It’s important to know what sites are being blocked in which schools. I’d be very curious to see what patterns might emerge from this and whether they follow types of schools, socio-economic status, etc.

I also think schools should have to provide a public list of the sites and/or types of sites they block along with their reasoning, and that these decisions should be open for public debate. When I was in the classroom, it would drive me crazy that I couldn’t pull up YouTube or Blogger blogs to share and discuss with students. And two years out, I don’t think those blocks have changed.

Primary Point: Reducing Cognitive Load

The main thesis he presents in this speech is that interface design, and the technology that backs it, will move toward reducing cognitive load and expanding the user’s opportunities at less cost per opportunity. This makes sense: more useful and easier to use.

On the one hand, Sterling is talking about the cognitive load required by the interface objects themselves. In his words:

Never thinking about [the object] again: that is the ideal relationship between a human being and an object. It’s the opposite of how designers think and feel.

Half Empty or Half Full?

On the other hand, Sterling’s frequent repetition of the phrase “reducing cognitive load” could be a troubling prediction, depending on whether the glass is half full or half empty. The half-empty perspective can envision a world driven entirely by desires, with the “spimes” acting as wish-fulfillment agents, leading the user mindlessly to his/her desired end. This could almost turn on its head the hope many educators currently place in technology; rather than becoming a means for more awareness, connectivity, and thought, it becomes merely a means for more and easier gratification.

However, the half-full perspective, taking a page from the social evolution of Jared Diamond, might imagine a user freed of having to devote “cognitive space” to the means and methods of acquiring, thereby gaining the ability to devote more “cognitive space” to the things that really deserve and require it.

Education and the Ubiquitous Tech

Either way, the “what and how” of technology will, in Sterling’s view, increasingly become “not the point.” We will marvel less and less over the tools themselves and merely use them to get things done. I think this is evident from our past (who still marvels over the desktop computer?), and our present. For instance, the average user of Internet technologies wants to order movie tickets, research the most fuel-efficient car, be entertained by videos, or stay in touch with “friends.” Only the bloggers and technophiles spend a lot of time discussing the “what and how” of the tools that make this possible.

If we accept Sterling’s claims and predictions, I wonder how this impacts what and how educators teach in relation to technology.¹ A large part of the technology/education discussion seems to center on the what of the interface: how to make it do what you want it to do. I’ve heard claims from some educators that everyone should learn the basics of computer hardware and a few languages of code. Sterling’s view would seem to undermine that approach and even to undermine the concept of “technology literacy” itself: ideally, the technology is merely there and merely useful, not the subject of our attention and learning, but the transparent means.

Secondary Point: Media Convergence

Another point that Sterling raises in this speech, but doesn’t spend much time addressing, is the convergence of media. Again, in his words:

As a creative, one’s choice of a medium used to be absolutely critical [but] that’s just not there anymore … We people who work in media, creatives, we lack a good perspective on this reality … These former hierarchies of the creative disciplines are coming violently apart. [At the same time,] profoundly powerful networks are assembling.

The possibilities this opens are exciting and daunting. I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time trying to think through the implications here, and trying to find anything else Sterling has said on the conflation of media.

1. I’ve seen Sterling pop up on the blogs of some of the educators I follow, including Doug Noon and Tim Stahmer, who wrote an interesting short piece based on a Sterling quote, where he contrasts viewing computers as creative devices instead of appliances.

One of the requirements for my Masters in English¹ was the standard scholarly research course. The major assignment of the course was to create a bibliography on a subject or author and then compose a bibliographic essay from the findings. I chose to research H. P. Lovecraft because I’d been interested in his fiction and his influence since my undergrad years.² The result of that project was a pretty extensive EndNote bibliography of Lovecraft criticism from 1990 to 2004.

Setup: Part Two

I’ve been playing with Zotero for over a year, and enjoying the improvements the Center for History and New Media folks keep cranking out for it. ³ I’ve also kept in the back of my mind the idea that I should get that Lovecraft EndNote library into Zotero, and then I should probably poke around and see if I can revise or expand it.

Converting Bibliographies

I’d had trouble with this, though, because it was a pretty large collection. My browser would freeze when attempting to import an EndNote XML file. This morning, I found bibconvert, a really handy online tool that will convert a number of bibliographic formats. I uploaded my EndNote XML and converted it to BibTex format (apparently, the preferred Zotero import format) in less than a minute. I imported the result into Zotero, also in less than a minute, and now have my entire Lovecraft bibliography in Zotero ready for tweaking, expanding, etc. Happy!

Side Note: Diigo vs. Zotero

I’ve observed the recent flood of educators switching to Diigo, and I think that’s great. It’s a really good tool with a lot of excellent features. I still use both del.icio.us and Diigo: del.icio.us for saving everything (personal, academic, professional, etc.) and Diigo for saving and annotating educational/academic pages (which are also sent to del.icio.us).

