Multilitteratus Incognitus

I was reading Jenny's post the other day on What is Academic Rigor and it got me to question my own conceptions of academic rigor.  I think many academics treat rigor just like supreme court judges treat pornography: They know it when they see it . I too have been guilty of not defining rigor, and just saying "oh that's not rigorous" when I recognize that something isn't rigorous (or at least I mentally categorize it as so). Some of the participants in the synchronous session that I didn't attend had their own conceptions of what rigor is (via Jenny's blog): not for the faint-hearted; takes effort and commitment (Tom Reeves) unchanging, in the sense that ‘rigorous’ means performing the same (type of) study every time, conforming to the same (set of) principles etc. (Stephen Downes) more likely to lead to the truth (but what is truth?) (Stephen Downes) disciplined, measurable, stands up to scrutiny by others (brainysmurf) can replicate the methods (To...

Nothing really dies on the internet :-)  Sometimes that is a bad thing, sometimes it's a good thing! A few years back, I had wanted to join a social network (like MySpace and Facebook) but where the language was Greek.  I discovered a few like Zuni (facebook-like in that it was only for college students at the time, it's now defunct), and fatsa (Greek for "face" or rather "mug"). Fatsa never really did it for me because it was a bit like the TV show "Jersey Shore." Despite the fact that I have told this network numerous times to remove my profile, it's still there.  Well, lucky me, because this is one place I had put that photo I had mentioned in my previous post - the old office, affectionately known as the bat cave . Thinking pose, in half-tone, circa 2003, alpha version

I was reading a post that I came across on Change MOOC this last week, the title was Can Educational Research be both Rigorous and Relevant? This article was an interesting read for both people who are researchers and people who are practitioners. The main theme of the article is that research articles have been rigorous enough to pass peer-review but they haven't necessarily had an impact; and at the end of the day impact is what matters. In general, I agree with the overall tones of the article. We do see a lot of research published these days - the article cites something like 1300 (approx.) education related journals in existence, and even if they had just one issue per year (which most don't) that's a lot of reading. The other figure that really stuck with me was that only 40% of those articles tend to get cited in other subsequent publications. Two things come to mind here. While it is true that not all articles don't get cited, at least not right away, that d...

I don't follow the main presenters much on Change11 any more, partly because of the gaps in the schedule, and partly because some things seem like repetitions of previous topics...and partly because I started a new job and have little time.  I do however follow the daily newsletter and when I see posts from people that I've interacted with in the past, like Jenny, Jupidu, Jaap and Serena I put them on my reading list.  This week Jupidu's and Serena's posts piqued my interest in IEML. Initially I didn't really want to deal with a semantic meta language for the web.  I've been hearing about the "semantic web" for quite some time now, and (honestly) I am getting a bit fatigued by it. Having read the quick overviews I decided to go in and read the chapters provided by Pierre Levy. I have to say that it is quite interesting.  Semantics isn't really my thing - don't get me wrong, I would like to like semantics (I find the study of semantics fascinat...

This past week I've been trying like a mad man to find a photo that I took in 2005, using Photo Booth on MacOS 10.4 when it first came out.  At the time, I was employed by Media Services and worked with a great group of people.  Alas, my office was reminiscent of the Batcave. Despite being on the first floor there were no windows, the fluorescent lighting felt piercing to the eye (so I had some spotlights strategically placed in the office) so my office was a perfect candidate for a painting using  chiaroscuro . It was also cold (year round!) a bit damp (not great for the media playback equipment that I had stored there) and the air quality was questionable.  This was the background of that photo.A few months after that photo was taken I switched jobs and went to another building. This week (six years later) I am back in that old building, in a new job, but this time I am on the sixth floor (all the way up!), with a window that provides natural light, a p...

I had come across Jupidu's post on Sensemaking in a MOOC a while back, but I haven't had much time to respond to it just yet (until now I guess ;-)  ).  I was actually thinking of my participation in MOOCs in general; as well as the two MOOCs I am now participating in - those being Change11 and DS106.  I was actually thinking of points 1, 2, 4 and 5 in specifically and I thought I would do a bit of compare and contrast between the two: Sensemaking works around identity creation – in every environment f2f or virtual I’m building my identity and this “self” is in continuous interaction with the environment and with the other learners as well. Sensemaking works retrospective – I’m making sense out of experiences reflecting about them, as I’m doing it now with this article I want to write. And therefore sensemaking is influenced by my memory of situations. Sensemaking is social – of course it is in the Mooc! I’m a kind of aware of some the learners who participate in th...

