Wikis and Blogs and Feedly, Oh My!

A link to my new wiki: shanawolstein.pbworks.com.

     I’ve used blogs before and though blogger isn’t my favorite site (I love Wordpress!), I still love the format of blogging in general. As a creative writer though, I was nervous about creating a new blog. I find it hard to explain exactly what happened but I noticed that in writing my post for this first week, I approached it differently than the average discussion board post. Even though I don’t think people will be seeking out this blog, the lurking eyes of the internet have made me more aware of my audience. I was also excited we were assigned to create an RSS because I was an active user of Google Reader and had not found a new RSS since Reader’s demise. I found Feedly very easy to use although I miss the visual layout of the Google Reader (a static list of blogs on the side in addition to the previews in the center) whereas Feedly only seems to have a side pop-up menu. However, I’m sure this is something I can get used to as the rest of the feed is very similar.

     I really like the idea of wikis but I’ve found in my usage of them for this class so far, I’ve only used it as a kind of interlinking blog post. However, for my job I’m working on up-dating a wiki of office knowledge. I think using a wiki like this in the classroom, where students are pooling information about subject matter and in glossaries, a wiki could be extremely useful. It can also be useful in terms of solidifying a sense of community outside the classroom that encourages more meaningful interactions in the classroom.

     While I think that Dale’s Cone can be used to evaluate the use of Feedly, in terms of it’s ability to create an easily accessible pathway to resources of limitless potential, it’s easier to speak in more direct terms about it’s application in terms of blogging. Blogging allows for a variety of levels of the Cone based on the content of the post. Text posts, that use abstract verbal symbols and higher learning levels, can be combines with video demonstrations or videos of dramatized experiences. As I wrote about on my wiki, sharing blogs can lead to direct purposeful experiences by allowing for conversations and interaction with other bloggers.

     As far as “computer imagination” is concerned, I think that Feedly is still more limited in it’s use. Feedly offers a service that allows you to stay up-dated to other data-delivering services (whether they be blog or website) but doesn’t allow for user-created content outside of creating tiers of organization. However, I could see how an instructor could use this as a tool to understand those sources. Keeping track of websites that up-date on basis of quantity as opposed to on the basis of quality of the content, may allow for an English teacher to question the proposed audience of those articles in order to understand their reliability as a source. They then would answer the question of how knowledge changes over time and what kind of information may be over-produced. However, blogging is a tool this is hard to limit in terms of imaginative uses. One of my favorite blogs that have transformed how I view the genre, are those that act as experience. Many artists are able to use their blog space to create a controlled delivery system for art that takes advantage of multiple media, whether they be video, audio, or text-based, as long as they can be posted into a straightforward digital space. Blogs, as classroom tools, thus allow for a wide variety of uses with the emphasis on the ability to continue conversations outside of the classroom and to allow for a wide variety of supporting media. For me, this would be the essence of the problem that blogging answers.

Response to “Beyond Technology Integration: The Case for Technology Transformation” by Charles M. Reigeluth and Roberto Joseph and “Of Luddites, Learning, and Life” by Neil Postman

     These two articles stand in opposition to each other but, because of that, are clear counterpoints to each other’s arguments. Having spent a large part of my life in English departments hanging out with writers, medievalists, and a wide variety of bibliophiles in general, I found the Postman article relevant to a degree I wish I didn’t, especially considering it’s a decade old at this point.  The points he presents, specifically saying that technology will do away with school and that our problems are “social and moral” problems that technology can’t solve, are not only frustrating but also familiar. This fear and distrust of technology is pervasive even today. However, when reading as a counter-point, Reigeluth and Joseph’s article, acts as a kind of diagnosis for Postman’s problem. While Postman expects technology to solve a problem that can easily identified as already existing, Reigeluth and Joseph suggest that the key point to understanding technology is finding ways to use it that we haven’t even thought of as problematic yet.
     Postman begins my using a metaphor that is innately problematic for considering the larger ramifications of technological evolution, his preferences for his car. He says ultimately, that technology has limited his options by discontinuing the use of older technology. However, living a decade in the future, we can see where technology has also lived to answer Postman’s own problem. While the desire for newer technology may eliminate some older technologies, it has also created new ways to search and find your older technologies that are being produced less. In other words, Postman may say that you can’t buy a record anymore but (in addition to the record store down the street from me) a quick Google search shows otherwise. Again, if Postman is disappointed he has less options easily available to him, he now has more options in how to find his own solution for his own unique need. The problems being solved may not appear to be problematic to him because he is focusing on a problem particular to himself.
     In addition to this, technology is helping to support a vast community of those who are returning to hand-crafted objects. Websites like Etsy allow for people all around the world to sell their products, whether they’re handmade, vintage, or some re-purposed combination of both. More important though that the commodities and products we can find online are the people themselves. Online geek communities allow for people who might be embarrassed of their interests to connect with others across the world who care about the same things they do.  So, arguments that criticize the desire or necessity for technology often feel short-sighted, in the way that Reigeluth and Joseph describe they feel as though they can’t see out of their own paradigm. It’s not just that people have a wealth of quickly available resources it’s that we become each other’s resources.
     No matter how amazing a computer is, we all know that it has yet to reach comparability to the human brain. However, when computers are used to crowdsource, to combine the efforts of hundreds, thousands, or maybe millions of people, we have the ability to think beyond what are the problems we are inventing solutions for. Instead, we can foster a sense of discovery for the sake of discovery, which is priceless.