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Thoughts for Teaching “Digital Natives”

I recently returned from the NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) Annual Conference interestingly entitled, Barbarians at the Gate? The focus of this conference was on the impact that “digital natives”—defined as those born after 1980—and emerging technologies have on the future of information services.  As one might imagine, based on the conference title, there is a perception that digital natives are very different than those of us outside this generation.  The word “barbarian”also implies that somehow their skills are not as refined as those of us born before 1980.  But is this really the case?

Conference keynote speaker, John Palfrey, author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, found in his research that adoption of new technologies is more dependent on socioeconomic status than on generational affiliation.  This idea was echoed by Dr. Ian Rowlands, managing director at the Center for Information Behavior and Evaluation of Research, and director of the Research Centre for Publishing, University College London.  In his research, he found that in the UK those over 65 were online four hours more per week than 18-to-24-year-olds.  Both of these findings refute, in part, our common perceptions of technology utilization.  In the end, it seems as though search behavior and technology utilization are less of a generational issue and more of an issue of access.  This raises the question that if socioeconomic status and access to technology define who uses technology, are “digital natives” really different than the rest of us?

Mimi Ito is a research scientist at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, Annenberg Center, University of California and a visiting associate professor at Keio University. His research has found that there are some fundamental differences in what digital natives do with information (a link to her speech from the conference can be found here).  In particular, the idea that digitalnatives use information and media to tell stories about who they are—essentially making and sharing media is a fundamental literacy for this generation.  This is a fundamental change from previous generations and one that we should take note of.  This generation can be defined (again loosely as not all digital natives have access to technology) as being part of a remix culture.  To many in this generation, it is okay to take something that exists, change it slightly, and republish it.  Traditional ideas of copyright are not as important to them as it may have been to previous generations.

As instructional designers, what does this profile tell us about how we should be designing classes for the newest generation of college students?  I would argue that we should consider the following:

  • Use of media should be purposeful and provide meaning to the course—these students are not going to be impressed that instructors can embed a video lecture in their class. 
  • Information should be provided not only in multiple technology formats (video, audio, multimedia, text) but also in various genres (narrative, fiction, nonfiction) and remixing should be encouraged.
  • Along with traditional research papers, course assignments should also allow for multiple means of completion including the creation of digital media like short films, animations, digital images, etc.
  • Students need to be educated about laws around copyright and fair use.  Creative Commons licensing should be encouraged.
  • Collaborative spaces should be provided for those students who prefer to work in a collaborative environment while options for those students who prefer individual work are still maintained.
  • Inquiry and problem-based learning should be included as well as more traditional methods.

So are “digital natives” really that much different than the rest of us?   I would argue that what these “natives” really want is to be able to find information quickly, easily, and freely; use what they find to create new knowledge; and easily share what they find and create with others.   Does that make them different?  You decide.

Collaboratively Writing about Collaborative-Writing Tools

Writing is collaborative when multiple authors work together to produce a written text. While collaborative writing doesn’t have to be computer based, in this entry, we focus on Web-based applications that enable collaborative writing. Wiki-based Web sites, discussion boards, and blogs could all be considered collaborative writing environments; however, here we focus on three Web-based applications specifically designed for collaborative writing. People use these applications for different purposes, so it follows that different applications have different feature sets and capabilities.

Working in collaborative-writing environments may be restrictive and difficult for some, while liberating and easy for others. It is difficult to generalize about the limitations and advantages of collaborative-writing environments, especially for anyone trying to learn how to become an editor for books, but it is clear that such tools are often easier to use than e-mailing Word documents back and forth—especially when more than two writers/editors are involved. In the following evaluation of three writing tools, we highlight some of the benefits and drawbacks of each. In conclusion, we propose how we believe each tool could be enhanced and the specifications for our dream collaborative-writing application.

This blog entry was actually collaboratively written in a collaborative writing environment. This exploration of both the collaborative-writing process and the tools proved to be positive and enlightening. We were no longer chained to working on multiple versions of documents using the track changes features in Word via e-mail. We also found that the group dynamic was a motivating force; collaborating on this entry increased our sense of responsibility and overall accountability to each other. We completed all the tasks listed in our original collaborative writing planning document on schedule. We feel that the final product, this review of three collaborative writing applications, is much stronger than had we written this on our own. Our thoughts about Buzzword, Etherpad, and Google Docs went through many iterations and revisions; hopefully, our entry reflects this work.

