And that is a good thing, right?  I'm sure many will argue with me on this point, but after reading James P. Purdy's "The Changing Space of Research: Web 2.0 and the Integration of Research and Writing Environments" I know I'm not alone in my way of thinking.  A few post back (quite a few I think) I lamented the fact that many in education, particularly higher Ed, forbid the use of Wikipedia as research.  I hear, and see, this all the time.  I hear colleagues complaining that students use Wikipedia for a resource in the papers, and I see it in assignments sheets: the big, bold, all caps command, DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA or WIKIPEDIA NOT ALLOWED or some other such command.  


Those who have this pedagogy are doing a disservice to their students.  If these educators would teach their students HOW to use Wikipedia instead on forbidding it, they would be teaching them not only critical thinking skills, but as Purdy argues, they also would be teaching them that research in the Web 2.0 environment is very interactive.  So why do they object?  Purdy argues that "these critics object to Wikipedia's frequent revision by anyone because this ongoing textual revision renders texts unreliable: the research-text-being-written cannot be trusted as a source of knowledge.  They, in other words, object to a public research space being writable" (50).  


That one statement says it all!  Research in Web 2.0 is WRITABLE.  With Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 technologies, we have the opportunity to produce knowledge and contribute to research rather than be only passive consumers.  What better way to teach students how to think critically than to have them critiquing the research they find and possibly correcting or contributing to that very research?  


It's time that those who use Web 2.0 become leaders in guiding others how to use these  technologies.  Wikis, blogs, Zotero, Mendeley, and other technologies can allow students to become a part of the conversation, rather than being passive consumers who take it all in and then regurgitate back to us in papers that lack any real meaning.

If I blog less often, will you read?  If I blog more often, will you read?  If I narrow my blog to just one topic, will you read?  If I blog about whatever takes my fancy, will you read?  What exactly is the trick to creating a loyal base of readers?

The November/December issue of Writer's Digest tries to help me out with these questions.  Of course the title of the article, "<How to> Lose Blog Traffic <and> Alienate Readers", should have been a clue that maybe ALL the right answers would not be there, but I thought it couldn't hurt to read it, so I did.

What did I learn?  Well, I learned that if I post to infrequently, I lose readers.  I then learned that if I post too often, I'll likewise lose readers.  I also learned that I can't be overly "snarky" ("who, me? Snarky?"  I don't even know what it means!!) cause I'll run the risk of losing readers. 

The article did, however, have some interesting information.  For instance, you all don't want to read long, drawn out, boring post.  I think I knew that.  Keep it as simple as possible.  I also learned that I need to be pointing you, the reader, to other great content, which I've done to a certain extent, but could probably stand to do a lot more of that.  Finally, I've learned that I need to read others blogs.  Isn't that the old "you reap what you sow" argument?  Well, it holds true in blogs as well.

Moral of the story?  It's all trial and error, and I'll keep pluggin along, hoping to do something right at some point that I can then replicate.  Let me know if I do something right!!

This past weekend I attended a small "Ideas Exchange" conference.  There were about 95 participants, and I was doing a 45 minute talk on online consulting using Second Life opposite another online presentation.  Apparently, the other session had a lot more people than mine, all wanting to know about Second Life!!  Go figure.  But I digress. 

The four people that were in my session had lots of questions and seemed intrigued by the idea of running an online writing center.  So it surprises me that so many people are interested in the prospect, but are resistant to the actual doing!!

To be fair, it's not an easy feat to run a writing center in Second Life.  There is the training of the consultants that has to take place, and so far, I have found no easy way to accomplish this.  We have tried it by training large groups at one time in hopes that those who catch on quickly or have used it before can help others who are less sure.  This would work if we weren't all in the same physical room at one time, using the same bandwidth and resources.  There is also lag on the sim to consider when dealing with large crowds, but it would work if everyone were in different physical locations.

Now I have taken the approach of training a few who are really interested and letting them work individually with the other consultants.  This seems to be working better, but there are still issues with consultants saying they will just direct clients to Skype or AIM.  This will not accomplish the same thing as a session in SL. 

Other issues in SL surround hardware.  Second Life is a hardware whore.  It requires high video hardware, and thereby, processor and ram.  To be fair, though, I have run it successfully on a netbook.  I've conducted numerous class sessions in SL, and most students have little problem with their machines.  Of those who do, their biggest complaint is getting kicked off.

And of course there are the issues with Linden always changing things or making things more difficult by requiring people to constantly update their software.  Today, for instance, we had our first of the semester consultation (we just went live today) and what happens but Linden Labs decides to do a rolling restart of sims.  This is kind of like the rolling blackouts in certain areas during peak electric usage times.  They go through and restart the servers.  This is quite inconvenient when you are trying to conduct a consultation.

