It’s the Sunday night of a long week and I have the vague, confused and grimy feeling of someone who just lost a fight with an old, dirty fog machine. There’s a level of confusion that comes on me at this time of night that is so strangely blended with moments of clarity that, unless I’m very busy, I tend to avoid it. But I want to try to take the post from yesterday and bring it into a more practical context, and also another shot at describing the feedbook… so here goes.Language-games are one of the central concepts that I’m going to babble about, so, having just copped out and used wikipedia for my last post, maybe I’ll address them a little more here. Language is alive. A word, out of context, has little meaning. -monkey- This is a word that i’ve used as a nickname for a friend of mine, it’s an animal, it can be an insult an endearment or, i would bet somewhere in the world, a foul tasting and instantly inebrating drink. A quick translation of a word from one culture to another will give even clearer examples. They mean something when they are part of a text-event. When language is used in a text event, Wittgenstein referred to them as being subject to various rules including grammatical rules but more importantly for this conversation also including societal rules. These rules can be seen as applying to a game stipulated by the circumstances of the text-event. You have entered into a language-game. You can ‘win’ the language game by successfully following all the rules and coming to any number of successful outcomes. You ‘lose’ a language game by not following the rules.
Anyway, to return to fog. That vague feeling of confusion and desire for low level avoidance is same feeling that comes over me when i feel like I don’t understand what is going on. Lets use a live example. As I made up the word last week, and since this may be the only website that ever uses it for the purpose that I had in mind when I first wrote it, let me use it to give you a feeling of what I mean.
I really like feedbooks. They are just what’s needed for education. (obviously not an introduction that’s going to make you feel comfortable, unless your the sort that has either the patience, or the personality, to enjoy/endure the speech of the prophet)
A feedbook is a collection of RSS feeds amassed in an OPML. (This is a little clearer, it defines the feedbook, and, given definitions for the other terms, would define to us what the word means. It tells us very little about the ‘text-event’… what would it mean to use the word.)
A feedbook is a collection of RSS feeds amassed in an OPML and used as the central (or peripheral) learning ‘text’ for a class. (We now have a context, in a classroom and a comparison to a physical textbook with which to make sense of some of the meaning of the word. Some people could begin to imagine how they could use the word, and understand it when it was used by others.)
A feedbook is a collection of blogs and podcasts that each student would have delivered to them like a personalized newspaper. (This example offers a little more context, a more experiential example of the kinds of things you could do with a feedbook. It’s a newspaper. We read daily stories and talk about them. This is different from talking about a ‘textbook’, which is static and passive in the event that takes place in the classroom)
The question is, when explaining something to people who aren’t already invested, how do we explain something so that they feel that they will have a fair chance of ‘winnning’ the language-game if they were to start it.
October 3rd, 2005 at 10:34 pm This post was very helpful to me. I have had a great vision of an online portfolio process much like Elgg. While I am chasing that thinking it was the way to go, I started thinking of the group collaborative aspects of Moodle as a bridge step. But I think you have articulated a nice developmental sequence for new online learners. I am not sure it would spoil chatting for my students but I am thinking how positive it would be to expose and guide them first. Most of my 8-10 year old students are not yet messaging.
October 4th, 2005 at 12:20 am Yeah. I think chatting has many advantages as a first step in the K-12. It gives an instructor a chance to monitor what many people are calling the plague of written English… instant messaging. I think it also has great brainstorming potential. Jeff L. keeps saying that VOIP is better, and I may agree with him, but text has the advantage of being an easier record, and also of being in the format that many of the projects will be exported as… written text.
October 16th, 2005 at 2:05 am I agree – although Jeff insists on voice, for non native speakers it is not always the best way to express deep thinking. Speaking for myself, as someone who did not have much purposeful English spoken communication after graduating from high school, and until I started around 1999 to become an international Webhead, for the first few years text chat was far easier for me to follow, than a spoken conversation. I joined an online community just two years ago where longish teleconferences with many people were a must. I just sat in there, listening and trying to follow the stream of fast speaking people with all sorts of difficult sounding dialects, even foreign accents. But I could not come to think of much to say myself, as the conversation partners were often from a different context than my own, and most of the time it was also very academic and research oriented. Rather embarassing for me to stay pretty silent, as I wanted to show my benevolent presence. I was more than happy when someone took minutes, and if there was a recording of the cal, I would perhaps listen again and get more out of it for a second time.Then, virtual classroom sessions with bonus text chat added to the voice, came in from another side. I was invited to speak as a virtual guest teacher with students who probably had less experience than myself with authentic coversation in a foreign voice. Their teahcers were my virtual colleagues and our collaboration was more informal, down to Earth so to speak
First, I could see who was speaking! We also used slides and whiteboard a lot. And, if I needed some clarification on a difficult term, I could have it spelled out to me. And soon after I started to relax and chat naturally with my own voice. Remember, I needed practice as well as a stressless, supportive context. And today I feel OK with a podcast interview, although I think next time I would prefer to prepare myself a bit. I see myself as a lifelong learner in this case, supposing this could refelct the different between being primarily a visual learner, or an auditive. This is why I think the mixed mode blog/podcast is excellent.
January 9th, 2006 at 3:10 pm Hi. This all looks really interesting and exciting – some great ideas that celebrate in the individual in the process. However – a note of caution directed at the technology aspect of this idea – is this about liberating us or unconsciously developing a technology for the self and thereby doing the opposite of liberating us? What I mean is there have been many educational technologies that have been sold using the rhetoric of liberation and empowerment, whilst – it seems to me – they have had the effect of policing the imagination through creating a technology that looks benign but carries its own structural limitations – sold as geting beyond structure it provides yet another. Having said all that it looks really good. I try to get students to write books together with a similar sense of trying to get students to genuinely own what they are doing.John