Buzzword

Buzzword is Adobe’s entry to the world of free word-processing applications. Unlike most of the Web-based applications, Buzzword is built on Adobe’s Flash platform. Though Buzzword’s feature set is scrawnier than Google Docs or Word, you can still accomplish most word-processing tasks: editing and formatting text, inserting lists, bullets, and tables, and sharing documents with others. However, you should know that completing any number of these tasks will take much longer in Buzzword than in Google Docs. Buzzword is pokey, which makes collaboration a frustrating experience. But Buzzword does its best to compensate for its speed and agility by seducing users with its looks. While Etherpad and Google Docs are cursed with plain and homely interfaces,

Buzzword boasts a sleek, black interface decorated with stylish icons and colorful symbols. The fact that the icons don’t necessarily make any sense is another issue. The emphasis on design even includes the fonts: Buzzword contains unique fonts not typically found in Web-based word processors. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many of them.Collaboration features are pretty strong in Buzzword. To share documents, you just click “share” and enter email addresses for other users. You can assign multiple user roles in the same window—this is a feature set we would love to see in every Web-based writing program.

The commenting features are very powerful in Buzzword. Unlike Google Docs, in which the comments are awkwardly integrated into the text, the comments in Buzzword are set off to the side like post-it notes on a bulletin board. The revision feature in Buzzword is solid enough, but it cannot compete with the revision capabilities of Google Docs. In Buzzword, a “history” timeline allows you to revert to earlier versions of a document. But this potentially useful tool is a nuisance in Buzzword: not only must you search for this inconspicuous icon of an old Greek statue* on the bottom toolbar, you cannot identify the specific changes made by the previous authors once you get there. This navigation/icon oddity exemplifies a basic problem we have about the overall usability of Buzzword: the toolbars are not standardized to common word processing applications. The icons and commands are designed for style, not for function. Navigating around Buzzword becomes a chore, and trying to decode the meanings of the icons and symbols takes time and energy, distracting from the task at hand.

Pros

  • Diverse export options
  • Revision history, once you find it, is powerful
  • Multiple user roles (editor, viewer)
  • Generous, easy sharing options: generates a custom URL to share with a wider audience
  • Visually pleasing interface
  • Comments are well designed and separated from the text; helpful for collaborative editing

Cons

  • Slow as molasses; working in Flash is not a pleasant experience
  • Revision history, unlike Google Docs, is not tracked by user
  • Toolbars are not standardized to other word processing applications
  • The functional interface is not intuitive; symbols and icons are not meaningful
  • Table function is confusing
  • Confusing filing system; lack of folder structure is annoying
  • Indent features are awkward
  • Distracting, massive pop-up window when other users are editing at the same time
  • Right-clicking gets you nothing but “Flash settings”

Overall

Buzzword has lots of beauty, but not a lot of brains to back it up. We won’t be using this for our collaborative writing projects anytime soon.

*Buzzword Notes

We learned that Adobe released a new version of Buzzword aboutu the same time we completed this blog entry. Adobe was wise enough to discard the statue icon in the "history" bar and rolled out a very appealing-sounding "document compare" feature. Unfortunately, Adobe has not made any progress on the speed of this application. The press release, published in Buzzword, took forever to load in Firefox. Until this issue is resolved, we regretfully decline our invitation to use this tool.

EtherPad

EtherPad is a bare-bones collaborative text editor created by the team at AppJet. Etherpad was originally created as an internal application that allowed team members to collaboratively work on projects. However, AppJet soon saw the wider applicability of the tool and released it for public use. It is difficult to compare EtherPad to other collaborative writing environments like Google Docs or Adobe’s Buzzword for many reasons. One reason for this difficulty is because EtherPad is a nearly real-time collaboration environment, meaning that as you and others enter text into a shared document (called pads), the text will appear nearly instantly, with only a half second delay. Google Docs and Adobe’s Buzzword, on the other hand, would be lucky to refresh every 15 seconds.

Compared to Google Docs and Buzzword, EtherPad is devoid of formatting features and its interface is bare bones. Users cannot bold, italicize, or underline text. Aligning text is also impossible. It would be best to compare EtherPad to Windows’ Notepad. Despite these limitations, we were instantly smitten by Etherpad. You can create and share documents in seconds without creating accounts or logging in, and the real-time text editing and color-coding edits by user is very helpful. Etherpad is still in its infancy, and at this time, we don’t think it is robust enough for large collaborative writing activities such as group-editing projects. But Etherpad would be tremendously useful for group note-taking at a live meeting and small-group planning activities, such as brainstorming and agenda-setting.

