Sustain the Matrix

I'm sitting on my exercise bike, typing on my computer. That's right... I have a desktop on my exercise bike that allows me to pedal for hours while working (it's the only way I can find to keep in shape and stay "jacked-in" to my computer all day.

Anyways, I'm supposed to go into my office today to get some work done. However, I'm a commuter, it's a snowy day outside, and I'm thinking about the gas I'm going to burn going to and from work. I'd like to say I'm environmentally friendly when I can and besides, it's the post-xmas time of year when my wallet hurts a bit. If I'm right, the root "Sustain" will be the most used word of 2008! Sustainable market, credit, growth, environment, progress... So, don't I want to sustain?

I ask myself, do you want to help sustain the environment? Would you drive to work and waste the gas when what you need to get done can be done from the warmth of your own home? Are you ready to abandon the peace and quiet of the office (and possibly the productivity) and try to find a quiet corner of the house away from the noisy (very, very noisy) toys Santa got your daughter for xmas?

If I don't go to the office, well then they don't have to heat the office. Those are resources saved too right? My home will stay heated whether or not I'm here. In fact, with a virtual office, I can abandon that room altogether.

One of the biggest concerns I've dealt within my area this last semester is, "How does art fit in a virtual world?" Now there is someone teaching drawing in Second Life! So maybe I can start teaching drawing from home. Poof! My classroom no longer exists. More resources saved!

How far do we want to take this? Perhaps the idea of humans living in small spaces pedaling away on their bikes like hamsters on the wheel while using virtual worlds to live and work (escape?) isn't such a bad one? I'm already doing it! And I feel good about it!

Wasn't the idea behind the Matrix supposed to be evil? What if the world came to a point where every resource was calculated to the point of precision.... Or absurdity! How much oxygen does the grass in my yard produce? Might I plant something else that may yield a better carbon dioxide to oxygen conversion ratio? Do I fill my yard with trees?

Now if only my bike powered my computer... Perhaps my body heat energy could be harnessed too. Am I sounding strange? Ask yourself this: If all the people trapped in the Matrix were released at once, could their world have sustained them? Wouldn't they want to go back in? Wouldn't they want to survive? Live? Sustain?

YouTube Channel: Classroom

From Vlog Blog:

Vlogging the Classroom

There is an interesting article over at Adweek about how universities are leveraging YouTube by putting PR videos, classes, and even entire semesters of classes online at the video sharing site.

The article concentrates mostly on the efforts of UC Berkeley, which has set up its own channel. Under the current agreement, YouTube has agreed not to put ads on the Berkeley channel. Instead, they have traded the space for the extra cachet they hope to gain.

While there is no “outside advertising” on the channel, and there is indeed a lot classroom material, the Berkeley channel is obvious meant to be one giant advertisement for Berkeley itself.

In the article, Ben Hubbard, co-manager of Berkeley’s Webcast program, explains: “You can put together a one-minute spot that markets the university in a certain way, but there is nothing like showing the real thing.”

And so, is it working?

The article states:

Within three weeks of launching the YouTube partnership last month, Berkeley had 1.3 million views on the three channels it runs on its page. “When you really boil it down, the size of the YouTube audience is mind-blowing and it shows how hungry people are for this type of content,” he (Hubbard) says.

I'm not sure if putting my classes up on YouTube is a good idea. However, I recently gave my students a list of 5 classroom innovations to see which they'd take most advantage of. Downloadable podcast or vodcast lectures and collaborative blogs (as opposed to individual blogs) ranked the highest. Starting a Facebook group or supplying supplemental podcasts (interviews with artists, extra information about an element, principle, or concept) ranked lowest. Of all things I was surprised the Facebook group ranked lowest because in the same survey 70% of them said they use Facebook daily.

The above article is an obvious example of how the media or the web is driving innovations in education. I wonder if this issue is addressed in the new book by Edward Castronova: Exodus to the Virtual World in which he tries to project the medium-term impact of virtual worlds on daily life in the real world, especially in regards to politics and policy. I hope to include Exodus into my Winter Break reading list (which seems to grow daily!)

