Archive for July, 2008
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Communication
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. by Rollo May
As I sit here, trying to make sense of what I want to write for the communication section, I realise that communication and working with others plays a major role in my daily practice as a learning technologist, as an educator, and also as a researcher. To collaborate we do need to be able to effectively communicate with others while we work and learn with them.
These days I use several channels to communicate with those I work and learn with inside and outside the University.
I could actually provide numerous examples about how communication plays a very important role in my professional, and also personal, life. Today, however, I decided I should reflect about the latest group of people I am informally collaborating with and with whom I have been able to establish real communication. I think all of us are actually benefiting from this situation which started a couple of weeks ago, after I attended a Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) for PhD students in Ohrid/ Macedonia.
It was quite a rewarding experience to have been granted a scholarship to take part in this event and be able to meet many other people, who otherwise I would probably not have had the chance to. What was interesting about the entire week of events was actually not so much the lectures or the sessions which had been planned for us as attendees, but all the unplanned connections and discussions that took place during that week, both online and on-site. Those were almost parallel sessions which ran informally and which spontaneously took shape, according to people’s needs to talk, discuss and make sense of topics in which we were interested in for several different reasons. It helped us in a way to bond and feel more inclined to work together.
During the summer school some of the participants used twitter and twemes (a site which helped us aggregate twitter messages, flickr photos and del.icio.us bookmarks based on a specific hashtag) to provide immediate feedback about the sessions that were taking place at the very moment. It not only generated a lot of on-the-fly reflection, it also enabled participants to bond with each other.
Now, after the summer school, some of us are still carrying on with the unstructured discussion in two different online spaces, where we have the opportunity to share with others what we are up to (and this not only includes resources and opinions, but also humorous conversations spiced up with giggles, planning of future get-togethers, etc) .
Thus, some of the summer schoolers are still in touch through twitter, and a new twemes, ( a micro-blogging aggregator site) and through a written skype channel, where we keep sharing resources and points of view related to our fields of research and professional interests.
I think most of the conversation that followed after the summer school has been quite important and relevant, not only in terms of the content shared and produced, but also because we have explored ourselves the potentials of such technologies to bridge communication and collaboration.
I think communication is key to any learning relationship. It is important we keep the channels open and make people comfortable enough to share their fears and anxieties, report about their experiences, and give and receive feedback about their practices. Communication is core to collaboration, a good working environment and keep the people’s leraning spark going (motivation).
In my role as a learning technologist I also try to convey the message that I am always willing to talk to people, and more importantly, to listen to what they have to say. In the last year I have also started using skype with the people I work with. It enables them to contact me at the spur of the moment, independently of their whereabouts. The fact that they can see my skype icon in an ‘online mode’ also gives them the reassurance I am virtually present and reachable in case they need to get in touch with me.
From this initiative, many some internal collaborative approaches have developed. Besides being connected to staff through skype, we are also now offering online tutorials and support via skype to students on study skills. Furthermore, we have also provided mentoring for students to start their group skype channels for project collaboration, as reported here.
In all, communication and working with others is really a very important part of my day to day work, and I thoroughly enjoy it. :-D By using such channels, it not only helps me convey the message “I am approachable and am here to support others in their learning and practices”, it also enables me to constantly benefit from what others also have to offer. Thus it keeps me motivated while learning about this evolving world which is more and more reliable of the web as an important means to establish meaningful communication.
In the near future we are looking at reaching out to university staff through others means, in which communication and collaboration will continue to be the focus.
Communication is key to any learning relationship 
Addendum - December 2009
Since I last wrote this post, many more things have happen regarding how I communicate with those around me, and how I am trying to help staff and students to communicate amongst themselves and also their research and activity.
We have recently started working on an interdisciplinary project which brings together 1o institutions and students from Literature, Science and Medicine in an open forum. The project leader want to design a strategy which would enable students to communicate with other as well as have access to the tutors in a continuum, and not only during the face to face sessions or through the exchange of private emails which might not reach the entire group, or more widely. Hence, we started looking at the possibilities the technology could offer based on the context and goals of the project as well as those who it aims to reach. We end up creating a collective space for social engagement, i.e., a space where students have access to other students and tutors, and equally where they have their own space (=blog). The idea was to bridge communication between face to face workshops and also provide a space for those who won’t be able to attend the physical sessions. Further, the purpose is to give students and tutors alike ‘equal rights’ to start new discussion threads, share their reflections and even create groups of interests within that space. The project will officially start in January. Yet, we already have more than 30 people enrolled to the space, and quite a few are already participating in the ‘challenges’ the tutors are posing them. The interesting part of this project is also to observe how the tutor themselves engage in this engage of information as ‘just another participant’. The tutors are taing part in the discussion, giving constructive feedback and also sharing their reflections on the blogs, and not at all acting as ‘the one who stands at the front of the room and talks to the audience’. in LitSciMed there is no audience. They are all co-producers.
