Betsy's Disruptive Tech Blog

Terribly sorry all... I know I was supposed to separate the last post into three, but as of Tuesday (and the last revision of my draft post), I have come down with some sort of flu.  The meds + fever are preventing me from any form of coherent thought (my head actually hurts from entirely non-academic reasons tonight).   I figured it would be best to post the draft "as is" in order to give people a chance to read over it.  Again, my apologies.

Community, Identity, Design.  I can’t seem to separate one from the others, so I wish you luck trying to follow the thoughts of my very scrambled brain.  Our class has shifted from reading a wide variety of authors to Wenger; so needless to say, many of my thoughts (ok, our thoughts) are centered on the ides of Wenger.  From my very first post containing substantial content “Thinner” I have been concerned with the concept of identity.  From the comments received, it seems like others have their concerns too.  I believe that identity is a lens as stated in my post “to be or not to be,” and I agree that is not a dichotomy but a gradient between the individual and the rest of the community.  If the community were to disappear, you would no longer have a lens, but a mirror.  What you see in a mirror is quite different from what is viewed through a lens.  I am finding comfort in this definition because you can control your own identity (to some extent).  You can control what is put out there for the rest of the community to view through the lens.  You cannot control, however, the lens through which people are looking back at you, and that makes part of your identity not your own.  In this way, your identity means something different to everyone whom with which you engage.  I am still uncomfortable with the thought of multitudes of identities looking back at me.  As Wenger writes, maintaining an identity takes energy and energy is a finite resource.  I like to be able to pick and choose (to the greatest extent possible) what parts of me I will show to other identities to be viewed through their own lenses.  This discretion takes some energy, and I am sure this energy expended will increase greatly as I have more contact with younger students.  Some designs allow more of your identity to be seen than others; writing in blog, sharing an evening (in the same room!) with friends, or posting on facebook, all change the identity lens.  In the case of facebook, I am very glad that the design is so restrictive (to the point that I feel it is not even a community). 

A person’s information is shared, but as Wenger says … sharing information is not the same as engagement.  To have engagement a person has to be a part of a community and he or she has to have an identity in that community that is shaped (though the lens) by the other community members and the other community members have their identity shaped by that person.  In the blog post “it takes a virtual village,” Lis beautifully states how she engaged with her virtual community.  Her identity was changed by her community and the other members’ identities were changed by Lis being a member of the community.  If Lis were never to have joined that community, neither she nor the other members would have had the same type of engagement.   With facebook, if a user were to stop using (yes… like an addict), the other “pseudo identities” of the other facebookers would not be affected.  Again, I’m trying not to be a hater… I do think that there can be wonderful, rich, virtual communities; I just think that engagement may come a bit more naturally when people are in more “personal contact.”  (Humans have evolved within the context of voice inflection, body language, and physical contact.) 

Back to design… design can be a facilitator of engagement.  It can help create a community or help prevent one from forming.  I think sometimes design is unintentional by it is always evolutionary.  As the community changes, identities change, and design changes as well.  Something with a static design may start out as a community but cannot be maintained as a community. 

 

  I want to postscript this blog with the fact that I am young: I’ve just had my 23^rd birthday.  I’ve got sooo much living and reflection to do.  I feel that my age may give me an advantage in the technology part of the course (ok, maybe not), but I feel at a disadvantage when I hear (and read) the wonderful, insightful discussions created by the rest of the community.  I want to say, while some improvements could be made in the design of the disruptive technology course community (possibly more structure… just a thought), the ability to see though others’ lenses has made a great impact on my identity... and Minh... all the ellipses are for you :-)

That is the question.  Or at least the discussion.  Identity.  What I am taking from Wenger is that identity is about how you perceive and reflect the world you experience.  This can even include self-reflection, and imagined experiences and perceptions.  To me, Wenger's idea of identity "negotiation" is the filtering of identification through the individual.  If I'm totally wrong here, somebody please help me!  Identity is the personal lens to the world... it is how one perceives themselves in relation to the rest of the world and how the world perceives the person. (Think of a lens though, the view changes depending what you are looking at and through which end you are looking).   I do not think there is identity without both types of perception.  (Wenger's flower, for example, cannot have an identity).  I am going to go with Wenger's view that learning shapes identity.  If an identity is not changed in some way, there is no learning (and the poor flower can't learn).  I still do not think a community of practice is necessary for learning. Where I strongly agree with Wenger is in his description of his three modes of belonging: all require energy, and all have the potential to be restrictive or freeing.  I think my problem with some of the Web 2.0 applications we have been studying (such a twitter or del.icio.us) is the feeling that these are actually restricting my modes of belonging.  They are taking up energy I would prefer to use elsewhere and my frustrations leave me more misaligned with the members of those communities more than anything else.  (Sorry twitter peeps!)  A great thing about Web 2.0 however, (at least outside of class), is that we can choose which communities we wish to engage in (and align with) that will help shape our identities.

