Mark Childs
I've been researching and teaching about educational technology for 20 years, particularly the role of digital identity and presence in online collaboration.
Location Aspley Guise
Activity
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Mark Childs replied to Ana Ovejero
This is partly due to time issues, and partly due to lack of awareness of the issues. With the mash-up culture that we're in, where people take an image, or sound bite, and modify it and re-post it, it's an easy mistake to make to apply that to more academic work. There is also the lack of confidence in their own ideas, and abilities, and it can seem like less...
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Mark Childs replied to Anna M
I think what it means is that there's a whole range, so for example, if you only visit very, very, occasionally, like for example, I go onto Facebook once a year to thank everyone for wishing me happy birthday. So I'm on one side of the spectrum. Someone who pops in once a week to look at a post or two might be just a visitor but close to the middle. But I...
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Oh like Andrew "Two-sheds" Jackson. :-)
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Ooh what about here though? Visitor or resident? Or right in the middle?
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It sounds like you are a resident in some fields and a visitor in others. So a resident of forums, but a visitor to social media. Resident in emails. nowhere at all as a gamer. I'm not sure where builder fits on the model though. Maybe we need a 3d grid?
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Mark Childs replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Yes! That is exactly the way to interpret Dave's model. We are all visitors and residents depending on the technology, and often it can change depending on the purpose we're using the technology for.
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And I think the way to engage is the same with both, which is find one thing that meets your needs, and develop that incrementally, rather than looking at the whole thing and being daunted by what you think needs doing. Ed tech expands so much in so many areas, at the moment I'm just looking at one (VR) and seeing what I can do in that which is useful...
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I think this is the strength of the visitors v residents model over the Prensky idea. It allows for the possibility that some people might be engaged with one aspect, but not another, and that it doesn't presume where someone is going to be on a spectrum by what age they are.
Also native v. immigrant has an implied competency difference to it, whereas...
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True, they *can* but in the networks I've been involved in, the co-operation outweighs the competitiveness. I think I'm lucky in the field I'm in though, in that ed tech is often overlooked within HE and those working in it have built up a stronger camaraderie as a result.
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Ah this is interesting ... I think we've identified a big distinction between the compulsory and the post-compulsory sectors. Unfortunately (maybe, or maybe fortunately) self-promotion is pretty much essential for educators in the HE sector, as that's how the networking, and dissemination of findings, and advertising of courses (like this one) happens....
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Those are good points. I think if I was going to use Twitter as an activity with younger people I wouldn't make it compulsory. I also would recommend not making it public, for safeguarding reasons.
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One thing social media has supplanted is the online forums. 20 years ago I spent much more of my online time in forums, which you had to register on, and would be dedicated to a specific special interest group (to be specific in my case, Star Trek). Those were much safer spaces, because they required registration, were moderated, and although free, were much...
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Ah - if there's one thing to take away from this week, it's that online is real life too :-)
One thing I've noticed with younger learners is that offline/online isn't a clearly demarcated thing. They will engage in school then continue those relationships offline and it blurs into one. Younger learners tend to refer to skype etc as face-to-face, something...
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And also there are the raised expectations from students that you should respond immediately to queries. I try and ensure I set aside a specific amount of time, for emails, mentoring and so on, but the elements I find tricky are stopping myself from drifting into work-related communications when I'm outside work. My one resolution is never to have email access...
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Social media does seem to lead to greater hostility from people. There's a tendency called cyberdisinhibition - which is basically that some people will be more prone to be hostile because there is less consequence to their actions. There's also a subset of people who view all online interactions as inauthentic, they think it doesn't matter what they write...
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I think this is really important and so difficult to do. Not only for creating a professional distance between you and your students, but also protecting your down time. I think the balance that we strike online doesn't need to be that different from offline interactions with students. In a classroom we will share some elements of who we are, as that creates a...
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I think Leigh-Anne's poll was coming from the perspective of once you've got the tools, what do you want to do with them. I agree that your options are limited by your knowledge (and actually your spending power, accessibility of the tools, immediate support).
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I think impostor syndrome is one of the hardest things to overcome. We have too many people in our lives telling us that our opinions aren't worth anything and other people have more value. And that's speaking as a white male cis het middle class, global north, educated, able-bodied person. So I know I got off lightly compared to most. Maybe blogging could be...
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That's so true. They don't just lead to a blurring between online identities, they lead to an inability to create firm lines between working time and relaxing time. If you use Facebook for work, then there's always the distraction of social elements creeping in. Similarly, even if I don't feel pressure to be connected, there's always the curiosity that leads...
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It's also not about the most recent technology, it's about what the form of social engagement you want to have is. I like small group discussions with selective family and friends, so like WhatsApp. I'm not interested in large generic pronouncements to all and sundry, so Facebook doesn't appeal. Twitter is good for professional contacts, and sharing news, and...
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Well the dinosaurs were around for a lot longer than we're likely to be, so aspiring to be a dinosaur is no bad thing, they were enormously successful. The problem I think is only when we try to chase the most latest thing in order to look "with it" to the students. In fact, in my experience that just jars with them and looks inauthentic. One thing having...
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Mark Childs made a comment
We're now in the fourth week (timewise) and it looks like many of you are still catching up with previous weeks (FutureLearn-wise). That's OK. I'm hoping to engage with you for a couple more weeks after the course is scheduled to end. So if you'd like to still continue with the course, engage with the material, and post your comments, I'll still be here...
