unexpected ed adventures

I have as a friend someone who is a leading Australian online educator. I have been trying to interest him in blogging without success. A typical scenario occurred recently where I was explaining how through commenting on blogs, a sense of community online can be created amongst a group of bloggers. His immediate response was something like “but then it becomes an exclusive club”. End of conversation.

I haven’t agreed with this view – however there may be some aspects of it which are true. Recently I noticed an educator speaking of their “Twitter A-list” of educators online and it made me a little uncomfortable and wondering if my friend’s observation may be true.

2 new terms have recently arisen – Edupunks and Creepy Treehouse. I am partially attracted to the idea of an edupunk; and in my own alternate impulse named this blog in part after the term. That I might rock a few conservative boats in my field pleases me. I also titled my blog “ notanotheredupunk” because the term could be reductive and overly simplistic. It can separate us, perhaps at times unnecessarily, from other educators. I wanted the title to include a little ambiguity to reflect how I feel about this. After choosing the name I felt regret too – I want my blog to be about much more than this issue. In the end it doesn’t matter what I’ve called it – what matters is that I blog and get better at it.

I’m also not too sure about the term Creepy Treehouse, used as shorthand to denote when proprietary software developer attempts to appropriate open environments into their own systems, as if to attract learners to something that intuitively feels creepy, partly because it crosses boundaries into personal spheres. The example used is Blackboard developing a Facebook application (something I’ve never heard of anyone using by the way). What’s far creepier is the way Facebook makes our info available to advertisers and probably anyone willing to pay.

Whilst the term may be useful as shorthand, Creepy Treehouse may also be a term (used by edupunks and others!) to separate themselves from other educators.

Some of our best web 2.0 educators started out on Blackboard as their first e-learning tool. Perhaps a Blackboard/Facebook application could lead some educators new to using web 2.0 tools to more readily. (As for the learners, they tend to be good at smelling a rat; and will probably steer clear of any Creepy Treehouse unless they have to use it). It’s also not unusual for new tools to find a home in a manner completely unintended by their developers – those of us watching Twitter transform from microblogging into a full messaging system could provide ample testimony to this.

So perhaps there is some truth to what my friend says – that we can unwittingly become exclusionary. We need to consciously keep education open. And I’m going to continue the argument with my friend & continue to hassle him to blog, as he potentially has so much to contribute.

Listening recently to radio 3RRR’s computer show with lots of helpful ideas about free software and a healthy open source attitude. They mentioned an article (Not knowing which one, I did a google search and came up with this one as an example of many) stating that the German Government is having trouble with decrypting Skype calls and that this may create potential security risks for governments. A challenge for goverments but helpful for online counselling?

I checked the Skype website and indeed they do provide encryption for chat.

As far as online counselling is concerned this is potentially advantageous from the point of view of ensuring confidentiality. It may be a challenge for those clients seeking anonymity, however there’s always the option to choose an anonymous user name.

The big advantage is that it brings both the telephone and chat mediums into the one environment. It allows easy adaption for new counsellors, the option to easily move between mediums and the potential for saving time in moving chat conversations onto the phone.

And increasingly we are seeing Skype used for educational purposes. Now all we need is a Skype whiteboard.