Freshers on Facebook

The Guardian has this timely article on how Facebook is used by students before they arrive at university. It's Freshers' Week now, here at the University of Reading and so all the students who have been meeting online in preparation for their arrival at university will now be meeting face to face. I wonder how many surprises they'll be, how different students come across from the identities they present in their profiles.

There are a number of interesting points in the article - which you can read for yourself - mainly from research done by the University of Leicester. Among them is the issue raised again and again here at Reading regarding the distinction between academic and social areas online.

I don't think students necessarily want lecturers to use Facebook (which they see as their space for socialising). At the most, I'd say they want their lecturers to use tools like it to make communicating and accessing course materials more efficient - and even that is debatable. The issue really boils down to whether these new technologies are good for teaching and learning - an obvious point but one that can be easily forgotten in the anxiety of keeping up with the times or in the hot pursuit of new toys.

When it comes to the social side - well, I've already blogged about the nature of friendship on Facebook and the different policies users might adopt when interacting on Facebook or social networking sites in general. I'm sure a lot stockpiling of friends goes on, partly so's there's a readymade support network in place by the time students arrive, partly so's the numbers for everyone are higher.

That may sound cynical but I'm increasingly beginning to think the nature of the site itself is cynical. Having friends counts and newsfeeds of what everyone is up to all the time can't be good for a healthy perception of life. Lecturers should be looking into tools like Facebook when they can, not so they can use them but so they can know what it is that shapes their students' worldview.

R.I.P. D.F.W.

One of my favourite writers died at the weekend. The news shocked me more than any other news I can think of.

David Foster Wallace was only 46. His short stories and essays are all very personal so, although I never met him, I felt like I knew him.

More shocking is that it looks as though it was a suicide. This is especially upsetting given that he was not only extremely talented but that suicide, depression, isolation, alienation, loneliness, were all themes in his work; I always assumed that his ability to riff on these difficult topics and make them personal and funny and moving was merely another facet of his genius, not that he was writing from personal thoughts and experiences.

I haven't even mentioned the effect he has had on contemporary fiction and literature. His writing inspired many to reassess literature's purpose in a world increasingly filled with distractions. His death no doubt will lead to further reassessments. Hopefully, it won't overshadow his work.

Anyway, there are a lot of tributes and memoirs being posted on the web - among which, the following:

@ The New York Times
@ The Times Online
@ guardian.co.uk

and, more personal than the above:

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

BACK-POSTED: 27/06/2009

Blog of the Week: Orwell's Diaries

I'm technically in the States as this is being published but am writing it before I go for scheduled release. So it seems appropriate that I should mention this blog, which is similarly delayed (albeit by much longer)...

‘When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page’, wrote George Orwell, in his 1939 essay on Charles Dickens.

From 9^th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. The Orwell Prize is delighted to announce that, to mark the 70^th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time. The diaries end in 1942, three years into the conflict.

So: one of our greatest political writers is "blogging" seventy years after he first wrote his the content. Enough said, I think.

Physics Rap, Anyone?

Found this video courtesy of the Pynchon-List today (yes, that's a mailing list dedicated to Pynchon).



e-Learning at its best or worst? I found it educational anyway. And it's like old-school hip-hop. What's not to love?

New Look del.icio.us

Anyone seen the new look del.icio.us? It's very sexy...



I only spotted it today! Not sure when it happened...

I wonder if this'll make it harder to explain for "social bookmarking for beginners" sessions...

You can get to my bookmarks, if you're interested, by going to delicious.com/catabolickid

ILP Walkthrough

Continued from previous set of screenshots... (As ever, click to enlarge/expand images.)



'ILP' stands for 'Individual Learner Profile'...



... a document which students are encouraged to fill out to aid them in the reflective process.

It was designed by Caroline Jacobs at the University of Portsmouth and adapted for the University of Reading by my colleague, Sarah Morey. The version we're seeing here has been further adapted (by me) from a paper-based form to a slightly more interactive web-form.




The idea of it being like this is that it fits seamlessly with the portfolio course-integration that I developed to making using e-portfolios in Blackboard easier.

If the user clicks the ILP option accidentally, they can always back out by clicking the familiar-looking 'Cancel' button at the bottom. As you can see in this screenshot, they're asked to confirm that this is what they want to do and warned they will lose any answers if they click 'OK'.



If the student clicks 'Submit' but hasn't answered every question, a little alert box tells which ones they need to go back and do.



This way, the students can't miss anything; they have to complete all questions before they continue.





When they finally do click 'Submit', the answers are automatically stored in their portfolio.

More on Step Four soon.

Blog of the Week: Greta Christina's Blog

Does 'blog of the week' sound patronising? I hope not. All I mean by it is that I've been looking at a particular blog this week and think it worthy of mention here. I don't mean to suggest that I've looked at all the blogs on the web and that this is the best out there, this week. It might not even be the best of what I have read in any given week.

But the blog I've been revisiting this week must surely be up there. Here's a nod in the direction of Greta Christina. As she herself says, she uses her blog to riff on "sex, atheism, politics, dreams, and whatever". She's been blogging, or better yet "thinking out loud", since 2005.

I found her site some months back after I'd read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Despite being an atheist myself (albeit with an interest in religion), I wasn't very impressed with some of its arguments (especially with regards to moral philosophy). So I was on the look-out for other arguments from different viewpoints. And my search for the term "atheism" brought up this surely now-famous posting about anger at religious views in America and the world today. I recommend reading it, no matter what your views are concerning religion as I think it makes some very good points and passionately too.

More generally, I like the presentation of her site. She breaks up the text with little pictures, some of them purely decorative, some illustrative of some point and others poignant or disturbing. Check out the simple image of a coathanger in the "Atheists and Anger" post, for example.

Of what I've read, I think I can safely say that Greta Christina is always opinionated but never patronising, always well-informed but never digressive, and always engaging but always on equal terms with her readers.