   Everybody loves an acronym...right?  I spent the last week at NASA lunar educational workshops and the NSTA (National Science Teacher's Association) conference in Boston.  To be honest, the NSTA conference was very overwhelming.  There were sooo many people and booths.  It seemed that every booth was trying to sell an educational "product" of some kind, so I had to approach with caution.  I don't really have any money to spend or a classroom to spend it on, so the vendors didn't like me very much.  I did see the Toyota trumpet playing robot.  (Very cool... but also very creepy).  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqubUfKrDIY&feature=related>.  There was lots of talk about technology at the conference, but I didn't pick up on too much Web 2.0 stuff.  A good idea I did hear was to create wikis centered around curriculum.  As teachers modified and tried out the lessons, they could post comments and revisions to a common wiki. 

I am finding Wenger’s discussion of identity much more palatable than his discussion of communities of practice.  I feel that he is concerning himself more with the application of identity and not trying to define the indefinable.  (He even admits that identity is constantly changing throughout time and space and is only relevant to discuss when taken in context!)  As teachers, when we branch out into more communities of practice with our students (such as entering more Web 2.0 communities), we will change our identity as teachers.  Remember the reading we had before when it discussed how students could hardly believe that teachers have lives outside of the classroom?  Imagine how our student’s perception of our identities will change when we enter more of their communities.  I know there is always a fine line between being a personable, caring teacher, and encroaching upon areas that a teacher shouldn’t.  I think this will become a big issue for teachers in Web 2.0 communities.  I have always set up a screen name for communication with my students; if they had a quick question while working on an assignment, they could just send me an IM and get an almost instantaneous response.  I had many students wanting to “chat” and talk about matters (for example, where they were going to party that weekend or which student was dating someone else from the class).  I do not feel comfortable talking to my students about such things (unless the personal issues were negatively affecting the students performance in class) and normally (in face to face and e-mail conversations) my students would not discuss such things with me either.  On AIM, for some reason, my perceived identity changed drastically enough to change the behavior of my students.  I would have to politely steer them back to more “academic” matters by asking if they had any more questions on the assignment.  
    Another important issue brought up in these chapters is the issue of reconciliation of identity between communities of practice.  I’m sure we all have know that gorgeous blonde, who deep down, is probably pretty intelligent, but acts stupid because his/her identity in his/her academic community of practice cannot be reconciled with his/her social community of practice.  This student would be an example of a willful non-participant.  In order to help teach students with difficulties in reconciling identities (differences in culture, religion, socioeconomic background, etc.), we need to be aware of the many different identities each student holds.  Also, we will have to help our students (and ourselves) with the transitions from their “Web 2.0” identities to their other identities with respect to learning.  

Here is the link to my Flickr site featuring some animal from North Eastern North Carolina <http://www.flickr.com/photos/24176785@N07/>

  Being sick this past week has given me some much needed perspective about the course.  Even though I read the assigned readings, posted my blog, and read others, I have missed much by not being able to attend class.  I only sort-of know what's going on, am trying to learn how to use flicker on my own, and am wondering what was talked about during the last class.  I wonder what I would have taken away from the "live" discussion. (Believe me, I would much rather attend class than face the stomach flu, even though I do leave with a headache most of the time).  I am also appreciating the saving graces of technology.  Though I wasn't able to make it onto campus, I was still able to submit grades to the professor I am TAing for (using the spreadsheet application in Google docs... Thanks Professor McDonald and Professor Cole) and work on this week's podcast presentation. 
    In this mindset, I enjoyed reading by Nardi and O'Day.  We have started thinking about some of the issues they present and they seem to be giving an overview of many ways people have thought about (and are thinking about) technology.  I also like how the book was written by a technology specialist and a sociologist.  Some try to separate the social aspect from technology in order to make value-judgments, but we are seeing that this is clearly impossible.  In my previous blog, I made the statement that technology was neither good nor bad, it is what we do with it that determines its value; I would like to retract this statement.  Because people are designing technologies (or discovering them) and people are animals with emotion, foresight (occasional), values and opinions, technologies are "delivered to the world" with values already attached, good or bad.  Whether we use the technology as intended, however, is still another matter altogether. 
    I will keep my discussion about the Wenger readings brief.  I am truly wondering what it would be like to have a "live" conversation with this guy.  I bet his kids (if he has any) are like "Please dad!  Stop telling me why I shouldn't not help out in my group project for school because I won't be an inside member of a community of practice and just let me go out and play!" and then Wenger replies "OK dear, just mind your mom's flowers because they can't mind you."  Sorry, that was totally non-academic. I do wonder where he is going in his book though.  He keeps defining and clarifying many aspects of communities of practice but he doesn't say why he is going to all this trouble.

