Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Fearing Facebook, the high school example

How should high school teachers engage with Facebook? This NPR story fairly trembles with fright, a barely suppressed cry of "never!"

"Don't ever friend or follow your students on Facebook or Twitter, never post during work hours or using work materials such as a school computer, and certainly never post anything about your job online, especially about students," [New Jersey teachers union spokesman Steve] Wollmer says. 

Nothing in the article about any positive features of teaching social media.  It's just a zone for possible fails.

(thanks to Laura Blankenship!)

When faculty members really are Luddites

Hating laptops in class reaches a height in this video.  It feels like a charming liquid nitrogen exercise, until the furious denunciation at the end (around 1:39).

Which reminds me, I need to write up my argument about how most academics criticizing technology aren't Luddites, but Amish.

(thanks to Peter Naegele!)

Gaming versus college study: FCC commissioner

It's the flip side of gaming for teaching and learning: gaming could pull students away from their studies, says an FCC commissioner.

You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Citation needed, please.  Note, too, the continued acceptance of the "gaming addiction" concept without demur.

Some of the rest of the speech is fascinating, with a series of fearsome internet statements.  For example, this strange Pollyanna idea:

Like many parents, I never really thought past the benefits the Internet offers... However, we must also realize that this technological explosion of access also presents challenges and very real dangers.

Somehow this FCC commissioner - a national leader - missed a couple of decades' worth of cyberfear.  Maybe not the best datapoint for her tenure. 

Moving on, a nice dose of mobile fear:

Even more concerning, the threat is no longer contained to the family computer. It is in the palm of your child’s hand. Given the fact that approximately 60% of American teens have a cell phone, and that cell phones are being marketed to children as young as 6...

"In the palm of your child's hand" - as my son says, "shiver!"

More child internet fear as the speech goes global, with a touch on censorship:

I was honored to have been invited by Secretary General Hamadoun Touré to participate in the global launch of the Child Online Protection Initiative at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). (www.itu.int/cop) Ministers and delegates from every nation are considering best practices for protecting children from predators, cyberbullying, pornography, child trafficking, and many other threats.

Note "pornography" there.  It's the classic rhetorical move of focusing on children, when the legal category is certainly minors, meaning criminalizing inter-teen communication.

(via BoingBoing)

The body of knowledge meets disembodied learning

The flip side of fearsome bodies is the fear of no body at all.  Case in point: The Guardian refers to podcasting as "disembodied learning."

(thanks to Peter Naegele)

New Bryan articles on teaching with technology

Two articles of mine have hit the Web and road:

• "Social Networking in Higher Education", in The Tower and the Cloud, an Educause book.
• "Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre," in the lastest Educause Review.

Both are available in print and pdf.

Teaching schools to fear Web 2.0 even more: University Affairs

This article offers a solid dose of Web fear, aimed at higher education.  The author hits a wide range of scary topics: pornography, privacy violation, religious bigotry, suicide, murder, hate speech,  "cheating, bullying, identity theft, slander and other mischief and malfeasance."

And it begins with one of the best fearsome internet images I've ever seen:

Notice how the Shelob-monster comes from behind students, not being something reflecting what they might do to each other.  And it has that old Web-spider pun, too.

At no point does the article pause to consider any positive uses of Web 2.0.  There's nothing about pedagogy, scholarship, campus life, town-gown relations, outreach, convenience, generational connection. 

Connectivism, the dark side

The dark side of connectivism:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents...
[S]ome day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age..."

Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu

Nicely done, professor Webb.

In a sense, this is a reflection of what lies beneath much of the antidemocratic resistance to the Web.

Connectivism course draws night, or behold the MOOC

The Connectivism online class is drawing closer, as we can see from their wiki, the blog, and email announcements.  I'm excited about the idea of a "massive online open course". 

A University of Hell

“Well, of course, it is a job in humanities, and you know they’re not easy to come by."

The academic job market can be hellish indeed.

Job Listing #666. University of Hell at Seventh Circle. Visiting Assistant Professor, two years (with possibility of converting to tenure-track position at culmination of two-year appointment). Beginning September 2009. Teaching load of forty-three courses per semester, with no more than thirty-nine preparations (i.e. instructor will teach more than one section of some courses). No official committee duties, but will be expected to contribute occasionally to departmental administrative work. Competitive salary, given local economy. Candidate must exhibit evidence of strong potential for both research and teaching, and significant flexibility in his/her expectations. For further information, repeat the name “Mizrakreth, Chair of Hiring Committee” three times.

New article out, shameless promotion ensues

Self-promotion time: I have a new article out, "Deepening the Chasm: Web 2.0, Gaming, and Course Management Systems" (also in lovely pdf).

It's stashed in "Next Generation Learning/Course Management Systems", a special issue of MERLOT's Journal of Online Teaching and Learning (JOLT). The rest of the issue is excellent. .