Group items tagged

"It's often said that services like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter - you name it - are not the product, you are. Each and every bit of information you share and action you take is used to create a profile of user behavior, which is used then to either advertise directly to you or to people on a whole. But how can we ride the fine line? How can we have great, world-changing services at a price (read: free) everyone can afford without completely selling out the end user?"

I think it's going to have to be redefined. But I also think we're in the process of defining new commodities. We need to decide what we value.

I think this issue of privacy and use of personal information by online service companies is a very big deal. I'm also beginning to make use of some of these cloud-based applications (especially from Google) as part of my standard approach to teaching hybrid classes. Up until this past year, I've relied on the tried and true Vista/Blackboard to manage student projects and interactions, but I've found it to be sort of a dinosaur compared to the speed and ease of use of other Web2.0 apps. But if I'm working outside of Vista/Blackboard, I need to be especially careful of privacy policies and procedures of the companies behind these online apps. In the 'Sharing and Privacy' article, Mike Melanson makes some interesting points. He says: "...the companies themselves - the Googles and Facebooks and Twitters of the world - realize that correctly handling these issues of privacy are center to their continued success." and... ""All things equal, the company that's going to want to win in the next couple years will have the best privacy model." When I was doing my own investigation into this issue last winter, I asked myself, "What are the most conservative and and security conscious organizations using for social networking tools?" So I went up to the US Army website to find out. Certainly they have a heightened need to be careful what companies they choose for their social networking tools. I posted the results of this online research on my Web2.0 Chronicle blog. The results aren't surprising... Google, Facebook, Twiter, Wordpress, Flickr... among others. I see no need to rush into this area, and am willing to wait until the dust settles and user results come back from dependable sources. Jennifer's recommendation of Diigo is a good example of this. For myself, I've already left a significant "digital footprint" over the past 15 years - which is now out

Challenges I found when developing this blog included: 1. Organization. Deciding on the organization of the blog is the most challenging, as is often the situation when organizing a new project. One isn't quite sure what "envelopes" (in this case pages) you want. 2. Privacy. The issue of privacy is very much an issue for me, as I am not sure what I want to have public and/or permanent (as even though you delete something, it still remains somewhere.) 3. Spelling/editting. Proper spelling and grammar I feel is a reflection of who I am and needs to be accurate. Spell checking allows you to find misspellings, but not the use of miswords.

I love that you're seeing the challenges and posting them openly. 1. Organization - I use post-it notes. Seriously. Put everything you want to put on the blog on a post it note, then try to arrange them in similar groups, then try to label those groups. It will help with the structure. (It's a common practice in Information Architecture. I'm not just wacky.) 2. Privacy. There's really no such thing any more. Anyone who can see your stuff on a screen can copy it and put it someplace for others to see. We're under false illusions of privacy, and I just assume anything I put into a computer is going to be seen. 3. This is a great point, especially if you begin to enjoy blogging. Once you begin gathering an audience, it's easy to want to write for them. Pretty soon, you want to publish as quickly as possible. Sometimes it helps to leave the work in draft, and come back to it, just like with a paper document.

1. I will try the post-its. I'm thinking it is an especially good way to keep thoughts/ideas, which I can return to and then see if they really "stick" and I want to explore/use them. 2. Privacy. The interesting thing is that there is so much information out there, the volume almost acts as a gate. I agree with you about not real privacy.

This was in today's LA Times, indicating how a person's disability benefits were promptly stopped after the insurer saw posts on Facebook. The unintended consquences of information further our discussions regarding privacy.

Or possibly this page: http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/adults/cyber-bullying.aspx

The concept of personal privacy and what to post or not post is such a difficult one for parents and students now. We archive for two years now to comply with the laws and to be able to meet possible public records requests. It is hard for adults to keep in mind sometimes that even an e-mail can be forwarded on to anyone in the world. A different planet from even 10 years ago.

I just finished reading E-Habits, by Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of the company who puts out this blog. It was fascinating (and scary!).

