Naoto Kan and the End of 'Japan Inc.' | The Nation

Naoto Kan and the End of 'Japan Inc.' | The Nation:

A surprising enough find for April 7, this article "...[a]ppeared in the April 18 [sic], 2011 edition of The Nation." It offers a critical appraisal of numerous issues entwined with U.S. foreign relations.

Another century post slips past

I figured it was time again for a human post when I noticed 300 for potpourri on the dashboard, and the month of February gone by without one. The 3ooth was an automated Diigo bookmarks compilation. Does extending the dashboard metaphor mean I was asleep at the wheel?

No, the three such automated posts last month represent about thirty Diigo bookmarks (February 2011). What with categories, highlights, notations, quotations, and tags as options, not to forget [group sharing,] Diigo-to-blog and -to-Delicious output options and other extensions, I'm beginning to think of Diigo as my micro-blogging engine of choice!

As the chart in the graphic and figures below indicate, total numbers of visitors and countries from which they hail continue on modest upward trends.

2010-10-15 79 2338

2010-11-00 n.d. n.d.

2010-12-15 80 2397

2011-01-00 n.d. n.d.

2011-02-15 81 2444

Balance, on all fours

Balance, on all fours, seems to be what keeps tails from wagging dogs. For educational technologists, these days, the balance and interplay of humanity and technology seem to keep coming to the fore. The technological end of things has been twisting my noodle since I chewed over Achieving Sleep/Network Balance (Ceraso, ELT Blog, 2007.10.21) in pab's potpourri (2008.01.28).

Call it a rush, or addictive, vacuous pressure to adopt more and more diversified web tools, join more and more diversified professional and social networks, hold further discussions - with more people, explore existing topics more deeply, share and try new ideas, compare findings, pool and package resources, ..., and what do we get?

Loud whooshing sounds as our lives evacuate online, or something graphically represented as an exploding head, for which Alan Levine suggests he is "lacking an easy answer beyond shrugging it off, unplugging, letting stuff slide, or just floating along til the groove returns." Nonetheless, he keeps contemplating "how much 'power' we acquiesce to technology tools" (CogDogBlog, Exploding Heads, 2008.07.22).

Without ever having tried twittering, I'm inclined to agree that doing it needn't make everyone who does micro-thinkers. Yet humans are creatures of habits, and Levine wonders, "If some of the most sharp and clever people I know and respect find themselves overly immersed in something like twitter, what does that portend for the many more people who look to them for guides?"

If collection and recollection of both data and thoughts becomes largely and ubiquitously mechanical and piece-meal, it may lead to flattening of the web, and bode ill for discursive thought patterns, coherent conversations, cogent analyses, and deliberative syntheses. When push comes to pull, which way will online educators be leaning - towards the flat, quick, and transient, or the deep, rich, and stable?

It comes as some relief to hear of folks abandoning twitter accounts before I ever got one. However, I felt a twitch of dismay yesterday discovering So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet) (Marielle, Authorship 2.0, 2008.07.03), about which I growled on the LTD Project Blog (2008.07.24). Marielle reminds us "not to get lost in a plethora of solipsistic silos, speaking without listening, [and] reinventing rather than building upon each other’s ideas and deepening the collective dialogue." I wonder how long it may take twitter-free digital immigrants to groove deep enough into the web for the rest of the world to hear the music.

Photo by Andrey Sukhanov (2008)
Creative Commons License BY-NC 2.0

VoiceThread from the B4E Workshop

Not much to say here except check out the blogging ideas represented in this VoiceThread from the Blogging for Educators workshop:




Had to use the small version, because the big one didn't fit the page. For a micro-review of the tool (VoiceThread), please see the LTD Project Wiki (AudioPodcastVideo, VoiceThread).

ELT notes: Achieving Sleep/Network Balance

Claudia has gone and done it (again). She really touched a nerve. In a post the other night, I had suggested that "commenting is the heart of blogging" (Edubloggers Learning Space, Blogging in Their Own Words, January 25, 2008). However, in ELT Notes, I find today, Claudia referred to much, much more in Achieving Sleep/Network Balance:

The blogger's time management is instrumental when we want to talk other teachers into the conversation. The first perception people have about publishing your thoughts is the amount of time it all must take. So true. I cannot say my blogging (by which I mean, reading, updating, tagging, commenting, analysing and synthesizing in posts) is an activity that can be done in, say, one hour a day. And there is family and health to take care of. And jobs. And why not a totally unrelated hobby (like dancing tango) that can make us feel good about being playful.