From: Terra Nova - RE: Game Time

Terra Nova: CFP: Breaking the Magic Circle: "One of the classic theories of games and play was presented by Johan Huizinga in his work Homo Ludens (orig. from 1938). Huizinga wrote about the free and voluntary nature of play, how it is 'an activity connected with no material interest' and how it 'proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space', involving and absorbing players utterly into a separate world set off from the 'ordinary' life, while being created and maintained by communities of players."

This idea that play 'proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space' is very much in line with Ed Hall's ideas of Polychronic time. I would also extend this idea of 'play' to many other online activities such as surfing, blogging, and even reading. I know I get on a Wikipedia reading kick and hours will pass.

The power of mobility

Communities Dominate Brands: Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users:

"Now we have context. 800 million cars, 850 million personal computers, 1.3 B fixed landline phones, 1.4 billion credit cards, 1.5 billion TV sets. How many mobile phones in use today? In use today, yes, 2.7 billion (technically 2.7 billion in January, not December). They sold 950 million phones last year and the total worldwide mobile subscriber base grew from 2.1 billion to 2.7 billion. Three times as many mobile phones as automobiles or personal computers. About twice as many mobile phone owners as those of fixed landline phones or credit cards. And almost twice as many mobile phones in use as TV sets.

Phones are very aspirational. We project our personalities via the interchangeable covers, various decorations, stickers, and the massive industry of ringing tones. We customize our phone services further with ringback (waiting) tones, welcoming tones and background tones. Young people assign the same kinds of value to their emerging personality, their own perceived coolness etc, through their mobile phone, like older generations did with their first car."

This isn't surprising to me. My daughter will be getting a hand held learning device made by leapfrog this Christmas which will undoubtedly begin her lifelong relationship with hand held devices... which, at some point in the future will all meld into one device: phone + PC.

What is being done right now in education for the mobile phone or hand held device? Just recently my campus instated a text messaging program for emergencies on campus. The program allows you to register your cellphone and receive a text message if there is a campus shooting or fire, etc...

I've recorded lectures and provided them as mp3's for my students to listen to on their iPods. And now most holiday phone commercials tout the ability to play mp3's on the device. (Sidenote: the lecture's I provided were recorded live from the classroom, hence longer in length. I would not recommend this. Instead, cut the lecture down to 5 short minutes of important points. Or better yet, provide a podcast of supplementary material for the lecture. The students will be more likely to take advantage of these rather than a 20-30 minute lecture.)

I have a friend who recently graduated with a degree in Video Game Design. His first three interviews were for gaming companies developing games for the mobile phone platform. I was also excited to see that last February, Comverse Technology cracked a mobile phone to run Second Life.

It will only be a matter of time before my students are using Facebook from their phones (some already are) instead of their laptops and my the wiki textbook for my class will be carried in their pockets (disguised as a phone no less!).

Academia 2.0

Again... very convincing, yet so generalizing. To make the assumption that thousands of students from all across america, from different racial, ethnic, class, genders, etc... are all the same and are all going to learn the same is just too far fetched.

Everyone is different! Yes, things are changing. Yes, we as educators have to change too. Yet we have to accommodate for those students who still come to class with a pencil and notepad and CAN listen to a lecture for 90 minutes and those that come with a laptop and can reduce your lecture to a 200 word blog post.

Santa gets cheap

Some students may be able to afford their own holiday gifts this year as Wal Mart will be offering a $199 Linux desktop (no monitor) with an 80GB hard drive. Of course, to me this seems like a typical Wal Mart product... buy it cheap, throw it away in a year (wasteful, right?). But even still, you have to admit it's a solution that wasn't there last year. I'm not sure if it will be capable of running Second Life, but with all the tools you need for classes being free or online (Open Office, Google Docs)... this computer rivals the cost of some textbooks.

Speaking of textbooks, I've been waiting since the 1980's for my hand held digital book. Finally, it seems like Amazon has one that will be affordable ($50) and (most importantly) real! The Kindle was supposedly going to hit the shelves last week but has been delayed until the end of the year. Why am I looking forward to an digital bookreader? All selfish reasons, of course. Bedtime reading is tough with a laptop... which is also too heavy to hold like a book. Comics. I want to read/make/distribute comics digitally. Wikis. My students have made a 2D Foundations wiki textbook... now I want that textbook to be downloadable onto a bookreader.