Pros

  • (Near) real-time editing
  • In-browser chat
  • Bare bones interface is easy to navigate
  • JavaScript syntax highlighting
  • No registration required (nor is a pre-existing account required to participate)
  • To share a pad with other users, simply send them the URL to your pad
  • Users’ text is color-coded, making it easy to see who is making which changes
  • Low machine requirements/fast interface

Cons

  • Cannot import or export documents
  • Revision history is very minimal; no way to compare changes between two saved versions
  • Formatting options nonexistent
  • Deletions are not tracked; no way to tell who deleted what text
  • No autosave feature
  • No keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+S to save like in Google Docs)
  • No hierarchy for user-access levels; can’t allow users read-only access—all users are given full access

Overall

Etherpad is totally crushworthy and an excellent tool for very specific tasks, like brainstorming sessions, agenda planning, etc. But this tool is still a work in progress. It needs some basic features before it can be really utilized in a mainstream academic setting. It is worthy to note that Aaron Iba, the AppJet CEO, is quite responsive and accessible. He seems very open-minded about the development of this tool.

Google Docs

Google Docs (strangely still in beta) is a fully functional Web-based word processor. Easy collaboration is just one of its perks. Google Docs is part of Google’s ever-expanding application suite and part of their plot to take over the world. And who can really stop them? Google Docs has a ton of features and functionality that the other tools simply can’t offer. Google Docs has the look and feel of any mainstream word processor and has rich formatting options and intuitive hotkeys. The strongest collaborative feature is the revision history, which allows you to compare any two previous drafts’ changes via a color-coded system, showing who made specific insertions and deletions. We recommend Google Docs for developing large documents with multiple users, but it is less than ideal for quick collaboration. There is no chat feature, and while you can see who else has the document open, it is difficult to see exactly what changes other users are making. The real-time update is less than real time, with a ten to fifteen second lag between when someone else makes an edit and when you see it.

Pros

  • Familiar, easy-to-navigate menu bar
  • Intuitive keyboard shortcuts
  • Documents are exportable as .html, .doc, .rtf, .odt, or .pdf or publish it to the Web
  • Rich document formatting options including support for images, footnotes, and tables
  • Tracking of all changes by all users
  • Autosave
  • Footnotes feature that appear on the side margin

Cons

  • Collaborators need a Google Account to access Google Docs
  • Difficult to see what changes others are making
  • Takes ten to fifteen seconds to update when others make edits
  • In long documents, the revision history can be overwhelming
  • The design is functional and not very attractive
  • Comments are only highlighted and not very distinct from the text itself

Overall

Google Docs is our first choice for a collaborative writing project. Though it doesn’t have everything we want, we used it to collaboratively write this blog entry. Though we supplemented this with instant messaging (why isn’t GTalk integrated into Google Docs?) and an occasional face-to-face discussion around the Google Doc, we found this to be the strongest application for this type of work. We like that the Google team is dedicated to improving this product on a regular basis.

Conclusion

In evaluating these tools, we’ve highlighted some of the aspects we liked and others we weren’t so pleased with. But ultimately, we found that there was no perfect tool. Though Google Docs was the strongest of the bunch, we still think it has a way to go before really facilitating the types of interactions that are required for collaborative-writing projects. The key to collaborative writing is the ability to converse about what you are writing about; we would love more integration of communication in these tools. We would like to suggest the feature set we’d hope to see in the best, hypothetical collaborative-writing application.

  • An interface like that of Google Docs, mimicking word-processing software, with all the amenities: hot keys, spell check, and rich formatting options
  • Autosave
  • Full revision history with comparison between drafts; we need to know exactly who has changed what
  • Import/export options for Word documents and pdf files
  • An in-document chat room as in Etherpad (with options for audio)
  • A fast refresh rate during simultaneous edits as in Etherpad
  • An easy sharing option, where you only need to share the link with collaborators instead of making them set up accounts
  • Varying user-access levels (contributor, viewer, editor, etc.) such as in Buzzword
  • A clean, visually appealing comment system, like that of Buzzword
  • An ability to work off-line (Google Gears)

Sunday Comics, Digital Values

I’m all about asking the big questions. And the one on my mind recently has been: how do we model conscientious use of digital tools for our students?

