Thanks for your thoughtful comment and response. I appreciate it. I agree that thoughtful readers will follow the link back though and, possibly, read comments. But we’re talking about thoughtful readers – and many people simply don’t have the time to be thoughtful. Most of us – for fairly legitimate reasons of time – skim. So I just wanted to add a little more context given my sense that few people would go actually bother to read my comment (and why should they?).

In answer to your question about my courses.

My courses are *production* based web courses that are part of post graduate college industry programs. I teach students how to use social and participatory media. The object of the course is to have a facility with the tools and the ability to articulate their purpose and value in their industry.

I have linked my name to a post I wrote about using social media in my classroom. This use was experimental and not built into an assignment.

I do create assignments and assessments for the blog posts, social media bookmarks and analysis of social and participatory media sites throughout the course but have not made the use of social networking sites mandatory but I think there are enough instructors – David Parry, Howard Rheingold and Mike Wesch, in particular – who have set ethical and productive examples for use that we could all adapt.

For me and many of my students, we need to spend a lot of time talking about the issues around the use of social and participatory media rather than blinding adopting or, worse, forcing adoption. There are great many issues concealed in the use of social media that many of us have failed to even consider or address.

Privacy, surveillance, permanence, ownership of data, user controls and, even, ideology are some of the issues we ought to be talking about in our classrooms – in addition to using or exploring these tools for viable learning outcomes.

Back to the edu punk thing … I think this is merely progressive pedagogy (and, indeed, critical pedagogy – constructivism and collaborative learning) rebranded. I don’t mind this rebranding and think it’s cool but let’s not forget about the people who started this revolution – people like Paolo Freire. Here in Canada, our teacher training involves a lot of self reflexivity and praxis. This is built into our teacher training programs. You cannot, for example, apply to OISE without writing a statement about your experience and commitments to social justice. I’m not sure how things work in the states, but you will not get a job teaching in Toronto without establishing evidence of these commitments.

To me, the punk movement was very libertarian and anarchist. It did not follow a particular ideological focus – or, indeed, any shared commitment to social justice. To me, these ideas are entirely meaningless if they do not advance equitable practices in pedagogy.

Progressive pedagogy must go beyond “cool” and “interesting” to serve – first and foremost – the needs of the learner. Great teaching is a blend of various instructional approaches from transmission and transaction to transformative.

I linked to Melanie’s website in the post, but here it is again: http://melaniemcbride.net/

That is quite an awesome series of beliefs and statements!

Do you blog your ideas and work?

I did not, of course, mean to suggest that the one sentence I quoted was the essence of your comment. I did read the entire comment, but chose that sentence to illustrate basic opposing views on the issue. I assume that readers will take it as such, just as I assume that, as I linked back to the article itself, the curious ones will go there and read the comments I refer to in their entirety.

I do not claim to know everything about EDUPUNK, nor do I believe it’s possible to encapsulate an idea that is–at the most fundamental level–about open perspectives and freedom of thought. Before writing this post, I read everything that has been blogged over the past week. I have also engaged in multiple discussions with other students, faculty, and (especially) Jim Groom.

By asking students questions about Blackboard, class blogs, forums, and other online tools being used in the classroom, I am not suggesting that EDUPUNK is defined by these. But I do think that it’s valuable to find out where students stand on these kinds of efforts to engage them. I think the overwhelmingly negative responses to Blackboard are not just about Blackboard. They reveal a deeper desire for creativity and challenge in the classroom that even the students themselves might not be aware of. Here at UMW, class blogs are becoming more and more prevalent. I don’t think blogging should be left out of the open source education discussion, especially when there is so much potential to draw upon multiple resources within a single blog post. Blogs are not just places for students to write things down. They’re a place for research, inspiration, communication, and discovery.

Your course structure seems well thought-out, especially in terms of allowing students some degree of personal privacy while balancing it with the responsibility of public academic blogging. Do you give the students specific writing assignments, or simply let them explore course-related content and thought? Have you gotten any student reactions to your system? (I’m thrilled, by the way, that you’re using Twitter in the classroom. I think there’s just as much potential for communication and mutual inspiration through Twitter as there is in blogging.)

