Let’s keep the format simple and the responses succinct.

(Post-Writing Comment):  Okay, I lied.  Sue me.

Campbell’s essay:

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  And no, not in that way…

Campbell’s essay:

The idea of letting students build their own cyber-infrastructures — roadways between their Facebooks, Flickrs, Twitters, and all their other externally hosted pages — and connecting them all to their own domain, a web space that is all their own, created with their own hands…It’s not only educational, it’s empowering!  Not only are they learning how to build, share, and express themselves creatively with the tools already in place on the web, but they’re growing personally just as Campbell said.  They’re gaining the competitive edge that so many of my generation lack:  The knowledge and the drive, to use the web to create such an infrastructure.  We’re quick learners too, so the “training wheels” he mentions won’t be on for very long.  If we are to become truly effective on our own, we’ll need the initial guidance, then we need to take the wheel, asking for directions as needed.

Campbell’s presentation:

One thing that clicked easily here with me was the “Three Recursive Practices” and how communication technologies dramatically increase their power.  His example of the forum that his students continued to use six months after the course ended (which I relate to technology’s effect on those three practices) shows how technology can be used to facilitate question-asking and interactive discussion, which is something that Campbell seems to indicate is not happening easily with our current educational system (I agree with this…How many times have you been in a class where the teacher asks a question, and their response is the drone of the florescent lights?).

Another point I’d like to explore is the BlackBoard discussion board he showed.  It was, for all intents an purposes, drab.  Who’d want to use something so…boring?  Really!  I mean, I’m fine with it, but remember, I also turn off all the visual styles and effects in Windows 7.  But since other people probably like to customize their interface to a service like a blog or a forum or a discussion board, giving them the tools to do so and letting them tinker with it is one way to get students excited about learning.  The next slide shows a forum from a class he had taught, which the students had the power to customize with signatures and avatars and the like.  That forum was actively used for six months after the class ended.  The moral?  Letting students use technology to make the learning experience their own will encourage them, however subtly, to participate in the learning/teaching process.

Despite the fact that it can be, dare I say…fun, we shouldn’t underestimate the practicality and usefulness of technology in education.  Let students make the process their own.  It may be the only way we can get students to actually TALK to one another and share their ideas and work(s).

Wesch’s presentation:

I liked this presentation better.  The idea of moving from mindlessly memorizing material to being able to actively learn, store, apply, and re-apply information, is something that I still struggle with, but it’s a change that needs to happen.  The need for critical thinking, “a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false” (“Critical Thinking”, Wikipedia), is something that goes hand in hand with being knowledge-able (i.e. being able to actively learn, store, apply, and re-apply information).

The PowerPoint segment really hit home with “knowledge vs knowledge-able” for me.  I’ve had to take many notes from these kinds of slides, and it’s a testament to the sad state of public education.  I have to say that in my three years at UMW, my ability to THINK has dramatically increased.  I can’t imagine how anyone can survive on storing and regurgitating information mindlessly.  My liberal arts education has given me the beginnings of being knowledge-able — I’ve learned how to learn, rather than to churn and burn, but I digress.  The demonstration of using technology to collaboratively identify streets in Manhattan that were “bikeable” and “non-bikeable”…That was genius.  To wrap this post up, I’ll say it’s another fine example of how technology, and the cyber-infrastructure underneath it, can be used to positively influence education.

Well, that’s it for me.  I have work at 8 am tomorrow…er…today.