Last week I was reintroduced to a YouTube video, “A Vision of Students Today,” which focuses on the tensions between current education and the current global, digital world. Well, that piece, by a Kansas State University class in digital ethnography, continues to blow my colloquial, late-twentieth-century American mind. And then… there’s the Sunday comics.

Zits, a strip about a teenage boy and his family, is one of my favorites. In last Sunday’s strip (3/8/09), Jeremy’s friend comes by to pick up a book, use the bathroom, and eat a snack. Through the entire visit, they communicate only through texting. The mother is, of course, appalled at the missed chance for real communication.

No, I’m not going to answer my own question. Big questions are more important to ask than to answer. The two images provided here, however, provide some grist for lively discussions on what is of value and how to line up the “things” around us to reflect those values.

In terms of modeling conscientious use to our students: What are our values as educators? And, how do we employ or line up the digital “things” in our digital tool box to reflect those values? That would be a place to start.

I Retired My USB Drive

I have three office locations, four if you include my home office, and it’s quite common for me to find myself working on the same files in multiple locations on any given day. I’m not a fan of lugging around my laptop everywhere, so until recently, I would carry around a two-gigabyte USB drive and keep my current files on it. It worked great except for the times I would forget to bring it with me, misplace the drive, or accidentally drop it down a sewer. Hey, it happens.

However, the days of losing files to the Chicago Streets and Sanitation crews are over, thanks to Dropbox. Dropbox offers two gigabytes of free cloud storage. Once you install Dropbox, any file that you add to your Dropbox folder will automatically be synced and available on any other computer you have installed Dropbox on. There’s no need to e-mail yourself a file again. Just have Dropbox sitting on your desktop like any other folder and drag and drop the file you’ll need at another workstation. That’s it. You’ll have it when you need it.

Now what happens if you are on a computer without Dropbox installed? No worries, since its cloud storage, everything is available on the Web. Just log on to the Dropbox site to have access to all of your files.

Dropbox also includes a public folder that opens up some of your cloud storage for easy sharing. Put a file that you want to share in your Dropbox public folder, right click, select Dropbox, and then click “Copy public Link.”

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Now you have a URL link in your clipboard that you can paste into an e-mail or IM conversation in order to share the file with others.

That’s just a bit of the functionality of Dropbox. I can’t recommend it enough. So retire your USB drive and come play in the clouds with me.

Keeping It Visible: The Joys of Offline Organization

Keeping on top of the daily multitude of tasks we all have in our work is like having another full-time job. There are a number of tools available to the most casual computer users, from the tasks and to-do lists in Microsoft Outlook, to Apple’s Project X, to a variety of Web programs like blist.com and Zoho. In IDD, keeping up with the dynamic nature of the academic environment is especially challenging. Anyone stepping into my shared workspace in the IDD offices at the DePaul Center will quickly notice my own low-tech yet cutting-edge (I think) solution to task management: sticky notes and a wall.

It looks something like this: there are three columns of stickies, each headed by a large note which categorizes that column. “Upcoming Tasks” in the left-most column, followed by “Current Tasks” in the middle, and “Items for Inspection” on the right. Projects or tasks that I need to complete, but which are not a priority today go in the “Upcoming” column. Those things I am working on today belong in the middle. If a project is large, I break it up in to smaller pieces that can be completed more quickly. Those finished projects, or tasks that require the review or “inspection” of others to be considered complete, go under that last large sticky.

Though I’d like to, I can’t take credit for this system. I first learned of the sticky-note revolution from my husband, an agile process-management consultant who teaches the sticky-note idea to teams in a variety of fields, from software to education. What the sticky notes do for me is help keep my workload visible to me and to anyone who needs to know what I’m working on and the status of those projects. At a glance, my colleagues can see where my efforts will be focused on a given day, and this knowledge facilitates ready discussion. The portable nature of the stickies also allows me to reprioritize my work each day. I can reach up and peel off a project under the “Current” heading—perhaps a course that has been shifted to future quarter—and replace it with a new, more immediate task. Should I run into a problem with a task, or need more information in order to complete it, I add a “flag” sticky to that task. Flags are a bright color and list the issue to be resolved. They are removed when the impediment is. Of course, the act of moving a completed task to that finished column gives me a boost in a very real, tactile sense which helps keep my motivation to continue on to the next task.