(ELT notes, October 21, 2007)

The notion of striving to achieve a sleep/network balance is fascinating, especially after an intensive week on the job (the week before finals) augmented either by staying up all night endeavoring with diminishing success to network effectively in multiple venues, through multiple media, across multiple time-zones; or by spending virtually equally restless nights dream-planning communications that are difficult to recall the next morning.

The weekend dawns and what Claudia calls posers remain: Turn off the computer and go do yoga, or put on eye-shades and hit the cold futon for a few hours before going back to networking? Excessive blogging: formative, playful, or serious; in the long run, just isn't sustainable or healthy. If you've read this far, it's time for you to take a break.

Lessons for bloggers (Porter, 2007)

In addition to a first batch of nine lessons learned through seven years of blogging (Porter, 2007a), Joshua has summed up nine more lessons for bloggers (2007b). I've collected and recast them here because they resonate with what I've been feeling, reading and wondering recently about blogging.

Getting over initial fears of publishing your thoughts is part of the blogging process. This is a challenge for many if not most would-be bloggers. You can get over, around or through it simply by blogging.

Saying your say is important, whether you say it right the first time or not. Thinking aloud in beta is part of the process; just keep typing. Posting what you've written is essential. As Joshua suggests: "When in doubt, post." You're a blog owner, so you can always change your posts, continue to refine them, or remove them later. Fine-tuning posts with comments is a possibility (Porter, 2007a). However, I prefer revising the posts themselves.

Sticking to your passion(-s) will enable you to inspire not only your readers, but yourself. It will help you decide what to write about, and feel strong enough about to see it through. You should be writing from the gut or heart. So rather than worrying about grammatical correctness, you should concentrate on making your ideas easy to understand.

Creating a "greatest hits" collection, or showcase module, and featuring it on every page will remind readers of where you've been and what you've done (Porter, 2007a). It will also help you remember that people are reading what you've written, and that you have written something you're proud of. This is an idea I plan to adopt and share with students as well.

Nevertheless, is important to take your time writing because each post can pay forward as well as pay back. Give each post and each concept that you embrace a meaningful, memorable name. Build on posts of interest to you and others. Continue to revise good stuff to make it better; you never know who may find it several years down the road.

Joshua suggests summarizing comments and writing your own reflections in follow-ups, linking to, but not quoting yourself. If you've got a hot idea that deserves reiteration, refer to it by name and paraphrase it; you most certainly can find a better, more economical way to say it again than quoting.

It is productive to own up to your mistakes. If someone points out a mistake that you've made, in thinking or expression, agree that you made it and carry on with what you actually meant. Take other disputes off-line promptly. If criticism becomes offensive, personal or tangential to the focus of your writing, don't haggle about it on your blog or in counter comments. You may wish to try writing a polite email response instead.

Finally, it is important remember that blogs are conversational. Your posts should sound as if you're speaking, and you can use your voice to help make others' perhaps softer, less familiar voices heard by cross-linking, creating broader audiences and promoting higher expectations of readership (Porter 2007b).

References

Porter, Joshua (2007a). Nine lessons for would-be bloggers. Retrieved April 3, 2007, from http://bokardo.com/archives/9-lessons-for-would-be-bloggers/

Porter, Joshua (2007b). Nine more lessons for would-be bloggers. Retrieved April 3, 2007, from http://bokardo.com/archives/9-more-lessons-for-would-be-bloggers/

Blog post label experiment

This post, I'm labeling "b4b" because when I announced this blog in the Blogging for Beginners (B4B): Links: Participant's Blogs list, I characterized it as an experiment in labeling. While this experiment has surpassed the duration of the B4B workshop by a week or so, I am anxious to flag and share the results.

Just as the blogroll that I assembled had grown too long, so too had the list of labels (I'll work on the blogroll later). In the past few days, I have combined labels and re-affixed the combined labels to blog posts which bore original, spontaneously derived labels. What follow are a few memorable examples of the past few days' work (ABC...). The left-most items are current labels derived from items to the right:

• AudioPodcastsVideo: Audio/Video
• This concatenation derives from recent wiki reorganization which reflects the intersection of audio files, blogs, podcasts and videos.
  

• BloggingCommentary: Blog/Comment

• CognitionReflection: Meta-cognition and Reflection

I've decided to use CamelCase, instead of slash marks, and to spell items out rather than acronym-ize them (ExtensiveReading rather than ER, on another blog). I've also decided to use plural forms of countable nouns: tools and wikis, rather than tool and wiki (same pluralization for del.icio.us bookmarks, when I get around to it).

