, that I think helps that Gwen's question, is that we have class blogs & personal blogs
2007.05.18 21:50:25 MizmercGst1: Yes, but there are things that connect both of them for me.
2007.05.18 21:50:26 NinaTL: I write much differently on a class blog
2007.05.18 21:50:28 ThomasLev: we invite students to delete their personal blogs if they want, after they graduate
2007.05.18 21:50:34 ThomasLev: ...though they never do
2007.05.18 21:50:35 CaroleMc: Nina, I am amazed at the type of blogs that learners, much younger than me, love to frequent - certainly more colourful than mine - maybe my blogs need a makeover to attract a different audience- :-)
2007.05.18 21:50:41 NinaTL: Anyone can delete a blog
2007.05.18 21:50:44 ThomasLev: actually occasionally they do
2007.05.18 21:50:56 MizmercGst1: Becasue thomas, once they're gone, you can't get tehm back!
2007.05.18 21:51:08 MizmercGst1: Have you ever lost track of somethign that was digital?
2007.05.18 21:51:15 MizmercGst1: Photos, a paper?
2007.05.18 21:51:17 MizmercGst1: I HATE it.
2007.05.18 21:51:20 ThomasLev: I've lost track of lots of stuff
2007.05.18 21:51:22 ThomasLev: I do too
2007.05.18 21:51:30 ThomasLev: it's my own fault, for the most part
2007.05.18 21:51:35 MonicaV left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 21:51:38 MizmercGst1: And I think maybe they have at some point, and fear losing those memories, and that time.
2007.05.18 21:51:46 GwenC: Is it possible to download a blog in itÂ´s entire form?
2007.05.18 21:51:47 NinaTL: There's a lot of trash floating around in cyberspace... I understand it never really goes away
2007.05.18 21:51:54 NinaTL: I don't think so, Gwen
2007.05.18 21:52:13 ThomasLev: it's probably easier to delete a blog than burn a book
2007.05.18 21:52:23 CaroleMc: you can often use the WayBackMachine to locate lost items on the web http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
2007.05.18 21:52:31 MizmercGst1: There's this theory of death, and life after that may be a good analogy...People live on as long as there is still osmeone alive who remember them.
2007.05.18 21:52:42 NinaTL: I had trouble deleting a sample blog I made in Blogger--until Google took over Blogger and then it was a snap!
2007.05.18 21:52:46 MizmercGst1: ANd maybe when you lose that blog, or that paper, you lose a part of yourself.
2007.05.18 21:53:01 JeffC hopes to live virtually forever in cyberland.
2007.05.18 21:53:05 NinaTL: not very long, then Alice, for most of us :-(
2007.05.18 21:53:21 DougSy: that comes back to the notion of public voice
2007.05.18 21:53:22 MizmercGst1: I lost my senior seminar paper, I'm sure it's on some harddisk in the house.
2007.05.18 21:53:27 NinaTL: Like Voldemort and his seven pieces of soul
2007.05.18 21:53:29 ThomasLev: Jeff will live forever in TI transcripts at least...
2007.05.18 21:53:38 NinaTL: Aarrgghh Alice!
2007.05.18 21:53:40 DougSy: and the fact that things (those blogged anyway) will persist on the web
2007.05.18 21:53:46 JeffC: true... i've logged about 50,000 hours here.
2007.05.18 21:53:52 MizmercGst1: Yeah NIna.
2007.05.18 21:54:02 MizmercGst1: It was a nice piece of research too!
2007.05.18 21:54:08 NinaTL: I'll bet it was.
2007.05.18 21:54:17 DougSy: Carole, funny you should mention
2007.05.18 21:54:18 NinaTL: You have my condolences
2007.05.18 21:54:38 DougSy: I've had to resort to wayback for some blogger stuff I didn't get moved before the "overhaul"
2007.05.18 21:54:41 CaroleMc: Yes, DougSy
2007.05.18 21:54:42 DougSy: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://learningdiary.blogspot.com
2007.05.18 21:54:51 ThomasLev: I go around telling people how putting a research paper on a blog is better than putting it on paper- for that very reason
2007.05.18 21:54:57 ThomasLev: if it's worth anything, save it!
2007.05.18 21:55:00 MizmercGst1: I found my first reflection blog on blogger (the anonymous one).
2007.05.18 21:55:18 ThomasLev: speaking of Wayback, I'm using it to dredge up work on obscure languages
2007.05.18 21:55:20 MizmercGst1: it was weird seeing some of that stuff.
2007.05.18 21:55:33 NinaTL: I'm beginning to learn how to write on the web--with lots of hyperlinks that go right to the source
2007.05.18 21:55:42 NinaTL: It's a different way of writing entirely
2007.05.18 21:55:44 ThomasLev: which is a byproduct of SIUC Linguistics housing a Journal of Pidgins & Creole languages
2007.05.18 21:55:50 MizmercGst1: Yes nina...
2007.05.18 21:56:04 MizmercGst1: I have a whole "conversational" style in blogging.
2007.05.18 21:56:04 ThomasLev: and me being one of the few around that know about the wayback archive
2007.05.18 21:56:08 JeffC: wow doug... you're a dedicated blogger.
2007.05.18 21:56:08 NinaTL: I didn't use to do that (hyperlinks)
2007.05.18 21:56:15 CaroleMc: i agree nina, there is a different 'voice' required' to engage the reader online
2007.05.18 21:56:21 MizmercGst1: I comment, and then do a post on my blog to the comment, with more annotations.
2007.05.18 21:56:27 MizmercGst1: so it's all circular.
2007.05.18 21:56:39 NinaTL: My next goal: start tagging
2007.05.18 21:56:40 MizmercGst1: it's structure is so different?
2007.05.18 21:56:46 ThomasLev: I've started tagging
2007.05.18 21:56:47 GwenC: IÂ´m sorry Thomas, what is the wayback arquive?
2007.05.18 21:56:51 MizmercGst1: Yep.
2007.05.18 21:56:55 JeffC: just clicked randomly and am looking at Doug's blogs from 2003 at the wayback machine:
2007.05.18 21:56:56 JeffC: http://web.archive.org/web/20030731222038/http://learningdiary.blogspot.com/
2007.05.18 21:57:02 JeffC: thank you peabody and sherman.
2007.05.18 21:57:03 ThomasLev: the wayback archive stores old webpages
2007.05.18 21:57:12 ThomasLev: has a record of them even after they've been deleted
2007.05.18 21:57:18 NinaTL: Scary
2007.05.18 21:57:36 GwenC: Like a windows restore file?
2007.05.18 21:57:41 GwenC: Who houses that?
2007.05.18 21:57:42 NinaTL: I repeat, be aware of your potential audience when you upload
2007.05.18 21:57:45 ThomasLev: in our case, some old papers on languages such as St Lucien (Creole) were deleted
2007.05.18 21:57:46 JeffC: probably google
2007.05.18 21:57:50 JeffC: they save everything
2007.05.18 21:58:01 ThomasLev: and the wayback still had a record of them....
2007.05.18 21:58:03 NinaTL: It's like email: it's no more private than a postcard, i.e., NOT private
2007.05.18 21:58:07 DougSy: and Google
2007.05.18 21:58:11 CaroleMc: so any final advice for the bloggers Tom?
2007.05.18 21:58:12 MizmercGst1: oh I forgot, my latest creation, my blogfolio: http://amercerportfolio.edublogs.org
2007.05.18 21:58:18 MizmercGst1: It's less private than email.
2007.05.18 21:58:24 ThomasLev: advice?
2007.05.18 21:58:36 NinaTL: Email is not private. We just like to think it is.
2007.05.18 21:58:48 ThomasLev: carry on! let's make a bloggers' confederacy
2007.05.18 21:58:49 CaroleMc: how to become transparent; or how not to 'shoot yourself inthe foot'?
2007.05.18 21:59:05 MizmercGst1: well, email isn't private, but blogs are very public.
2007.05.18 21:59:10 ThomasLev: reread before you post
2007.05.18 21:59:17 NinaTL: Just don't say anything you don't want them to know.
2007.05.18 21:59:23 MizmercGst1: Admit when you're wrong.
2007.05.18 21:59:29 MizmercGst1: I've corrected myself.
2007.05.18 21:59:31 CaroleMc: never blog when angry
2007.05.18 21:59:32 NinaTL: them = your students, your parents, your boss...
2007.05.18 21:59:34 DougSy: don't make posts when you're "emotional" (especially if the emotion is anger) is a good place to start
2007.05.18 21:59:39 DougSy: beat me Carole
2007.05.18 21:59:44 MizmercGst1: Not emotional wrong, I don't do that.
2007.05.18 21:59:51 NinaTL: Edit your posts! (Is the old version saved in some archive?)
2007.05.18 21:59:52 CaroleMc: you and i are in synch today doug
2007.05.18 22:00:08 DougSy: indeed
2007.05.18 22:00:18 MizmercGst1: I re-read after I post. Catch the typos that way.
2007.05.18 22:00:22 ThomasLev: I don't know if the wayback does blogs too
2007.05.18 22:00:23 CaroleMc: update blogs ona regular basis
2007.05.18 22:00:28 MizmercGst1: I've been known to change stuff.
2007.05.18 22:00:34 NinaTL: Me too
2007.05.18 22:00:34 ThomasLev: it will have to be overloaded soon
2007.05.18 22:00:40 MizmercGst1: Anyone here read Miguel Guhlin?
2007.05.18 22:00:45 CaroleMc: ?
2007.05.18 22:00:46 NinaTL: OK guys, it's way past my bedtime
2007.05.18 22:00:51 MizmercGst1: night.
2007.05.18 22:00:58 NinaTL: Thanks, Tom, for a stimulating session.
2007.05.18 22:00:59 DougSy: yes, he does good work, Miguel does
2007.05.18 22:01:00 ThomasLev: Nina - thanks for coming!
2007.05.18 22:01:06 DougSy: yes thanks all, have to run too
2007.05.18 22:01:07 ThomasLev: I realize it's very late in MD
2007.05.18 22:01:08 NinaTL: Nothing else could have kept me awake until 1 a.m.
2007.05.18 22:01:12 MizmercGst1: He changed a post recently.
2007.05.18 22:01:17 CaroleMc: time for me to go - must do an entry in my Baranduda Blog before I sign off - interesting stuff here today
2007.05.18 22:01:19 CaroleMc: thanks Tom
2007.05.18 22:01:23 NinaTL: Perry, good luck with your session--I will catch it later from the recording.
2007.05.18 22:01:30 ThomasLev: Thanks Carole!
2007.05.18 22:01:38 MizmercGst1: And I thought, have I lost my mind? It didn't say that before, and he had changed it because of a complaint.
2007.05.18 22:01:47 NinaTL hugs all around and goes to bed.
2007.05.18 22:01:49 CaroleMc: cheers everyone - football is on TV now
2007.05.18 22:01:49 NinaTL left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 22:01:49 MizmercGst1: do we needd to leave.
2007.05.18 22:02:03 MizmercGst1: football? This time of year?
2007.05.18 22:02:08 CaroleMc left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 22:02:09 ThomasLev: I appreciate all the links- which I will read
2007.05.18 22:02:12 ThomasLev: football?
2007.05.18 22:02:17 MizmercGst1: Oh, aussie football
2007.05.18 22:02:20 DougSy: thanks Tom, great conversation
2007.05.18 22:02:22 DougSy: take care all
2007.05.18 22:02:23 GwenC: maybe soccer
2007.05.18 22:02:31 DougSy left the room (signed off).
2007.05.18 22:02:38 JimTGst5: Is it possible to listen to Talkcom session with OS X or Linux? I only see a Windows plugin.
2007.05.18 22:02:45 MizmercGst1: nope aussie rules football?
2007.05.18 22:03:01 ThomasLev: it's fall in Australia, I guess
2007.05.18 22:03:03 MizmercGst1: jeff, sounds like yours?
2007.05.18 22:03:21 ThomasLev: don't know, Jim
2007.05.18 22:03:23 MizmercGst1: Thomas email?
2007.05.18 22:03:30 MizmercGst1: is it on blog?
2007.05.18 22:03:30 ThomasLev: leverett@siu.edu
2007.05.18 22:03:39 ThomasLev: should be
2007.05.18 22:03:42 JeffC: sounds like what Miz?
2007.05.18 22:04:23 JeffC: the talkcom question? hmmm... dunno... but if you're having trouble connecting with a mac, and there's no mac plugin... i'd suggest using a pc emulator if you have one.
2007.05.18 22:04:57 ThomasLev: Thanks again all & farewell!
2007.05.18 22:04:58 MizmercGst1: email sent
2007.05.18 22:05:20 ThomasLev left the room (signed off).