The problems so far I'm foreseeing with the Kindle: 256mb? I have a 2gb micro sd card the size of my fingernail. I think Sony can do better than 256mb. Just words? I need pictures too. PDFs as well. And why can't it play music while we're at it. Also, is it durable? Can I drop it on the floor after I fall asleep reading? Apparently I will be able to buy and download books straight to the Kindle... Can I rent books? Free? Like I do from the library? They can tell me Harry Potter drinks Coca Cola if they let me download the books for free.

In fact, if somebody combined the above two products... I'd pay $100 for one. A flat, hand held bookreader, web browser, IM chat tool, that could download and play music, video, and pictures but NOT be bogged down by all the other apps my laptop has to run. That's what I want Santa to bring me. Can the elves make that?

This is what I'm talking about...

Web 2.0

Synthetic worlds – real community, real money

Synthetic worlds – real community, real money

Edward Castronova and Mark Bell
Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality will be published shortly by Palgrave Macmillan.

"The membrane is allowing not only economic factors to seep through, but social and cultural ones as well. People all over the world are connecting in new ways through the technology moving from a calculation model to one of communication. Our children will grow up knowing people in Africa, Asia and Europe and see it as the norm. They will lose sight of geographical distance and explore cultures and people my grandfather had no chance of meeting. The new world offers limitless expanses of both digital and analog connection and understanding, and brings the world closer together. New social connections can overcome geography, culture, and sometimes even language. Most companies find a team of 25 unruly on a project, but in WoW guilds take part in raids every night creating a sense of group connection and goal achievement. The identities that form in these communities allow people to explore and play with their own identities. The world might not recognize your leadership skills, but you can learn and mature them in a virtual world and then apply them to the real world. All this can create a close, strong bond of friendship and community."

I think it's about time that the media began to also cite the usefulness of virtual worlds, besides the usual hype and sensationalism (thanks Mark!).

Another article in my own campus newspaper also cites the usefulness of the Second Life virtual world in education.

Synthetic worlds – real community, real money

Synthetic worlds – real community, real money

Edward Castronova and Mark Bell
Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality will be published shortly by Palgrave Macmillan.

"The membrane is allowing not only economic factors to seep through, but social and cultural ones as well. People all over the world are connecting in new ways through the technology moving from a calculation model to one of communication. Our children will grow up knowing people in Africa, Asia and Europe and see it as the norm. They will lose sight of geographical distance and explore cultures and people my grandfather had no chance of meeting. The new world offers limitless expanses of both digital and analog connection and understanding, and brings the world closer together. New social connections can overcome geography, culture, and sometimes even language. Most companies find a team of 25 unruly on a project, but in WoW guilds take part in raids every night creating a sense of group connection and goal achievement. The identities that form in these communities allow people to explore and play with their own identities. The world might not recognize your leadership skills, but you can learn and mature them in a virtual world and then apply them to the real world. All this can create a close, strong bond of friendship and community."

I think it's about time that the media began to also cite the usefulness of virtual worlds, besides the usual hype and sensationalism (thanks Mark!).

Another article in my own campus newspaper also cites the usefulness of the Second Life virtual world in education.

Is Multitasking More Efficient?

Is Multitasking More Efficient?:

"New scientific studies reveal the hidden costs of multitasking, key findings as technology increasingly tempts people to do more than one thing (and increasingly, more than one complicated thing) at a time. "

"The researchers say their results suggest that executive control involves two distinct, complementary stages: goal shifting ("I want to do this now instead of that") and rule activation ("I'm turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this"). Both stages help people unconsciously switch between tasks."

"Rule activation itself takes significant amounts of time, several tenths of a second -- which can add up when people switch back and forth repeatedly between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem more efficient on the surface, but may actually take more time in the end."

"Understanding executive mental control may help solve "fundamental problems," says Meyer, "associated with the design of equipment and human-computer interfaces for vehicle and aircraft operation, air traffic control, and many other activities in which people must monitor and manipulate the environment through technologically advanced devices.""

