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"If you're a pilot, you need to be able to monitor multiple instruments at the same time. If you're a cab driver, you need to pay attention to multiple events at the same time. If you're in the military, you need to multi-task too," she said. "On the other hand, if you're trying to solve a complex problem, you need sustained concentration. If you are doing a task that requires deep and sustained thought, multi-tasking is detrimental."

technical know-how is not enough. We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching).

The Collaboration Age comes with challenges that often cause concern and fear. How do we manage our digital footprints, or our identities, in a world where we are a Google search away from both partners and predators? What are the ethics of co-creation when the nuances of copyright and intellectual property become grayer each day? When connecting and publishing are so easy, and so much of what we see is amateurish and inane, how do we ensure that what we create with others is of high quality?

Students are growing networks without us, writing Harry Potter narratives together at FanFiction.net, or trading skateboarding videos on YouTube. At school, we disconnect them not only from the technology but also from their passion and those who share it.

The complexities of editing information online cannot be sequestered and taught in a six-week unit. This has to be the way we do our work each day.

The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly -- a frontier that traditional schools have rarely crossed.

Look no further than Wikipedia to see the potential; say what you will of its veracity, no one can deny that it represents the incredible potential of working with others online for a common purpose.

The technologies we block in their classrooms flourish in their bedrooms

Anyone with a passion for something can connect to others with that same passion -- and begin to co-create and colearn the same way many of our students already do.

I believe that is what educators must do now. We must engage with these new technologies and their potential to expand our own understanding and methods in this vastly different landscape. We must know for ourselves how to create, grow, and navigate these collaborative spaces in safe, effective, and ethical ways. And we must be able to model those shifts for our students and counsel them effectively when they run across problems with these tools.

The ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure’s report points to five manifestations of digital scholarship: collection building, tools to support collection building, tools to support analysis, using tools and collections to produce “new intellectual products,” and authoring tools. 

Tara McPherson, the editor of Vectors, offered her own “Typology of Digital Humanities”: •    The Computing Humanities: focused on building tools, infrastructure, standards and collections, e.g. The Blake Archive •    The Blogging Humanities: networked, peer-to-peer, e.g. crooked timber •    The Multimodal Humanities: “bring together databases, scholarly tools, networked writing, and peer-to-peer commentary while also leveraging the potential of the visual and aural media that so dominate contemporary life,” e.g. Vectors

My initial diagram of digital scholarship pictured single-headed arrows linking different approaches to digital scholarship; my revised diagram looks more like spaghetti, with arrows going all over the place.  Theories inform collection building; the process of blogging helps to shape an argument; how a scholar wants to communicate an idea influences what tools are selected and how they are used.

I looked at 5 categories: archival resources as well as primary and secondary books and journals.   I found that with the exception of archival materials, over 90% of the materials I cited in my bibliography are in a digital format.  However, only about 83% of primary resources and 37% of the secondary materials are available as full text.  If you want to do use text analysis tools on 19th century American novels or 20th century articles from major humanities journals, you’re in luck, but the other stuff is trickier because of copyright constraints.

I found that there were some scanning errors with Google Books, but not as many as I expected. I wished that Google Books provided full text rather than PDF files of its public domain content, as do Open Content Alliance and Making of America (and EAF, if you just download the HTML).  I had to convert Google’s PDF files to Adobe Tagged Text XML and got disappointing results.  The OCR quality for Open Content Alliance was better, but words were not joined across line breaks, reducing accuracy.  With multi-volume works, neither Open Content Alliance nor Google Books provided very good metadata.

To make it easier for researchers to discover relevant tools, I teamed up with 5 other librarians to launch the Digital Research Tools, or DiRT, wiki at the end of May.

Enter technology; students can learn from each other by collaboration through technological advances such as wikis, blogs, You Tube, Facebook, and projects such as Flat Classroom and Horizon.

I really agree with both of what you two are saying, but my question remains, (in an attempt not to sound too cynical): how is this going to happen? I know that Dan Tapscott seeks to view change in the education system, but my question is, how is this going to happen?

with our advanced, technological world, we must not only acknowledge the new technologies emerging but we must gain knowledge on how to use them.

f school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great. If we all focus on change and ways to make interactive learning better we could reach so many people! Not only can we interact with each other but we can raise awareness and pose solutions on the many issues regarding education.

Teachers are no longer “transmitters of data,” but active participants in the student’s learning process.

but the real issue is, in so many places education is rigid and all about regurgitation of information. How do we look past that? Is it a mindset that we need to learn how to transgress, or is it a gradually changing aspect?

Third, debt teaches a worldview. Following up on the way that advertising indoctrinates children into the market, as Juliet Schor shows in Born to Buy, student loans directly conscript college students. Debt teaches that the primary ordering principle of the world is the capitalist market, and that the market is natural, inevitable, and implacable. There is no realm of human life anterior to the market; ideas, knowledge, and even sex (which is a significant part of the social education of college students) simply form sub-markets. Debt teaches that democracy is a market; freedom is the ability to make choices from all the shelves. And the market is a good: it promotes better products through competition rather than aimless leisure; and it is fair because, like a casino, the rules are clear, and anyone—black, green, or white—can lay down chips.

