Writing in response to the article published here.

One thing I noticed is that their information is wrong on the origination of the WIKI concept. It actuall originated in the novel Earth by David Brin (his comments are about halfway down the page). (curiously he also talked about the drowning of New Orleans in the novel). Cunningham may have been the first to create an active WIKI but he didnt create the concept.
Structure, in the begining, of a WIKI can be a problem. Only by adding and cross linking does the wiki become something more that a regular webpage. I know that most of you are not Star Trek fans but a great Trek WIKI and model to look at is Memory-Alpha. It shows how linking and cross linking leads to great depth. I have posted and edited on this site fixing grammar issues. SO I collaborated even though the only credit I get is a mention in the page edit list for pages I fix. Also a second edit to the first.
The authors discuss process over product in relation to WIKI. I agree that this is the view to have. Given that anyone can edit a Wiki page it is foolish to consider it “complete”. This is also the danger of Wiki and internet writing in general. It is quite tempting to keep futzing around with writing because it is easy and cheap to do so. An author has to konw when to step away and say “Enough!”.

I am writing in response to the Story posted here at Texas A & M, Corpus Christi.

I think that the authors are quite correct in administrative types being scared of new media use. I have run into that at my school. I started using blogs with my kids. I told the administration what I was doing and showed them. One year it was fine; the next I had to hide everything behind a “wall”. I could understand their concern with the kids well being and fearing they might meat some predator if I wasn’t liniting the website to my seniors. Oh, Well. I no longer have the kids writing on blog sites because it is a pain to do.

I think that the writers comments about plagarism are true as well. But this is not a new poroblem. Students will sometimes infringe even without knowing they are doing it. All parties need to pay attention to what is being used and posted. The better response from the admistration would have been to have the student correct the work and send an apology to the offended party. In most cases (especially here since it was a student piece and they are learning) it woulld have resolved the problem.

As far as ownership, I think that online environments does increase student involvement. I have found this out this semester. This is the first time I didnt have to create email accounts for kids to transfer files back and forth from home. I had to show how to attach files but all of them had accounts. This is a big change. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the future.

I keep coming back to the native versus non thing. I have compe to teh conclusion that I am still on the fence in a few ways but want to become more digital.

For example I have noticed that I have changed many of my email habits since last summer. I have switched almost all of my email communications to my Gmail account. I still download email to my offline Outlook program but dont get in a hurry to look at it. I have begun to feel that if it goes to the old account it isnt important. What increases the strangness factor is that I control my own email server and have it set up so that I can do email reading through a web browser, yet I dont.

I also have been beveloping a desire to have access to all of my files all the time. I know that I have files at home I weant at school and vice versa. Why do I need them. I have found that my desire to do this has increased since I got a DSL line and have the bandwidth to actually do it. Mostly it is me being at school and konwing the file is at home.

I wonder if there are others like that.

I have spent some time thinking about other things I have to say on this subject. I want to focus on my using the old world and mixing the new.

With my students I almost have to use the old world techniuqes. One reason is that we simply cannot get enough lab time to do the projects properly being all digital. I know that is suprising with Cabell Midland having so many computer but there it is. For example, this past week the three largest labs were off limits to the teachers because state testing (state writing assessment) was going on. We were told ‘tough’ if we had time scheduled in the lab.

Another reason I use it with my kids is to try to cut down on plagarism. I have found that my kids have no real background for dealing with it. They don’t konw how to tell what is thiers and what isn’t. Because of this I require hand written rough drafts. My kids whine about this but I don’t see any other option. I  need to see them working on it to know they did it.

This semester I tried out a new technique. I had my kids write opinion pieces and get all this writting down on paper. I later (after I had collected them) told the kids they had finished the rough drafts of their research papers. They weren’t really happy about that until I told them I had done it to seperate thier thoughts from their sources. They understood then. Next year I am going to have the kids sit at the computer and do their drafts there.

I am going to experiment with a plagarism company (turn it in) and scan the papers for plagarism this time.

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One thing that  mentioned in the article was printing out work to edit it. I like to do that. I like to be able to spread the whole thing out and look at it. I have been trying to only edit digitally but still often print the work out. I find it easier to mark up that way. NOw if I had a tablet PC then I might change my view with that. Also without printing the writing out it is had to do peer reveiw. I am looking at some only alternatives but haven’t found anything to use.

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I still like to carry a notebook to write quick things in. Although I am thinking that the recording feature of my Iriver might substiute for that. Then I hazve to get the dictation converted to text. In classes this isnt a good option since people would be upset with me constantly jabbering into the device. Also how would I hear the professor. I wonder if this will lead me into podcasting.

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An interesting thought is this: because of podcasting are we movie back to a more aural communication method away from the visual. Or will we simply be more multi-sensory by nature? Will this be a new rewiring of the brain or simply a reversion to an old baseline.

I found this to be a most interesting article. I have known for a long time that the brain can adapt and transfer functions from one part to another. Having this broke down was interesting.

I agree that kids brains today are wire quite different than older brains. One example if the increase in ADD kids. If you watch them, their attention span tops out at about 15 minutes: the time until a commercial on TV.

Now this raises the question why can they focus so long on a video game? I don thave a good answer but there is an intersting device to help these kids increase focus. You can read about it here. It is a Playstation device and seems to work.

As far as capabilities I konw that kids to day can focus on several things at once. I konw that I can do that as well. I can’t work on as many as my kids but their training has been more focused than mine.

I found the comment about rewiring brains so that the visual speech parts could learn to read. I didn’t know that was what happened when you learned to read. I figures reading was located in the visual part not the speeking parts.

I want to find out more about these things.

The article is asking whether life is different for people that have been born with the tech than those that have learned to adapt to the technology.

I know that my kids are better at using technology than many of their teachers. I know that many teachers are having problems learning to use tech. I have some problems myself and it does come from the way I think.

I feel that I am more a native than an immigrant. I have been using technologysince I was a kid. I played video games and started using an APlle IIe early.

I think that teaching does need to change to support the kids.