The feedbook is an idea I’ve been talking about and working through with many people over the last six months or so. The idea (not a very complex one I admit) came to me in conversation with Tim and Rob (more on these guys later) in our early planning stages for a new media program for UPEI. It is a flexible idea that can encompass many possibilities. For its first introduction I’ll restrict myself as much as possible to the ideal version of the feedbook as its been worked out between Jeff Lebow and I during our edtechtalk broadcast in September.
The feedbook is a collection of feeds (including podcast, blogs and someday soon hopefully vlogs) contained in an open ended opml first seeded by a course instructor and added to (or pared down) according to student needs. Imagine five instructors all teaching a an education course on using new media in the classroom. In their opml they might include:
- one blog from each instructor
- dave tosh
- will richardson
- george siemens
- edtechtalk
- barbara ganley
This would make up the main ‘textbook’ for the course. The students would not be getting a textbook positioned from a single instructor from last year or even a couple of years ago, but a collection of essays written right now about changes that affect the current issues in education. The instrutors can add their own flavour to the course in their own blogs as well as modeling blogging as good educational practice.
A feedbook is a living text. Students are getting material that is new. The material may surprise the instructor, but it gives them things to discuss, a real platform upon which to have a natural discussion rather than one forced by a lesson plan made weeks, months or even years earlier. As a final advantage, when the students leave the course, their feedbook goes with them, not a textbook slowly fading into kindling for your fireplace, but one that will stay current…
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