Adapting the sticky note system to my work in IDD keeps me organized, but also flexible, adaptive and motivated to move that next sticky into the “done” column. I love a good Web app as much as the next person, but I also appreciate simplicity and ease with which I can keep myself organized with just a few adhesive note and a good black pen.

Student Toolkit

Here at DePaul, we have the DePaul Online Teaching Series program (DOTS), where we work with faculty to help prepare them for the unique challenges of teaching online. It’s an intensive program that begins with a crash course in designing an online or hybrid course and goes all the way through working with a design consultant to get the course completed and evaluated.

In order to help the faculty effectively accomplish this, we give them the tools they will need to create their course, including a laptop computer, a webcam, a headset microphone, software, and a portable voice recorder. Doing this ensures that they have all the technology they will need to produce a robust, dynamic, and interesting course.

I received a phone call today from an instructor who went through the DOTS program asking about what resources were available to a student who wanted to produce videos to submit to the class. This got me thinking about the aforementioned technology toolkit we give to faculty. At what point will the students need a similar toolkit?

A great deal of focus in course design is often placed on creating instructional materials for the students to consume. For example, they watch a video, read an article, or view a Web site. There is not much focus on student-created content—regardless of whether it is eventually offered up for assessment. The majority of the time, students interact with the material through writing a paper, posting to a discussion board, or taking a quiz.

However, what happens when an instructor would like to send off her students to create materials for assessment similar to what the instructor can produce for the students to consume? Where does a student, especially an online student, obtain the required video camera, microphone, or editing software?

This thought process, combined with a conversation I had the other day about technical requirements for online students, made me wonder if we will see not only tech specs for computers for students in the future, but also what they will need as peripheral devices in order to succeed as a student in an increasingly visual and technical world.

I can’t wait to see where this may lead.

Wikis, We’ve Got Wikis Part II

In my last post, I gave quick overviews of PBwiki, Zoho Wiki and Google Sites. This time we’ll look at three others: Wikispaces, Wikidot, and Wetpaint.

 

Wikispaces

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Things I like about Wikispaces:

  • WYSIWYG editor is a breeze; love the preview function.
  • Easy to add widgets.
  • Extensive default widget list with video, audio, calendar, spreadsheet, polls, RSS, chat and IM, slideshows, map, bookmark, and custom html plugins.
  • Easy to add a logo.
  • Easy to invite users with a personalized greeting.
  • Built-in user statistics, with an overview and breakouts by members and pages.               
  • Wikispaces badges, which let you easily place a graphic link to your wiki on any Web site. There’s a live-changes badge too.
  • Fairly logical information architecture; easy to find the settings you’re looking for.

What I don’t like:

  • Advertisements on right pane of page. You have to pay to get an ad-free version.
  • Free versions can’t be private; public wiki can be viewed and edited by anyone, protected can be viewed by anyone but edited only by invited users.
  • Private wikis start at $5 per month; custom-permissions functionality starts at $20 per month.
  • Limited, cheesy selection of free skins.
  • Logo size limited to 150 x 150 pixels.

I really want to like Wikispaces. I think the WYSIWYG editor, selection of widgets, and built-in analytics are great features. I don’t like the limits of the free versions; the permissions settings don’t give you enough control over users and access. Aesthetically, the free Wikispaces are a disappointment; if you prefer to have a customized, professional appearance you’ll probably want to go with a paid version to get more functionality. This isn’t a bad free wiki; but it’s not at the top of my list.

 

Wikidot

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Things I like about Wikidot:

  • Mathematic equations on the page—a great feature for educators.
  • Bibliography block and citations feature.
  • Custom code can be easily displayed on the page.
  • Free version has customizable permissions settings.
  • Forum and per-page discussion features.
  • WYSIWYG editor has a preview function.
  • Decent selection of free skins, fairly wide variety.
  • Customizable CSS.
  • Active support community, extensive catalog of wiki code snippets for page customization.
  • Google Analytics.

What I don’t like:

  • WYSIWYG editor is kind of kludgy, more an html editor than a Word-type WYSIWYG.
  • Not as intuitive as other wikis.
  • Plugins hard to find or nonexistent.
  • Have to customize CSS to include a logo.

Wikidot is not the most intuitive wiki to use, but its ability to display mathematic equations, programming code (javascript, html, etc) and academic-text formatting like bibliographic information and footnotes makes it a smart choice for educators. It’s a bit short on easy multimedia features (you won’t find a drop-down of easy-peasy plugins, for example), but with its ability to customize look, feel, and access it’s worth a look for tech-savvy users who aren’t easily discouraged or intimidated.