Welcome to WiAOC 2007!

2007-05-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

image from Webheads

How blogging affects the academic ecosystem- home
My humble weblog
Convergence schedule

How bloggers affect the academic ecosystem

2007-05-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

Resources below deal with this topic. Here are four ideas I'm working on.

1. Blogging is part of an international trend toward transparency in general, which has brought pressure not only on academic institutions, but also on governments, businesses, and individuals. This phenomenon in general is guided by several principles: first, that transparency is valued by the public, which tends to reward agents of transparency, if only indirectly; second, that those who are more transparent put back-pressure on those who aren't, so that institutions or individuals that continue to hide information about their true activities, interests, or purposes eventually come under suspicion;

2. That the academic world can be described as a kind of ecosystem, with a power structure (food chain) of delicate interdependence; that researchers and professors, by establishing a direct line of communication with the public, cut out the middleman in the image and knowledge-delivery mechanism, in a way that will ultimately change that ecosystem, and will cause adjustments, if not outright attempts to control it, by universities and their committees that to some degree are defenders of the status quo. The university can be seen as constrained by its need to present itself as defender of academic freedom, and freedom of speech, yet the ambivalence of university administrations to what is seen as publicity-seeking is longstanding and precedes blogging.*

3. That the academic blogging community by its nature has become a loose confederacy of experts in different fields, with certain characteristics in common; that, because of their interaction with each other, they have more potential to be influenced by each other, and show the benefits of cross-disciplinary influences.

4. That blogging puts a public face on academics who have to some degree become accustomed to the protection of the university and its public image machine; that, by actually creating one's own interaction with the public, a blogger faces not only the adjustment of the university to the new decentralization caused by the personalization of media, but also the adjustment of the public, which, formerly used to directing criticism to the local newspaper or to the secretary of the Chancellor, now finds another representative of the university to open a dialogue with. This last possibility may be the most difficult for the blogger, and may in fact be the most threatening to the university, which may have gotten used to the fact that professors represent the university wherever they go, and whatever they do; but, in the past, this was not always recorded in print archives, forever.

I welcome your comments. I may tone down mine, if they don't sleep well.

Juan Cole, blogging and the academic

2007-05-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole

Leibovitz, L. (2006, June 2). Middle East wars flare up at Yale. Jewish Week Online. http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=12578. Accessed 5-07.

Drezner, D. (2006, July 24). The case of Juan Cole. Daniel Drezner weblog. http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002814.html. Accessed 5-07.

From 2006 Chronicle set of essays on blogging and academia

Chronicle Review (2006, July 28). Can blogging derail your career? Volume 52, Issue 47, p. B6, available http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00601.htm. Accessed 5-07.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2006, July 28). The lessons of Juan Cole, from "Can blogging derail your career?" Chronicle Review, v52, i47, p.B6. http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00602.htm. Accessed 5-07.

There has never been a better time to be a public intellectual, and the Web is the big reason why...par. 2
The blogosphere is an excellent vehicle for the kind of intellectual ascendancy he has achieved. Dozens of important intellectual and academic blogs are being written for a wide public — and they are clearly being read, influencing the agenda, if not the content, of debate in the mainstream news media. -par. 4
But blogs expose us in some alarming ways.-par. 5
He used to be harmless. Now he is dangerous enough to try to stop. I'm thrilled to see the membrane between the academy and the public more permeable and transparent than ever. But such progress has its victims. -par. 5
But Cole's experience has shown us all just how tenuous academic freedom is when it comes to stuff that really matters. Thank goodness for tenure. Imagine what his critics would do at Michigan if they thought they could drive him away. If the academy is worth anything, it will continue to protect and reward him — and the next wave of public intellectuals. -par. 7

Drezner, D. (2006, July 28). The trouble with blogs. from "Can blogging derail your career?" Chronicle Review, v52, i47, p.B6. http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00701.htm. Accessed 5-07.

...a senior colleague once told me his secret to academic success: One bad article equals five great ones. His point was that the worst thing a scholar can do is to publish too much, as opposed to too little. Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase. -par. 1
The trouble with blogs is that they seem designed to provoke easy doubts. Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings. What makes them worth reading can also make them prone to error. Any honest scholar-blogger — myself included — could acknowledge a post or two that they would like to have back. At a place like Yale, one bad blog post can erase a lot of good will very quickly.-par. 4
Today's senior faculty members look at blogs the way a previous generation of academics looked at television — as a guilty, tawdry pleasure that should not be talked about in respectable circles. -par. 5
In a perfect world, blogs would play no role in hiring decisions. In the world in which we live, perhaps university committees should consciously factor in the positives — quality blogs allow scholars to link grand theory to real-world events, cultivate new ideas, and spark public debates — that come from scholar blogging. Apparently, it has become impossible for the negatives to be ignored. -par. 7

Althouse, A. (2006, July 28). Exposed in the blogosphere. from "Can blogging derail your career?" Chronicle Review, v52, i47, p.B6. http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00702.htm. Accessed 5-07.

Successful blog writing is sharp and clear. Controversial opinions will look quite stark. You lay it on the line, and you mean to startle readers and make your opponents mad. Academic writing is temperate and swathed in verbiage. It creates a comfortable environment for academics and wards off casual readers. In the blogosphere, you're newly exposed, and it's a rough arena, where you have far less control over what happens to you. That's part of what makes blogging empowering and, often, great fun. But it's a big risk, and of course, it risks your career. -par. 3

Cole, J. (2006, July 28). Juan R. I. Cole responds, from "Can blogging derail your career?" Chronicle Review, v52, i47, p.B6. http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i47/47b00902.htm. Accessed 5-07.

Academics cannot easily be handed a pink slip, but they can be punished in other ways. The issues facing academics who dissent in public and in clear prose are the same today as they have always been. Maintaining a Web log now is no different in principle from writing a newsletter or publishing sharp opinion in popular magazines in the 1950s.

The difference today is that, because of Internet neutrality (which may not be long with us), an academic's voice is potentially as loud as or louder than those of corporate-backed pundits. Occasionally, my Web log has generated as many as 250,000 unique hits and over a million page views per month. Entries have also been sent in e-mail messages in numbers that cannot be traced. My Web log is, for the moment, certainly a mass medium. -pars. 2-3

The ability to speak directly and immediately to the public on matters of one's expertise, and to bring to bear all one's skills to affect the public debate, is new and breathtaking. -par. 4

Damrosch, D. (2007, Mar. 9). Trading up with Gilgamesh. Chronicle Review, v53, i27, p. B5. Online, Log-in required. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i27/27b00501.htm. Accessed 5-07.

The lesson I would draw from my Goldilocks experience is that it is neither necessary nor desirable to dumb our projects down when writing for a general audience. At the same time, we need to write quite differently when we want to reach beyond the comforting confines of our disciplinary coteries. It is good to have a clear and vivid style, but equally, we have to retrain ourselves to write for readers who don't already know what we're talking about, and who need to be shown why they should care about the things we know and love so well. The trade market can bear na impressive degree of scholarly substance if we can teach ourselves to reach out to a substantial nonscholarly clientele. -par. 11

Drezner story + recent discussions

2007-05-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

Deconick, A. (2007, Apr.). Tenure and Blogging. The Forbidden Gospels Blog. Should blogging count for tenure? Links to a discussion.

