The Ed Techie

A blogging downside

At one of the blogging talks I gave recently Niall Sclater asked me what were the downsides to academics blogging. I gave an unsatisfactory answer about it being a possible time sink and also you could get yourself in trouble saying things about people or projects. It occurred to me afterwards (I was always one of those people who had a witty reply two days after an event) that a very real downside for many academics is that it isn't recognised as a legitimate academic activity. For instance, there is no allocation for 'blogging' in my annual work plan. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think I have written fewer academic journal papers since becoming a serious blogger. If I was chasing promotion then blogging might be an activity I could ill afford alongside those that are deemed promotion-worthy.

As a Professor with the luxury of tenure I can, to an extent, ignore some of these pressures. That's kind of what tenure is about, although I like to think I pull my weight still on University projects. But if I were a hungry, ambitious lecturer seeking promotion to senior level, would blogging be a help or a hindrance?

Blogging vid

I have given two blogging talks recently (or more acurately, the same talk twice). I have used the following YouTube video. The quality isn't great and some people don't find it funny, but I think it's hilarious.

What are you an analogue snob about?

I was contacted yesterday by someone writing a piece for The Times on parental snobbery. They had come across my posting on My Own Leisure Snobbery and wanted to know if they could use it. By the way, having just done two blogging talks this was a minor example of the economics of reputation concept - this person would never have contacted me normally. In my response I mentioned that I was an occassional anaologue snob, and that being an analogue snob was a sure giveaway of being a digital immigrant, to use Prensky's term.

I recounted the story of when we were in a restaurant recently and my daughter and her cousin were swapping pictures via their Nintendo DSs. I used to be a bit judgemental about kids sitting there with gameboys, but that was before I had my own child, and I realised what a Godsend they were. There was a table behind us of older people who were casting disapproving looks at the children though for this blatant display of digitalness. It struck me that if the children were swapping pictures on bits of paper, then everyone would think it was sweet.

This made me reflect on what I was an analogue snob about. Not that much, but two things came to mind:

• Watches - I have an automatic with a glass back so you can see the movement, and I think it is a thing of wonder. It gains about 5 minutes a week and is much less reliable than a digital watch, but I have always felt proper watches should have a movement.
• Art - it's got to have paint, canvas and stuff you know?

Now I think these are justifiable snobberies, that in these cases analogue is simply better, but maybe not. For some people photography would be another case (not me, I'm a point and click merchant). So, what's the thing your an analogue snob about?

[Update - the piece in the Times by Michele Kirsch was published here, although it got rather trimmed down in favour of an advert apparently. Not a problem one has with blogging I will snootily point out]

Blogging workshop

I ran a blogging workshop the other day with Tony Hirst. It was only a small audience but seemed to go well. My main aim was to get across the idea that keeping a blog is both an academically valid activity and also really beneficial for the individual. I used most of the reasons I have listed before here and here. For me I would say the two strongest points are that it provides a useful means of engaging with technology, a base camp in the online world as it were, and that of all the academic activity I engage in, blogging is the one I probably enjoy the most (apart from having drinks in a bar at a conference in Hawaii, say, which is also quite nice). It is where a lot of the stuff you came into academia for in the first place, but has been eroded by increased administration, workloads and formal metrics (casts disapproving look at RAE), still persists - for example, lively debate, creativity, new ideas, good humour, collegiality, the progressive development of half-formed concepts through dialogue, etc.

A small aside - I tried to make the presentation more graphics heavy and less word intensive. In other words I was trying to increase its glanceability - it took me a lot longer to produce, with the inevitable conclusion that glanceability is hard. Reminds me of the Nathaniel Hawthorne quote 'Easy reading is damn hard writing.'

Slideshare file below:

What does the Facebook API extravaganza tell us?

I know everyone has blogged about the recent openning up of Facebook to allow lots of new applications, but hey, it's half term and I've only just got around to looking at it. Tony Hirst makes the point that it's beginning to look like a learning environment. I've had a play with it, looked at the widgets, updated some stuff and here are some random thoughts on what it signifies:

• Technology acts as a pull factor - I've gone back to Facebook because I wanted to see what new widgets they had (I added in the LastFM one). This demonstrates something I was talking about with the openlearn guys last week, that is by doing fun stuff with technology you drive traffic to your site from the users of that technology who are keen to see how it is being used. In educational terms this means doing fun stuff with educational content so that people want to see what you've done with Google maps, or twitter say.
• The social network is the starting point - rather than content being the main focus and creating a network around this, Facebook demonstrates that the network is the key asset, and then you add value to this.
• Adding features generates interest - I keep finding things in Facebook that I need to do. I'm not an avid user, so for instance I've only just joined a network (the Open University) and a group (Educational Technologists). But having these tasks makes me want to come back and see what else I can do. The educational point is that often we resist adding more features or tasks for fear it will confuse students. I've written about this in the VLE book - that a lot of the web 2.0 approach (of which rapid development is one) is at odds with higher education approaches (such as testing and scoping  features rigorously). What the pull in to Facebook illustrates is that more features creates a more vibrant environment. Not rocket science I admit, but still not something we necessarily apply to VLEs.
• Openness is the key to development - if we didn't know it before, then the Facebook example provides further evidence that open APIs and mixing of 3rd party software is the way to create a dynamic, vibrant site. The educational point is that most VLEs and many universities still want to create their own versions of tools.

I mentioned some work we were doing on a new social network based model of learning, which looks to be moving forward. It strikes me that 'Facebook + some educational widgets + open content' wouldn't be a bad starting point.

Academic publishing - what's the point?

I had a message today saying that an article (The distance from isolation) I submitted to the journal Computers and Education has been published. Good news one might have thought, except check the date it was submitted - November 2004. That's three years to publish an article (admittedly it was available online a year after submission). Now, it's a good article and all that, but it's hardly current. For a start I address three technologies, but web 2.0 doesn't get a mention since the phrase hadn't been coined then. If I was writing it now, this would certainly form the crux of my argument (which thankfully has held up reasonably well).

Not all journals take this long to publish, but it does make you wonder what is the point of journal publication? In a classic example of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it seems that the function of journals is now to feed the Research Assessment Exercise. Initially the RAE used publications as an indication of the quality of research. Now it is the justification for the journals themselves. I learn a lot more from blogs now than I do journals, and I have also noticed that since keeping a blog I have published fewer 'proper' articles. Surely journals can't survive when they a) cost a lot of money, b) are out of date and c) don't facilitate the type of engaging debate you find in the blogosphere.

I know people will put down the marker of quality here, but I think a blog posting does undergo a form of peer review - if you post something stupid you can bet someone will tell you. And there are a host of metrics that indicate the quality of a blog, such as your technorati authority (mine remains doggedly low).

I've had some discussions with people at the OU about whether we should start encouraging and recognising blogging as an academic activity. I would like to see this,  but I don't want the RAE or the OU to start formalising the process, since this will stifle it. The moral here seems to be that formal metrics kill creativity. From a career perspective it is best to have a high ranking in the former, but for your own devlopment (and ultimately the health of the organisation), you want to be in the creativity camp.