This article, and the study that goes with it, seems a bit slanted if you ask me. When I was first told about this piece a sweeping statement was made like: "Oh, kids aren't multitaskers! Ha, ha! They're wasting time... Haven't you seen the new study?" Yet the study only proves that we polychrons are wasting milliseconds... yes, "tenths of a second"... as we switch from task to task. I think the overall assumption or argument that says multitasking wastes time needs more than just milliseconds to convince me.

However, the idea that we can cut out even those few tenths of a second by better understanding our executive controls and innovating our UI now becomes even more appealing to me. I mean... isn't that the idea behind the dashboard widget and the firefox plugin? To bring the functionality of one thing to another and yet keep the same interface?

Lifestream - Classstream?

Google recently bought Jaiku, a micro-moblogging site (that's micro-blogging like twitter + mobile blogging) that also keeps track of when you post to your blog (via an RSS feed) and when you post to your flickr. It also posts a timestamped record of what you listened to on iTunes or Last.fm and what you last bookmarked on Del.icio.us. So they take all that info and put it into a feed or "lifestream."

Now, I teach 2d Foundations and Drawing... which aren't necessarily heavy on computer use (all my students keep blogs, use a textbook wiki, photoshop, that's about it). But I was thinking about how great it would be if I did have a feed, or if we all had access, to a "classroom feed" or Classstream that would work something like this:

10:14pm Allison finished 15 thumbnails for homework
1:42am Anthony posted link to article on Fred Wilson
9:37am Bob posted to blog: Principles of Gestalt
12:00pm Johnny needs feedback on sketch for assignment - visit blog
3:30pm Anthony posts picture from Toledo Museum of Art
and so on...

How could you see this useful in your class? In an online class?

Second Life and Machinima Resources

For anyone interested in Second Life Education (SLED) I urge you to join their respective listserve mailing lists. The SLED community has been thriving for several years and can provide a great bit of knowledge. Have a question about Second Life? Search the archives!

SLED listserve: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
SLED Archives: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=001010425210852223575%3Ajldmgpuier0
SLED Wiki: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Machinima listserve
SL has recently started a listserve for anyone making or interested in machinima.

Machinima listserve: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/machinima

SL Machinima will save YouTube

Reuters/Second Life � HBO buys machinima film created in Second Life: "“You can build visually rich dense environments in an incredibly short amount of time, and you can work collaboratively using the tools of Second Life,” said Gayeton, who currently works for the virtual world development agency Millions of Us. “It gives you an idea of how animation will look five years from now.”"

Think of all those sub-par videos on YouTube that could have been more effective, artistic, or powerful with a budget. Making machinima in SL is like making movies with an endless budget. If you can dream it, you can visualize it in Second Life. Granted it will take some time, effort, and know how.

I would like to differentiate from the statement above however... SL does not produce high quality animation. It is shaping how animation will look five years from now not on cinematic or graphical quality... but based on the fact that it comes to the masses in the age of socially motivated peer production; a time when a younger generation of content creators is willing to produce for little or no financial gain, to experiment and take risks with limited resources or expertise at their disposal, and unafraid of critical peer review.

Animation, like film, is a highly refined art form with masters of its craft held in the highest regard. So how will a new generation of "tinkerers" affect it? I must admit... I am one of the tinkerers. I recently created a machinima video to promote the sale of my graphic novel.



I could not afford studio time on an infinity wall to shoot this properly in real life. However, with machinima... it took only 3 hours to make that video. And that includes building the drawing table.

Next week in Ann Arbor Michigan my newest video, "Machinima Paradiso", opens at The Project Gallery in a show titled, "My Private Utopia" (more info at the site). This machinima video is almost 5 minutes in length and includes scenes over large bodies of water, flying through a movie theatre, and down a NYC Times Square like corridor of giant images. If created in real life, I am approximating the budget to be well over $750,000. However, I have been able to put it together on my laptop in little over three months.

