Titio. Titiemusne?

I have recently signed up for a Twitter account. My handle is MsEffundatrix (my name, Latinisized).

I'm interested to learn more about this webtool. It may not be a good fit for me. My prose has been called Proustian, so 140 characters may not be the right thing for me. Still, I'm very optimistic about the possibilities for personal use and life-long learning.

However, I worry about asking my students to join Twitter before they are ready to manage the personal information they share. Twitter makes it easy to let a whole world of people know exactly what you're thinking in just an instant without much time for reflection. It takes experience to determine what is safe and appropriate to share with the world wide web.
That is not to say that adults do not have to learn this skill also. Perhaps many of our students are more savvy than adults when it comes to internet sharing. However, even the most luddite adult has had opportunities to forge his own identity and the permutations of that identity in each of the communities in which he participates.
An adolescent or pre-adolescent is still in the process of creating her primary adult identity. If she is still developing in her cocoon, I do not want my course requirements to push her out of her shell before she is ready. Her development should not be complicated by having it take place in the public eye. So I worry about asking students to put themselves in a position where they are expected to share themselves and their thoughts regularly and instantaneously.

On the other hand, I do believe students have to enter the wider world at some point. It's just a matter of when. They should learn to move beyond the cliques and social circles or their own high school. Taking part in a larger internet community, outside of their Facebook friends, could really expand their horizons. If they learn to follow current events, influential writers, politicians, and connect to those who also follow these Twitterers, this could be a new community of learners for our students. A very exciting prospect worth teachers' consideration.

We also have to consider the role of technology in the classroom. When we use webtools, are we using them to teach technological literacy, or are we using them to reach students where they are? This article in the Washington Post points out that Twitter is not very popular with teens. Using Twitter in the classroom does not reach students where they already are. It is a new medium, a new skill for them.
If an educator is already a successful user of Twitter, has found it very useful for her own professional development and life-long learning, than she is ready to share it with her students. But if the educator is still learning Twitter for herself, or has found it to be unhelpful, there's little reason to bring it into her classroom.

If Twitter is used in the classroom, there are many potential uses. Here are some of the ones I found in this article by Gabriela Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu that I like in particular:
~ Promoting Blogs: if you already use a blog for your class, instantly let everyone know about updates
~ Quick Announcements: if you feel comfortable being in constant contact with students, Twitter can be checked on computer or phone for up to date information
~ Research: especially on current events and developments in the news
~ Succinct responses: learning how to communicate quickly and precisely is a very important skill. I'm not sure I've mastered it myself; I tend to ramble. If the instructor creates a specific learning activity based around succinct communication, Twitter with its 140 character limit may be a useful tool.

Twitter is not the only microblogging tool available to educators. Micro Mobs could also be used. As Mr. Byrne explains, Micro Mobs can be used to create a public or private micromessaging network. If you're worried about using a public service like Twitter for more private announcements meant for only your students and their families, or your coworkers, this might be a great alternative.

Obstantia frustra est

The learner is like a Star Fleet captain. She has powerful tools at her disposal to aid her learning: a super computer with instant access to all collected knowledge in her quadrant of the galaxy, and a faster than light speed ship to take her wherever she needs to be to learn new things by direct discovery. She's a team player. Her crew is a community of talented, learned, creative individuals who are ready and able to contribute to the mission. Many of them are also good friends who provide the captain with social and emotional support. She's also part of an even larger network, the United Federation of Planets. She can be in touch with peoples from all different cultures, each with its own learning and perspective. They can inspire her and bring fresh insight to her own explorations.

But sometimes there are great challenges. A captain might find a species so strange and different from her own that the universal translator can no longer function. Her ship might fly through a spatial anomaly causing the engine to fail and subspace communication to go offline. Her crew might suddenly become infected with an alien virus. She might become stranded on an alien planet, separated from all her technological tools as well as her crew. Sometimes, she must make profound moral choices, and there is no one who can make them for her. A Star Fleet captain's work requires years of training, deep personal knowledge, the ability to reflect, flexibility, creativity, openness to others' ideas, communication skills, and self reliance. But she is prepared for any new encounter she must face.

Now many of you probably aren't sci-fi nerds, and you might not have seen much Star Trek. You may need a concrete example to better understand my metaphor. Let us consider my personal hero, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise.



The character is a true Renaissance man. Of course he can pilot a starship, conduct diplomatic negotiations between two warring planets, lead scientific research missions, and bring out the best in all of those serving under his command. That's just standard Star Trek captain stuff.
But Picard can also direct a Shakespeare play. He can read ancient Greek, speak English, French, Latin and Klingon. He sometimes publishes articles on xenoarchaeology. He can be your Cha'DIch in a Klingon trial. He sings Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. He can make wine. He can fence and ride horses. And his moral compass never fails.

He exemplifies what the Germans call selbst bildung, self-education. He is a lifelong learner, constantly developing his own well-rounded personal store of knowledge. And good thing too. When he's out exploring the final frontier and a crisis hits, more often than not he's on his own.

There was a time he was plugged into a vast learning network. Connections between nodes were never down. Aggregated information flowed freely. But that didn't go so well.


Picard was assimilated by the Borg, a collective of cybernetic organisms who travel through the galaxy assimilating peoples and their whole cultural knowledge. This destroys all individuality in the process of course, and the Borg don't mind killing a lot of people to get the job done.
Picard became Locutus of Borg. He no longer could choose what to share, how to apply his knowledge. Everything he knew, everything he experienced, everything he was became part of the collective and was used to kill hundreds of Federation citizens.