 

Wetpaint

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What I like about Wetpaint:

  • Easy, intuitive WYSIWYG editor.
  • Nice selection of multimedia widgets: video, messaging, maps, slideshows, video mail, etc.
  • Multimedia search and embedding is a breeze.
  • Add photo feature makes uploading images, searching Yahoo images, or adding a slideshow easy.
  • Customizable permissions setting.
  • Spellcheck!
  • Add An Edit note feature: leave a description of your edits and/or contribution. 
  • Discussion forum.
  • To-do feature.
  • Google Analytics or SiteMeter for site statistics.
  • Wetpaint Central, a resource-rich online help and support community.

What I don’t like about Wetpaint

  • Limited range of free skins.
  • Can’t customize page layout.
  • $10 – $15 monthly to get an ad-free wiki.
  • Feels a little impersonal.

It’s hard not to like Wetpaint. It’s intuitive, with lots of thoughtful features like spellcheck, discussions, and Google Analytics. And it can’t be beat for multimedia ease of use. For example, you can search for and embed a YouTube video directly from the Add YouTube Video dialog box. No need to leave the wiki, go to YouTube, find the video, copy the code, and then return to and embed the code in your wiki. My complaints are few: I’m not crazy about the aesthetics, and I think the ad-free price is a little steep. However, Wetpaint is extremely easy to use, it offers customizable permissions, and its rich multimedia feature set makes it a good bet if you plan to use lots of video or Web 2.0 apps.

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Just Because They’re Young Doesn’t Mean They’re Tech Savvy

A professor I work with recently decided to use Ning to create an online social network for a course. Like Facebook, Ning provides a space where users can communicate and share links, images, and videos. However, Ning allows instructors to create a space that is used exclusively for course-related collaboration and is only accessible by their students. This increased level of privacy and focused purpose helps everyone involved maintain boundaries between their academic and personal lives.

Shortly after the course began, the professor noticed many of her students were having trouble with basic tasks such as uploading images, embedding YouTube video clips, and writing blog posts. The professor told me, “I have a blog and I’m almost fifty. I was shocked that my students have no experience with blogging.” I wish I could say I was as shocked as she was. Unfortunately, I know this problem all too well and I’ve been writing about it periodically for the past year. Back in February of 2008, I wrote a post about the importance of defining computer literacy. My major complaint at that time was the lack of agreement on a minimum technology literacy level for college students. The lack of computer-literacy requirements and classes to support students who don’t meet such requirements places an unfair burden on faculty. Professors who wish to use new technology in their courses wind up serving as tech support for students who lack a fundamental understanding of interactive media.

Back in November, I also wrote about the misleading stereotype of the tech-savvy millennial learner that I hear about so often at conferences. As much as people love to refer to today’s twenty-something college students as “digital natives,” many of these students are more like “digital resident aliens.” They’ve learned just enough to get by, but ask them something that’s not in their phrasebook and you’ll quickly see how superficial their knowledge really is.

Sadly, the lack of a well-rounded technology education isn’t just failing students in the arts and humanities. Students pursuing technology-focused degrees are also suffering. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education recently noted that many Web-design instructors are not preparing students for the demands of employers in the field. In “Colleges Get Poor Grades on Teaching Web Fundamentals,” the author cites a survey developed by Leslie Jensen-Inman, an assistant professor of art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Jensen-Inman interviewed thirty-two professional Web designers and discovered that universities are either encouraging students to overspecialize in a particular piece of software or programming language or teaching outdated tools and techniques that are no longer relevant in the working world.

As a part-time Web-design professor, I found this article vindicating, because it supports my belief that students need a broad range of up-to-date knowledge to become successful designers themselves. In addition, I think the basic skills and knowledge that aspiring Web designers need are becoming increasingly essential for all college students. Knowing how to manage digital files, maintain a blog, participate in an online discussion, embed media in a Web page—these are all skills that will prove valuable no matter what a student’s career aspirations might be. Now we simply need to recognize that this knowledge won’t reach critical mass by osmosis. Hundreds of hours of Wii Tennis or text messaging or Twittering might do a lot to reduce technophobia in a new generation of students, but it doesn’t necessarily increase their understanding of how interactive media works and enable them to transfer knowledge from one tool to another.