Is machinima a new form of storyboarding? Will it produce a new farm-team-crop of filmmakers and animators? Will access to this media in both SL and through outlets like YouTube reshape our idea of what can be produced "on a budget?"

Quechup to the times...

Quechup.com is one of the newest social networking sites to pop up and has made quite an impact on me, albeit in a negative way.

Earlier today I was invited to join the network. I accepted the invite and decided to make a profile and check it out. During the set up it said it would look though my gmail address book and see who else was on Quechup. After it got done thinking, there were four check boxes. It said "would you like to be friends with these people". Since they were already on Quechup, I clicked yes.

Apparently when I clicked yes, Quechup sent emails to EVERYONE ELSE in my address book inviting them to be my friend on the Quechup site. (For more of my personal reactions to this incident, check out my personal blog at www. anthonyfontana .vox.com). This is a familiar process for those who use facebook. However, without one additional page asking if I'd like to invite everyone by email.

This incident (and of course, a PAID networking site) got me thinking about the amount of trust we put into social networking sites. It may have said somewhere on that page "would you also like us to spam everyone in your address book with an invite to our site?" But my intuitive reaction was to click yes, invite the four friends you have checked. There was a level of trust there, built by similar interfaces on other sites, that Quechup took advantage of.

Now comes the kicker. During my profile setup, it asked me questions about height, eye color, as well as whether or not I live with my children. However, when I tried to enter simple information in the text box, things like "I'm an educator," or "I use Second Life", an error message appeared informing me NOT to put that sort of info on their site due to "identity theft on social networking sites." It then gave me the same error message when I tried to enter such things as "art, movies, and music" as interests.

Here, Quechup is trying to build a false level of trust by insisting that they are protecting me, meanwhile collecting a lot more information than other social networking sites have. Was I willing to give up the info... sure. Will I now? I don't think so.

How can we establish trust with websites that promote trust in relationships? What role does intuitive interface play in our expectations of service? What happens to our trust when these expectations are not met or even worse broken?

Web 2.0 Learning Community at BGSU

Check us out.

Back to School

After a long summer hiatus, I will now be posting more frequently on this blog.

I spoke with someone recently who told me they had been checking this blog, actually visiting to see if I had posted. I informed them about RSS feeds and Google Reader (which I use). For those that don't know, when I open my Google Reader web page, I have all the blogs that I am interested in right there in front of me and can easily see what they've posted.

To subscribe to this blog, click the subscribe button located at the very bottom of the page (scroll down all the way).

In a Web 2.0 Learning Community meeting, hosted by the BGSU Center for Teaching and Learning Technology, I was caught off guard when one of the members thought it odd that they could not "look at themselves" (in the face) when they chatted in Second Life. Immediately I thought of my Yahoo IM profile pic that started at me when in IM chat. Meanwhile, in SL (Second Life) I was chatting with my avatar's back to me. Was this unintuitive? Was I more likely to say something different when looking at a pic of myself vs. my representation of self (or the back of my representation)?

I think that intuitive controls or modes of communication become so favored that we have a hard time adapting to new ones. This argument seems in line with the polychronic classroom for two reasons:

1. Students coming from college prep or lecture heavy schools actually CAN take notes. They also may actually prefer a straight lecture.
2. Students who spend much of their day IMing and typing in shorthand may not be able to take such good notes. In fact, they might not even be able to decipher what is important and what is not during a lecture. How might the intuitive nature of communication or information acquisition differ for these students? How may it be accommodated?

Web 2.Perfection

Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students
This recent article is a really great resource for getting folks into those 2.0 apps.

You can also check out the wiki textbook my 2D Foundations summer students made (link below) as another example of using Web 2.0 in the classroom.

I apologize if the blog runs a little slim this summer. I'm having my second child and taking a needed break :)

PMOG

Passively Multiplayer or PMOG

The PMOG Research paper

A while back I heard about Justin Hall's idea for a Passively Multiplayer Online Game that would track your web surfing and give you points. An idea based off of the leveling system used in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

It has occurred to me that much of what has been established as regular practice in e-learning could easily be tracked with such "myware" (spyware that consicoulsy tracks the data your computer generates for personal benefit) and later reported to the teacher in terms of stats and points.