Fifth, debt teaches the worth of a person. Worth is measured not according to a humanistic conception of character, cultivation of intellect and taste, or knowledge of the liberal arts, but according to one’s financial potential. Education provides value-added to the individual so serviced, in a simple equation: you are how much you can make, minus how much you owe. Debt teaches that the disparities of wealth are an issue of the individual, rather than society; debt is your free choice.

Last, debt teaches a specific sensibility. It inculcates what Barbara Ehrenreich calls “the fear of falling,” which she defines as the quintessential attitude of members of the professional middle class who attain their standing through educational credentials rather than wealth. It inducts students into the realm of stress, worry, and pressure, reinforced with each monthly payment for the next fifteen years.

As far as the ego thing goes who cares. Your blog's this mine is that. Whoopdy do! If you're learning and growing your PLN that is what counts.

Charlie A. Roy said.

I feel similar frustration. If the point is about learning than reading and commenting is a great way to add to our own creative potential.

Tennessee

Great response to a burning question/statement that most of us (well probably all of us)feel at one time or another.

Many of the people that I have learned the most from are not the ones involved in the "cocktail party" but rather those in the trenches doing what I love to do each and every day, just like you!

agree that developing a readership takes time.

Carolyn Foote

Scott McLeod

Re: the depressing aspects of 'comment intensity,' I actually meant it to be an affirming post rather than a depressing one

I think that the comment intensity idea is important in this respect: I often see laments from bloggers that they don't get many comments on their posts. What the table above shows is that even those of us who are fortunate enough to have large readerships often don't get many comments. My personal median over the past 20 posts, even WITH the big spike of 89, is still only 2.5. Ewan, your blog and Vicki Davis' are similar. The point is that many, many posts don't get a lot of comments, even those by the more widely read bloggers.

tom said...

Thanks for bringing this up. This has been an issue for me personally as well. OK, so nobody's IN, but the (pseudo?) community nature of blogging makes it feel that way.

But, like other artists, we have to work a little every day whether we feel like it or not, and whether we get validation that day or not.

I think many of us are working at blogging because there's an element of self improvement, which implies self evaluation. Without feedback from others it's easy to be hard on ourselves.

Christopher D. Sessums

For me, the conversation is hardly closed; it is simply a matter of having something to say, something to share.The emotional commitment is another aspect of the conversation that is easily glossed over.

MIke Sansone

I've found (both with myself and those educators I've worked with in their blogging starts) that the edublogosphere is open and welcoming -- but as we engage in any cultural group (even offline), patience really is a key.Still, we sometimes measure our success by the interaction from those we look up to (esp. teachers - many of whom were probably the best students in their class, yes?)

Sometimes we don't see the comments -- because the talk happens offline.

Britt

I get very few comments on my blog but see through the clustermaps that I have readers each and every day, so continue to feel that the blog is benefiting me through reflection and may even be benefiting others as well.

atruger

I NEVER get to share tools I discover because someone ALWAYS beats me to the punch...but I am ok with that.

I truly connect with what you write even though I am one of "those" people who reads but rarely comments. YOU do make a difference and so do I!

Bego said...

the whole cocktail party analogy is just a grown up version of the kickball line-up in elementary school.

In the blog world, change is effected by good content, and while good content isn't always noticed at first, it does eventually get a respectable position--sometimes because the cocktail group points them out.

How could I think to be in the same boat as John Scalzi who started in 1998 if I've only been blogging since 2007?

I found your blog, Vicki, because a project you do for Atomic Learning mentioned you, and your name is on the movies they use.

jeanette tranberg

2005 - you were the only ones out there to follow

Oh yes, I have felt the cocktail chill at times. I'm a norwegian edublogger, that have been following your brunks (blogdrunks) for a while. To start with - in

Wes told me once I twittered, that nobody should twitter alone and I could not agree more - so I don't.

So, from the outer side looking in: Anybody stopping by in Second Life tonight (which is today for you) for a virtual edu cocktail?I'm aka Kita Coage at Eduisland II, waiting to cocktail connect with you c",)

Paul Hamilton

For most of us, blogging is very much a personal venture.

I suspect that we all have a deep desire to be heard and to be accepted. The longer I'm involved in the edublogosphere, however, the more impressed and encouraged I am by the level of acceptance that there is here. It is a good thing that we don't always agree with each other. Disagreement is often at the heart of constructive conversation

At the same time, we are no different than the kids in our classrooms. We educators need to know that we will be accepted, no matter what we have to say and no matter how well we are able to express it. I think we help to make the edublogosphere a "safe place" for each other as we try to keep it positive and as we take advantage of the numerous opportunities to be affirming.

Jim Dornberg said.

