Creating a Word cloud #edcmooc

One of the sites I learnt about during the EDCMOOC was Wordle - that lets you create a word cloud.
Here is the "wordle" of this blog at the end of the course.

Technology in schools - does it work? #edcmooc

I have made a video with some comments about technology in schools - best discussed around the water cooler (or should that be over IM?)


Water Cooler 2.0
by: wclass

Technology in schools - do our kids have the right tools and the knowledge to use them?

Does e-learning work? #edcmooc

A question posed on the EDC MOOC site asks about the benefits of e-learning. One major issue raised, especially for moocs, is whether the "massive" aspect means that most of us get lost in the huge array of information. This one especially has forums, blogs, tweets, Flickr challenges, just to name a few.

How different is it really from finding your way around the old mailing lists and bulletin boards? You had to "lurk" for a while before you understood the language and worked out "who to follow". And is that different to face to face classes? Sometimes you want to sit back and listen for a moment to assess everyone's agenda.

One positive aspect of this course is the Google handouts presented by the staff - I think it helps the students enormously to get a picture of what is going on in several areas of the course.

For me, the great benefit of e-learning is the fact that you can access vast amounts of information in your own time.

Utopias and Dystopias - Looking to the Future #edcmooc

In the future, is the question really who will benefit and who will miss out?

Already I want to look back to the past and ask if this was the question when we got books, or radio, or television, and so on.

The video ads from Corning and Microsoft make technology look easy - everything is clean and white and nice - really? I think the purpose is to represent utopia with these new tools but is it real? People know ahead of time who you are and what you'll need. There is too much that is skipped here - what about privacy?

Sight, Charlie 13, and Plurality all deal with privacy. Technology can help you score, keep you safe, and keep your world safe but at what price?

I didn't get all the references, but I was totally amused at the classic comic "men carrying a pane of glass" routine.

The real questions are about control, the price of "safety" and freedom, but also, who audits the auditors?

Utopias and Dystopias - Looking to the Past #edcmooc

In this first week of EDCMOOC, that is, the massively open online course (MOOC) from Coursera called eLearning and Digital Cultures, I have made the following notes and observations.

One of the main themes is technological determinism and we looked at films and read articles about technology and culture and the utopias or dystopias they represent. Technology can be liberating - it can bring people together in ways that may have been impossible before (see Inbox), but people may also come to rely too heavily on this technology (see Thursday) and even begin to worship it (Bendito Machine). For some, technology represents an extremely grim future that sees man replaced (New Media). Maybe we should follow the example of the birds - technology does not control them. They use it - for perching, for nesting, whatever. It does not seem to worry them but neither do they make any gain from the possible benefits.

The films and readings seemed to show a very black and white view of the issue. I want to ask people what do they hope to benefit from the technology, and what are they prepared to give up. Many people seem to just not take any responsibility for what is around them.

Office cubicles - the non-social medium

I sit with my back to the people I work with - I am sick of this!

When people visit my "office" they enter the cubicle from behind; some are so "well mannered" that they "hover" because they don't want to disturb me. Hey, news flash - having someone hovering in the background is really, really disturbing.

I work as a technical writer in an IT development environment. Often I think I’d like a quiet space with no interruptions, but sooner rather than later, I need to get up and talk to someone – that is, creep up behind them with my list of questions. Now we have email and instant messaging to keep in touch, but we have had to create rules and "netiquette" to dictate how and when we can contact each other in this social world.  Many people plant headphones on to avoid distractions – that kind of body language sends a pretty clear message. Are we really more interactive and social nowadays?

Teams are heading towards a more "agile" style of development where a key feature is daily meetings. If the morning meeting is the only aspect of agile you adopt you are still doing well – the communication between people on the same project is crucial for success.

I suspect a new arrangement of the office furniture might go a long way towards improving communication. Several years ago I worked at a stock broking firm - the brokers all sat either side of a very long table with their screens full of data down the middle. They faced each other. If they needed to talk to someone it was really easy to catch their eye. This worked.

Way back in the day before we all had computers on our desks I worked in an office where we arranged ourselves with our backs to the wall and we could face each other across the room – yes, we were developers (coding onto data sheets for punch cards). We still had a quiet space each, but contact was easy.

I sometimes think the current cubicle world is arranged the way it is because it is much easier to set up the cabling needed. I’d like to remove the cubicle walls and turn the desks around – technicians will need to come up with a new cabling diagram but this is achievable. We can still work quietly, but chat more quickly if necessary. People who don’t want to be disturbed can still stick their headphones on. This could go along way to reducing the amount of mis-communication.

Back to blogging - the social media explosion

Social media has worked its way into our daily lives. I read a lot of blogs, and I did start this one some time ago for personal writing, but I only wrote in fits and starts.

Recently, I've enrolled in an online course entitled e-Learning and Digital Cultures - the main focus for me is the "elearning" part, but I'm definitely interested in how we can use digital and social media to present courses, classes, and technical information in general.

Anyway, the course doesn't start till the end of January, but already (a month early) we students have received notices suggesting we get accounts on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Blogger or Wordpress, ... and the list goes on.

Which brings me back to this blog.

I had originally wanted to have a bit of a tech blog - I answer a lot of Word and Help questions at work as a technical writer, but work kept me busy enough and my tech ideas went into tips and tricks there (and they pay me). Which unfortunately meant that this blog has languished idly on a virtual beach waiting for a few words of wisdom to drop by.

So with my focus now on the course, the blog has been resurrected. It contains some old snippets of ideas, that may not make a lot of sense, and some lists of things that would be interesting to think and write about. I decided I may as well leave them in, even though some of the links no longer work.

Over the next few week, I'll make posts on e-Learning, social media, and technical writing, and I'll write up some new stuff about the new DSLR camera I got just around Christmas time. I'm sure a blog is exactly the sort of procrastination tool I can use instead of doing assignments.

Looking forward to the new year ...

Margaret