Davidson, C. (2007, April 7). Should blogs count for tenure? HASTAC.

Guardian Unlimited. (2004, Sept. 23). Inside the ivory tower. Registration required.

Goldberg, D. (2005, Mar. 5). Corporate vs. Academic blogging. ILLiGAL blogging.

Drezner story

Gershman, J. (2005, Oct. 11). Blogging prof fails to heed own advice. New York Sun.

Drezner, blogging

2007-05-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

Tribble, I. (2005, July 8). Bloggers need not apply. Chronicle Careers, Chronicle of Higher Education.

How would my colleagues know that blogging has replaced cable TV ? Or that I now read fewer mystery novels? That blogging has actually increased the amount of time that I spend thinking about my professional life? I think having a (non-anonymous, public affairs-type) blog actually reflects a high level of engagement and professional seriousness. Lazy or uncreative people do not blog; they eat Cheetos and watch daytime TV. (I'm not calling all non-bloggers lazy; I'm just saying that blogging is probably one sign of high commitment.) If only more of our colleagues in political science would recognize that blogs can be a virtual academic conference, we might have a more lively discipline.

Dion, M. (2005, Oct. 12). Blogging and tenure. La Profesora Abstraida.

Lawrence, C. (2005, Oct. 9). Drezner denial discussion. Signifying Nothing. Links to posts about Drezner.

How blogging affects the academic ecosystem

2007-05-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Althouse, A. (2005, Oct. 5). "The very first words I wrote on this blog were: 'I shouldn't be doing this. I'll be going up for tenure soon.' Althouse blog. (About Drezner)

Williams, L. (2007, Apr. 12). How real life screws up blogging. Learning the lessons of Nixon. "Blogging is making a backup of my soul".

Keen, A. (2007, Apr. 12). An elitist code of conduct for bloggers. ZDNet, The Great Seduction.

"There are (at least) two issues for those considering the tenure of a blogger: whether the time should have been spent elsewhere (on scholarship, for example, especially if the quantity/quality of what is there is borderline sufficient)and separately, whether writing a "creative" or less than 100% serious blog detracts from the scholarly image of the person and of the institution. The person you mention was on the high end of the quantity/quality dimension and the department was not heavily enmeshed in blog reading or writing and so they hardly knew about, let alone read, the blog of the one sole person in a huge department who kept a blog.

At the law school it may be differently perceived as there are a number of bloggers and so it isn't just a rare instance of one person doing her or his own thing at the side. It's much more visible and therefore potentially more threatening.

(comment from Althouse post, above, by nina

Portfolio showcase

2007-03-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

As part of TESOL 2007, this post shows some student portfolios that I am proud of.

I have taught our highest-level writing class many times, though not recently. I'll start with portfolios that show well-formatted (in my view) research papers.

RESEARCH PAPERS

Yuii- Wal-Mart and Women, CESL EAP2
Sosuke- Magnetism's change and the effect on life- CESL EAP2
Raeed- Nene Bird, CESL EAP2
MinHo- WalMart and a Bank, CESL EAP2
Awni- Transportation pollution in New York City, CESL EAP2

SURVEY REPORT

Dominic- Airplanes, CED, Quebec

GROUP PROJECTS

Violent Deer, CESL Newstalk 054
New Wal-Mart, CESL Newstalk 054
University drinking culture, CESL Newstalk 065
A Look at Bullying (not SIUC, excellent, but unidentified, in terms of which class & where. Note: Student work is in the comments)

WEBLOGGING

Sub, CESL AE2
Bright, CESL AE2
Andre, CESL AE2
Faisal, CESL AE2
Hussain, CESL AE2

unfinished business

2007-03-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

This weblog, which was always independent, having its own logon and password, is switching over to being part of the CESL system. That whole situation has become a little complicated, but CESL now has three kinds of weblogs, students, teachers, and old ones. This one is going in with the old ones. Information about how to post will soon go onto the template.

Meanwhile, with TESOL coming up, there are some articles floating out there that did not get included in the TESOL presentation, but are interesting nevertheless. Those articles are referenced here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=1104&tag=nl.e622
Google gets nervous about its $1 billion-dollar video copyright infringements...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2992587.stm
Gagging the bloggers, BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6375525.stm
The mash-up future of the web, BBC

Radcliffe, J. (2007, Jan. 20). A new school of bloggers. Houston Chronicle. Appeared on web, but now gone. About teachers who blog anonymously because of the dangers of blogging, & the perils of saying too much about a profession that is very sensitive.

sources

2007-01-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tevlin, J. (2006, Dec. 29). Bloggone! StarTribune.com, Minneapolis. Accessed 1-07 from http://www.startribune.com/217/story/903162.html.

According to this article, people are getting tired of blogging; the number is leveling off. It quotes Technorati, though, saying that it's over 50 million. The Star Tribune is the paper that was just sold for about half of what it was worth a couple of years ago.

revival

2006-11-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

Weblog notes go here:

Aaron Campbell has given a pre-conference JALT Workshop; Using weblogs in language learning classes along with Marc Sheffner at the JALT Conference in Kitakyushu. It's well-organized, and has a lot of links.

more from TESOL

2006-03-30T08:33:00.001-08:00

from a presentation that I did not attend:

Petring, J., Chap, B., Costa, C., Fernandes, E., and Fawzi, H. (2006). Weblogs, photoblogs and audioblogs, an international perspective. TESOL, Tampa FL, March.

Jane Petring, College Edouard-Montpetit, Quebec
http://englishcefblog.blogspot.com, class blog
http://blogenough.blogspot.com, collaborative blog
http://sortez.blogspot.com, blogging in ESL EVO

Barbara Chap, English to the Point, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
http://tinyurl.com/n2gda, class blog
http://fwe2.motime.com, Fun with English 2 blog

Cristina Costa, Portuguese Naval Academy, Lisbon, Portugal
http://fromstemtostern.blogspot.com, class blog

Elisabeth Fernandes, Kobe Women's Univ., Kobe, Japan
http://kgwritingclass.blogspot.com, high school writing class

Hala Fawzi, College of Technological Sciences, Khartoum, Sudan
http://englishonlinects.blogspot.com, class blog

BLOGHOSTS

http://www.edublog.com
http://www.tabulas.com
http://wordpress.com
http://www.elgg.com - for collaborative use

AUDIOBLOGGING LINKS

http://www.podOmatic.com - find, send, create podcasts
http://www.odeo.com - create & send podcasts
http://audacity. sourceforge.net - open source, for recording & editing
http://www.springdoo.com

ADDING PICTURES, SLIDESHOWS & VIDEO

http://www.bubbleshare.com
http://www.photostory.com
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.revver.com -upload, convert, store videos
http://www.youtube.com -upload, convert, store videos

RSS & SOCIAL SOFTWARE

http://www.bloglines.com
http://suprglu.com
http://www.del.icio.us
http://www.dekita.org

ARTICLES & LINKS

Ward, Jason. Push button publishing for the pupils.
http://www.teflweb-j.org/v3n1/blog_ward.pdf

Oatman, E. (2005, Aug. 1). Blogomania!
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleid=CA632382

Campbell, A., Amman, R. & Dieu, B. Elgg- A personal learning landscape.
http://tesl-ej.org/ej34/m1.html

Farmer, J. (2005, July). How you SHOULD use blogs in education.
http://blogsavvy.net/how-you-should-use-blogs-in-education

Expert Voice: John Patrick on Weblogs
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,1395411,00.asp

Next generation weblogs: multimedia
http://livingonthinair.blogspot.com/2004/10/next-generation-weblogs-multimedia.html

Weblogs in Higher Education
http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php

Pod Almighty (Guardian Unlimited - Jan. 20, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1690638,00.html

notes from TESOL - Mar. 2006

2006-03-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

Back from TESOL (Tampa), where I saw that weblogs were big; lots of people wanted to know what they were and how one could use them. I ran out of handouts and promised to send a few along later. The promise still holds! Write!

Here are some interesting notes:

Sarah Lee-Dretzka's class at Penn Valley/UMKC (Kansas City, MO) (I saw her poster session, and saw her at my presentation):
http://composition3blog.blogspot.com/
nice! I was especially impressed with her outline, so I'll include a complete reference:

Lee-Dretzka, S. (2006). Blogs for Fluency, Pragmatic, and Rhetorical Skills. Poster Session, TESOL, Tampa FL, March.

Blog entry in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

TESOL 2006

2006-03-13T22:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Tampa....

This presentation will show you a little of what our program has done with weblogs.

Come and see:

our students' page
our teachers' page
abstracts and papers on Wal-Mart
lower-level projects
student-collaborative effort on violent deer
my professional weblog

Have a good conference!

bib

2006-03-13T22:38:00.000-08:00

Leach, J. (2006). A teacher's guide to blogging. The Guardian.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/appleeducation/story/0,16926,1682441,00.html. Accessed 3-06.

Guardian (2006). How blogs can make the link.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/appleeducation/story/0,,1682538,00.html. Accessed 3-06.

Sharos, D. (2006, Mar. 13). Blogs taking a seat in, out of classroom. Chicago Tribune (log-in req'd).
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0603130006mar13,1,6691250.story?ctrack=1&cset=true. Accessed 3-06.

2006-03-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

More quotes from sources:

Although there has been some wonderfully innovative uses of blogging by both journalists and educators I believe that the media and the academy as institutions are still asking the wrong questions about this phenomenon. The standard questions are most often posed in terms of productivity: how can this technology enable us to do what we already do but more efficiently? How can we reach more people? How can we encourage more discussion?...I believe we will only unleash the full practical potential of blogging when we pay due attention to its place in this complex field of new communicative practices. We need to look at blogging, not as an isolated phenomenon, but as part of a broad palette of “cybercultural” practices, which provide us with both new ways of doing and new ways of thinking. (pp. 2-3)

One of the aims of using blogs in educational settings must actually be about the process itself. In the same way that one of the aims of encouraging good essay writing is to assist students to develop expressive skills that they can then apply in a range of different ways in professional or personal contexts, one of the aims of blogging ought to be to encourage cyber-literacy and an understanding of the ecology of the link in a networked society. (p.10)

I am therefore becoming increasingly convinced that blogs used across classes over the duration of a degree course, rather than blogs focused on specific assignment tasks or blogs developed for single semester units are a more congruent use of this technology. (-p.15)

O'Donnell, M. (2005) Blogging as pedagogic practice: artefact and ecology. incsub.org.

http://www.incsub.org/blogtalk/images/Odonnell.doc. Accessed 3-06.

