Archive for October, 2005
Contemporary Literacy. Everybody’s doing it, right?
John Pederson posted a little entry last week calledOwning Contemporary Literacy…The Next Big Conversation.
In a nutshell, the question is how do we get non-techie teachers to drink from the Kool-Aid?
Ever have that frustrated feeling while out there blogvangelizing? “When do you have time?”, “I can’t possibly find the time!”, and “There’s not enough time to learn this stuff!” Yeah. Familiar. I’ve spent hours with individuals, only to find 3,500 new items piled on their Bloglines accounts when I see them the next time. Why don’t they get it?
Been there. Seen that. So what is the magic key to getting people on the Contemporary Literacy bandwagon? I wish I had the easy answer, but I really don’t.
I know others are going to look at it from the perspective of educational systems, but I’d like to consider it from a different angle. In order for someone to make a major change in the way they do things, they have to believe in three things: that they have the resources they need, the knowledge they need, and the value relative to the investment involved.
Classic example: How many people have created a web page in html? To do a halfway decent looking one, it takes hours. Then you decide that you don’t want a solid green background and that takes more hours. Then you decide that you want a menu as well, and that takes more hours. Then you decide that you want a Mail Me icon, and that takes hours to put in. When all is said and done, you’ve spent countless hours creating your site and 10 minutes putting content on it. The relative worth of the outcome doesn’t even come close to balancing out the time that you’ve invested into it. One more website that will never be updated.
So the question is, how can we get people involved in projects involving Contemporary Literacy where the worth of what they get out of it outweighs the investment that they have put into it, while ensuring that they have the resources and knowledge that they need to be successful. Does that sound simple enough? Good!
I truly believe in making things as simple as possible for people. I’m a firm believer in the Macintosh idea of hiding the choices that 85% of the people don’t care about. Keep it simple for the masses. Contemporary Literacy 101 needs to do the same.
Another quick example: Teaching somebody about Bloglines is easy, right? All they have to do is sign up for an account and they’re ready to go. Of course, if they don’t know how to bookmark sites, then they’ll forget how to get back. Even if they know how to bookmark sites, they may have no idea about bookmarklets, toolbars, XML/RSS chicklets, multiple feeds, folder organization, or why their searches for high school English only pulls up blogs from students whining about their classes. There’s more to it than simply signing up for the website. Quite a bit more.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that if we are going to get more people to start sipping from the jug o’ kool-aid, we need to remove as many of the obstacles as possible. Make it simple as all heck for people so they get the desired results without needing a geek degree.
I’ve heard people argue against this, saying that dummying things down doesn’t really help them. People need the background in order to really use the knowledge effectively. Ummm…. I respectfully disagree. That’s like saying you need to know how an engine works to drive a car. Car designers have made their product just about fool proof. Turn the key, shift into drive, step on gas. If necessary, turn wheel.
If we’re going to set our teachers up for success, we need to make things that simple for them at first. I’m an advocate for IT folks at schools going in to people’s accounts and setting up their toolbars for them. With a big ol’ button that says “READ NEWS HERE” on the browser bar. I’d even recommend setting up a group of great blogs, both educational and non-educational (I love getting Dilbert in Bloglines), and importing them into Bloglines for their teachers. Make it so all they have to do is go there, get their information and leave. Make it as simple as possible for them until they have their feet wet, see the value in it and have a desire to learn more.
Set them up to be successful, help them be successful, and let them bask in their success. Afterward, don’t allow them to be satisfied, build on the success. It’s a simple formula, bit it’s worked for me.
Quality problems at Wikipedia. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems | The Register
Quality problems on a site where virtually 99% of the content is written by people without any sort of editorial background or formal knowledge of the subject? That’s not exactly a huge surprise.
However, it does not take away from the usefulness of the project either. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. Nor is it a dictionary, nor is it reliable. However, that does not diminish its value as a resource.
Wikipedia is a community where people have collaborated together to provide information about an extraordinary number of topics. There is no guarantee that the information will be unbiased, factual or complete. However, the idea behind it is that if you find any of the information is wrong, you should take a minute to correct it.
Therein lies the importance of the project. If something is wrong at the New York Times or in the Encyclopedia Britannica, there is no sense of ownership, no sense of responsibility that one should attempt to correct it. Mostly, people just mock the mistakes made by so called professionals. At Wikipedia, you assume there might be mistakes or omissions, and when you find them it is your actual duty to correct them.
Wikipedia is a much more accurate reflection of the type of information students are going to be exposed to in the 21st century. When they do a report, the first thing they will do is a Google search. They won’t necessarily be searching through accredited resources, but web sites, forums, and message boards where ‘normal’ people have provided information and opinions about the topics they are researching. It is likely, and expected that the student will eventually move to more credible resources, but the path there may wind through a few people’s backyards and garages.
Using Wikipedia as the sole resource for research would be as ridiculous as… well… using CNN as the sole basis for a research paper. It is critical that students learn to take any information they encounter with a grain of salt and to cross check it against other sources. It is a place to start your research, not a place to end it.
Of the many, many atrocious entries, we’d like to bring one more to the HUAC’s attention, and it’s our very favorite. As of the time of writing, whoever wrote the entry for soul legend Baby Washington has no idea who she is, but makes a wild guess, then gives up completely with the less-than-helpful advice: “Many have written inaccurate information about Washington. She IS NOT “BABY WASHINGTON” from James Brown.” (sic).
Indeed. But note that this entry has been edited no less than seven times and can be found replicated at Biography.com, Answers.com, Reference.com, InfoMutt, The Free Dictionary and hundreds of other sites.
IMHO, the problem there isn’t Wikipedia’s, rather the sites that leech onto it and treat it as gospel. The crazy man on the corner raving about the UFO invasion isn’t the problem. It’s the people who hear him and assume that he must be right because he has a megaphone.
Don’t forget to think for yourself this weekend.
Synonyms for Microsoft Word.
Had a comment in my last post (yes, I know it was forever ago) asking what an online word processor was. So while answering the person via email, I realized that other people might have a use for such a tool as well! I couldn’t find the site that I had gotten such a kick out of before, but I did find an article on ZDNet that has a list of several that fit the bill.
The one that I had looked at was GOffice.com. It has a basic word processor available and a bare bones desktop publishing program in the works. They also have tabs for spreadsheets and presentations, but they aren’t linked to anything yet. Must be in the works. Anyway, it does just about everything you could want a word processor to do if you have fairly basic needs. I mean, if you use some of the more obscure features of Word, this may not work for you. However for about 90% of us, it would do just fine. It’s free for personal use, and for business use it’s a whopping 1$ per month with no long term contract. Shall we compare that price side by side with Microsoft Word? Nah. It’s simple, it’s free and it’s accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection. Students don’t have Word? No worries at all. Plus, since you can save your files on the site, the kids don’t have to worry about losing their disk on the way to school or forgetting it at home!
ZDNet had quite a few others listed, and some of them looked incredibly sophisticated. FCKeditor in particular looks pretty cool. Does start to make you wonder whether schools really need to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on Microsoft licensing if comparable alternatives are available free on the internet.