Ok, this blog may not be completely different because I am still reeling from all the new information, but at least it is different information…
I have taken some time to read through all the class blog links and introductions Alec (if I may be so bold 
) has provided for us (as of the 17th) and I have to say I am very impressed by what I have seen. Well done people! I apologize for not making any comments on your blogs, but I had a limited amount of time tonight and a lot of reading to do… I will eventually – I promise! I did notice we have a wide variety of experience levels dealing with all of this technology and that mine is not the only head still spinning from Tuesday nights class. Whew – trying to listen to the lecture, watch the shared desktop and read the back channel posts was overwhelming… I think if I had tried to type any responses I would have triggered a stroke… Multitasking is generally not an ability I possess. In fact, I can imagine the peals of laughter from my wife if it was suggested that I was capable of such a thing. I think from now on I will just try to absorb the lecture and save the chat file at the end of each session so I can skim it later for all the great links, questions, answers and ideas that I noticed whizzing by in the last session.
I watched video lecture “The Machine is (Changing) Us” the other night and I read Richard Schwier’s article. I have been pondering the questions posed by Alec – “What is going on here? What observations do you find relevant? What do these changes mean for education (and specifically for you as a teacher)?” for over a week and have found some observations I found relevant that tied the video and the article together.
Schwier was writing about how people connect and interact in online learning communities and wrote that ”participation does not equal engagement for learners, and while interaction is visible, engagement is hidden.” He goes on to identify four mechanisms, of the “bystander effect” – that the presence of a group actively inhibits an individual from acting in an emergency – given by Hudson and Bruckman (2004), that apply to online learning and I see how they apply to our “readings” this week and our class in general.
The first mechanism is self-awareness – where individuals do not want to appear foolish or inappropriate an audience and become inhibited. I can relate to this feeling in this class. I think I feel it more because we are not dealing with a small group of students enrolled at the U of R, but more than a hundred people around the world who are more familiar with this type of technology than I am and the possibility of thousands more having access to information I post whether I know them or not. It does hinder my creativity in our introductions because although I am willing to reveal some information about myself, I don’t have the right to open my family to the same level of exposure and so cannot include details about the most important people of my life who have shaped a large part of who I am today. I also wonder if people posting very personal videos on Utube, as mentioned in the video, make them so personal because of a percieved lack of an audience. If there is no audience there is nothing to inhibit them, so the webcam becomes a sort of confessional or confident for thoughts someone would never say to a friend, let alone the millions of potential viewers on Utube.
This leads to the second mechanism of social cues – where individuals look to each other for cues about how to behave. This reminds me of the first few minutes of class where Alec invites us to take the mic and say hi – yet no one does… or almost everyone does if someone breaks the ice. The video mentions how some people make hateful comments on Utube postings – hatred as public performance. Is this a result of a combination of no perceived audience and a lack of social cues to say otherwise? Why do people feel they have the right to express hatred in personal attacks on people because they disagree with them and others cheer on the exposure of their ignorance? Perhaps this is part of the 90′s (and still going strong) “who cares” attitude of what I think is important, what you think isn’t that the video lecture reveals.
The third mechanism is blocking – where one “bystander” takes action which blocks others from taking action. Once again I’m guilty of this in this class. I don’t want to rehash ideas already talked about in other blogs so I find myself not talking about similar thoughts and reactions that I have had that I have read in other course blogs. So, I have decided that I need to write my blog posts before I read what others have to say to prevents this – sorry if I repeat what others have had to say, but hopefully we all put a little different spin on it.
The final mechanism discussed is diffuse responsibility – where each group member feels only a limited responsibility for the negative consequences of inaction. Could this be another reason why hateful responses are so prevalent? Is everyone who is upset by these comments waiting for someone else to deal with it, or are they intimidated by the responses to those who are critical of poor behaviour?
Others have touched upon the ideas of trust and intimacy so I’ll leave just say that for myself, open classrooms are daunting and it will take a long time for these factors to develop and for me to feel apart of an online learning community.
Finally, I can see several implications for my teaching. First, that any teaching of using online social networks will include proper etiquette lessons and monitoring to hopefully stave off some of the crueller comments some students might make to each other to encourage an open sharing environment. Second, that I have to get off my butt, and learn a lot more about what networking systems are out there and how to use them if i am going to stay current with my students and be able to reach them. Third, that no matter how much technology changes, most of the learning that takes place is in the connections between people – not with the machines – so I have to remember to encourage the development of a community, not just teach how to use technology.
Although I took the course route to complete my Masters so I wouldn’t have to write a thesis, you wouldn’t know it looking at this post. I think I got a little carried away – sorry about that.
Take care, “see” you at class tomorrow!
G
Tags: eci831