Recently, I have also managed to convince my colleagues to start a Blog for the Graduate Studies Team. It has been an exciting experience. We have all taken up the challenge with enthusiasm and it is interesting to see how our blogging voices are developing in the context of our blog’s thematic. Our goal is to keep posting throughout our staying at our institution.
2010 will be an exciting year where ‘communication’ is concerned. Our goal is to improve our communication strategies with our research students. It is also in our plan to enhance their research profile and create new opportunities for research students and staff to make their research more visible with the use of the participatory web.
Related posts:
- WeDoTEL - A Skype group for TEL Researchers
- Broadcasting myself all the way to Moscow
- The power of the community
- Reach out to us through twitter!
- EduTalks
- Reaching out to Japan
No Comments » - Posted in Communication, cmalt by Cristina Costa
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
The impact of social media on (Digital) Literacy
Two weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a Panel on Digital Literacy at UCLan. It was indeed interesting and thought provoking. As it often happens in this kind of events, so much was left to say. I especially liked the way the audience progressively got involved and we briefly touched some of the current worries considering literacy in the 21st Century. Does it have the same meaning as it did 50 years ago? How are we to define literacy in this day and age? Is education keeping up with it?
Jonathon Westaway kicked off the debate by highlighting some of the hot themes concerning this matter, and off we went to jointly reflect about issues around the following questions:
- Is Social Media changing the way we read and write?
- What are the advantages of learning and teaching in the digital environment?
- What are the problems associated with information overload?
- Who has authority in the digital landscape?
Too many questions for such a short period of time, but we sure tried to get across as many ideas as possible.
Educators in generally are still very worried the “little Johnnies” are not reading as much as they should! Not to mentioned their writing and spelling skills which are just getting worse by the minute. But is it really so? Are we reading less? Are our writing and spelling skills really that bad? Steven Johnson presents some counter arguments about it, and I must say I like what he says. We are not reading less; we have just started reading differently. I myself read more (blog) articles than ever, and have access to much more literature in my filed than when I was restricted to paper books and local library access. The web has opened the doors to a new world where the literacy concept is being reshaped into different dimensions. Professor David Crystal’s recent article also underlines very pertinent issues concerning the new writing and spelling habits (maybe styles?). They are away from being new, yet they are becoming more visible as social media, and micro digital communication devices and applications, such as mobile phones, micro-blogging, instant messaging, etc have become widely accessible in the latest years. They represent the main channels for written communication and also reflection. I have recently blogged about the twitter phenomenon and how it has impacted in my learning. It has increasingly contributed to my knowledge and increased my learning network. Despite the rather short length of twitter messages, true communication is achieved through this channel. And just like we were already doing with mobile phones, and also with lecture note-taking (remember those?), we do use a lot of abbreviations to convey the message. That’s how things have evolved. They are not bad or good. They are just different.
However, it doesn’t mean that we are getting worse at spelling; it just means we are developing additional communication registers.
One can argue that sometimes students tend to overreact and use such “tribal spelling” in their assignments. It’s in their nature, and role as students, to push boundaries; it’s our mission as educators to guide them to consider the different contexts in which they are involved in – that is to say, to prepare them for real life! . [I think sometimes we just tend to generalize something that happens less often, especially if it is something that we are not used to. It’s so much easier!!!]. The fact is that students often distinguish which kind of register belongs to which context, and if they don’t, then it tells a lot of the educational system they have been in. It is our job as educators to help them realize which register to adopt according to the situation they are in.
Times are changing. Generation conflicts are old as the world. We always try to do things differently from our parents, as our parents have done things differently from theirs…
I strongly believe that digital literacy is more than reading books and writing exam papers. That might have been the literacy ideal of the industrial age. These days, literacy is also related with how we use the digital media to search, access, read, critically think and make sense of what we read in our areas of expertise and interests. It is also how we show evidence of what we learn by communicating it through different means and ways. Today it is as important to know, as it is to know-how. And our kids sure know how to know when they feel they need to know something. Furthermore, they adapt more easily than most of use to those venues, where they engage into knowing whatever they want to learn. If it takes to learn a new spelling code, then they do it, because they want to feel part of it.
So why can’t we accept it? And why can’t we just familiarize our students with academic writing without despising their tribal writing? It would be easier than trying to ban the web because it is bad for your spelling!!!!