****************************

Whether you’re a warblogger who works by day as a professional journalist or you’re a teenage high school student worried about your final exams, you do the same thing: you use your blog to link to your friends and rivals and comment on what they’re doing. Blog posts are short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal, no matter what topic they approach. -Hourihan (2002)

Hourihan, M. (2002, Jun. 13). What We’re Doing When We Blog. O’Reilly Web Devcenter.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html. Accessed 3-06.

************************

It seems clear that although blogging can and does have a significant and worthwhile educational impact, this impact does not come automatically and does not come without risks. As many writers have noted, writing a weblog appears in the first instance to be a form of publishing, but as time goes by, blogging resembles more and more a conversation. And for a conversation to be successful, it must be given a purpose and it must remain, for the most part, unconstrained.

Downes, S. (2004, Sept.-Oct.). Educational Blogging
. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5, 14–26.

http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp. Accessed 3-06.

2006-03-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

By the end of 2005, there were an estimated 20 million active blogs worldwide.
English Next, p. 47

We now live in a world in which migrants do not have to break connections with friends and family to begin the generations-long process of assimilating into a new identity. Not only is it possible to retain close contact with the home community, on a daily basis via e-mail and telephone, it is also possible for people to read the
same newspapers as those being read in the community they have left, watch the same television programmes on satellite television, or borrow the same films on DVD.
pp 52-53

Graddol. David (2006). English Next. British Council. Retrieved by pdf.
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-englishnext.htm?mtklink=learnng-research-english-next

http://edu.blogs.com/
edu.blogs

http://education.guardian.co.uk/appleeducation/story/0,,1682538,00.html
Guardian story

http://dafnegonzalez.com/id3125-05/
Dafne's class

http://cae2005.blogspot.com/
http://www.englishcedblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.englishcefblog.blogspot.com/

more quotes & notes

2006-02-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

More quotes & notes from around:

A blog is, at minimum, a presentation of a repository of journal entries. But since those entries can be selectively reflect on other posts, the blog can occupy the entire eportfolio space.

I had (fleetingly) hoped we could have one repository, or give the end user the impression of one repository. But, with in my personal portfolio experiments I've come to understand that there will be multiple repositories and multiple presentations ('a multi-folio').
-Nils Peterson, 7-2005

********************

Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

George Siemens, 2004

****************

Other links:

UAE bloggers.

Gami, North Central College, Illinois.

bib

2006-02-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

Berube, M. (2005, Oct. 11). Blogging: An academic question. Post & comments. Michael Berube Online.
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/741/. Accessed 2-06.

Campbell, A. (2005, Oct. 10). Classroom blogging: Two fundamental approaches. dekita. org.
http://dekita.org/articles/classroom-blogging-two-fundamental-approaches. Accessed 2-06.

Glogoff, S. (2005, July). Instructional Blogging:
Promoting Interactivity, Student-Centered Learning, and Peer Input Innovate: Journal of Online Education. Nova Southeastern University. Log-in required.
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=126. Accessed 2-06.

Pollard, D. (2005, Dec. 15). Blogging's simple future. How to save the world.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/blogsBlogging/2005/12/15.html#a1374. Accessed 2-06.

Seimens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. elearnspace.
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm. Accessed 2-06.

Tribble, I. (2005, July 8). Bloggers need not apply. Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm. Accessed 2-05.

quotes

2006-02-18T19:11:00.000-08:00

Any site that attracts a stable group of contributors in its comments threads creates a sense of stake-holding among the participants. It’s the tension in the online public sphere. On one hand, a huge agora where unlike opinions and backgrounds clash and intermingle, sometimes productively, sometimes not. On the other hand, online discourse is also a cradle that nurtures connections, a shared sense of mutual community, among small subsets of users.
-Tim Burke, Easily Distracted, 11-05

******************************

The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one's unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It's not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it's also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.

A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.

Worst of all, for professional academics, it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation.
Ian Tribble, 2005)

**********

A key theme at last year’s conference was the idea of a “virtual global university”—not in the sense of one more institution being formed to compete with all the other brick-and-mortar and online schools, but rather as an organic, emergent property resulting from crossing all these disciplinary, institutional, cultural, and national borders, as a phenomenon arising of its own due to information technology, globalization, and new transdisciplinary ideas and research programs. Participants say it’s been the most enjoyable activity they’ve been engaged in as a member of the academic community because it is so free-wheeling and yet intellectually challenging and productive, too. It is as Matthew Greenfield says in his comments: “Real academic innovation within a discipline almost always depends on stimulation from outside that discipline. I am not even talking about true interdisciplinarity….
-Eric Weislogel, 1-2006

********************

There’s a lot of talk in Philadelphia (and elsewhere) about Franklin this week. That spirit of generative amateurism, exploratory practical knowledge, and so on. That’s the dream that still lies somewhere deep in the DNA of scholarly life and which fights its way to the surface now and again. I have no idea how to make it more than a brief gasp of freedom in between episodes of stricture, how to change the spirit and culture of inquiry in subtle but pervasive ways. There are few real villains arrayed against that shift, much as it would be convenient to think otherwise. Mostly it is responsible people behaving responsibly, or busy, productive people whose own arrangements work well enough for them, well enough that they don’t really see any need for sustained change.
-Tim Burke, 1-2006

old linked quotes

2006-02-17T22:25:00.000-08:00

from: Teaching teachers to use weblogs (2005).

On weblogs as a medium

My favorite part about working with class weblogs in addition to personal weblogs is that you can compare how different individuals approach the same topic from unique perspectives. I recently read sixteen essays about the same experience (a class trip), and I can't find two identical responses. Putting these varied accounts together on one weblog creates a kind of mosaic effect, and I hope it is one other readers will also enjoy.
-Jessica Montgomerie, CESL teacher, 2005

As blogs enter mainstream public consciousness from the margins of the Internet where they originated, they bring a hidden and newly awakened army of interactive participants who may be experiencing the kinds of unsettling (to the powers that be) critical consciousness that is within the goals of the increasingly democratized culture such as Paulo Freire as an educator sought to foster.
-C. Boese (n.d.)

Teacher's presence

Web presence is in essence the gift to see ourselves as others see us, enhanced uniquely by the Internet. It might be more precisely defined as an ability to convey messages in text, sound, and image over the Internet through means of communicating asynchronously through fixed URLs. It used to be that to establish Web presence, one had to be in that group of cognoscenti known as "Webmasters" who created sites in HTML code and then uploaded files manually to host servers with restricted access. But nowadays, anyone with an Internet connection can be a "Webmaster" in a matter of minutes.
-Vance Stevens (2005)

Shortly after I began producing Rebecca's Pocket I noticed two side effects I had not expected. First, I discovered my own interests. I thought I knew what I was interested in, but after linking stories for a few months I could see that I was much more interested in science, archaeology, and issues of injustice than I had realized. More importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In compusing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important.
-Rebecca Blood (2000)

...the online comments feature accompanying blog use links the teacher to a virtual community on a global scale for support and feedback. In her famous diary, "Teacher", arguably the most influential of all teacher diaries ever written, Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963:213) writes of her diary: "Its purpose has been already fulfilled. I was lonely, professionally. I wanted gifted, intimate understanding. I've had it. I'm no longer professionally alone." These words illustrate how a diary (e.g. a blog) may be used for both research and teacher training in the absence of collegiate body or professional development schemes...the comments feature enables the teacher to invite an unlimited community of practitioners to join in the dialogue, reaching out to a very real global net of professional knowledge and support.
-R. Suzuki (2004)

Weblogs in a writing program

...while writing pedagogy often emphasises the need to attend to audience and, perhaps, to have a conception of 'the ideal reader', the fact remains that students in school-based writing classes typically have no authentic, tangible audience. Moreover, there is little or nothing in writing pedagogy that invites students to begin from their concrete membership of affinity groups, or to go about establishing a constituency for real life (non artificial) purposes. On the contrary, much of the authentic writing students do in school settings for real audiences is ultra vires and discounted, if not punished.
-C. Lankshear & M. Knobel (2003)

...it is evident that so far as matters of purpose and a concern for quality are concerned the 'orders' evident in the blogging world and the world of classroom writing pedagogy are almost neatly reversed. Bloggers begin from a felt sense of purpose and take it from there, or else simply stop blogging. Writing pedagogy usually does not presume purpose, but somehow hopes to prepare learners for being effective writers in contexts where they do encounter serious purpose. Likewise, bloggers begin with a point of view they want to share with others. Without this there is no cogent basis from which to blog. By contrast, so much powerful writing pedagogy actually sets out from the assumption that student points of view need to be developed, shaped up, or made more worthy of attention.
-C. Lankshear & M. Knobel (2003)

Personal publishing allows for incorporated subversion and volatile design in online education. It's online unplugged. Indeed, the socially and individually constructivist principles which supposedly inform current teaching practice (but which, in fact, rarely do) find their closest allies in the "edit this page" button of a wiki or the unedited expression and knowledge network development of a weblog.
-James Farmer (2003)

Teachers & Technology

...it is often remarked that teachers, while often among society's most liberal members, are also, as keepers and carriers of tradition, at the same time conservative and slow to change...While the growth of technology has been rapid, teachers have been generally slow to adopt this technology, and even slower to make productive use of it.
-Gratton, 1998, quoted in Lam, 2000

...if you don't have a strong curriculum as a foundation, technology will do little to improve your schools and might even have a negative impact.
-Van Cooley, 1998

If you're a teacher, you don't want to step into a classroom with something you don't know how it works, because you look like an idiot. It's already stressful to use something in a classroom, but if you don't know [how to use it], that's adding more stress.
-Teacher, quoted in Lam, 2000

The thing that puzzles me is, when every student is facing the screen, then how am I going to talk to them, through e-mail? So I have to learn the pedagogy first, the classroom teaching method using computers.
-Teacher, quoted in Lam, 2000

Much as policymakers and administrators, teachers are very concerned about efficiency. But their criteria for efficiency are anchored in classrooms. In coping with conflicting goals in an age-graded organization, teachers use criteria forged out of their experiences to decide which electronic tools they should use routinely. Teachers ask: Is the machine simple enough for me to learn quickly? Can it be used in more than one situation? Is it reliable or does it break down often? If it breaks down, do I have to fix it or will someone else repair it? How much time and energy do I have to envest in learning to use the machine vs. the return it will have for my students? When students use the machine, will there be disruption? Will it maintain or compromise my authority to maintain order and cultivate learning?
-Larry Cuban (1996).