Currently, PMOG only tracks the sites you frequent. Passively, you don't have to do anything to "play" but go about your normal online lives. However "quests" can be created so that you may actively choose to explore what others have. Further improvements to the game are in development, such as tracking how often/much you contribute to peer production sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, etc...

Imagine being able to track a student's involvement in class by the number of "quests" they complete... quests that the educator, or better yet, the students create. These quests can be based on research, blogging, editing or gathering information, collaboration, or communication.

Also, a fictitious element has been added that divides players (by the data of course) into a certain archetype of internet personality. See pic at left for more info.

There is still a lot of work to be done in the way the system works (it doesn't actually track how often you blog, post picks, or edit wiki's at this time). But I see great potential here for:

• engaging the student through competition in rank
• identification of study habits (good or bad)
• easily tracking what materials are most attractive vs. beneficial
• and what Hall calls "Literacy for Personal Data Control" or actively tracking one's own digital paper trail
  

As the younger generation continues to dissolve the idea of "privacy", I see this type of software evolving into a 'paying' game, where players are gladly rewarded with currency for completing quests. Many online survey sites already pay (check out opinions2cash.com) and even Google asks to track your web history while you are logged in. By the time we start actively using this in education, our students may already be "playing".

2D Foundations Open Source Textbook

2dFoundations.wetpaint.com

Last year I began to contribute to the open source textbook wiki Intro to Art at the Wiki Books site. The idea of using an open and editable textbook fits neatly into the goal of student engagement that the Polychronic classroom aims to achieve.

For my summer 2007 2D Foundations course at BGSU I have assigned a project in which my students will write the textbook for the course. Using open information from Wikipedia, dictionaries, and in class lectures groups of 2-3 students are assigned a topic page. They must add text, examples, and relevant links.

The exercises and assignments the students complete will also be used to illustrate elements and principles of 2d art at work. Look for more illustrations to be added as the semester rolls on.

When the wiki is complete, the students and I will move the information from our free and open wiki text to the wiki book site where more contributions may be made from the general public. For now, however, our site may only be edited by my students.

How well does this project engage the students? How has interaction with the text, rather than the normal one way transfer of information, changed or modified their learning process? Do different roles (adding text, finding links, adding or creating illustrations) fit different students? These are questions this project aims to answer to determine the role of the wiki, or interactive editable and open textbook, in the classroom.

Realize > Now Adapt

From a presentation on new media and "digital natives" at Penn State:

1. Media and gadgets are ubiquitous parts of everyday life
2. New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather information, and carry on communication anywhere and any time.
3. The internet (especially broadband) is at the center of the revolution
4. Multi-tasking becomes a way of life
5. Ordinary citizens have a chance to be publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators, and story tellers
6. Everything will change even more in the coming years


--
As always, I am happy to find that others are subscribing to these realities. The next big step is for teaching bodies in higher education become acclimatized to these facts. How will that change pedagogy?

What I am seeking is a common resolution to the problem of integrated technology for users at all levels of development and deployment of pedagogies that allow for both traditional methods to remain and effective strategies to emerge for a generation with different learning methods.

I say "development" in place of being "native" or "immigrant". Levels of technological integration into one's life may happen at any age, regardless of date of birth or complexity. My toddler has her own digital camera. Her grandfather uses GPS to measure the distance from his golf ball to the green.

Traditional methods must remain for those students (some I have in my classes) who dislike technology or have not yet reached a level of higher integration.

However, pedagogy must adapt and allow for students who have a different way of learning and communicating due to these realities (listed above).

Making Online Learning Mandatory

Making Online Learning Mandatory: "college trustees want all students to be well versed in independent research and discovery — skills that employers demand, they say — and feel that online education is one way to accomplish that."

"no iPod left behind"

Michigan's "no iPod left behind" budget proposal - Engadget



Michigan subscribes to the idea of providing content transfer in modes most familiar to the student.

Blogging for Apples - FATE Conference 2007

powered by ODEO

Hosted here.

This .mp3 track is downloadable here for your mp3 player.

For use with slides found on the Blogging for Apples blog.