I think there's more of an opportunity for us to recognize that with so many different ways to communicate, the nuances of interpersonal communication are more important than ever. I think the people who will be successful, are the ones who truly learn to connect with their audience and make the digital seem personal. I grew up with a dad who taught English and was an Air Force public affairs officer. My writing style has always been formal, and cold, and I've had to learn to add warmth in digital spaces. I'm still trying to figure it out!

My experience with your style is you are very intellectually based in your writing style, while your personal style when dealing with this student was warm and open, encouraging and sharing. Okay, it is one opinion among many, I am certain; but this one is mine. I spent many years with the military as a family member and the mother of soldiers. One has to be careful in the civilian world when it comes to interacting with others, because military directness and crispness can get in the way of showing warmth and interest. Hopefully, I have mastered a more civilian way of speaking over the past several years.

Alec Couros started this collaborative document today, and in no time people were filling it with prompts. Feel free to add yours, or borrow from it for inspiration.

Another interesting read.

His comment about why he wanted this collaboration - to have a focus for his students - put the exercise in context for me in a way that made it more meaningful. I also agree with him that it was great to have everyone collaborate so quickly and thoroughly.

Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. Please take the survey and provide your thoughts and experience with Module 4. Thanks.

Thanks for the kind words. Next week-end we have out-of-town guests, so that's one of the reasons for my early focus. Your directions were fine and helped the logistical process. I prefer this to a screencast, but that might be reflective of my technology knowledge and learning style. Two things, though, that took me a while to figure out were: 1. Sharing. It might be a default setting, but new documents I create have a privacy share indicated. You have to specifically change the setting (the share button is on the top of the screen) for people to be able to access it. 2. Editting. When you go back into Google docs, I got an excel spreadsheet. To actually update the form, you have to go to the form button and select "edit" in the pulldown screen.

I had fun responding to your survey, Ann! You did a great job--I liked the questions and the color format!

This week the focus is on assessment and evidence of understanding. The emphasis is, of course, on how we assess our students. However, eteachers can be more easily observed, so I thought the community might find it interesting as to how I, as an eteacher, am assessed. (The students do an automated self-paced lesson and then take a practice quiz. If they have questions during the lesson or in order to go the next one, we interact. Based on the quiz and other questions/discussions we have, I pass them to the next lesson. I have up to 4 students in one session.) Once a month, my supervisor listens to one of the recorded sessions and writes up an assessment. What I find interesting that is unique to elearning, is that my use of the technology environment goes into my assessment. I need to be logged in on time, I need to effectively switch among my students, etc. Also, if an area is weak, a request by my supervisor to re-take an automated class I have taken before - such as effective questioning - might be assigned.

The online environment provides for easy capture of the session. The requirement for teaching include having a degree and a background check, but not a teaching certificate. I feel the monitoring is an extra check and balance on both how we are teaching and our online presence. We go through training and have guidelines on what we can and cannot discuss with the students - such as sharing emails, contacts outside of class, etc. Recently this has come into focus, as the regular school teachers at the school I am tutoring with (we are a scheduled once a week class during the school year) encouraged the students to ask where we live, etc., to feel more connected. On our teacher platform, the teachers and our supervisor were able to post and share with each other on how they were and should be handling this. It is a balance - just as in a regular classroom - to be connected, yet have privacy. I do not find what information I should and should share or ask to be a problem for me, but the time focus is. The students are used to texting all the time and feel comofrtable with using the time that way. I have now developed my own transitions - from the explicit: "we've chatted enough for right now, please go on with your lesson" to a softer transition by using the information in our dialog to set-up a problem: You got so much snow! So if you had eight snowballs and split them evenly....".

This is fascinating! I've honestly never seen an instrument for a supervisor to evaluate an online teaching session. (Or maybe I just don't remember.) For distance education at BC, instructors/divisions can opt in to the online student evaluations. I don't know if Norma signed up to have this course included in the evals. If so, you may have received access to that today. As far as I know, that's the primary way teachers are evaluated here. It compares to how they are evaluated in f2f classes. For me, I like to get constant feedback from students, and that's why you see me poking around a lot, sending lots of email, and including self-checks. It's always an awful feeling to get to the end of a course and discover you could have made changes early on that would have made a big difference in learning. (But I always expect to discover some of that at the end, as well!) Thanks for sharing this!