The main reasons for the teachers' decisions regarding technology seemed to depend on whether the teacher was personally convinced of the benefits of using technology for L2 instruction, a factor that is underemphasized in previous studies...the results of this study indicate that it is unfair to brand teachers as 'technophobic;' they suggest that teachers' decisions regarding technology use are based not on fear but on personal convictions.
Lam, 2000

When you introduce technology into a school, I've found, you have only a small window of time to develop enthusiasm for the new tool before teachers (and administrators) become cynical. And once they grow cynical, you're going to have a hard time turning them around.
-Van Cooley, 1998

The road to success is often fraught with frustration, anger, and even hostility. It takes time and patience to build a community of technology users, but if you persevere, you can find a way to get there.
-Van Cooley, 1998

No matter how many computers are available or how much training teachers have had, there are still substantial numbers who are "talking the talk" but not "walking the walk."
-Byrom and Bingham (pdf)

random links

2006-02-17T21:27:00.000-08:00

on blogging: Joi Ito
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/10/10/blogging_style.html

***
steve esringhaus
http://steveersinghaus.com/

blogging LA
http://blogging.la/

Next stop: Tampa!

2005-12-28T21:36:00.000-08:00

This site will continue evolving. The posts below relate to work done by my partner, Jessica Montgomerie, and me for an online presentation at the Webheads' Online Convergence in November of 2005. It was successful, I thought, and you can read about it both below and at my weblog.

But it's time to move on, namely to a presentation at Tampa entitled "This is your program: This is your program on weblogs"...

The basic framework of this presentation is below, in an earlier post by that name. I will be showing what we have done with our program for the last several years. Unfortunately Jessica is moving to Des Moines and may not make it to Tampa...good luck, Jessica!

I will slowly change this site so that, by March, it will reflect what I want it to. Weblogs are, after all, an evolving thing: more and more, they are carrying podcasts, video feeds, etc. It's been pointed out that what we do is actually very low-tech (it is), yet, it is clearly leading people, at least within our program, on their first steps across the creek, so to speak. I feel that we have a vital and useful function, and our presentations are always well attended and appreciated at TESOL conventions.

See you there! Tampa, March, 2006...if you don't know what I'm talking about go here and click on "convention"...

links and quotes...

2005-11-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

from the conference. Both presentations went well, I thought...Jessica went first....

Jessica's weblog: http://jessicamontgomerie.blogspot.com
ceslstudents: http://ceslstudents.blogspot.com
Moon's: http://smlove2001.blogspot.com (she posted an entry after she returned home)

"I evaluate writing in different ways, since I teach different classes in a multi-level program. For instance, I'm teaching both an accuracy-focused grammar and writing class and a fluency and cultural competence class to different students...For the grammar-based class, I have an analytic rubric that I create for each assignment, and I give grammatical accuracy greater weight. The students in this class don't post to their weblog (or, don't HAVE to) until the final draft..." -Jessica

"Blogs have more immediacy than e-mails, don't they...student and teacher can scroll up and down to compare drafts. You don't have to open files." -Elizabeth H.

Aaron Campbell's article on two different approaches to evaluating blogs:
http://dekita.org/articles/classroom-blogging-two-fundamental-approaches

James M. H.'s blog with links to his advisees' blogs:
http://discussenglish.blogspot.com

(at this point information overload crashed a number of computers)

"Like many other parts of this conference, (weblogs) can be as low tech as you desire or as broadband as you like..." -Robert W. B.

"I think we should emphasize to students that they are writing posts for the world to see. Maybe that will have them focus on accuracy without having to get whacked by the ruler..." -James M. H.

James M. H.'s presentation on using blogs in English Teacher Training:
http://www.englisheducation.iwate-u.ac.jp/Hall/Blogs/BlogFrontPage.htm

The Friday Five:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/thefridayfive

Tom's presentation:

cesl students
http://ceslstudents.blogspot.com

cesl teachers
http://ceslteachers.blogspot.com

mirrored site (religious)
http://ceslteachers.blogpsot.com

80 things to do with your weblog:
http://ceslteachers.blogspot.com/2005/11/80-things-to-do-with-your-weblog.html

"We need a site with countries of the world listed and all the sites that are blocked by country...of course...that site will probably be blocked." -Jeff C.

(to get around it when sites are blocked) "Visit http://www.cnproxy.com/proxyedu1.html which lists a number of proxies that you can try in your browser settings instead of the proxy you may have been provided. Test the proxies listed using a site or software called Proxyfox. When I searched for this software on Google I got sites with a lot of Chinese characters, so there must be information here useful especially in China. Once you have determined a proxy address that works in China or UAE, in your browser (for IE this is what you do) pull down Tools / Options and click on the Connections tab.

At this point you have to know if you are on a LAN conncection or a dialup and either:
click on Settings (for dialup)
or LAN Settings (if you're on a LAN)
and replace whatever is entered under "use a proxy server" with the IP address of the server you're aiming for and its port setting. For example, suppose the server that's working today is 200.206.191.145:6588. The digits following the colon are the port setting. You put the 4 sets of numbers separated by dots as the address of the proxy server, and the numbers following the colon at the port setting." -Vance S.

Postscript

My comments about this presentation are at my own weblog:
http://tomleveretts.blogspot.com/2005/11/wiaoc-presentation.html

Webheads Conference

2005-11-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

The schedule is here for the Webheads Conference, and we've been very excited, but we figured out at the last minute that we had misunderstood "12:00 GMT" - so our times were difficult and we SWITCHED PLACES...the new arrangement now appears in the template. It's a fantastic conference and I highly recommend it, and thank Vance and the others for all their hard work. I'd especially like to thank the folks at Tapped In for their help!!! You're awesome!

Our proposal in its entirety is below.

This is your class: This is your class on weblogs
Bridges across Cyberspace

This session will show how teachers can use weblogs in a language program, and deals with some of the issues that arise when they do. The presenters teach in an ESL program where every student is asked to have a weblog and every class also has one; class weblogs are used to make the program newsletter, and personal weblogs are used as online portfolios in the upper levels. The program has adjusted to a new transparency; not only are many class activities visible to the rest of the program and to the world, but people have also learned more about each other by sharing of links, interests and experiences which has arisen as a result.

Issues that will be covered include reasons to use weblogs, problems of platform compatability, getting other teachers involved, teaching basic technological skills to lower level students, and dealing with possible problems with inappropriateness of posts.

The presenters, Thomas Leverett and Jessica Montgomerie, have set up a weblog which will be used as a springboard for showing people the program weblogs and the writing that has come from the experience. The weblog will be shown throughout the conference.

Each will be available through chat at Tapped-In at an agreed-upon time during the conference for questions. A presentation may be given by each at their appointed times (probably separately) but each will be available for questions also.

We are comfortable with chat but less familiar with other technologies that could be used with the presentations, for example voice-chat or video. This could be negotiable, but as of now, using voice chat or video feed doesn't seem like a promise we could keep.

Relevant weblogs and websites are below.

CESL students' weblog (CESL is our program)

Teaching teachers to use and teach with weblogs: Our TESOL '05 EV demonstration

http://thisisyourbrainonweblogs.blogspot.com/
the weblog set up for this presentation (in progress)

Connections to our personal weblogs are at the cesl students' weblog
or here.

Collaborative Writing and Community Weblogs

2005-11-19T13:48:00.000-08:00

I have had success twice with collaborative writing assignments and class weblogs. Both times the context was an integrated grammar and writing class For their first composition, I asked them, "Is Carbondale a Good Place to Study English?" and I accepted simple "yes" or "no" responses. Based on their answers, I put them in mixed level groups of 2-3 students and gave them an outline to organize their arguments. Though all the students are new to the area, they had already compared Carbondale to other communities for a Listening and Speaking class activity, so they were able to quickly describe and evaluate Carbondale. They did need to negotiate, especially in regards to whether or not the nightlife in Carbondale qualifies as "no entertainment." All the groups turned their notes into opinion paragraphs, which you can see at the General English or the Advanced English 1 class weblogs and look for a series of posts about Carbondale written on September 21st.

With this assignment, I also introduced students to comments and encouraged them to give the other groups feedback through this channel. Some of the students have taken this more seriously than others, but overall it has encouraged them to read their peers' work so that they have something on which to base their comment.

About two months later, I decided to try out collaborative writing again, this time with a different group of students, though the same mixed-level grammar and writing context. This time the writing followed a reading / discussion activity, where students read model paragraphs of different styles of writing: descriptive, narrative, etc. The groups worked together to analyze the different features of the distinct styles and then worked together to write their own version of a specific style. The results can be seen My Worst Trip, Jay's Whole Life, and Carbondale Town. Again, the students were encouraged to comment on the other groups' work. For the last post, Carbondale Town, a random reader dropped by and commented. The class was both surprised and glad that and "outsider" had noticed it.