Many instructional designers might disapprove of the idea that we should relegate new-media education to a single “Technology 101” course. Instead, they often support an integrative approach in which technology is used across the curriculum as a means to an end for a variety of disciplines. I agree that it’s wonderful to see faculty using technology to improve learning in a variety of subject areas, from philosophy to chemistry to mathematics to the fine arts. However, I think attacking the problem from both sides could help ensure the push for technology integration doesn’t always come from the top down.

A Technology 101 course could help ensure today’s students can live up to the tech-savvy stereotype we’ve already forced upon them. With a little support from the bottom, we might finally see more students pushing faculty to use new tools and helping instructors improve their technology literacy. Until then, I’m afraid we might be stuck in an inefficient, reactive model that attempts to support students once assignment deadlines are looming and panic has set in. This approach is a bit like asking students to drive cross-country after giving them the keys to an eighteen wheeler and an 800 number to call if they have questions as they’re barreling down the highway. Will some of them make it? Sure. But a little driver’s ed up front could prevent a lot of disasters down the road.

Language and Thought: Explanation and Understanding

Conventional wisdom views language as a device through which thought is actualized into spoken or written word, as a tool that simply assists in the representation of something that precedes it. To paraphrase a science mentor and dear friend of mine, “We do not create the world through language. Language and explicit knowledge are the poor symbolic systems we use to try and communicate about the real creator of the world: implicit rules and knowledge that are metasymbolic.”

I disagree with this assessment and see an important, fundamental feedback between metasymbolic, implicit rules and knowledge on one hand and language on the other. Understanding language formally as a symbolic, self-contained system that is governed simply by syntactical and grammatical rules is narrow and fails to recognize that language does not only express thought but also guides it. Such a failure underestimates language’s potential to both enrich and stifle thought. With this in mind, the belabored arguments below are meant to support a single simple statement:
The task of developing rich (and ideally multi-) language skills should be undertaken not only by language or creative writing majors but by all, since one’s level of linguistic skill provides the basis for critical and creative-thinking development, which is fundamental to all human endeavors.

By the time in our lives that critical thinking and reflection have become prominent aspects of our being, both the use and understanding of language have themselves become implicit, creating the illusion of a given language’s “naturalness.” Those who speak and write fluently in more than one language often discover aspects of thought and feeling that are much more accessible in one linguistic scheme or another, destroying this illusion. I, for one, think and feel differently, express myself differently, and focus on different aspects of my experiences depending on whether I "function" in Greek, English, or German. I can think of several words that exist in one language and not in another (especially words with subtle shades of meaning) that not only suggest differences in how thoughts are expressed but also support the formation of different future thoughts. For example, there is no Greek noun that can capture the meaning of the English "privacy," while the English "hospitality" and the equivalent Greek "filoxenia" (literally and clumsily translated as “friendship towards strangers”) clearly put emphasis on different aspects of the concept they describe. In both cases, the linguistic differences reflect and support attitudes towards privacy and guests that are fundamentally different between the two traditions.

The drawbacks of formal approaches to language come to the forefront especially when trying to address prosody and metaphor, linguistic devises that account for a large portion of communicated meaning and of language use and creation in general. All the  formal “substitution” theories of metaphor accomplish is to create a model that is “Ptolemaic” in its complexity and uselessness, trying too hard to stick to existing ideas, simply because embracing different ones would require thinkers to enlist the help of unfamiliar intellectual traditions. But I will reserve this topic for a future post.

Winograd and Flores (1986) observe that even sophisticated linguists are puzzled by the suggestion that the basis for the meaning of words and sentences cannot ultimately be defined in terms of an objective external world. Words correspond to our intuition about “reality” simply because our purposes in using them are closely aligned with our physical existence in a world and with our actions within it. But this coincidence is the result of our use of language within a tradition (or as some biologists may say, of our “structural coupling” within a “consensual domain”).  As such, this reality is based on language as much as it reflects it.

Ultimately, language, like cognition, is fundamentally social and may be better understood if approached as a “speech act” rather than a formal symbolic system, a move that introduces the importance of “commitment,” as described in speech-act theories of Austin and others. Both language and cognition are relational and historical, in the larger sense of the word. As Winograd and Flores note, the apparent simplicity of physically interpreted terms such as "chair" is misleading and obscures the fact that communication through words such as "crisis" or "friendship" cannot exist outside the domain of human interaction and commitment, both of which are intricately linked to language (as speech act) itself. This apparently paradoxical view that nothing (beyond simple descriptions of physical activity and some sensory experience) exists except through language describes the fundamentally linguistic nature of all experience and motivates me to approach moments of understanding (i.e. “understanding” experiences) as the achievements of explanatory (i.e. linguistic) acts.