In Camino, the Mac browser that I prefer, revisiting and editing posts and labels was easy because I could click on a label. Then the pencil icon on each post with labels that I wished to edit offered one-click access to the posts and their labels. For example, I could select a label like "GlobalIssue" and immediately revise each post so labelled to "GlobalIssues."

However, in Firefox for Windows, I have been unable to display the editing icon (pencil) on any post, in spite of toggling off and on the settings for easy editing (Blogger: Dashboard: Settings: Basic: Show Quick Editing on your Blog? Yes). Clicking on a label concatenated target posts. Yet I've had to use the Dashboard: Edit Posts view, and repeatedly scroll down through the list of posts to visually search for labels to redefine.

Once I got to the end of the first 25 posts or so displayed, I had to scroll down and then select Older Posts, before continuing to scan for labels to redefine. Scrolling down and then reselecting Older Posts was necessary after every label update.

How did Neil Young put it in his song, "Piece of...?"

I'd better stop now, before this report and reflection turns into a rant.

Inspiration from Claudia

In comments on my draft blog plan, Claudia Ceraso inquires about students' cross-blog reading and commentary, homework, RSS feeds, and the relationship between course blog and wiki. I'd like to respond between the lines of her inquiry (excerpts in italics, below):

• I understand from your post that drafting may be done at home, blogging will be done at the school. How about the reading of each other's posts and comments? Will that be homework? Will you be encouraging students to use RSS feeds?

That is correct, students will probably do a large part of their blogging in class - especially those without access from home. A number of additional computer laboratories will go online by next fall, so opportunities to do homework in the lab's will multiply. Another option, perhaps better suited to students' lifestyles than mine, is that of blogging from ubiquitous mobile phones. Those who wish to do that can send pictures and blog stubs from almost anywhere.

I consider reading and commenting on one another's blogs part of blogging, hence my rather optimistic projections of three to five student posts per week. Were they to devote their time to generating RSS feeds, I'm afraid that they would do much less communicative writing than they need to. English majors with the computer skills to generate feeds already may be few and far between.

• Does the wiki already exist? How do the course wiki and blog relate to each other?

Yes, the wiki exists - just barely (it's not open to the public). I'm setting up a PmWiki and find it much slower going than Wikispaces, especially while B4B continues. To describe the relationship between planned course blog and counterpart wiki in few words is a challenge.

Suffice it to say for the moment (almost 12 hours into a constant keyboarding day) that I expect the two parts to be closely interconnected (for example: blog feeds on the wiki): the wiki to contain more mutable, less time-sensitive material than the blog (for example: grammar references); and the blog to serve not only as a model for learning bloggers, but also as a gateway to a local blogging community (as will the wiki).

• I am particularly interested in these questions because I am thinking about my own blog plans adjustments for 2007.

• I am adding a wiki to my FCE blog for students as from next April, so I hope you keep posting about how your project develops and the students' response to it.

(Fri Feb 23, 03:25:00 PM JST)

I had visited and bookmarked Claudia's FCE wiki not long before I found her comments on my draft blog plan. I'm looking forward both to returning for a closer look at the wikispaces she has started, and continuing to peruse her ELT Notes blog, which has been in my blogroll almost as long as any other but B4B!

Draft Blog Plan for B4B Review

The points this plans addresses derive from a Blogging for Beginners (B4B) workshop task on the B4B pbwiki (Task 1 - Looking ahead - The Challenges of blog integration into our teaching). I'm posting the plan here so I can continue to develop it at my leisure (hah!) over the next week or so; I welcome your suggestions via comments.

• BLOG NAME: The name should match the course wiki name, so there's hardly any doubt that it will be ... Writing Studio Blog.

• BLOG HOST: The host should be free, and match the blog type that students will be using - again, there's little doubt that it'll be Blogger blogging for them.
  

• Note: This is a teachers' group decision, though I almost prefer Edublogging. Radical changes in Blogger during the next week or so could influence this decision.
  

• BLOG SAFETY: I will require word verification, but only retroactively moderate comments from students. By retroactively, I mean I will assert administrative privilege to delete unwanted or no longer pertinent comments. I will strongly urge students to use word verification on their blogs as well. Regarding privacy, I note that an example student blog that I've just retrieved (see: Evaluation, below) is publicly accessible without going through university or community sites. The public nature of such blogs may influence what students post as well as who reads them.
  

• OWNER[S]: I'll launch a blog for the two classes that I teach across town starting in April, and list it for other teachers' and their students' reference. Other teachers and I will help students launch their own blogs. So students, too, will be blog owners.
  