New technologies take time to catch on and be used.  The books that exists about higher education in SL are mainly written by people in the UK where one author notes that nearly 2/3 of the universities in the UK have a presence in SL.  It will just take us time.

There are times, like now, where I really begin to question the validity of what it is I'm doing.  My research into the use of virtual worlds in general and Second Life specifically for writing centers and writing classes is just the tip of my questioning.  The resistance I am experiencing from consultants about using this space to conduct sessions has me wondering about my choice of career paths.

I've done the manual labor scene, I've done the service industry scene, I've done the technical scene, and I've done the corporate scene.  In each of these there was just something lacking for me.  Mainly, the ability of those I often worked with to even consider stepping outside of the box, much less venturing there. 

So I decided to come back into academics.  A place where I could meet and work with people doing really interesting research and pursue my own interests as well.  I hoped to work with people open-minded enough to allow me my ventures outside of the box.  This, however, is not always the case.

To be fair, I work with a great group of people from faculty and admin support right on down the line.  I love the students I work with both in my classes and in the writing center.  But the push to get our Second Life center up and operational has been anything but pleasant for me.  I only have a handful, and  by handful, I mean a "tiny" handful, that have embraced this idea and that are on board with me in this endeavor.  Others are not merely resistant, but down right hostile to the idea.  What happened to the desire to learn while in college and to experience new things?

So needless to say, I'm frustrated.  Down right depressed at times, but determined to see this to fruition.  I may be down, but I am far from out!!!! 

I've never met a class I didn't like, and this one is no exception.  Each student brings something different to the classroom environment.  Sometimes its a moment of laughter, sometimes a moment of frustration, sometimes a moment of quiet.  But whatever it is, it always comes at just the right time.

Today I spent a good deal of time looking at my students' Weebly sites and reading their Design Journals.  You might be wondering what I could possibly "learn" from reading these, and if you are, then you can probably stop reading now because you and I probably wouldn't agree about the classroom.  I love teaching because I learn just as much, if not more, from my students than I could ever hope to teach them; and I don't have to pay!!

So today I learned that many students really appreciated the "talk" we had in class last week about the direction the class is taking.  I learned just how frustrated many of them were becoming about not getting into the "code" of web authoring, and I learned that many had a better understanding of what the purpose of the class really is.  You can write these objectives into syllabi, but until you get into the context of the class, that is nothing but words.

I also learned about the readings that are assigned to the class.  You know, some of those readings that I have attempted to blog about here??  They feel the same way I do about many of these texts, but others they find very useful and comment that they actually have a better understanding of what design means. 

This has reaffirmed my faith in treating my students as peers.  They call me by my first name, and most feel comfortable doing so because I treat them, as much as I can, as equals.  Do they come and go from class at will?  No, most make every effort to be on time, and no one leaves until I say "see ya".  You can treat students like peers and them still understand the boundaries that exists.  We all know these boundaries.

The bottom line is that waiting until the end of the semester to ask your class how things went is, well, too late.  Because the changes you make based on those students' comments may not fit the next bunch of students you have.  Talk to your students frequently, and DON'T be afraid to throw out what's not working and go with something different.  Oh, and one more thins:

STUDENTS ROCK!!!!

I asked myself this question quite frequently.  What is it I hope to accomplish with this blog? Who do I hope will read it? What should I be reading? Should I be focusing this on one topic? One area? What?

When I first started this blog, I did intend on focusing a lot on my area of research, which is virtual worlds in general and Second Life in particular.  But that soon started to change.  In fact, I think I changed it from day one.  I was mixing things up, changing things around, but still coming back frequently to virtual worlds and technology.  I soon realized I really enjoyed the queer readings as well, and I really enjoy throwing the odd bit in from magazines.

Then I ran across an article in Writer's Digest that really resonated with me.  The name, "Pitching the World", piqued my curiosity.  Steven Rowland discusses his journey of querying "every market in the latest freelance directory" (8).  Rowland is, you guessed it, a freelance author.  But he's had his ups and downs.  At one point he decided to get out of that business and write really boring things for the government.  That didn't last long either, and he hated the thought of going groveling back to the editors he had once written for. 

So he had an idea, an idea not completely unlike my own, but his is on a much larger scale.  He also wanted a challenge, and so he decided to "pitch [his] way through the directory [of freelance directory], front to back" (9).  642 listings of magazines.  Even though there are times that he wonders what possessed him to take on this challenge, he admits that he's "thinking more rigorously and more creatively than ever before" (9).  He has busted through his comfort zone, and he realizes that he had "been too reliant on pitching in a standard, uniform manner on subjects that seemed varied but actually weren't" (9).

So while my blog doesn't even begin to touch what Rowland is doing, I still feel as if I am stretching . . . reading things that I probably wouldn't have without this challenge hanging over my head.  I've had to modify my goal (no, I no longer believe I can make 260 post in one year), but I am determined to have 260 posts, or some combination thereof, before I end.