IDEAL Podcast #1 - Interview with Anthony Fontana

Interview with (me) Anthony Fontana, about art, technology, online teaching, and the classroom of the future. Anthony Fontana is an Instructor for the School of Art.

Scroll half way down.

A recent interview I had with the IDEAL Distance Learning Center at Bowling Green State University.

Digital Division, Polychronic Multiplication

On the SLED board recently, someone quoted Robert Benchly who said,

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't."

Then I found Kim Flintoff's site: Grip,Fix,Turn which has been examining "the limits of these (the Prensky) metaphors in relation to education."
"While there are ever expanding communities of open-source developers and others resistant to the thrust of monopolising corporations, we cannot assume that students are likely to be a part of that movement."

The idea of a Polychronic Classroom should first and foremost take into account EVERY student, be they Polychronic, Monochronic, or anywhere in between. Take this test and find out where you are on that scale.

I have found many who disagree with Prensky's terms and some who are just glad he used them just to start this discussion. I thank everyone on SLED for their wonderful feedback and insight into this matter.

This idea from the Learning Games Blog and Mark Owens clearly supports the idea of a Polychronic Classroom:
"If people assume that what Prensky states about digital natives to be true - and it turns out to be false - then they might end up delivering teaching that is less well suited to their students than they believe to be the case. "

A Polychronic Classroom must provide multiple channels of content transfer MOST familiar to the student and therefore would allow a monochronic student to function and thrive in a very linear, task oriented manner. It should not force a student to work outside of their normal mode of operation, in which they will learn best. The classroom may only benefit from providing a multimodal approach that incorporates both traditional and technologically savvy approaches to pedagogy.

Perhaps the word polychronic insinuates or defies the idea of a monochronic state, but in theory a monochronic state exists inside a polychronic one.

Don't Be Naive, Native, or Immigrant

After attending the FATE, Foundations in Art: Theory and Education conference this last week I returned home with four resounding words in my head: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Marc Prensky's idea (found here) was repeated at many of the session presentations as a standard for what is happening in today's classrooms. However, there were many, including myself, who found these terms to be dated, negative, and off the mark.

Examining Prensky's original paper, you'll find he was speaking the message of the Polychronic Classroom long before I was:
"instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
So remember as you read this that, above all, Prensky is on our team.

However, the term "Digital Native" should actually be "Polychronic". In his 2001 paper, he clearly defines a digital native as a polychronic person. Polychrons have been traditionally defined by culture (Asia, Middle East) and are now being defined (or created) by technology. There is no reason though that any American above the age of 30 could not be a Polychron. And this is where Prensky's idea of digital foreigners is wrong.

Likewise, today's students that have never worked with a computer (or much technology) before reaching college, are more likely to be Monochrons; or the same type of personality that Pensky describes as digital immigrant. They have grown up reading, writing, thinking logically, etc...

I suggest we work to change these terms from words like "native" or "immigrant", which carry negative connotations of being foreign, naive, unaware, and not in control, to terms more akin to what they describe: Polychronic or Monochronic.

After all, aren't we all pioneers and conquerors in some way.? Aren't we driving this boat? Sure, some of my students don't know a world other than the new digital millennium but, that does not mean they will understand the iPhone better than I.

A good definition

I have found this article by Harley Hahn that describes the definition of Polychron better than I have.

I have also changed the definition off to the side of this blog to include: "that optimize learning outcomes by providing channels of content transfer most familiar to the student."

Learning Agreements

Individual Learning Plans and Learning Agreements could be the most effective form of assessment in a structure like The Polychronic Classroom.

From the wonderful SLED listserve:

We use an model for assessment that utilises something we call a ‘Learning Agreement’
which is a combination of dissertation and personal development document.

> •      an individual creative approach to study as described in and 
> negotiated through the Learning Agreement.
> •      the demonstration of a consolidated ability to research and 
> produce visual outcomes which reflect the approach to study and 
> which are capable of functioning within the context of graphic arts 
> and design practice.
> •      the demonstration of a developed utilisation of appropriate 
> technical and practical skills in the mediation of ideas and 
> intentions
> •      through the Learning Agreement the demonstration of an 
> informed capacity for self-critical reflection.
> •      through the Learning Agreement the demonstration of the 
> ability to situate the practice within the wider technical, social 
> and cultural contexts of graphic arts and design
> •     the ability to effectively articulate and communicate 
> intentions and outcomes to others within appropriate academic and 
> professional contexts."