• ADMINISTRATOR(S): This particular plan is for but one small part of a collegial and community-based blogging endeavor. As I suggest regarding the blog name (above), another small part will be a corresponding wiki. The planned blog and budding PmWiki will inform not only classes taught concurrently but in all likelihood successive cohorts, just as preceding cohorts, blogs, wikis and web pages have already done. The wiki that I administrate is provided as a courtesy of the host institution. I will join two teachers already collaborating on blogger community building, as I have joined them in writing about online educational endeavors. One of the other teachers currently exerts administrative privileges over the community website.
  

• WHEN WILL THE BLOG BE KEPT ACTIVE? I expect to start the planned blog within a week or so after posting this plan for peer review and announcing it in the B4B workshop blog. I will keep it active for the duration of the coming academic year (April - March).
  

• TOPIC[S]: The topics for the planned blog will most likely be varied. However, I expect the majority of posts to focus on:

• writing coursework and assignment details,
  
• language learning activities and strategies,
  
• extensive reading and learner blogging, &
  
• to the extent feasible, learned-centered blog assessment (see: Evaluation, below).

• WHO WILL POST? - On the planned teacher's blog, though students, peers and conceivably other interested parties may comment; only the teacher is likely to originate blog posts. Students will maintain their own blogs and comment on those of their peers.
  

• WHERE WILL AUTHORS POST FROM? Most student posts and comments will probably originate from on-campus computer laboratories. I expect to post to the planned teacher's blog mostly from my office before and after laboratory classes.
  

• Wow, this planification thing is working!
  
• I've just realized that where and when students actually do what proportions of their writing ought to become research questions for collaborating teachers.

• HOW OFTEN WILL AUTHORS POST? - Offhand, I'll say three to five times a week, both for me on the planned teacher's blog, and for students on their individual blogs. Students should be able to create two posts, drafts at least, during class time in a computer lab. (90 minutes per week) - especially if they come prepared with outlines, notes and pre-located references to use for in-class writing.
  

• WHY WILL AUTHORS POST? The course syllabus requires individual student blogging for a variety of purposes including: reflection upon extensive reading and viewing activities, sharing of learning and other informative resources, posting major assignments for peer review, and commenting on others' blogs. As have predecessors, I will encourage and model unfettered expression in optional types of blog posts, of both filtering and journaling varieties.
  

• EVALUATION:
  

• Evaluation of students blogging endeavors will continue to build upon a framework of weblog assessment indices (WAIs). A quick Google search (keywords: Kumamoto, WAI, weblog, assessment, index) top-lines an example from mid-term, second semester, last year (I LOVE SOCCER: WAI: the weblog assessment index;
  November 28, 2006).
  
• Student blog authors will be EFL learners, so I hesitate to categorize anything that they write while learning English as "mistakes." Instead, I prefer to think of what they say and write as approximations of communication in the target language. As time allows, in class and out - without savaging learners' writing spaces, I expect that we'll negotiate both meanings and forms of their approximations, in order to achieve or repair communication with target audiences.
  
• I intend to collect specimens to illustrate need for common repairs, and to model and suggest repair strategies.
  
• I may rant in class and online about repetitive oversights or omissions that I find common in drafts, essays, blog posts or comments.
  
• Students who continue to make such oversights or omissions may feel like they have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire!
  
• I will encourage learners to review and revise their blog entries as often as they feel a need to do so, in order to make their intents and purposes clear.
  

• TARGET AUDIENCE[S]: The students will be writing to an audience including:

• themselves - to mediate and observe their own linguistic development;
• their peers: class mates, cohorts, successors - as near-peer role models and cross-commentators within an intermural community of bloggers including other universities; and,
  
• should students decide to make their blogs readily accessible outside the community - also to other interested parties around our blogosphere.

• Note: I'll share this B4B advice with students: "Thinking of what kind of connection your readers may have should be important when determining what kind of content you'll include (remember the more you embed, the harder it is for people on a slow connection to get access to your blog)."

• ADVERTISING: Rather than "advertising," which has strong commercial connotations, I'd rather use the word, promotion. Community organizers will promote students blogs with RSS feeds in instructors' blogs or wikis and on community web pages. I will confer with the organizers soon, and suggest an announcement of the community on Dekita.

• WIDGETS: As a minimum, on the planned teacher's blog, I plan to include:

• a Creative Commons license;
  
• labels keying into types of posts and specific assignments;
• links to a course wiki and community website;
• reference tools: a calendar and a dictionary; &
  
• some sort of a logo.

Comment on Best Blogging Practices from the B4B Blog

The following is a comment that I'm cross-posting from the B4B Blog entry on Week 4 - Best Blogging Practices (task 2). It reflects in part upon another less recent entry in Edublog Insights than I wrote about in a previous entry in pab's potpourri [link redefined, 2008.02.14].