  Wow! I could actually sort of understand what Wenger was talking about this time.  Either he is making more sense or I am just getting used to his manner of writing.  From what I gather, Wenger's definition of learning is what takes place within and among communities of practice.  It is forming an identity (whether personal or collective).  If a person is rejected from the community, they cannot learn.  I think Wenger was a bit redundant on how communities are continuous and discontinuous at the same time.  He summed it up best by saying that they are in a "dynamic equilibrium."  The interaction of communities, as described by levels of membership as well as boundary objects and brokering, ties into the article by Rogers.  The way an innovation diffuses depends heavily on how individuals act within a community and how communities interact with each other.  Another connection is that of homophily and community dynamics.  Both Wenger and Rogers note that people who share something in common, whether it be a community of practice, or a socioeconomic status, are more likely to act in a way that reflects their own groups' politics. 

    Though Rogers does not go into much detatil about the consequences of accepting an innovation, I think that it is a very important topic to consider for this class.  We disscussed how there seem to be two groups in the class, those totally for new technology and those totally against it.  I don't think there was anything such as "the good old days" and nor do I think there is going to be an "amazing, wonderfull future."  (I'm still waiting for my jet-pack!) I think that the technology is what we make of it... it is neither good not bad; it is just different.  And it is up to us to decide what the consequences (good or bad) will be. 

  I am writing both of my reading responses in one blog.  I hope this is ok (instructors?).  Since we are having a conversation and making connections, I see no need to break up my entry into two.  What I am coming to realize is that design, community, and identity are as inseparable and mutualistic as Web 2.0 is from real life.  (Yes, I just admitted that Web 2.0 is real life...not quite what I may be used to, but it can be part of life none the less). 
    With the Cluetrain Manifesto, I began replacing the word "market" with "education," "people from your company," with "teachers," and "we" with "students."  That helped me greatly in relating to the 95 theses. (I was never very good at economics).  Not-so surprisingly, swapping the words did not change the meaning of the statements, just their application.  The three that I pick as my favorite (somewhat arbitrarily, because there are so many) are: "Markets (education) are (is) conversations," "Markets (education) consists of human beings, not demographic sectors," and "We (students) are waking up and linking to each other.  We are watching. But we are not waiting." 
    I think the main goal of this class is basically just "how do we connect to students and help them to prepare to make the best of their lives?"  If we can accomplish this goal through Web 2.0, we must try and do it (even as reluctant as some of us may be). I still don't think Web 2.0 is a substitute in any way for a face to face conversation with our students, but if connection on the Web helps facilitate that conversation, then it is necessary.
    I am still having a lot of difficulty understanding the readings by Wenger. (Can anyone help me!!??) I think it is because of all the definitions.  I do give him credit though, he is trying to define things that almost seem impossible (i.e. like defining interactions in everyday life).  I almost feel that way when trying to define identity, community, and design.  Each definition will be different depending on the person and the context in which they are applied.  By reading Wenger, I am getting a sense of the complex and dynamic connectivity between all three "definitions".  Relating to Web 2.0, to me, "participation" is the actual, physical, human, involvement in the community.   "Reification" is the interface we use and artifacts we leave behind when we visit.  Participation requires an identity as well as a community.  Reification requires participation as well as a design.  Oh dear, now I am confusing myself.  See you all in class. 

  I found this reading a bit confusing (especially when it came to the diagrams), but I got some of the same understandings out of it as I did the chapter by Pea.  When I come to think of it, most of the important, and most memorable things I have learned, have happened outside of the classroom.  And true... these things usually happened within a community (usually my with my family or friends).  To me, the community is a very important "distributed intelligence."  The best thing about it is that it changes as we or any other member changes.  Communities of practice suggests to me that the communities serve a purpose, they are meant to "do" something (i.e. get a job done, raise a child, entertain, fill a need of some sort).  What I think we need is to do is bring more communities into the classroom (go John Dewey!) and have our students practice community and organizing communities (working together, incorporating family into learning, using distributed intelligences). We should do all we can to make the school experience actually reflective of something that may be useful in the "real world" even if it includes cyberspace. 

     I found this reading to be both hilarious and insightful.  While reading it, the Brad Paisley song "Online" kept running through my head.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you should go to your favorite, legal, online music provider of choice and listen to it.  I wonder how Turkle would change her introduction if it was written today.  (I love it... the MUD's of yesteryear being only text-based and only "thousands" of people interacting in virtual communities).  She was very insightful to pick up on the beginnings of Web 2.0.  I wonder if she ever had any idea of what the text-based MUD's would lead to.  I think this course will be very good for me.  I think it is important for us all to think about our identity and how we interact with others (including the machine) not only while we are in Web 2.0, but before and after we are changed by it. 

P.S. I've lost many a good friend to the World of Warcraft... don't let it happen to you.