It’s probably an indication of how bolted down things are that hearing Gardner Campbell talk about how each students should have their own domain and narrate/aggregate their educational experience sounds like he’s ready to start a revolution. It’s not that crazy. It’s an online eportfolio that students have complete control over and overall is likely cheaper than buying into an existing eportfolio system. And they’d have it at the end, if they wanted to keep it. It’s like a narrative eportfolio system. That, ideally, as one of the commenters in the presentation pointed out, would have some attributes that would allow instructors to pull in posts like this ds106 blog is doing.

But, it kind of sounds crazy. Power in the hands of the students! What will they do! Besides customize it. Not use it, a lot of them, unless it’s for points, and use it quite a bit, others, because they like it and like to pick it up and fiddle with it then come back to it later. But it’s interesting as a system, because if you had access to something like this as an instructor you’d have all sorts of options in terms of assignments and community building.

Great ideas:

• Decorating their locker – it IS non-trivial how people perceive that they are perceived. How often do people change their avatar on Facebook. How keen was I to find a “good picture” of myself to get up in Facebook, Twitter, etc. This is insightful. I’m not convinced it’s critical, but it does add motivation to participate – I participate more in things I can customize and make my own.
• Participating “in depth” in the consequences of our own actions.

Good from Galago on this: Why Personal Cyberinfrastructure Matters. Made me think:

I thought about the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The basic idea is, at least in the first little bit that I read before it got too dense and I gave up, the narrator has an older, solid bike and his buddy has a nice new BMW. The narrator does basic maintenance on his, including some troubleshooting and repair, his buddy takes it to a shop. There’s power, fun, and security (and more confidence in the system and one’s ability to survive in it) with doing things yourself. I believe that’s true out of the gate. When people take the time to make things theirs, like a locker or experimenting with CSS or trying plugins, it can get fun. And energizing.