My video introduction to the research methods course (for instructional designers) that I am teaching this semester came in.  Yay!  Even though I think I could have benefited from some make-up, the video came out pretty good.  (if the embedded player isn't working, here is the direct link to the video introduction )

While I am not the biggest of Blackboard cheerleaders, using Blackboard Coursesites (with Mobile Learn enabled!) has really had a big influence in changing my perceptions of how good blackboard can be. Our evaluation instance this past summer, due in large part to our migrated courses looking like a truck ran over them, didn't inspire confidence, but my usage of coursesites over the past nine months makes videos like these give me a warm and fuzzy feeling (as both an instructional designer and an instructor).

A couple of years back I was taking a lunch-time walk around the harbor walk  which goes by my university campus. In the summer I walk every day (3-5 miles) at lunch time, but when the weather gets colder I tend to cut back. In any case, this was taken in the fall, it was a bit chilly and drizzling (not a big deal) and there he was, Elmo, abandoned (there are condos nearby so some kid probably forgot him).  I also saw this as a perfect opportunity to mess around with a free photo app that I had gotten for my iPhone.    I think the grayness really does bring out how bad the weather was (no one else was around outside) and a generally jovial toy monster is longing for his owner to come back and get him.   

This is my first semester teaching (yay!) and since we're eventually migrating to Blackboard Lean 9 on my campus I've decided to be part of a pre-pilot using Coursesites (fantastic and free service, by the way, if you are looking for a free LMS). One of the perks of coursesites, that briefly was taken away from us last year but is now back, is access to Blackboard Mobile on iOS, Android and Blackberry (hopefully a windows phone version soon?).  In any case, since I don't have a computer at home that I regularly have access to, I tend to use my iPad and Blackboard Mobile to keep on top of things.  While Bb Mobile is a great app, it does have a few shortcomings that I hope Blackboard addresses in the near future.  Some of it is (or should be) easy to implement, while other things might need a little more work on the back end to make feasible.  So here is my laundry list: What's New and Due This is a great feature of Bb Learn - it essentially gives you (student and...

I haven't yet read the Web 2.0 Storytelling chapter on DS106 - I've skimmed through it and it looks pretty interesting -I think it's going to go on my spring break reading list (so sometime in March).  I did however (quickly) go over the O'Reily " what is Web 2.0 " and the educause 7 things of Creative Commons (which admittedly I have read before but not in a long time). My main thought about Web 2.0 is that we ought to not be calling it "Web 2.0" but rather just call it "the web."  Perhaps back in the early to mid 2000s when this stuff was new it was useful to differentiate how the "old' web was different from the "new" web.  The new web however has been with us for quite some time now, so it's no longer new.  As a matter of fact any newness is iterative, a "Web 2.0.010" if you will. We don't pay attention to iterations (no matter how amazing they are) we just use them - so why fixate on the "...

I don't often read Inside Higher Education these days. I used to gobble it up, but I've found that a lot of the content seems to be off-base opinion (and when there is real news, the RSS feed doesn't give you anything but the title, so I refuse to take that bait - give me at least some content). In any case, I came across a blog post by Joshua Kim the other day with the topic of 9 Academic Freedoms Of Not Having Tenure , and it piqued my interest.  I have to say that initially I was happy to have a tecchie blog on IHE but over the years it seems to me that Josh just writes for the sake of writing.  This article could have been much more, but I read it more like a sour grapes grapes† ; and one that perpetuates certain observations of academia that we should all be fighting to change (thus the connection with #change11).  So here is my rebuttal of his 9 "freedoms"‡ 1. The Pleasures of Being a Generalist There is a myth in academia that you can't be a gener...

Happy February to all! I thought that this week's DS106 assignment should be something random, so I went with the illustrated recaptcha assignment suggestion whereby you are given the task to illustrate one of those random recaptcha images.  I must have hit that button to give me another captcha many times because I couldn't get inspired by any of the random text.  In the end I got something that looked like Peachill Insurrection. My initial thought was something out of Super Mario (Peachill maybe something named after Princess Peach), maybe some protesting or fighting Goombas or Hammer Brothers...but I couldn't find any fan art of insurrecting goombas to add to images of rolling (peach)hills. So here's a mashup of Super Mario (World) hills with an image of the Warsaw insurrection (from wikipedia).