Inspire - Enthuse - Provoke

Photosharing – Inspire, Enthuse, Provoke?
How can we creatively use photosharing sites to inspire, enthuse our students? For me a no brainer again. As stated in the discussions, I have often wanted my students to create a portfolio of some sort. The feature on Blackboard would not work for what I wanted it to do. I would like students to create a portfolio of their work, their discoveries, and tell us how they accomplished things. It needs to be open so that other students can visit, and it needs to be interactive. Photosharing could be a way to accomplish this.
It could also be used to showcase works of others, suggesting ways to accomplish a certain look or feel. One could put up resource images, that is if I want students to make a poster with certain elements in it, they could be provided there.
Not sure if I will use Photosharing or a blog, probably the latter, but I have game in my course where students add elements to a foundation image and tell a fairy tale that goes with their new element. A blog is far better than the discussion group method, you can see each image as the story grows..
Then I began pondering how I would use it in another course. Perhaps in an anthropology course putting pictures up and having students write stories on them, or research them. Likewise in the environmental course, place powerful images up and have students write about what they see. I recall an instructor once doing this in a Psyche course, putting up an image and having the students write about what they saw… tell a story surrounding the image.

Niche Social Networks.
I like the idea of niche networking. It appeals to me to have a network of like minded people. Whether it is mychurch or couchsurfing, the idea of bringing people together to share ideas makes sense. Around 2004 niche networks came into being.
Care2 is one such network. It was originally designed in mid-2004 to serve activists of all kinds and shapes, but recently focuses more on green living. Visiting the site, it has many green-oriented aspects, from the color combinations to the majority of topics. Looking deeper, you see political messages, an article on civil rights regarding National Coming Out Day, links to Obama speeches, and healthy lving. It serves “and is driven by” passionate people who want to restore the world’s balance.
At the top of the page it boasts 12 million members, 39 billion petition signatures, and 380,000 member blog posts. I think this makes a statement about the people who are interested in this site. Whoops, found new information. It was actually begun in 1998 by Randy Paynter, to make the world a better place. His basic premise was to make it easy for everyone to live a healthy green lifestyle and impact the causes they care about. Beyond that, he realizes that individual actions collectively make a difference. Small changes grow into large shifts across the globe. It begins with being informed, taking small steps to enhance your own life, then moving on to taking action to better the world.
I am not sure if there are other networks like this, but I believe so. I visited another in the course of developing an Environmental Stewardship course for Pacifica Graduate Institute. Wasn’t thinking of social networks at the time… but I think it was one. Ok, found it, http://www.newdream.org/ Certainly it is a community, thus I assume a social network. By the way, there are many neat things about this site, but one os the best is a format for getting rid of junk mail. It works.
Would I consider joining? Already did, prior to writing this. Also went back to New Dream and joined there as well.

Failure is Free… Make Lemonade.
Ahhh… now I am inspired. Steve Hargadon’s comments resonated with my Ning Experience and its lack of success. So much so I may be adding to my discussion group thread as well. Of course, what doesn’t work should be turned to opportunity.
So, I am embarrassed that I have spent the first weeks whining about my Ning site. Of course, I did make changes to it… I did invite this semester’s students to it (last semester I was so discouraged by it that I didn’t bother). I added new content and encouraged others to do the same. Still not much enthusiasm.
Ok. Steve’s comments are great. “You don’t really know what sites will take off or succeed.” Instead of stayed “married” to this site, or the format of this site… I need to change my expectations and purpose. The first thing I thought of when reading this was changing the content. Add tutorials. Do something new and cool. Well, that leaves the content still a little too much “all about me.” Its still “me” adding content, not my fellow collaborators. Thinking of this, I came to Steve’s #2, that content may not be as important as the collaboration. Ahhh…
So the trick here is to engage the participants. Again Steve comes to my rescue. “A network must fulfill some compelling needs.” What are their needs, not mine. Do we want to share tips and trick, do we want to share our successes? What will they get out of visiting the network regularly.
I don’t have the answers yet, working through the ideas presented in this article. But I will add some new content. Invite others to submit their ideas and tips and tricks. See if I can turn my failure into success. I love lemonade.

Not So Sure About Wikis

I found it particularly interesting creating a Wiki this week. I began to conflicted almost immediately. I was writing about an aspect of my work with the Yavapai-Apache Nation. First conflict? Did I really want everyone to be reading it? Community members, ILI (the competition), others I had worked with over time. While this is a thing I am passionate about, did I want to put my passion out there for the world to comment on.
Then, when I got to the history portion, it made more sense for me. My information was thin in areas. In others, it might be good for others to flesh it out. I could add informative content as time went on. In the sites I liked to, were great resources. Oops, I forgot to add the link to “digital storytelling in education”.
I found the film in the assignment section really interesting. It described how the instructor used wikis as a class notes resource. Students could add content from the F2F lectures and everyone had access to the same information. For a more academic course than what I teach, this would b a powerful way to use wikis. The idea of collaborative writing may help to inspire the act of learning… at last among students.
I can see a wiki used more for my Photoshop course, and perhaps I should have begun there. In it could be descriptions of how to do something, FAQs regarding the course and the software (hmm, that just gave me an idea). The best part might be students sharing ideas with each other. In several years of Photoshop, I posted a “game” on the discussion board, where students added content to an image over time, telling a story with it. Perhaps the wiki would be a better place for the game. I think I will do it. I think that learning should be “social” as described by Siemons and Tittenberger. If students can interact and share, they will learn faster. After all, we (instructors) all know that when you teach a thing, that is when you really learn it. It is clear that the need for social contact is important for online course, and any of these tools may contribute to those forms of collaboration. On the other hand, the web itself, online learning, and the inordinate amount of material that exists online has a terrible price in time, for everyone.
No conclusions… and not a very academic discussion.