Were I to be so bold as to assert knowledge of best bloggin' practices, I'd be stretching beyond my ken. Nevertheless, there are a couple things that sound good a mere 7-8 months into personal blogging.

First, I would like to reflect and perhaps re-spin Linda's suggestion... regarding how to treat learners' blogs. That seems to imply our treating their blogs with the utmost respect, as connected, interested and motivated learners, ourselves, who are focusing on emerging ideas rather than unrefined forms.

Second, since a number of preceding comments have focused on the second of the readings found on the B4B wiki [Kathy Sierra, January 3, 2006; Creating Passionate Users: Crash course in learning theory], I'd like to bounce back to a point that immediately and memorably caught my attention in the first, by Ann Davis, a week or so ago when I had a moment to read it (and before I moved on to blog another of Ann's interesting posts):

Giving students a choice in making their own connections about their learning on blogs paves the way for blogs to be constructivist tools for learning. These attributes are compelling and powerful motivators that help us shape the pedagogy.

(Davis, May 31, 2006; Blogs and Pedagogy: Ownership & Choices)

What Ann says about pedagogy still seems to resonate with my spin on Linda's suggestion (above), and sounds even more suited to educational blogging with adult learners - andragogy....

Rip, Mix & Burn "in Ideas" (Anne Davis on Ellin Keene)

Caught some good vibes reading into Edublog Insights, where Anne Davis reprises "Ellin Oliver Keene’s keynote at the TRLD conference." That's: Technology, Reading and Learning Diversity; I gather.

Continuing to sum up Ellin's presentation, Anne notes several strategies for enabling learners to "dwell in ideas... in the classroom", namely:

• Clearing time for learners "to listen to themselves think and consider subtleties";
• Modeling "how proficient readers frequently re-read and re-think portions of text... to explore [ideas] more deeply"; &
• Teaching "about meta-cognition - thinking about one’s own thinking - and the seven most common meta-cognitive strategies."

I wonder whether a minimum of 10-15 minutes individual, reading-related blogging per day might help fill the bill. That is, to implement some of the seven strategies that Anne recap's:

1. Connecting the known to the new;
2. Determining importance, learning the essence of text;
3. Questioning, delving deeper into meaning;
4. Using sensory images to enhance comprehension;
5. Inferring, finding the intersection of meaning;
6. Synthesizing, discovering the contour and substance of meaning;
7. Solving reading problems Independently [capitalization in original], empowering children to move from problem to resolution.

(Anne Davis, February 8, 2007; We Dwell in Ideas...)

Those metacognitive strategies go, I suppose, for adults as well as children.

Technical and Time-Saving Issues Re: Blogging Podcasts

Whilst announcing a wonderful interview on her blog, MaryH suggests that she'll try podcasting interviews "in the future" (B4B Message 1503). In response, Gladys points out a recording tool - blog sharing link-up (Podomatic: Blogger) that used to work for her, yet expresses a preference for "text in blogs" (B4B Message 1534, PS).

Elsewhere on the B4B list (forgive me, please, for relying here upon our memories rather than citations), contributors note challenges related to bandwidth limitations, making it difficult if not impossible to download media- (audio or video) rich blogs. They also may face restrictions on downloading media players or browser plug-ins to play back A/V blog elements.

Though I've begun listening to, and earmarking podcasts of interest, I prefer text in blogs, too, for reasons beyond downloading and playback difficulties. Granted, A/V podcasts are of great interest to educators who are intent upon presenting material that will help learners to develop listening and viewing skills.

However, for time-challenged educators and learners, sitting through podcasts is hardly a viable option. Attention spared while driving or cycling, I argue, is insufficient for uptake of ideas, intents, structures and vocabulary. Under such circumstances, note-making and cross-referencing are virtually impossible - unless you have a clip-board or keyboard mounted on your steering wheel or handlebars (or are concurrently recording your own commentary). Moreover, for city-dwelling pedestrians, traffic noise may well defeat listening at anything less than hearing threatening playback volumes on mp4 or mp3 players.

Rather than rant on about the drawbacks of podcasting, and before I develop a fuller argument for properly framing podcasts to develop learners' listening skills and vocabulary, I'd better point out the LearningTimes Green Room and suggest that you check it out before the folks there quit providing nearly complete transcripts in show notes on their website as a prelude to their podcasts.

Class-Based RSS for Reading & Writing

This post begins by recapping Parry (2006) and continues as a virtual dialog digesting and reflecting upon larger chunks of Parry's article (a Blogging for Beginners workshop task-related reading).