I don't at all feel excluded from the blog "cocktail party", because just like a real cocktail party, I am drawn to the people who have something important, and engaging to say and I am content to listen and learn from them. I have seen a few of the "big names" at conferences, and even met a few of them in person. I have emailed several of them and others, or left an occasional comment, and I have been very pleasantly surprised at the thoughtful responses I have received.

I read many blogs, but comment rarely, and I suspect that those who read my blog do the same. So I don't feel at all excluded. I'm just happy to occasionally be part of the conversation.

Alfred Thompson

When I was at EduBloggerCon last spring I felt quite the outsider. There were famous people there and I was unknown. I still feel that way in the broad edublogsphere. But honestly the broad sphere is not who I am blogging for. I blog for a niche - computer science teachers. The event for that niche is SIGCSE and there I (blush) feel a bit like a star. Few of the people there know the edubloggers with much larger readership or Technorati ranks. And really reaching the CS teachers is my goal not reaching everyone who teaches general subjects.

There is, I believe, room for more at the top if only because the number of teachers reading blogs is still very small but we all hope it is growing. We are still at the ground floor. That makes edublogging different from tech blogging I think.

Jason Bengs

I think we need to all remember our focus for blogging. Mine is for reflection. I use my blog as a tool to improve my teaching. If others start to read and can learn from it, great. To my knowledge I am the only one seeing my blog right now. Which is fine with me. I don't think blogging should be a popularity contest and having a large number of readers is great, it must mean that you, and others, have something to offer that others want to emulate.

prof v said

I think you could have added three additional points. First, a suggestion on how to increase readership. I think new bloggers (myself included) are still trying to figure out how to make the connections that allow for conversations within blogs. I go back to your list of 10 tips for successful blogging, and still find things I never noticed before

would love to see an updated list that perhaps would include how to make sure your blog is part of an RSS feed and how to set up subscriptions for potential readers to make it easy for them to subscribe to your blog.

I think even you have realized that it is more difficult to break into the edublogger field as there is now so many new bloggers (just in the last two years).

Finally, I am surprised that you did not point out how you have helped new bloggers by both asking for new voices and then publishing them in your own blog. I think this is an indication that you are trying to open up the "party".

Dean Shareski

Isn't the whole point of web 2.0 is that it exudes democracy and equality? Those that get all concerned about rankings and ratings are, as you've suggested missing the point.

We often quickly want to find ways of ranking. Reminds me of the evils of current assessment practices. We tell kids to do their best and work on improving performance and yet continue to use ranking systems that is clearly a mixed message.

Anonymous said.

I'm new to this world as of Monday...yes, 4 days of immersing myself in as much ed. tech, web 2.0, online collaboration "stuff" that I can. (thanks to Lisa Thumman at Rutgers U.) Cocktail party or not, your blog and the comments people have left have increased my list of people to follow. Even a discussion about "being on the outside" has led me to the "inside". I'm thrilled to be in the company of such great minds and promise to start contributing once I wrap my brain around it all! Thanks to everyone for sharing! cmtvarok

Mrs. V.

thanks for coaxing me out of my blogger drought!

Vicki A. Davis

I believe that this "post" has been made stronger by the comments, which have added to the post greater depth of meaning.

All over this conversation I see the change in society. We are all going through the emotions of becoming accustomed to something new... kind of like I first experienced when the Internet first came out.

And while, when I began blogging, I didn't really set my sights or aim for a large readership... now that it is here, I will seriously consider and appreciate each individual reader and take my job seriously

@tennessee -- Those in the trenches are my most important reads... I just wish there were more of us. It seems as if many teachers view blogging as a way out of the classroom when they should see it as a way to improve the classroom!

@scottmcleod - I believe the comment intensity is highly correlated to controversiality AND immediacy. If a lot of people SAW someone recently, they want to interact and comment (immediacy.) If someone says something very emotional or controversial, people want to comment and interact (controversiality.) While I guess looking at these stats are fine, I've found in my very short time blogging that looking too much at numbers of any kind removes my focus from what is important. When I focus intently on conversation, my blog traffic and numbers just grow. I always say "whatever is watered, grows." If I water my investigation of stats, I become a good statistician... if I water my blog but also commenting and participating in the blogosphere as a WHOLE, I become a good blogger. I'd rather be the latter. And while the post was meant to be encouraging... I have to admit I'm a competitive perfectionist and always have to reign in that aspect of my nature.

@christophersessums - I think the emotional nature of something is like the proverbial elephant in the Net -- it is there. It always stuns me the number of people who discuss their feelings on this when it comes up... it means that many of us are experiencing the same thing.

Because nowhere in that talk

"If we just change it all up, the kids will all suddenly just start learning like crazy" when that misses several points -- 1) we still have an insanely anti-intellectual culture that is so much more powerful than schools. 2) Deep learning is still hard, and our culture is moving away from valuing things that are hard to do. 3) We still need teachers to teach kids thoughtfulness, wisdom, care, compassion, and there's an anti-teacher rhetoric that, to me, undermines that video's message.

We cannot pretend these ideas "save" our schools, they create different schools -- better ones, I believe -- but very, very different ones, and that's the piece I see missing.