Since I've already given away so much of the episode I don't feel bad telling you that in the end his fellow officers find a way to disconnect him from the Borg and remove his cybernetic implants. It took him a long time to heal emotionally from the experience but he does recover. He goes on to be a brilliant Star Fleet captain through four more seasons and four feature films.

*****

Our class read an article by George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.I do agree with some of his theses. Yes, the "ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill." Sometimes people keep specializing and specializing and stop seeing the connections. It's the connections that illuminate knowledge. The connections make information relevant and meaningful.
I also agree with what he says in his video The Impact of Social Learning Software on Learning: “It really boils down to our ability to have a dialogue with other individuals. And when we have that dialogue, we ourselves grow in our knowledge, and we grow in our own understanding and our own ideas sometimes." I know I've experienced that in my own learning. Communication forces us to articulate what we mean. Dialectic with those who have more knowledge, or with those who disagree with us can teach us so much more than we can learn on our own. There are tremendous benefits to being an active member of a community of learners. As teachers, we have to teach our students effective communication skills, provide a place where dialogue can take place, and direct our students toward other forums where this knowledge is happening.

And yet,
there is so much that I disagree with. One quote in the article really bothered me:
"The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe."

On a literal level, I fundamentally disagree. I care very much whether the water coming out of my pipes is safe and pure. No fancy faucet fixture is going to make me OK with drinking toxic contaminants.

And on a metaphorical level, I can't help but think of the Borg. Their organizational effectiveness is flawless. Their efficiency unparalleled. Their "pipes" are perfect.
Captain Picard was sometimes less connected to new developments than I am today. I'm updated by Facebook, and podcasts, and news sites about all sorts of events, and can comment on them on Facebook or my blog immediately, while Picard has a lot of debriefing to do when he returns from remote corners of the galaxy. But it was OK to be disconnected. He could focus on one job at a time and use his full concentration. He wasn't constantly distracted when he had to save the ship or make an ethical decision.
As Locutus he was completely connected. The millions of voices of the collective were always with him. The group knew so much more than he could ever know as an individual. But what came down the "pipes" of this process was significant. The collected knowledge, the constant updating, the efficiency and the connectivism of the Borg were used to perpetuate violence.

I think we can learn from the connectivist theory of learning. But I'd rather have a learner who may not always be up to date, but is unique, an autodidact, and can think and act for herself regardless of her situation.

de securitate et moribus

Mark Zuckerberg may think that privacy is no longer a social norm, and you may agree or disagree with him. But as teachers, the safety and personal security of the young adults and children in our classroom comes first. Even if in the future there were a radical shift in privacy norms, we have a duty to protect our students and, perhaps more importantly, teach them how to protect themselves when using the internet.

When it comes to safety rules and guidelines the more explicit the better. Don't be vague. Take time to discuss specific scenarios and practices with your students. When you say "be safe" students may have their own concept of what is safe practice that differs with what you and the school community believe is safe internet behavior. Be crystal clear.

I also think we should be clear about other practices becoming of responsible internet denizens. Perhaps it's quaint, but we as teachers may be in a position to help establish manners and etiquette in the digital age. Behind the anonymity that the internet provides, many creators of web content fail to employ social graces that create civil and meaningful discussion. This is no way a prejudice against the young. This is merely my own observation of and frustration with typical internet discourse. I think we have the right and the responsibility to insist on consistently respectful web communication. Or am I just old fashioned and overreacting?

Here are some guidelines I would insist on for my class. I look forward to reading the rules my fellow teachers have devised.

Personal Safety
#1- Students will keep personal information out of blog posts. This includes:
~ surname
~ phone number
~ home address
~ school name and address
~ the names of other local areas (e.g. don't use a blog post to plan a meeting at a library or coffee shop)
~ city
~ any other information that could help someone locate or contact you in person.
#2- Do not share digital personal information such as
~ usernames
~ passwords
~ links to other blogs or social networking sites that share any of your personal information.
#3- Students will report any comments posted by unknown parties that are disrespectful, suspicious or make you feel uncomfortable. When in doubt, tell your teacher or parents.
Computer Safety
#4- Students will not download or install any software without permission.
#5 -Students will not click on any ads.
Academic Honesty
#6- Students will not share their password and username with anyone except their teacher or parents.
#7- Students will not log on using the account of another student.
Respect and Courtesy
#8- Think of the class blog as a digital extension of the classroom. Do not post any links that are irrelevant to the task at hand. This includes any material inappropriate for school.
#9- Using the class blog, treat your teacher and fellow students in the same respectful manner you treat them in the physical classroom.
~ No name calling or put-downs.
~ No offensive language.
~ No comments that are prejudiced against people of different backgrounds (ethnicity, country of origin, race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation).
~ Respect everyone's views; don't use any hurtful language even if you disagree.
~ All criticism should be constructive.

#10- Because this is a classroom project (and your teacher isn't always up to date on current lingo), minimize your use of internet abbreviations so that everyone can understand, and we continue to practice "school language" conventions.

~Please discuss these rules with your teacher if you have any questions.
~Anyone who fails to follows these rules will not be allowed to participate in our blog project.
~ All students and parents will read these rules before signing the permission slip below. All students will hand in the signed permission slip before taking part in the blog project.