Recap

Laying the groundwork of an argument for class-based RSS feeding, Parry (2006) points out need for learners to make effective use of two distinct sets of analytical reading skills, especially in online venues: "one, the quick analysis to find what is worth reading, and the second, a switch to slow analysis to carefully consider what has been found" (Parry, 2006, Helping Students to Become Better Readers to Become Better Writers, paragraph 3). He argues that RSS supports the first, and saves time for the second. Rather than provide an RSS tutorial, Parry points out a number of other guides, and concludes by claiming "RSS alters the transmission (reading and writing) of digital knowledge, and thus is critically important to any classroom instruction which requires digital composition, but especially projects which involve blogging" (Parry, 2006, Conclusion).

Three Large Tender Morsels for Digestion

To require students to write papers and then post them to a blog or website misses the point. In fact, this often results in frustrated students, because understandably they fail to see the relevance of such writing. Instead, productive classroom blog projects focus on teaching students how writing for the internet requires a different type of authorship—again, an important lesson in how context shapes meaning.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 1)

The point Parry makes about relevance to learners is a point well taken. Simply transferring learners' papers to blogs won't necessarily foster awareness of or engagement with blog audiences. However, if they're first time bloggers, and one of their initial tasks is to introduce themselves, blogging a previously written piece of introductory writing may serve to bootstrap inter-personal communication by almost immediately supporting commentary from group, class or community members. Blogging a prepared piece of writing at course onset also may provide a baseline, or sample, and serve as a proto-portfolio component, indicating learners' initial interests and writing abilities.

... In order to be successful authors in this space, students need to construct content that takes advantage of the iterability and citationality that the web offers.... This type of citation and appending comments to citation is crucial to becoming critically engaged readers and writers.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 2)

Granted, there is a lot more opportunity to experiment in writing spaces such as blogs than there is almost anywhere but in wikis - "Weblogs on steroids" (Tomei & Lavin, 2007, cited in Wikis and websites and blogs, oh my! B4B message 319). Nevertheless, starting with a prepared text at first (say something already composed in a notebook or with a word-processor) could provide learners with a ready-made platform for experiments with the kinds of web-based functions that Parry finds advantageous.

... By using RSS, you can syndicate all of the students blogs; every student in the class will get the class “newspaper” with headlines and synopsis of each student's writing, allowing them to scan all of the posts at once, and then decide which ones are most relevant, and select them for close reading. Furthermore, RSS can facilitate commenting, as most blogs will allow you to syndicate the comments to a specific post, so that students can post to a blog and continue to follow up on the comment thread. Again, this will help students to realize how writing for the web is a matter of continuous conversation rather than static paper design.

(Parry, 2006, Why it Matters for Student Writing, paragraph 3)

The third and final bit of Parry that I cite above (Why it matters..., para. 3) seems based on an assumption that learners within a group, class or community have individual blogs - as opposed to simple posting or commenting privileges on a group or class blog, and at least commenting if not also posting privileges on one anothers' blogs. To extend the newspaper analogy, it seems educators then need to assume two inter-related roles: first, as editors and publishers of the learners' stories through RSS newspapers; and second, particularly in case they are teaching learners of English as an additional language, teachers of newspaper reading skills.

References

Parry, David. (2006). The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu/articles/view.php?id=6

Tomei, J., & Lavin, R. (2006). Autonomy Arising from Community: Experiences with Weblogs and Wikis [Keynote (trademark) presentation]. Kumamoto University: January 14, 2006.

Filtering and Journalling (LwC definitions)

Whilst scouting neighboring tribes in the blogosphere, I found a blog among MaryH's listings called Learning with Computers [LwC]: A community blog for the Learning with Computers Yahoo! Group.

What first caught my eye on that blog were a couple definitions posted there by one of MaryH's blog mates, which distinguish two different purposes of blogs:

The Filter Style Blog vs The Journal Style Blog (July 28, 2006).

In retrospective, those definitions makes this blog sound like a combination of both styles, a combination which I hope the blog title "potpourri" accurately reflects.

Although the LwC blog apparently has gone into hybernation (since October 2006), a comment linked to the filter vs. journal definitions (above) points out a typical filter blog that is still up and running, namely: The Generator Blog

Looks like some of the generators filtering through there are worth checking out. Two more generators have shown up since I started this blog entry!

LwC logo used with permission

B4B: One Stop Shopping

Food for thought:

All that I am really doing is putting together on single spot for my students to be able to access it quickly and efficiently so that they can expand their knowledge about certain topics we cover in class.