But I also use Zotero for any serious research project, and here’s why: Diigo and Zotero are not designed to do the same things. Diigo is primarily a bookmarking service, allowing users to save, annotate, tag, and organize web pages. Zotero is primarily a bibliography service, allowing users to save, annotate, tag, and organize sources, whether they are online or not. Certainly, Zotero is full of tools to make that process easier if you’re working with an online source, but you’re not limited to online sources. Also, Zotero and Diigo export their data in significantly different formats, gearing Diigo exports more for transfer between bookmarking services and Zotero exports more for transfer between bibliographic services.

Next Steps and Hopes

I still feel a bit limited with Zotero because the sources sit on my computer and can’t be easily shared with others. I certainly can’t build a collection collaboratively with others. But, as CHNM has promised, both of these limitations should be removed in the near future. Hope, hope.

These limitations aren’t solved by Diigo, either, because I can’t collaboratively build a bibliography of sources on Diigo, nor could that bibliography later be exported into a format easily adopted by scholars. I would love to see a Diigo-like ease of use and collaboration for a Zotero-like focus on bibliographies. Maybe CHNM’s plans for Zotero will deliver that or something close. Hope, hope.

Finally, I’ll be looking for some online research groups devoted to Lovecraft in the next week or so. If I don’t find any, maybe I’ll start some myself.

Resources

For anyone interested:

• My Lovecraft bibliography (currently unedited): RTF, EndNote, BibTex, Zotero
• My bibliographic essay (currently unedited): Scribd document
• An admittedly bad PowerPoint that summarizes the bibliographic essay (currently unedited)

Responses

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience with any of these tools, or some answers/guesses to these questions:

• Anyone know about any Lovecraft-centric online research groups?
• Is my analysis of the differences between and limitations of Zotero and Diigo correct? I think it is, but maybe I’m missing something …?

Any other comments are also welcome.

1. Teaching of Writing & Literature at George Mason University
2. In fact, my roommate and I used to get groups together pretty regularly to play the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. An ideal game for casual play, actually, because everyone ends up dead or insane by the end of the night. More recently, I’ve introduced my girlfriend to the Call of Cthulhu CCG, an interesting but complicated game.
3. I’m excited about their plans to add server-based syncing and group-managed collections, at which point I think Zotero will be THE go-to tool for creating, storing, and sharing annotated bibliographies.

The most disturbing aspect for me is the lack of guidance, and this is an old problem. How else do we expect adolescents to act, particularly when given free reign in the technological playground of social networks, when they have no clear or firm guidance from school administrators or parents? This is by no means a pardon for the students, but the strongest rebuke should fall on the shoulders of the parents for trying to shelter their children from the thing most likely to help them succeed in the world: the trimming down of the ego (a societal problem, really). Second in line should be the administration for failing to issue that rebuke.

The new problems are the more difficult ones, and require more time, thought, and research than I can put in right now. Questions about privacy, online identity, safety, censorship, and the like all bear heavily on these events … events that are, to different degrees, happening in every school.

For a while now, it has seemed to me that the two “sides” of the IP/copyright debate have made little progress with the other side mainly because of fear. Each side is unwilling to admit compromise out of the fear that the other side will be unwilling to admit compromise, resulting, stupidly and predictably, in a stalemate.

If IP supporters could admit that the law unfairly benefits the corporations and that those laws need to change, and if the IP opponents could admit that a change in the law does not mean an overthrow of all laws, then both sides might be able to actually have a conversation about the best ways to bring fair and balanced change, rather than just screaming at each other across an imaginary line.

The founders were concerned with having a system in place that would encourage the sharing of ideas and thus established a “limited monopoly” on those ideas to provide the creators of those ideas the chance to profit from them. The system in which ideas are shared is certainly more complex now, but the basic principle is unchanged: a society that wants to encourage the sharing of ideas must provide those who are creating those ideas the chance (not guarantee, and only for a limited time) to profit from their work. Why is this position so hard to agree upon as a starting point for moving forward with the details?

The most reasoned discussion I’ve found on this topic so far is still Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture, in which he argues that the laws must change, but never argues for lawlessness or the denial of creators to profit from their creations.

If we continue to argue about this issue, can we at least let go of our fear of “the other” and argue about the specifics of proposed solutions that might bring us closer to a fair and balanced compromise?

I haven’t worked much with FinalDraft, but MMS does have more automated features, including note/scene cards that can be rearranged and dumped into the script. Still, I’m finding RoughDraft very helpful right now with the story I’m writing, and I’ll probably have the same to say about it when I start my next script.