Hope that helps you understand where I’m coming from. Like all of us, I’m still exploring this thing and, if it means what I think it means, the exploration won’t ever end.

The “edupunk” idea is really a repurposing of a lot of other ideas that have been around for a while. Namely, constructivism. An approach that fits for me coming into teaching as a creative professional and coming from a non traditional background. Additionally, as a social justice oriented urban educator I’m interested in any approaches that make the classroom a more dynamic and equitable learning space.

I also objected to Blackboard and other one size fits all software approaches because they are proprietary solutions and reflect more about the needs of developers and administration – rather than students.

As for other issues you bring up in the post – about using blogs etc, this takes the post out of the original context – which is the issue of open source approaches – and into the realm of the “creepy treehouse.” This term applies to the context of coercion that students do not have the choice to opt out of. I recommend doing a quick google to get more context (it could take up my whole comment).

My courses are college level professional training courses that are specifically about web production so use of tools isn’t optional. It’s the very purpose. However, I know that many other kinds of courses are blending in social and particpatory media into their curriculum as well – as cool as that is, I DO think instructors who decide to start using social tech ought to spend some time first analysing the ethics around their use. Specifically providing contexts for dissent, critical analysis of tools, collective discussion of proposed projects and some options for anonymity and opting out in this context of power and surveillance – and teaching IS a context of power and surveillance.

For example, I’ve spent some time discussing Twitter — I’m teaching a web PR course right now and Twitter is an emerging brand monitoring/relationship tool right now so students have to learn about how it works. My policy is this: They can follow my course feed as well as my own feed but I do not follow them back (to read their updates). That feels like spying. Whereas in my case, I publish as a semi-public figure (I still work in the industry so I also make my living on the web). I said they could use anonymous handles, create private accounts (friend only view) and that Twitter accounts were OPTIONAL.

As for blogs, that’s a core part of the course so there’s not a lot of negotiation there except on handles. These are course blogs just for assignments and course related content so that’s what they’re doing. I’ve said that if they want to produce a totally private/personal blog they’re welcome to do so but do so separately from the course blog. The purpose of the course blog is to learn how to write professionally for the web, take responsibility for our words and create content that is productive and professional.

On Meet the Press this morning, the pundits were talking about the new book from Bush’s former press sec’y, and wondered why it was so different from the original book proposal. Todd Purdum from Vanity Fair hit it on the head- your thoughts change when you start writing them down. The act of writing is not about archiving completed thoughts, but about developing and testing those ideas through their expression on paper (or on the blog screen). The same goes for other tech. Writing will help you develop an idea- so will making a video mashup, and as they are different processes, they likely lead to different ideas. We need this tech b/c it allows for a diversity of processes, and by extension, a diversity of ideas (as long as we are not all doing it the same).

Now I want to respond to Christian’s comment. I use my laptop in class because it helps me learn. Yes, some (ok many) students use it as a distraction, but that shouldn’t mean we should stop using them. I look up articles and help answer questions during class time, it has definitely helped class discussions.
I agree that the responsibility should be on the student and professors shouldn’t have to entertain, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow the format we have been doing for the past 200 years. Schools are the way they are now because of an industrial model they were built upon and perhaps things need to change.
I’m not sure exactly what educational style you are referring to, but I want to respond briefly to what you might be saying. These new educational tools are not about the technology, but about the community they build and in addition thinking about content creatively. I believe learning how to work with others and being able to think outside the box are important professional skill to have, if I am not mistaken.

The responsibility should be on the student to learn the material rather on the professor to fit the material into a pleasing mold. This is college. It shouldn’t matter what format information is presented in as long as students are able to present proof of proficiency in the subject at the end of the semester. Further, they should be able to do so in a professional manner, one which this new educational style does little, in my opinion, to promote.