The power of language to create, rather than simply express, thought and meaning may actually be more easily recognized through an examination of the relationship between explanation and understanding. The writings of Gadamer (1960), Ricoeur (1991), and others, have expanded our conception of explanation, illustrating that it cannot be approached as simply the result of and subsequent to understanding. 

Explanation and understanding are both products of thought, “moments” of knowing that constantly interact in a productive feedback. This feedback is manifested as communication, reflection, etc. and has explanation, rather than understanding, at its center. In this scheme, explanation is linguistic in nature (whether as discourse—with someone or within—or text) and understanding is cognitive/phenomenological (whether as thinking or thought). Explanation (interpretation) is not seen as a post-facto supplement to understanding but as belonging to understanding’s inner structure, an integral part of the content of what is understood. I see Gadamer’s efforts to recover the importance of application (“understanding always involves something like applying the text to be understood to the interpreter’s present situation’”) as evidence that application is the ultimate explanatory act. As an "explanatory achievement," understanding is the fruit of explanation, "being realized not just for the one for whom one is interpreting but for the interpreter himself." This essentially argues that understanding is “explaining to self.”

If, along with Gadamer, we conceive every statement as an answer to a question, what we understand as a statement’s meaning is an answer, an explanation. And even though the moment of understanding often seems to occur without explicit interpretation/explanation, it is always preceded by an explanation to self, motivated by the hermeneutic question that has to be asked and be answered in any event of understanding.

The understanding/explanation dialectic parallels the one between thought (understanding) and language (explanation). A thought that cannot be “explained” linguistically (to self or others) is better approached as intuition, not as understanding. The revelatory moment of experiencing a work (linguistic or otherwise) that manages to say to us what we could only intuit is what transforms our intuition into thought, helping us escape the prison of our previous language (and thoughts), and being verbally reconstituted through our new language, enriched through our encounter with the work. Our interaction with the work gives us the tools to explain our intuition to ourselves and turn it into a thought, with our newly found understanding being the culmination of an explanatory moment, however “implicit” or “concealed” this moment may seem.

This is just a blog post rather than a piece of academic writing, so I will allow myself the luxury of closing with strong words: Language must be recognized as our means of formulating thought, with all understanding viewed as the result of explanatory moments whose ontology is linguistic. Explanation and understanding, in turn, must be recognized as being tied into a continuous and dynamic feedback loop that develops through the initiation of acts of explanation. With Winograd and Flores, I reject cognition as the manipulation of knowledge of an “objective world,” recognize the primacy of action and its central role in language, and conclude that it is through language that we create our world.

 

References

Gadamer, H. G. (1960). Truth and Method. 2nd edition (1989). New York: Continuum.

Ricoeur, P. (1991). A Ricoeur Reader. M. J. Valdes (ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Indianapolis, IN: Addison-Wesley, Pearson Foundation.

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From Google to Doodle

For those of us who rely on Outlook to manage our activities, trying to schedule a meeting with those who do not use the Outlook Calendar can be a pain. For me, that pain usually comes when I work with a faculty group, because many of our faculty do not have their schedules on Outlook.

That is why finding a tool called “Doodle” was like finding a painkiller for meeting schedulers like me.

Doodle is an online meeting-scheduling and polling tool. Not only does its name rhyme with “Google,” the simple and clear interface of its site design also resembles that of Google. Once you are on the site, you have two simple choices: to schedule an event or to make a choice. To schedule a meeting is as simple as entering the meeting name, selecting the dates, and adding the time slots, and to make a choice is to generate a simple poll for participants.

Doodle

One possible drawback is that the system doesn’t authenticate the user. This means you may not want to use it for any formal class survey, where there might be some naughty ones trying to trick the system. But as long as you’re dealing with a collaborative group, Doodle can certainly offer you the quickest and easiest result.

I learned about Doodle from a friend of mine who is a university administrator a few months after the company was founded, in March 2008. Over the past few months, I noticed it becoming popular among DePaul faculty for committee-meeting scheduling. Doodle’s growth rate of more than two million users per month makes me hesitant to blog about it, because everyone may have known about it already! If so, take this as my example of a short and simple blog entry.