Some of the features I really like:

• First of all, it’s quick. The two “big boys” in scriptwriting software may have lots of fancy features, but there’s a lot to be said for a fast, light program that handles the basics well and gets the job done. When I’m ready to write, I just want to open to the text and start typing.
• The “Pad” lets me keep notes running along the side of the document. This is where I put reminders about research needs, plot outlines, random ideas, or chunks of writing that don’t seem to work but that I’m not yet ready to delete.
• The auto-format features are particularly helpful for scripts (and easily cycled: just keep hitting tab).
• The instant backup feature lets me dump backups onto my USB thumb drive with a single mouse click.
• The Find in Files feature lets me search for items across files in a folder, so if I save each chapter of a novel in the same folder, I can quickly search all the chapters without having to open them all (or worse, keep the novel in one huge file).
• AutoWords is great for dropping in character and place names that are tricky for the fingers, and I’m sure very helpful for scripts.
• I can keep the text single-spaced in the editor and just set the print function to print it as 1.5 or double-spaced without having to change the text. (I hate writing in double-space mode.)

1. Yes, I know I’m late to the party. As far as I can tell, the last release of RoughDraft was in 2005. Still, it’s a good program!
2. Each is over $200 to purchase, and near $100 to upgrade.

I discussed forums, blogs, and wikis–first in general, then in Blackboard specifically.  My main point was that the two most powerful elements "Web 2.0" technologies bring to the classroom are audience and ownership.  It’s these elements, and not the tools themselves, that are significant and that can result in genuine learning if teachers know how to respect and protect these elements, take advantage of them, and guide students to opportunities for discovery.

The notes are available on my wiki: "Working with Blackboard."  Feel free to edit the pages or to argue/expand in the comments here or the discussion tab there.

1. Not to mention it’s questionable legal tactics.

1. maintaining a blog (or a few blogs) as a “notebook“:¹ a place to record notes and think through their implications, with little concern for whether or not there is an “audience” and without an emphasis on timeliness or polemics
2. maintaining a wiki as a “textbook“: a place to attempt some synthesis of thoughts and ideas over time, with the added benefit of minimizing redundancy and forgetfulness that can happen on a blog

Where the blog tracks fragmented thoughts and hypotheses over time, the wiki attempts to build some cohesive, connected (and still tentative) conclusions.

Certainly, there are more ways to use blogs and wikis, but this personal approach appeals to me right now as I seek to dig deeper into a few topics. I’ll probably be keeping some notes here about how this experiment is going.

1. a thought inspired by Christopher Sessums’ post

I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.

The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.

Cohen’s blog is also where I first heard about ScholarPress, which provides two (so far) cool educational plugins for Wordpress.

I’ve been really interested in what the Digital Ethnography Working Group is doing and think there’s some good, helpful thinking going on there. I’m not saying any one video is completely “right” or revolutionary, but the project as a whole is important.

What I’m interested in for this post is a point that came up repeatedly in the exchanges around Stager’s post: that students aren’t as “native” or as skilled as we often assume they are.

On Stager’s post addressing the immigrant/native idea, “James and Tom” comment:

If you want to quickly disprove the idea of “digital natives” visit a school with a 1:1 laptop program and test the basic skills of 100 students. You’ll find about 20 who can barely enter text, let alone create folders or know where their saved documents will end up. On the other hand you might have one or two who are at the upper end in terms of skills. Most sit in the middle with basic knowledge. [emphasis added]

And in a response to what he calls “misreadings” of the video, Michael Wesch raises the same point:

The great myth is that these “digital natives” know more about this new information environment than we do. But here’s the reality: they may be experts in entertaining themselves online, but they know almost nothing about educating themselves online. They may be learning about this digital information environment despite us, but they are not reaching the levels of understanding that are necessary as this digital information environment becomes increasingly pervasive in all of our lives. [emphasis added]

My own experience supports both of these assertions, and I think they’re important points to remember, particularly for teachers who plan to start “working with” technology in their classrooms. Many students are quite capable when manipulating aspects of technology they find entertaining, but if pushed outside that realm, they often lack even basic skills and usually lack the ability to think critically about the technology or the content it delivers. This means that it’s our job, as educators, to push them outside of that realm and help them find success working there … which implies we first need to be there ourselves.

Yesterday, during my freshman comp course, my students provided two examples.

Before class started, one student gave an exasperated sigh from where she sat in front of her computer, did some quick typing and clicking, and then settled back into her chair.

Her friend asked, “They block it again?”

She responded, “When are they gonna learn we get around it as soon as they change it?”

They were talking about internet filters for Facebook.

However, during the lesson, I was showing them how to format their papers according to MLA style using Word. The sounds of shock and amazement at simple actions, like increasing the indent or inserting a header, were clear indications that they hadn’t been asked to work with a word processor for academic purposes and certainly weren’t doing so on their own.

If that’s the case for an “ancient” tool like the word processor, imagine the implications for wikis, blogs, and social networks. And that’s just the basic skills. Wanna lay odds on how much thought they’ve put into the effective and ethical use of those tools? How about moving beyond the tool and returning to critical analysis of the content, the interplay between content and form, or the connections to any content created more than five years ago?

Would your odds change for teachers?