A challenging question posed by Christopher D. Sessums is picked up by many leading bloggers in the edublogger community. Christopher has some follow up posts on the same theme that expand and deepen this conversation. I scanned through several of the comments and many of the ideas posted resonate with my own thoughts on why I like to blog.

One aspect that comes to mind is the “here and nowness” accessibility of blogging. I can enter into a space that pushes me into reflection, writing, connecting and community participation (the list can go on). I truely enjoy the feeling of pushing my thinking and learning then experiencing the impact on my work, relationships and everyday life activities. I have little interest in developing a reading audience, but it’s such a thrill when someone does comment. I think that because much of the cycle of reading, writing, thinking and reflecting etc is difficult for me and takes work, the personal satisfaction of moving forward is palatable and reinforcing. I recall the same feelings when I was a voracious basketball player learning to excell in that game. A more current example is found in the enjoyment I experience in playing tennis. I believe I get similiar feelings of completness when I blog. It’s stretching all of me and pushing me outside my sense of self. I guess this part why I like to blog is the identity formation aspect of blogging.

Thank you Christopher for bringing your question to the table. I truely am enjoying your writing. It’s great when I can read the comments from the edublogger community on such a basic but vital question.

Brent pre-smtwl

In addition to learning more about this topic, I’m collecting these conversations so I can inform our school librarian about resources and references that she can use in her discussions with teaching staff. It appears there is quite a bit of confusion and misinformation about students and staff using Wikipedia so I do hope that these links add some light to the debate.
Wes Fryer (Moving at the Speed of Creativity)  captures in a podcast, a response from a Britannica official at Florida Educational Technology Conference. The podcast is titled “In Defences of Encyclopedia Britannica”. Also included in Wes’s post is a series of links that connects to other dialogues on this issue.

Podcast47: In Defense of Encyclopedia Britannica

In December 2005, Nature magazine published a controversial article arguing that WikiPedia was as accurate at worst or more accurate at best (considering it’s comparably larger size) than Encyclopedia Britannica. Last week at the Florida Educational Technology Conference, a Britannica employee spoke out in defense of the accuracy and greater value of Britannica compared to Wikipedia. Given Britannica’s formal release of a statement last week in response to that Nature article, and Nature’s subsequent response on March 23rd, this dialog is timely. This podcast is a recording (shared with persmission) of that conversation.

Program Length: 14 min, 29 sec
File size: 3.5 MB

(Click here to listen to this podcast)

Show notes for this podcast include:

1. December 2005 Nature Article: “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”
2. My blog post from February 28th, “Wikipedia Accuracy”
3. Britannica’s Reponse to Nature (PDF) – “Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature”
4. Nature’s response to Britannica’s response: 23 March 2006 (PDF)
5. Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study By Andrew Orlowski
6. Wikipedia and open source by Nicholas Carr

Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” weekly podcasts!

Brent pre-smtwl

Leigh Blackall is one of my favourite writers (the list keeps growing). I found this very interesting and useful post about a comic book that teaches young people about Creative Commons (see the Creative Commons Blog). Here is the introduction to the comic book titled – Bound by Law

Duke Law School’s Center for Study of the Public Domain has released an amazing 76 page copyright education in the shape of a documentary filmmaker and form of a comic book: BOUND BY LAW?

A collaboration between cartoonist Keith Aoki, law professor (and CC board member) James Boyle and CSPD director Jennifer Jenkins, the work is available for viewing online, download, or hardcopy purchase and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

Brent pre-smtwl

I am very interested in podcasting and digital storey telling and using it in our Community Resource & Learning Room programs. As our Program runs out of a large High School in Newmarket Ontario, just north of Toronto, I can see how literacy goals for the students and youth in the community could really be improved using this tool.

I’m going to post some resources that I will use and perhaps others can use if interested.

My first resource comes from TechLearning blog. This writer talks about the benefits of digital storey telling for improving student literacy and reaching young people who have plenty to say, but are often left out of the experience of expressing themselves to a public audience.

From the cogdog wiki authored by Alan Levine, comes a very clear list of steps to understanding and making podcasts.  He has another post on his blog that covers a pretty long list of social software tools and basic explanations.