Jessica

There's No "One Way" to Use Weblogs in the Classroom

2005-11-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

There is no fool-proof, one-sized fits all method for language teaching, though the field is full of those who would claim to have found such an answer to our prayers. I have found the greatest challenge of language teaching not to be selecting or discarding theories, but actually applying them inside the classroom.

I have found no single theory or approach to language teaching that can meet every need, so I vary my classroom procedures depending on the level and specific language focus of the course. For example, in beginning level courses that I have taught, in which receptive skills are being emphasized, I at times behaved as a model and therefore the class was more teacher-centered. On the other hand, I have also taught higher-level oral skills classes in which I encouraged students to do as much speaking as possible, with student-led discussion circles, student presentations, and a much more student-centered class in general. As I have taught classes with different skill focuses, I have also adapted my classroom procedures accordingly. In a “Culture through Film” class I taught in an academic IEP, I used more creative writing activities and students were encouraged to produce as much text as possible, with more attention to accuracy than fluency. The students wrote several unedited reflections and descriptions to build their confidence before they were given a graded writing assignment. Even with the more formal writing prompts, both the students and I focused on content rather than form, since the focus of the class is on cultural competence rather than grammatical accuracy. In an integrated grammar and writing class, however, the tasks were focused on accuracy and the state of the final written product. I used error logs, in-class drafting and editing time, and a product-based grading approach. The nature and goals of the class then, greatly influence the day to day activities in my classes.

I advocate using the same "custom-made" approach to bringing weblogs into the curriculum. What a variety of ways weblogs can be used! With a group of Korean students who visited our campus during their winter holiday, we set up a "travel diary" weblog on which they could record their trips to St. Louis, Chicago, and other cities or simpy recount their activities in Carbondale. Their home university, who sends a similar group to our campus annually, was so taken with the idea that they want to link up next year's travel weblog to their campus website. This is a short-term, fairly small scope use of weblogs, but it nicely meets the needs of those students. For longer-term projects, I have described in detail on another post how ESL weblogs can and should be used interactively with other websites. Also, students can write collaboratively on a class weblog, as I detail in this post. Since some classes work more on linguistic accuracy, teachers can set up weblog use as a "final draft" step, giving students opportunities to correct and revise their writing before making it public. In other situations, teachers can have students write more quickly, for fluency, and of course editing is always possible for major errors.

With all the writing that has been done about using weblogs in education, there is no shortage of ideas out there on what to do with yours. As with anything else we use as a teaching tool, weblogs should be adapted to suit whatever content / skills we currently want to teach, or our students currently want to learn.

Using non-ESL Websites in ESL Classes

2005-11-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

Language teachers and anyone who has tried to learn a second language know well what an obstacle vocabulary barriers can be. The richness of lanuage used in so called "authentic" texts make them both intimidating to lanuage learners and an irreplacable resource. With the same few thousand words recycled throughout ESL texts, and native speakers reaching adulthood with about 10,000 words, language teachers must look beyond language textbooks to best prepare their studetns for authentic communication outside the classroom. This principle has well explored by others in the TESOL field besides myself, most of whom have more experience in practice and theory. My own little foray into using authentic texts in the classroom has sometimes been more frustrating than fruitful. It takes a lot of work on the teacher's part to make such a text accessible for students. Not all of my experiments have been disastrous, though.

One non-ESL resource that I use regularly is the Friday Five livejournal weblog. This weekly-updated weblog is a community effort, written by several native-speakers of English (or NNS writing at a NS level), so there is a rich variety of vocabulary expressions used in authentic contexts. The weblog follows a set pattern; every Friday, five questions on a set topic are posted. It is moderated by five individuals whose real names I have yet to ascertain. Readers can write their answers and post them to their own weblog, and many do. It is a great place to find stimulating questions for a variety of writing activities, and can easily be used in integrated skills or discreet skills classes.

I myself have used the Friday Five in a variety of ways. The first time, I browsed through the site's archives and selected several questions I thought would be most interesting to my students. Because I did not want to devote time to explaining a lot of vocabulary on this particular day, I adapted the language of the questions to make them less colloquial. After students read the questions, I asked them to discuss their opinions in small groups. Note taking was optional; the focus of the activity was interactive listening and speaking. After this discussion, I had the students choose the question most interesting to them and that was the topic of their first opinion essay.

More recently I have stopped adapting the vocabulary of the questions, and I simply allow enough time for the students to work through idioms, cultural references, and unknown words or expressions. The class I currently teach meets Monday through Thursday, so it has been perfect timing to assign on Thursday that the students read and answer the questions posted on Friday. I do not require long answers to the questions, and in fact for some of the questions a long answer would be inappropriate. I like this opportunity for students to briefly express themselves, because so often I see short writing tasks that are juvenile. Because of the community nature of the Friday Five, students are able to see many other people using English to accomplish the same task, and they usually do so concisely.

Jessica

This is your class: This is your class on weblogs

2005-11-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

The inspiration for this title came from a television commercial with eggs frying. Maybe that dates me. That was a while ago, back when I watched television...anyway, I am now engaged in a project where my students- in fact, almost all of the students in our program, put much of their writing on weblogs. It changes the way we do things, and look at life and our writing. This weblog will be about those changes.

The first is that whatever you do with the class, you orient the class toward their relationship with the public, as opposed to their relationship to you the teacher, or their relationship to their grade. You engage them in being and owning the media, in starting a dialogue with the public, although in our case this may mostly be comment spammers. This has a dramatic effect on the teacher's relationship with the student, which is often adversarial in a subtle way; I've found, through working with drama also, that whenever a teacher can be on the student's side in facing the adversarial cruel harsh world, that this helps to lower the affective filter within the class itself.

In our program, a teacher has many choices: to post no assignments, post some, or post all; to get involved or stay aloof. Every class has its own weblog; every student is asked to start his/her own, though this isn't enforced thoroughly at the lower levels. Teachers can use both the class weblogs and the student weblogs in a number of ways; they can ask students to put posts on either.

Whether this has improved the overall writing in the program is hard to measure (see below). It has made much more of the writing public. We can all just go online and see what was done earlier, see what others have done, see how certain people handled certain assignments (the assignments do tend to be repeated). It's public record.

It has been said that the weblog straddles a line between the personal/intimate and the public forum. They are personal journals; even the most casual observer can see this personal nature fairly quickly. We use them for other things: to present academic work in portfolios (see below), to build community and share what we can of each other (these are the two most common in our program); but perhaps the best thing about them is that they allow each of us to show something personal about ourselves...all the time.

Our students are from all over, many countries, so it's nice that we have a realm, a place, where we are made equal, or at least have the same templates to choose from. We almost all use Blogger; though we've tried others, those attempts were mired in problems with systems that were less than intuitive (Blogger beats others in this area, believe it or not). We have other problems due to using Blogger: we have to start the weblogs on Safari...we have to learn some code to make links...but overall we've had a good experience.

technological issues

Naturally, students come into the program with a wide range of abilities and experience with computers. We strongly feel that it's important that they learn some basic computer fluency (see below), but we also try to remember that we are not a computer program, we're an English program. They should not be punished because they have trouble typing or have trouble uploading or fixing what they've uploaded. We loosen up on that end of it and just help each other a lot. Sometimes the students know more about it than the teachers! So we can't be too proud.

This term I have two classes.

intermediate reading/listening (Core) class

The first is a lower level (right in the middle, actually) reading/listening class where I'd actually like to develop their conversational fluency, their ability to recognize and relate to basic English on the web...and to basic things they hear in their environment.

My tactics with such a class, which I've used with some success several times, are:

1. make sure the regular reading-listening class goes through a variety of interesting and discussion-starting topics. I rely on the textbook, of course, to do this, and also bring in side readings when I suspect that a tangent might be fruitful. What I'm looking for is a spark in their eyes, that tells me there's a nugget there, something they want to know more about.

2. Then I give them a choice. I say, we are going to do a weblog project that involves looking around a little and then coming back and telling the class (and the program) what you found, on the weblog...so you're going to look into something, but you have to help me decide what. And they choose. I put them into two or three groups. This term they are doing paparazzi and rumors/political weblogs. Look at the assignment: I've kept it simple. Get into the computer and start looking around. I stress that I'm not teaching formal writing here...when they write their paragraphs, I'm not going to grade grammar, structure, etc.

My hope, of course, is that they'll follow some links. Look at their classmates' assignments. Fish around a little. Sometimes in the lab I get behind them, look at the tentative way they forage around hoping to find something to relate to (usually they're well aware that I'm back there, does that change their behavior??) I"m interested in how much of anything they read and whether they believe anything they read. What do they like? How do they find what they like? Etc.

3. We line-edit the paragraphs before we put them up. They have a right to know that what they are publishing is at least acceptable grammatically, appropriate, etc. They have a right to some of the control needed to ensure that they don't face dire consequences (slander, etc.)...

4. I teach them how to link systematically. I want them all to know how to do it and do it as much as they want. On mac/IE this entails learning some code. I apologize for that but just teach it & make them do it. Some have absolutely no clue when they get to the program but pick it up from friends as they do a lot of what happens in class...the ones who don't have same-language friends have to pick it up from me or from somewhere else, but in English, which means they become fluent faster, at least in these most urgent areas.

5. Next project, just like the first. Only this time I make them go out and talk to a few people before they start writing on the weblog. On the second one they write a little about what they've read on the web, but write a little more about who they talked to and what that person or those people said. Scroll down for projects on Carbondale Halloween, alternative lifestyles, and web design (that one may be back in the summer)...

In this class I've had several memorable projects. We have gone mostly where the students' interest and curiosity has taken us. Here are a few:

Celebrity weblogs (scroll down): Go into them and report what celebrities say about themselves. Also this month: Web marketing: Is it true that certain colors have associations for people? Is brown a better color to package a tour to a place like Italy, for example? (July 2005)

Paparazzi (most recent one): Are there other opinions about them besides the one expressed by the movie (basically, that they are immoral scum)...?