Blogging for Beginners
Re: ... K...'s Blog - Message #856 of 909
Wed Jan 24, 2007, 10:50 am (JST)

Identifying Desirable Blog Features (B4B: Wk. 2, Task 2.a.)

This post covers a review of eight blogging applications in which Campbell (2005) offers guidelines for choosing amongst them and other tools like them to use for language learning purposes.

Campbell suggests that blogs provide opportunities for "authentic use of language" that will challenge and stimulate learners "in ways that classroom experiences cannot" (Campbell, 2005, Choosing the right weblog application, paragraph 1).

Below are principle blog features to seek (Merits) and avoid (Demerits) that I've gleaned from Campbell's review of existing applications (2005), combined with a few others, and arranged roughly in descending order of importance:

Merits

• user-friendliness from the get-go (signup) including language choices;
• WYSIWYG, drag-&-drop editing and automated link assistance;
• author-ownership with edit-ability at any time, including time stamp updates;
• search and tagging or labeling functions;
• ease of setting levels of access, moderation, publicity & security;
• integrated, nearly unlimited file, A/V media and photo storage, and independent page options;
• variety of simple, easily accessible themes with intuitive (drag & drop) module arrangements;
• readily accessible, easy to use, built-in aggregators;
• networking options extending beyond immediate blogging services/venues, including whole and partial RSS feeds; &
  
• spell-checking functions.

Demerits

• external email necessary for confirmation, and forced local language displays;
• HTML coding skills necessary
• text-only comments;
• low contrast (text to background) themes with restricted font sizes;
• fixed or heavily constrained column, frame and window sizes for both input and display;
  
• same-service membership required to comment; &
  
• advertising.

Reference

Campbell, Aaron. (2005). Weblog applications for EFL/ESL classroom blogging: a comparative review. TESL-EJ, 9(3). Retrieved January 24, 2007, from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej35/m1.pdf

B4B EVO: Database, Personal Info. & Trust

It has taken a couple days for me to get around to reopening the b4b evo Session Participants' database to take another look at what's there in response to a moderator's question asking which information I consider personal (personal correspondence, Jan 17, 2007, at 04:55, JST).

As part of this point by point reflection on b4b evo backchannel messages, I'd like to suggest that, among other items of info. collected in the database, full names, gender, Yahoo ID and Skype names are personal (no Hotmail MSN for me, thanks, but that would be, too).

If there is order to these reflective pieces, it probably entails ease of collecting thoughts, exploring group moderator proposed work-arounds, and responding to requests for explanation or assistance.

The original post in this reflective series raised an issue of "ambivalent trust" (Jan. 18, 2007, 14:54 JST). Here I'd like to explore a couple of recent interactions that rekindled thought-fires regarding trust.

The first of those interactions was run of the mill. That is, when applying for group membership, I supplied the Yahoo! (R) Groups' interface with a concise rationale for asking to join the b4b group.

In return, I got an automated, "Please give us more information, or wait," sort of message. Though the application form had allowed only a few more characters (200-250 character limit?), I didn't want to wait and succumb to a foreseeable avalanche of introductory messages. As I noted later:

...I had hoped that gaining admittance to the group prior to the weekend launch would enable me to avoid a huge backlog of posts, come Monday morning....

I'd never wish that kind of reading load on EFL learners unless I wanted to extinguish their enthusiasm, or to train them to ignore the majority of posts from their peers.

(personal correspondence: January 15, 2007, 21:12:10 JST).

So I wrote back right away to demonstrate humanity, to show that I wasn't some sort of spamming robot, and to find out whether more info. really was necessary to do so. In short, it wasn't.

However, the possibility of surrepititious humans gaining access to the group retraced synapses when I opened the group database. I figured that anyone who could pass the human screens would have access to all the information earlier arrivals had posted there. That was well before I'd even browsed the hundreds of introductory posts that had already arrived to see who's whom.

When I had last checked the group participants' database (Tue., Jan 16, 2007, 9:58 am JST), there was still an ID in the database for whom automated searches of all messages retrieved no messages. With 160+ participants now on list, I can say neither that I know everyone, nor that I've even scrolled, paged, and scrolled through all of the database records to double-check who's there.

In reviewing that database today, however, I have discovered "Actions" (Edit/Delete) controls which I consider a plus because they enable participants to update their records without dependence upon group moderators. If any personal info. that participants' list changes (or gets abused), they apparently will be able to manage it to some extent, as long as group owners permit access.

The short story ends here; I did go back and add a limited amount of info. to the database. Participants photos will probably be the next point I take up.

Back-Channel Messages about the B4B EVO

This is the beginning of reflection on back-channel messages about the Blogging for Beginners Electronic Village Online workshop (b4b evo). As energy and time permit, it will continue in subsequent posts.