Brent pre-smtwl

I am enjoying conversations with Linda, our school’s Head Librarian about the value of Wikipedia for student research and using blogs for education purposes. One of her concerns was that many teachers don’t know what Wikipedia is and when students use Wikipedia for research, the content they find is unsubstantiated and editable, thus unverifiable. The teachers not knowing what Wikipedia is just makes the issue more difficult. She was searching for more informatioin on this issue and she accepted my offer of forwarding any material I might have in my blogs or resources.

I have assembled a few articles and posts that I culled from the blogosphere. Her concern about Wikipedia is a topic of great interest to many, so it was more a matter of choosing what articles are most relevant rather where to start.

My first find was David Warlick 2 Cents Worth, the end of journalism video called Epic 20014. The video (only 8 minutes) was used as an introduction for a presentation he made to educators (many where Librarians) at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators (IL-TCE). His presentation was titled ” Right & Wrong on the Information Highway.

The video is a great provocation of the senses and challenges status quo thinking to the core. A must view for anyone interested in looking into the crystal ball and taking at a peak at the near future. The topic that David presented on didn’t specifically address Linda’s concerns, however I thought it was a useful starting point for my little list of resources.

This is a key part of his post that I felt got at the questions raised by Linda.

What I was really trying to convey to the audience, was that what we look at is not our most important concern, as information specialists — educators. The change that is affecting the greatest impact on every aspect of our jobs is the changing nature of information. Largely because of ICT, information is increasingly digital, networked, and overwhelming. In addition (and more recently), the increased practice of information tagging and XML have further transformed information into something that is for more shapeless, impossible to freeze and contain, less dependable, and, yet, more valuable.

My next find came from Wikipedia. I found a very comprehensive article titled What Wikipedia is Not. The article includes a section titled No Original Research and I think it gets at the key question posed by Linda about students using Wikipedia for research. This was my first close look at Wikipedia’s policies and the article and dispelled some of my assumptions.

Another article came from a post on Darren Kuropatwa’s blog called A Difference. Darren is a math teacher in the K-12 world in Winnipeg. He lists a few of the major writers in his post tilted The Evolution of Teaching and Learning. The reading here covers so much I won’t even try to summarize each author’s work. These writers are impacting Darren’s work and as I slowly go through the articles they are impacting my learning as well.

The next resource that ties into Linda’s question is a blog writtten by a Librarian. I found it poking around in Dave Warlick’s blog roll. It’s called The Shifted Librarian and it is filled with stories of life from an Librarian’s perspective. Sorry for the lack of detail on this blog, however my quick scan left me wanting to go back at a later time. It’s now on my bloglines list.

My last article comes from Dean Sharetski (Saskatchewan educator) at his blog called Ideas and thoughts from an edTech. His article called “Creative Commons for Teachers is pulled from Wes Fryers blog “Moving at the Speed of Creativity“.

Creative Commons for teachers

After my presentation on storytelling, I touched on Creative Commons as a resource for teachers. Wes Fryer does a great job simplying its benefits for students and teachers.

Copyright and intellectual property issues are complex and often ambiguously defined. Unfortunately, it does not appear that copyright law in the United States is going to change substantially in the early 21st century. Before despairing and resolving to give up on student multimedia projects for fear of legal reprisals (or at least the ability to share projects over the Internet via the school website, a blog, or a podcast) teachers as well as students need to learn about Creative Commons. Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) “is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.” Everyone involved in education should be familiar with Creative Commons both as content consumers and content producers, wanting to legally access and use digital content. Whether someone is creating a digital story with PhotoStory3, an enhanced podcast with Garageband3, a PowerPoint presentation, or a narrated online slideshow with BubbleShare, Creative Commons licenses and website search tools can provide clear guidance about acceptable and legal uses of digital content to create and share “derivative works” using these materials. These digital resources can include images, music audio files, movies, or any other type of media.

Read the rest here.

Well this digging around for relevant resources and articles for Linda has given me plenty to read as well. Thanks Linda, for asking me to do this and many thanks to the authors who have written so well on this and many related topics.

Brent pre-smtwl