Carbondale Halloween and its accompanying violence: also, alternative lifestyle (Oct. 2005)

Socialization and Folk Tales (Oct. 2004)

Media fluency and weblogs: Getting students involved

Part of my philosophy is that it is important for the student to just feel what it is like to click through a weblog environment, have the power to linger or move on, and begin the process of searching out, reading as much as necessary, and making personal comments about what they've read. They become part of the new media, in English, and I help them through the process. They notice what they like and doubtless go back when they have time, and explore more.

Learning English is a process of becoming more comfortable with one's voice; in this respect, I've been influenced by Peter Elbow, who argued that some basic fluency in conversation is necessary for the student to get started; that good writing arises from conversational fluency and confidence in one's own voice. I see media fluency as related in the sense that through working in the medium, students become more confident, more able to express themselves. Since all writing is ultimately to an audience, to the ultimate audience, we might as well lead them there and help them serve it up. The conversation that is held in public is at least adequate preparation for a lifetime of public conversation, as opposed to a private exchange between teacher and student that prepares them only for the next teacher that is as close to them as I have become (there may never be another). Generally, the world beyond our program is scarier, more hostile than ours; I at least feel that I have, by raising the stakes and making their writing public, defined fluency as conversing publicly.

This is a blog post that explains a little of what I mean.
Seimens, G. (2005, Sept.). Designing ecosystems versus designing learning. The Connectivism Blog, http://www.connectivism.ca, accessed 11-05.

It takes a while for the sense of reflection to set in, for them to realize that others are viewing their site in the same way they are viewing others. Then it takes a while longer for them to actually start changing their sites accordingly. Some, of course, are onto it right away; they've already gotten used to the medium, perhaps, in their own languages.

Line-editing

You will see that some of these entries are line-edited more thoroughly than others. There were terms when I did not collect paragraphs or entries before they were posted; I hoped to line-edit them afterwards, or line-edit them on the printed weblog and let the student go back through "edit-post" and fix it. This did not always happen according to plan.

Sometimes I prefer the unedited versions, because they are more raw and frank, but I remind myself of my goals: help the student say what he/she wanted to say; stick as close to their meaning as I can; give them options whenever possible; if they have overstepped the bounds of appropriateness, let them know how and what reactions they can expect. After many years of this I am often confident enough that I can just change things if it is really too late and they are gone. However I'd always rather they do it, since that alone is a learning process and invests them in the appearance as it goes out. I devalue the grammar/appearance even as I know that others value it highly, including the student, but that's because lowering the affective filter puts me on their side against a hostile audience and allows learning at a better pace. I still believe that the more of this kind of editing they notice the more likely I can make positive changes in their grammatical system, though I can't expect those changes to appear immediately, nor can I always even be sure they understand the reason for those changes. But my own experience with language learning is: people learn the right way by being corrected. Occasionally it registers and they are ready for that step in their learning process. Line-editing, therefore, is effective, whether you can see it at every turn or not.

In my grammatical theory I am influenced by Marie Wilson Nelson (1991), who argued in her book "At the Point of Need" that students learned grammar at the point at which they actually needed a structure for a real-life situation. Following this logic one of the points of teaching is to set up situations where students urgently need to communicate something important that they are invested in. You thus set up the environment where it matters whether they get grammar right because their own meaning is bound up in the way it appears.

The newsletter which now appears online appeared in print form for many years; students of a single class took on as a project writing it, printing it, etc. Many programs are familiar with displaying student work and having close friends, relatives back home, lab workers and those around us, read about their lives; however, the online version brings a number of changes to the traditional format. Though I used the same set of steps to ensure that we were writing things that students were invested in, I have a different perspective now, because I know that what ends up on the web stays there and has a lot of importance in the freewheeling world of Google, Yahoo, and the international student alone at the keyboard. Our assignments have become livelier; they usually include links and the awareness of links; the final product is often linked to a variety of interesting places; and the prevailing awareness of "connectedness" influences everything.

Showing off the final product

I make a point to brag about what my classes are doing on my own professional weblog, which gets a lot more traffic, and as a result, I often can keep track to a mild degree of what has worked and what has not. Generally if my students are interested in a topic, other young people are also, and people are generally interested in hearing or reading of what a variety of young people think about any given topic. So these collections on the class weblogs get a lot of reading. They are much closer to the informal nature of the blogosphere than are, say, portfolios.

The students generally like the comment-spammers. They like it when anyone reads their weblogs, and the comment-spammers always say nice stuff, insincere as it may be. But other people pop in and say interesting things too. Their friends use the comments a lot. And you never know what people will say. That's part of the fun of it.

High-level writing classes: Portfolios and fun writing

For this high-level class, I try to separate out the serious writing and the fun writing. I ask them to put the serious stuff (the portfolio) on their own weblog. My reasoning is that if they want a more fun weblog they can always just start another one, or add fun stuff to their serious portfolio. Besides, and I tell them this frequently, I don't care what else you put on that weblog, as long as you put your academic papers on there, and they look good.

I now teach them to link all the references, double space between paragraphs, and identify the portfolio as being a set of papers for a writing class. Linking the reference is the hard part, because on the blogger/mac interface it requires learning some basic html; it is clear to me that many have never learned this and look at me like I'm from outer space when I expect them to. When we first started out, we had undergraduate assistants to help us with that, but now the system works by itself, and students teach each other, much like they teach each other how to study for certain quizzes or how to use spell-check.

You can look at their portflolios and learn quite a bit about their relationships both to their perceived English-speaking world and the technology that they've become a part of. Again, some master the art of personal expression better than others. Here's one I like:

Awni has a history of taking pictures from other sites without proper identification, but it's partly because he was fluent in the technology long before he was fluent in the cultural norms of picture-sharing. And he definitely showed how he could link to teachers, friends, and home places!

This term we're doing environmental problems of the New York City area. To see the portfolios, click on any of the names in the template. You'll be surprised by how much material they each actually get up in their own weblogs...They write it on paper, I line-edit it, they go back and upload, then they look at the weblog and fix it. Sometimes I print the weblogs and show them the problem on paper. They aren't perfect. These portfolios are works in progress. Many also are putting their papers on the class weblog, in misunderstanding of the assignment- (formal papers on the portfolios, fun stuff on the class weblog)....I'm patient with this kind of error. It doesn't hurt us to have the weblog in a state of movement...in the end, it's better for the student to move stuff around, put it where it belongs, than for me to do it.

Here is an example of what I consider a model portfolio (so far). Angelica writes about the black market in endangered species. She links her references and puts spaces between paragraphs (I already know that the papers have been line-edited, though not always perfectly). She agreed to let me show her portfolio. Nice!

Showing the world

One of the scary things for the teacher is the fear that one is not teaching exactly what the standard "summary-response," "argumentative essay" or whatever, is. This I would imagine would come back to haunt me if in fact I'm miles off; there is no doubt that there is disagreement in the field about what writing formats best prepare the student for academic work. I can't honestly say that the fear of having my students publish what I "believe" is correct made me any more diligent in tracking down what the standards are, out there, at this moment. I think that at some point you have to just take what you know and go with it. In our program we gave up assignments like "Cause-effect essay" and "compare-contrast essay" in favor of "summary-response" essays leading to a research paper. But what do I know about these, having been out of school for a while? I find myself saying to myself: "I've been teaching for many years...if my version isn't good enough for the world, that's their problem..." but I think it does make grow in you a greater curiosity...what's out there? How do my standards measure up? Am I teaching the right way? What do other writing portfolios look like? Is a "Summary-Response" different a few states over?

Even APA changes so rapidly as to be forcing us teachers to take a stand as to how certain references appear. As a line-editor, I should probably be more up on this. We are, after all, showing the world a lot of APA; we are even setting a standard, by pure volume alone, if nothing else. And later students are always looking at earlier ones to see how it was done... It should at least be close to right....

For example, we have this problem of what to do when there is no author listed...and when APA (apparently) says put the title first in the reference...but we also teach in-text citation, and have encountered many who advocate putting the organization of the author in the authro's slot there (makes citation easier)...I realize that whatever I teach, whatever I do, I'm putting it out on display. People could consider my students "untaught"...or worse, "improperly taught..." it's the chance I take. I'm not losing sleep over it. But I realize it's a major stumbling block for some. And, what you put up there, generally stays up there.

In the end, though, I like having them public, even when they are imperfect. They are a body of work; students have tried hard, succeeded at using the medium. and achieved academic expression.

After they're gone

Students are free to delete their entire blog the minute they leave. They very rarely do, though. It is also very rare that they actually use them for anything else once they're gone; they usually struggle with their academic classes and have very little time to do any "journalling"...but some do. They are the ones that are fluent enough to do what they want, but still able to look back at their English program and see that this process is very interesting and accessible....

This is your program: This is your program on weblogs

2005-10-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Before reading what is below, start with an overview of what we have done in our own program:

One teacher's perspective on weblogs in a curriculum, from Teaching teachers to use weblogs, TESOL 2005, San Antonio TX.

We are considered brave, to put our program out in public, and it is in fact brave. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and somebody has to actually be there to do this vigilance....do people know what they're getting into? Probably not. Nor do I, completely. I write 100 cool things to do with weblogs, but if everyone did all this stuff (and eventually I'm sure someone will) some institutions would simply prohibit the use of this media by its faculty, etc.

Now let's talk about the institution itself. It takes a lot of courage, I believe, for an institution to be really open to the blogosphere and everything it entails. One can only conclude that the big ones in our lives (in my case, CESL, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, the State of Illinois, and the US Government) are (perhaps unlike China) unaware of what it really entails, or they're really quite brave, in a first-amendment, benevolent kind of way. The price of trying to control freedom of speech in this country is often greater than the price of letting it go where it's going to go (in our case, not very far)... Because the fact is, you can change these weblogs any minute, and you can change them deep inside their own insides, etc. etc. You can even change them inside their own templates and you can even hide stuff in there, not that I would ever do such a thing.

