Saturday, March 29, 2008

Web walkabout links

Hi everyone,

While I don't recommend that the average doctoral candidate spends lots of time on web walkabouts, I do suggest that once in a while dipping ones intellectual quill pen into the writings and ideas of those outside of our general field of interest is enlivening. After a hard day at work, and while facing a long night of hitting the books in the latest class or typing away on ideas that run around your head in circles, a little adventure into the ideas of others can be good for us.

If you need this type of fix, below are a couple of pots (posts?) to dip into:
  1. Since bias is inherent and the bane of research you may be interested to see what these folks are writing about: http://www.overcomingbias.com/welcome.html .
  2. I don't know what web browser you are using, but I love Firefox. If that is your browser of choice you may be interested in some of the tools/plugins mentioned at: http://www.seosmarty.com/firefox-plugins/ . It might not be a bad idea for this growing community to discuss web tools and see if there could be consensus on what works. While a ways in the future, I will ePostIt the idea for a later time, more readers etc.
Let me know if the idea appeals either by commenting through the link below or emailing me at ajames@faculty.jiu.edu.

All the best for today,
Alana

Friday, March 28, 2008

Web works

Hi everyone,


Working on the web has a few challenges: you don’t know the gender of the person you are speaking to in a lot of cases – and yesterday I had occasion to react to news as though it were current, when actually it happened a year ago.

Alas we cannot attend the “Future of Education” online conference except as lurkers. However the archive at http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/ (link to enter the conference archive) remains interesting. Thoughts that come to mind as I read:

1. Context is always important – sometimes a speaker makes known their background, location and area of expertise but sometimes these remain unclear. In international meetings I find folks from the America’s less likely to introduce their location. Where were these people from? To what extent did that constrain their view? Would they say the same things now (with the growth in social networks in the last year)?

2. I found it very interesting the question of accreditation, although it came up within forums, did not attract conversation in a forum set up just for that purpose. The one issue in what new education might look like that no one seems to have a glimmer of an answer for is who and how people who have learned as much as anyone in a class could can be accredited for that learning. Without an answer here people continue to give a good part of their future income back to the university that holds that key.

3. Discussion of change frequently puts people in line with their personal fears on how they will survive. Discussions of the format of schools and the changing roles of students and teachers bring up these fears. As I send to Columbia today for a transcript I realize how many people are employed in education – when people take responsibility for their own education do we fear being put out of work?

4. There is much here worth further investigation. I am caught by catchy titles and interesting new explorations into tools. Also E laminate is offering a web based room for up to three people in conference – what a start! http://216.220.49.222/index.jsp

I’m sure I will be adding more about tools in the next several days, but this should be good for a few ideas to mull over as you all get back to whatever else you have on your doctorate plates!

All the best,

Alana

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

List of helpful hints

Hi everyone,

As I grade papers, read over research proposals and help student prepare for writing their dissertations I see the same challenges over and over. Here is a short and hopefully helpful list of the easiest challenges to avoid in writing up research:
  1. Data ARE plural - I know this is not the way the word is commonly used and we hear data is but data really are. This leads to these data show …rather than this. Get your ear used to this one and you will go far towards saving hours of time on your dissertation. Watch for other instances where this is a problem - data have rather than data has is another example.
  2. If you make a case for something once in your paper you do not have to take two more paragraphs later to justify the same idea again. This was common and partially a set up by the multiple assignments - but it helps when you are pulling something like this together to map your ideas in an outline - don't have the same idea under multiple headings.
  3. Redundancies detract - redundant words in a paragraph, redundant ideas, etc. Don't do what I do and fall in love with a word and then use it three times in four lines. Some of you did this too (smile). It is even worse in presentations when you might have the same word three times on a single slide.
  4. When we don't know precisely what we want to say our writing lags and our ideas are not easy to track. As you read other’s research, notice where you lose attention, that is the point where the author lost track of what was important. Be honest with yourselves - is your writing interesting for the whole article? If not, what can you take out?
  5. It is not written anywhere, but generally if you go over 3000 words you have gone on past most attention spans - this is the length most publications allow. You can highlight the bits after the coversheet and table of contents and before the references and that is the body of your project or article - see how you did on words.
  6. Passive sentences use are or is - try searching on these two and seeing how many passive sentences you are writing. Then take half of them and make them active. For instance, I could have changed the first sentence here to be active by saying instead: Readers prefer active writing to passive because it gives zest to your topic. Watch out for the use of “are” or “is” and try to rearrange your writing to get rid of them.
  7. Also expel words like so, as in so important, or very or ....... you see what I mean even though you would say them for emphasis they detract from the sentence rather than strengthen it.
  8. The use of the first person is tricky. I am not like some of professors, who simply say, "don't use it." This is because I see that when used sparingly and to bring your own presence into the article it can be effective. But when you use “I” in a sentence that describes your decision making path or where you are talking to your reader about any mental process..... then I would suggest you write instead about "the study" as though it were a thing separate from you. In a nutshell we don't want to confuse our beingness with our work. These projects are your work, the experiences you have in your schools or at your workplace are personal and that is where the use of "I" might be very effective.
I hope these are helpful, let me know in a comment by clicking that link below,
All the best,
Alana

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Participatory Action Research Video Presentation



Hi doctoral students!