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I would say it can if you do it right and your students are receptive (and able to engage). But there are plenty of new things that could take you to the next level if you do them right.
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I read "online reputation" as meaning a wider audience. However, I now see I was thinking of reputation as quantity not quality. Another hidden shallow revealed :-)
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I agree, even though I only teach adults, there's a blurred boundary there which is difficult to navigate. Maintaining these distinctions is hard though - I used to have a professional and a personal youtube account, and then accidentally started posting to the wrong one. As more and more platforms are bought up by fewer and fewer companies, which then try to...
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Actually, I think you're now ahead of the curve, it's now only the dinosaurs using FB. It's like any other fashion. Wait long enough and stick to your thing and eventually you'll be cool again.
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This is true. They are only on there because their parents are and their parents think they're using it to keep tabs on their social usage. It's a great example of how we construct different digital identities for different audiences. All the safe stuff goes onto FB and the real stuff is somewhere else.
What's interesting with all of these platforms is how...
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I think the best balance is to identify one for the class to work in that is tried and tested (and secure and supported by your institution) but allow the students to form their own groups for communication in the platform they prefer.
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I've learnt it can go either way with students. 12 years ago most of my students were into Facebook, it's why I joined it, but I found that many didn't want their lecturers in what they saw as *their" space. If you're invited in, then fine, but I wouldn't push my way in. Also many people (me included) have security concerns about Facebook. A third problem is...
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I think the structure of social media does have a lot to do with the sound bite nature of discussion, and the lack of nuance in a lot of the debates that preoccupy online discussions. Many sub-editors of newspapers traduce journalism by pulling out the most contentious element of a piece, even when this misrepresents the general tone of the article, which can...
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Maybe these issues are because we are in a period of transition due to the (relatively) new nature of social media. A teacher friend and I discussed this in a podcast recently https://www.pedagodzilla.com/dont-pivot-swivel-episode-2/ in terms of Goffman's The representation of self in everyday life. The online world makes our off-stage personas potentially...
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Hhhmm. Yes. But only if one would consider any form of self-expression arrogance? To be clear. I'm not dismissing the possibility that you're right. I'm doing an MA in Creative Writing at the moment, and the hardest thing to overcome is the feeling that I'm being arrogant by writing something and assuming someone else will want to read it. I wonder what made...
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Yes. Two things, 1) does this take care of participants and 2) does this result in some good for the participants? I think if you're going to take time from people, this is only really justifiable if it results in them benefiting from it in the longer term. Otherwise it's just for another publication on your CV, which doesn't seem ethical either.
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Probably not. I would have thought most marketing surveys were aimed at identifying the best way to make more money for people who already had loads. Maybe a marketing survey that asked the question, "do you really need more stuff?" could be disruptive. Maybe I'm just having a cynical day. :-)
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I think challenging preconceptions is really helpful, as long as you look for evidence that it's really helping before going too far. So often though "disruption" has been used by self-proclaimed disruptors to make themselves sound far more radical than they really are. Any really good idea is actually going to be disruptive, but in a small productive way...
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This is the standard one for educational researchers https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018-online and this is the one I recommend to my students specifically for online research (though I guess I should look for a more recent one as this is nine years old)...
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Another one for the information age. Lies are freely available while truth sits behind a paywall.
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there are a few fact check websites that are usually reliable. I often run a query through google scholar to see if there is evidence to back up a statement. Snopes.com is excellent to check out hoaxes as well.
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Ideally, yes. I think doing one alone is much more of a challenge to make fully effective, but in so many cases we have no choice but to do one or the other, either entirely offline because students have no access to tech, or entirely online because students can't access the physical space.
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Both numbers seem a bit low to me, ultimate answers notwithstanding :-p
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To begin with I totally agree. We need eventually to give students the skills to make these judgements for themselves. It's a key lifelong skill. Actually, with all the nonsense that was circulated around the pandemic, it's a skill that can save their life.
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I think pointing students towards google scholar rather than google is a step that can help. There's usually information there, and it is usually peer-reviewed and referenced. It's not as tricky as navigating publication databases. Unfortunately, so much academic literature is behind a paywall.
I think English is possibly the most contentious subject to...
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Yes there's an added level of complexity in deciding between two conflicting studies. Often all we can go by is looking at peer review, citations, and trying to read between the lines with whether there is an agenda or not. What is really worrying is that there are still a large number of people who don't even look for evidence to back up their position, let...
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Mark Childs replied to Beth S
Hi Beth, Leigh-Anne is busy writing another module at the moment, so I've looked into this. You're right, the disagreement is around the definition of the word included. I'd interpret this as just being a poor choice of words from the person writing it up, who might not have realised "included" meant part of the whole, rather than the whole. Unfortunately the...
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Mark Childs replied to Ana Ovejero
Those are really interesting approaches - I wonder what the online equivalent of those would be. What techniques can educators use to encourage people to have more confidence online? Maybe we could try a mini action research experiment here if we can identify one.
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Mark Childs replied to Silvia Fischer
I take your point, but I think the idea of looking at a platform no longer in use would enable people evaluating it now to do so with more distance and neutrality. Hopefully, we'll be covering enough new tools elsewhere in the course.