My sense is that the institution would probably be more worried about a well-done deception (several of these have been well-documented)...than a disagreeable opinion...

It's scary. But not so scary as, say, teaching with Skype. Still, as a responsible person, I worry about such things. After all, I teach people to teach with them. Most of them are young people. They're from all over the world. They'll go home expecting to be able to own the media... What are we unleashing on the world?

One of my students was shocked the other day that everyone had the log-on and the password to our entire system. That's a fact, at least at the moment. But I think we forget the fact that, really, the whole world has freedom of speech anyway. It's just that people don't always realize the consequences of certain speech until it's too late. Or they have to learn the hard way.

blogging in academia

an article about blogging in academia (tribune might require log-in)...

I can't say that I've had any big problems in academia. Nobody at my university really reads my weblog much, even when I've gone out of my way to, say, put a burning cigar on it and point it out to the guy who just had a baby girl...I've put public statements on there, against the war, against the disestablishment of linguistics (I'm an antidisestablishmentarianist)...and haven't heard a peep from anyone who it might have made a difference to. But that's ok, I'm sure they'll read it someday. On some level I'm sure they're aware that it's there...

This article rankled me a little, partly because it contained the assumption that "the academy" was assuming that this guy's communicating directly to his audience was somehow undermining or influencing, perhaps even trumping (or end-around-ing) his published work.

It's partly because in many ways the definition of academic is often at the other end of the spectrum from the "personal" world of the blogosphere...but should it be?

More on this later...

This is your brain: This is your brain on weblogs

2005-10-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

This space is intended for my thoughts on what weblogging has done for me personally. I include here observations that friends and acquaintances have made about the process.

weblogs and the weblogger

Using weblogs changes the way you relate to the world. It changes your sense of responsibility. You own the media. You are responsible to it, responsible to your audience. Why is it so different from, say, printing your own newspaper?

First, you had to own a press to print your own newspaper. You were also stuck with whatever you wrote forever...it was history the minute you printed it. The paper started yellowing the minute you set it out under the sun.

With weblogs, you can not only go back and change them, you can also consider them history. Forever. As many billions of words as there are in the blogosphere, they are also findable down to the infinite degree through google. They not only can be found, but probably will be someday. And they are also being archived. But they are lit-up history. Information is so easy to store these days, that whatever we write can be stored, even as we write about it, with no great loss to anyone.

I sometimes reflect on the responsibility of the blogger...other than to entertain and be truthful at the same time. That's already a handful, and I don't always live up to it.

People are using blogs for a number of purposes: they complain, criticize, persuade in the political arena, share information, spread rumors, promote themselves, etc. I've partaken in some of these, especially self-promotion, but I've also found them useful in some unusual ways. First, I find that if I challenge myself in them, I often live up to the challenges- so they are useful in tentative self-actualization...and very empowering in that way. Second, as a scattered person, it's good to keep track of various projects that I have going...and weblogs serve as an online organizer.

As a "multiblogger" (Hornsby 2004) who speaks in different realms, I find that the truth is often boring but stretching it is dangerous. This is true in every realm, in self-promotion, in esl, and here. Just like the print media...

Sometimes I consider myself like a baseball pitcher. I want to put it right down the pike, as we used to say in PA. You always get another chance, even if the last one was a mile wide. The audience is always a little hostile, waving a bat, waiting to pop one out of here, if not pop me outta here. But they aren't going to get the chance. My hat's down, I'm glaring at them, I'm down here, publishing in the bowels of my own obscure blog, which is meanwhile being hidden by the fact that I'll just move the top post up whenever I need more space...

But I'm not really like a pitcher, because the world isn't always hostile. I'm really playing to the fans, who want mostly to be entertained on a nice day. They are impatient with poor writing, and with people who don't know what they're talking about. They're impatient with drivel and bad grammar, or maybe I'm just projecting here. They want something to think about.

Visual nature of weblogs

I've been thinking about this a lot, because so many weblogs start out in your typical blogger format, but some of the more resourceful people see how important the visuals are right away and exploit them. I"m behind the curve on this one: though I have lots of photos I could use, I actually use the wrong ones; I give conflicting messages, etc. I'm a beginner.

There are a number of implications for teachers and the academic environment. Teachers may be quick to realize when they're being manipulated by an image; they may be more in tune with the words, etc. But everyone likes a good picture, a "look"...and there are some good "looks" out there.

I've also been slow on the technological end of things. The average picture uploaded from a digital camera is way too large for most web purposes, yet this is what we need a constant running supply of: instant picture news. We actually have to run them through e-mail to make them smaller, but flickr has been a lifesaver too. The hardest thing is to organize this stuff when you're busy. But I"ve begun to see the weblogs as the center, rather than the static pages, and I've begun to organize accordingly.

Here's an example of the power of visuals:
Jason de Fillippo, technology

Watson, quoted in Badger:

"It's the image they'll remember the next day, and the next week and possibly for the rest of their lives."

Not this one in particular, but you get the idea. Put something strong, catch them, draw them in.

Another example follows the Google theory. Simple, a lot of white, colorful, let the image(s) do the talking.

Parking Lot, Chris Corrigan.

Creative uses of weblogs & their environment
(see 100 things to do with weblogs)

I've found a lot of practical processes to use while blogging. First, your blogger "edit-post" supply cabinet is full of drawers that you can reorganize at any time, and this can be very useful to you when you aren't ready to show the world all your thoughts right away (like now)...so you can treat it like your own accordion file which you can access when you are ready, and make public ready when you are ready to point to it. And the rest of the time, the world will leave you alone, because it's not the top post (which is always being read by the surfers/blogbots, etc.).

I've read about schadenbloggers (using blogs to complain?)...does this actually make people feel better? Sometimes I want a blog for all my moods, one for each, one for my political self even, just so I can vent whenever I want. But I already feel bad about the blogs that I've put out there that are like dead branches on a tree. One part of me wants to go out there and "delete"...in one sense blogs are like gardens...you shouldn't plant more than you can weed or hoe, you shouldn't let them go to flower and overflow year after year. Haiku has taught me to be spare, put out there what you need, make it sharp, powerful, put it right down the pike. Then it'll sit there and look interesting for at least a little while...

Not that I always follow all my own advice. I do the best I can...

weblogs and the researcher

The previous post had a section on academia's tenuous relationship with weblogging. I have always found academia to be uneasy with frank open truthfulness, even though research at its heart goes after truth, seeks the science and the logic behind all human and other behavior. In this sense weblogs have the capacity to profoundly change research. more later...

notes

2005-09-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

on class ecology:
http://www.connectivism.ca/blog/32, the connectivism blog.

another one:
Barbara Ganley (where I got the first one), an ardent advocate of blogging and creative writing.

The first one helps me come to terms with a difficult subject. This term some of my students delved into the subject of violence in Carbondale at Halloween. Coincidentally we also had a great pumpkin-carving, but as a result, the two are combined somewhat in the CESL Today student newspaper I am now formatting & putting into html (should be ready early in the week)...

The problem is, when does this go over the line? As a teacher I'm perfectly capable of leading them to less powerful (& less interesting) subjects...and there are some people here who I'm sure would rather we just put that whole Carbondale-violence thing in the past (as, in fact, we've had relatively peaceful Halloweens for several years now)...I for one as a local am not especially proud of the whole history... but if it makes students more informed about their own environment...it's a kind of freedom of speech issue. They chose it themselves. They read the articles word for word...they know stuff now...

And the whole freedom-of-speech issue reminds me of another comment...of a student who couldn't believe that every student has the password to every account in the CESL system...just couldn't believe it.

"the price of freedom is eternal vigilance"... these are things I'm working on developing a little...

also, an article about blogging in academia (trib might require log-in)...

Bibliography

2005-09-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Bibliography

Badger, M. (2005). Visual Blogs. In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/visual_blogs.html. Accessed 11-05.

Elkins, J. (2000). Lawyer as Writer: Peter Elbow on Writing.
http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/writeshop/elbow.html. Accessed 11-05.

Hornsby, R. (2004). Multiblogging. http://royby.com. Accessed 11-05.

Leverett, T. (2005, Mar.). One teacher's perspective on weblogs in a curriculum, from Teaching teachers to use weblogs, TESOL 2005, San Antonio TX.

Nelson, M. W. (1991). >At the Point of Need. Heinemann, available at NetStores USA.

Seimens, G. (2005, Sept.). Designing ecosystems versus designing learning. The Connectivism Blog.
http://www.connectivism.ca/blog/32, accessed 11-05.

this is your brain:

Presentation links 2011

texting articles

autocorrect

more articles

on the market

Where is that grammar going

Add technology, delete skills?

recovery

tell it to the machine

changing grammar-check

Presentation links

grammar checkers- one more time

more on grammar checkers

TESOL 2010

TESOL 2010

Grammar-check theory

simplish

grammar checkers revisited

bloggers' tips

resources from Carla, Terrie's Twitter, TESOL

grammar technology cont'd

passive aggressive

green line to the commons

more on blogging

this is your brain on technology

TESOL 2008 handout

Students will

Portfolio Showcase 2008

teachers who start blogs (baW08)

portfolio related

best of the weblogs 081

more articles

notes from Lankshear & Knobel

sources on blogging for teachers

my questions

cartoon

How blogging affects the academic ecosystem

Welcome to WiAOC 2007!

How bloggers affect the academic ecosystem

Juan Cole, blogging and the academic

Drezner story + recent discussions

Drezner, blogging

How blogging affects the academic ecosystem

Portfolio showcase

unfinished business

sources

revival

more from TESOL

notes from TESOL - Mar. 2006

TESOL 2006

bib

more

more quotes & notes

bib

quotes

old linked quotes

random links

Next stop: Tampa!

links and quotes...

Webheads Conference

Collaborative Writing and Community Weblogs

There's No "One Way" to Use Weblogs in the Classroom

Using non-ESL Websites in ESL Classes

This is your class: This is your class on weblogs

This is your program: This is your program on weblogs

This is your brain: This is your brain on weblogs

notes

Bibliography