On Tuesday, January 16, 2007 6:44 AM (JST), I wrote to the b4b evo moderators to let them know:

... I've decided to pass on a few of the activities that you suggested before the launch, namely the following:

On Jan 12, 2007, at 21:16, bloggingforbeginners Moderator wrote:

• Answer our introductory survey to help us get an idea of how much you know about blogging.
• Add your photo to our album for participants at our YG.
• Add your photo and message to our Frappr map.
• Add yourself to our group database.

I thought you might like to know why I've passed on those particular activities. This has to do with privacy and ownership issues that I'll endeavor to explain below, and probably rehash along with these lead-in remarks in some blog post(-s) later.


I appreciate the value that knowing about one another can have in fostering and developing a sense of community, and I realize how the survey and database may ease and consolidate your access to information about community members.


Yet I generally avoid posting personal information in public or unsecured private online environments. I also read privacy policies closely and explore sites' verification mechanisms as well. Below are my current perspectives on the four tools underscored (hotlinked) in the list of activities above.


The b4b introductory survey, for example, opens to fields for collection of personal information. Yet the opening page includes no whisper of implicit or explicit purposes for collecting such information, processes for storing it, or limitations on access to it and its use.


Photos uploaded to Yahoo! Groups albums that some else has created would leave my ownership and control. I discovered that I would not be able to remove or replace them at a later date, if I so desired (and yesterday the same was true about comments on the b4b blog).


The Frappr map was just another tedious sign-up process waiting to happen, for a functionality that has mis-functioned for me in the past. I decided that posting two words ("southern Japan" or "Kumamoto, Japan") on the mailing list is a quicker and easier way to provide a global fix - one unencumbered by physical appearances. (I haven't taken time to find out whether I could change or remove Frappr pictures or comments at a later date because I believe it probably isn't worth the time it would take to ascertain control over a thumbnail identity.)


Finally, although the Yahoo! organization is bound by its privacy policy not to abuse information in group databases, group members with access to database information may well ignore both that privacy policy and its underlying principles. Here perhaps I could sum my concerns up as a matter of ambivalent trust....

(pab)

In response (Jan 17, 2007, at 04:55, PST), I received an understanding reply. The gist of that reply was:

• Participants are welcome to try anything they like, and to skip what they don't.
  
• Your feedback and explanations are helpful; they will inform future endeavors.
  
• If it is not too much to ask, please give us further feedback and assistance.

(a moderator)

Details of the moderator's reply addressed concerns that I'd had about the activities listed above. The moderator also suggested specific ways in which to further assist and inform the b4b evo team, and proposed work-arounds for aspects of the activities that I had found problematic. I plan to reflect further, and respond to each of the requests and proposals in subsequent posts.

Notes on Blogging for Beginners Workshop Blog

On Blogging for Beginners (B4B), pab commented...

In commentary on Andy Carvin's PBS post, What Exactly is a Blog, Anyway; Tom Daccord asserts, "The biggest challenge for teachers is not lea[r]ning blogging technology; it is figuring out where blogging fits into their curriculum objectives." Tom follows that assertion with a number of suggestions that I hope to take to heart.

Though I'd quickly pasted a terribly long URL for Tom's comment directly into that B4B comment, and planned to reopen the comment in wysiwyg view in order to tidy up - afterwards, I discovered that it was possible neither to reformat the cross-link nor to delete the comment and replace it with a new more carefully formatted one (such as the passage in italics, above).

I guess that in order for authors to be able to edit their own comments, blog owners must need to grant suitable permissions - if that is possible. If it isn't, then it may be necessary to learn HTML code to include in comments on the first go....

Vectors into anonymity, blogospheres, genres, literacy...

Thanks to a pointer from a colleague who shall remain anonymous, in a message entitled "anonymity, privacy, blogging" (personal correspondence, January 12, 2006), I discovered a Borderland post On Anonymous Student Blogging, but not immediately.

There had been a fault in the link that I followed, so I skipped across to another post, Blogs and Genre, in which Doug refers to blogospheres (re-)defined by John Evans (Are There Three Blogospheres (Revisited)?). Between the two of them (among other commentators), blog genre definitions emerge that hinge as much upon audience definitions as upon content, if not more so.

It's going to take a while to explore all the ramifications of that serendipitous sidetrack. Hopefully further explorations along those lines will reveal gems to share or ideas to implement perhaps sooner rather than later in a workshop on Blogging for Beginners. In the mean time, this post may well serve as a stepping stone for anyone hopping by.