Kids IM the darndest things...

A recent article at NYmag.com hits the nail on the head with:

A) what we're up against

B) the headache we don't see coming

or

C) the real reason we became educators!

Comment an answer if you wish. Personally, that sort of article is the reason I believe pedogical practices need prepare for Polychronic learners.

Cognitive Constructivism

How the Polychronic Classroom fits into Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

This online resource, which uses many outdated pre-web 2.0 examples, is a wonderful primer for the idea Polychronic learning. (Examples near bottom of page.)

Blogging for Apples - FATE Conference 2007

I have finished my paper for the 2007 Foundations in Art Theory and Education Conference.

Blogging for Apples

I will be using the blog to do my presentation so... Slide shows will be added soon.
Also, I will record the paper as an mp3 podcast and post it there as well.

RE: Polychrons and Our Classrooms"

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, Distractions in the Wireless Classroom led to a post on the blog Ed Tech Journeys titled "Polychrons and Our Classrooms" and my response (see comments at the Ed Tech blog link) .

My post on the SLED listserv in its entirety:

K.Becker wrote:
 >Again, the skill of being able to listen to music, surf the
web, IM to
 friends and talk on the phone and do some homework all at the
same time
 does not automatically translate into group presentation skills.
Perhaps
 they are nervous. Perhaps they have not seen the desired
behaviour
 modeled. <
 
 They are not nervous... The correct term is "Polychron".
 Related links here and here.
 Developed from Edward Hall's theory of Polychronic Time here.
 
 The idea of education as Entertainment is now dated. This
generation of students IS the Gamer Generation, the Live Net
Generation... whatever you'd like to call it, it is highly interactive.
At home on their phones and computers and gaming platforms they are
learning new ways to network, collaborate, and research without even
knowing it. MMO's, Xbox, and text messaging (even MySpace now) have
synchronous forms of communication often with high-context relationships
and may require a great deal of multi-tasking.
 
 Replace "entertain the student" with Engage the Student.
 Beck and Wade talk about this in [their book] Got Game.

 Give them strategy guides, clear and achievable goals, a reward
system that appeals to their sense of reputation. Give them passion and
energy and yes, real world application. Entertainment is passive.
Engagment is interactive.
 
 If I've had to change something... it's an expectation that the
"desired" behavior was Monochronic.
 
 I am very interested in anyone doing research in this area. I
work in the Studio Art discipline, which in many ways can be a platform
for new methodology (although consistently uses convergent thinking at
the lower levels).
 I want to know... what does a polychronic classroom look like?
Is it completely digital? With SL, IM, Sype, and Google all open and
working? Is it class that does not have a set time to meet, but rather a
specific set of goals that must be accomplished using a highly networked
collaboration of students with the teacher as 'game master'? Can the
monochron, or normative student, work asynchonously contributing at
regularly scheduled times while the polychron is always interacting but
not always contributing?
 
 Personally I believe myself to be somewhere between these two
ends as I'm sure many of you are. I believe, the key to the polychronic
classroom is a highly motivated individual with an ability for both
modes of operation. Otherwise, we'd have to identify and seperate each
type of student.
 
 And I think they saying goes, "Don't put all your polychrons in
one basket."

Read this and you see how easily technology fits in a lecture… let alone a polychronic classroom.

The Polychronic Classroom

Recently, I have defined the Polychronic Classroom as:
Any combination of web 2.0 applications and modes of communication (both synchronous and asynchronous) with educational course management technologies as well as real and virtual learning environments. Based on Edward Hall's idea of 'Polychronic time' and the idea of 'polychronicity' respectfully.

This blog will be used to:

• Further define the "Polychronic Classroom"
  
• Catalog resources being used in the Polychronic Classroom
  
• Survey the pros and cons of this classroom of the future