I hope you find this video interesting. Most of my research career has been on transformational educational practices, and nothing works like participatory action research. Although you may find this video a little sketchy (feet and bottom of slides cut off) I think you will catch my basic meaning. From here participants can build: doctoral research, community change projects, or personal transformation - the steps are the same no matter what the desired outcome.

This presentation is the basic slide set from which I am building two, two hour sessions for business majors and one four hour session for education majors at Colorado Technical University. I will be speaking, and they will be going through mock PAR cycles on April 12th and 17th.

Please comment by following the link below. I would love to hear what you think and suggestions you may have for my next attempt - both at these slides and at future videos. ALSO - Please take the one item quiz to the right - I am trying to get the pulse on whether and to what extent this is interesting content for my audience. - Thanks for both!

all the best,
Alana

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Too many new ideas IS Confusing! Use that TENSION to your benefit

Hi everyone,

This week I was emailed by one of my doctoral students about her confused wanderings around methodology. The class she was taking required a project and the methods she was sorting out for that were confusing her as she worked on her ideas for her dissertation. What she was hoping (I think) was that the university would sort this out and stop putting conflicting demands on students.

But life isn't like that - for which we should be glad!

Right now I am on a very large uphill learning curve as I work to increase my digital footprint and explode my consulting business. In the last two weeks alone I have explored: RSS feeds, Twitter, LinkedIn social networks in general, many blogs, open source elearning tools and networks, Del icio us, SlideShare, etc. I have started new profiles, I have tried to expand my links, all of which result in a much longer "to do" list each day.

But when I look selectively at the inverse of my tension I see that each day I have come to understand a little more. One week later I can keep more straight in my head when I think about these concepts. More importantly, this week I am asking different questions.

Next week I will upload a link to my slide banks - but as I work on my talk for Colorado Technical University in April in Colorado Springs, Colorado I realize that I completely believe that we MUST HAVE THIS TENSION. As I study transformational education practices, what they have in common is not downplaying tension, but helping people ride it, climb with it, and let their spirits soar because of it.

This is probably why I love working with doctoral students so much - tension is your middle name!

I write this hoping that it brings a grin to your face and that you all have a great day - tackling your tensions!

All the best,
Alana

Saturday, March 15, 2008

George says it better than I could

Hi everyone,

I highly recommend that when you want to take a break from your doctoral work to be inspired (or perhaps frustrated) by the tensions inherent in our current educational environment that you check out: http://connectivism.ca/blog/2008/03/i_mean_really_where_did_we_thi.html . In this post George Siemens does a great job of mapping our situation - spicing it up with suggestions of what else is going on out there that bear mentioning.

All the best - hope this is fun and welcome your comments,
Alana

Provocative Ideas about the future of teaching and learning.1

Hi everyone,

The purpose of this blog is to capture in it ideas from myself, the doctoral students I mentor and others how to most effectively (and with ease, fun and laughter) jump the hurdles set up for us in a research dissertation. These will be the notes and help part. Since I am an educator and the students I mentor are in education, this blog will serve a dual purpose of letting us all muse together on the future of education. These posts will make up the ideas.

To that end, I start with a copy from a post I just made in response to George Siemens: http://connectivism.ca/blog/2008/02/learning_and_knowing_in_networ.html because: 1) I think the theory of connectivism needs to be considered in all educational solutions, and 2) this is the first time I have seen someone ask about what happens to the role of the teacher in today's world of self directed learning.

Dear George and others,

Lots of comments come to mind (in no particular order) to your post "learning and knowing in networks" focused on your question about "what happens to the teachers?" By the end of my musings you will see that I solidify to the need to redefine the role that used to be teacher - coming full circle to your question.

a) I have lead numbers of groups of people simultaneously coming up with local solutions to issues by facilitating participatory action research (my favorite process for learning) online. The learning results have been transformative. For me this a piece of this larger puzzle.
b) I think the word teacher helps keep us in the old paradigm. We really facilitate more than teach - and it is best and most fun when I learn as well - (my current standard for refelctive measurement of the experience.) Keeping standards for measurement for myself and the "student" seems part of the role.
c) As I work with doctoral candidates I see what I do most is help them set in their own mind the size and shape of hurdles they need to get over and then make suggestions about tools that might help. Using this metaphor teachers really are coaches (and again the standard of measurement idea shows up).
d) What is fun for me about the "academie" is the height of the hurdles we set for each other - unfortunately these also may lead to ego issues but that is another story.
e) In another post I read today (http://kwhobbes.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/lets-meet-them-at-the-door/) a woman self identified as a teacher wrote of the difficulty of creating new networks, when others (she mentioned you by name George) had been doing it for so long. I really hate silo's of ideas, thoughts or people - what can we do in our new redefinition of the role that used to be teacher that will help us avoid these traps? This woman reminds us that part of this role is to give a helping hand up as we look upward our outward ourselves.
f) Finally I always come back to wondering what other cultures have by ways of understanding the roles of student and teacher that can help. Perhaps concepts of elder come in here, a concept I like because it seems without ego.

Thanks for the provocative question,
Alana