I love your lost! I appreciate that you are open to sharing your curiosity, feelings about going public, and willingness to explore how the experience of blogging will develop you as an educator and professional! I have learned something valuable about myself or course design each time I’ve had this as a requirement or attempted to implement connected learning!

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I personally think blogging is a fad and will eventually fade. It does have it’s place and purpose in today’s society, although I have to say that it is not for everyone. Blogs are often thoughts/opinions of individuals and are many times just that (of course there are good blogs out there). They are not well cited or researched, which is the biggest problem for me. Why should I read a blog compared to a well researched article in a newspaper or a journal/magazine? There is a reason the NYtimes has an Op-ed column – which to me is the equivalent of a blog.

I agree! For many students, it seems the thought of publishing their opinion can be a bit daunting. I think as long as mutual respect is fostered in the classroom this may be easily mediated!

I really like the questions you have posed here. I doubt that connected learning would fully replace formal education; at least I am not able to envision it. However, I strongly feel that connected learning can augment formal education. With the internet being almost universally available now or at the very cusp of it, I feel that connected learning can definitely be the great equalizer. I have seen several grass root innovations (plenty of examples on youtube), especially from individuals belonging to educationally backward communities – these have been possible through the dearth of resources available online. These are self-taught individuals that have either not gone through a formal education or gone through a poor education system.

Thank you so much for this Atiyeh! I’ve heard from others that the early years of blogging were especially empowering and important in Iran, and I’m glad you brought that to our attention. The point you make about apps, and Facebook in particular is also worth stressing. There is much to be said for the open web – one that is not confined within the walls of a particular interface or app. This came across my radar a couple of days ago and makes this argument more compellingly than I can here: http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2016/01/20/0900.html

I really enjoyed reading this, and especially appreciated Xiang’s comments about accessibility. Also we should talk about how we understand “standard learning” and “traditional education.”

I appreciate the honesty displayed in this post!!! Like several have expressed, blogging for class is not among my favorite methods of connected learning; however, I do find that I love to blog about my field. When given prompts, I’ve found it much more enjoyable from both a writing and reading perspective to translate a prompt into the context of my field.

When you mention your son in your post, it brought back a wonderful memory of my parents from childhood. Whenever my sister or I would ask “What does (fill in the blank) mean?” we would get a response of “Look it up!”. Of course they would answer our first question or two, but more often than not, that was our answer. This was back in the day before computers, smart phones, and connected learning. Their encouragement for us to explore our curiosities is probably what got me into a doctoral program at this stage in life! Even now, as I’m just starting my second semester of what is considered a “terminal” degree in my field, I can already hear the question forming of “what’s next?”. Guess I am truly a life-long learner. Thanks for your thoughts and the post!

The element itself wasn’t too radical. In classes past, we’ve had problems with students not staying on track with their projects, so the professor wanted to introduce weekly status reports, where each student would send a 25-word blurb updating him on where they were with each project. After a stretch where students were just incrementally updating their projects without having “real” updates to give, they didn’t much see the point in keeping up with the reports. The professor was also not a big fan of having to collect and read through 15-20 reports every single week, even if they were short. Another, larger, issue was that in past years, there was always a mix of experienced and novice students in the class (and small class sizes–5-6), so the more experienced students could help teach the novices basic techniques and equipment use. Starting last year, we had classes of 10 students, all of whom were completely new. Suffice to say we were unprepared for how difficult it would be to supervise and instruct 10 students in a lab class, when each student simultaneously needed individual attention. The old teaching style of “just go out there and start making things” didn’t work so well, because none of the students knew what they were doing or had any sort of background in the subject. This year, I’ve made efforts to give more formal instruction in the class before we go to the lab portion, but for my professor, old habits die hard. It also doesn’t help that the foundry is generally open for most of the day, so students will come in to work on projects an hour or two before class starts, so we would have to go and round them all up and bring them in the classroom to formally teach them something.
It’s still a work in progress and I’m working on ways to streamline and improve the flow of the class.

I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t thought of using their mentality “against them” to promote Connected Learning. Employers absolutely love hearing about group dynamics and teamwork, people who can give/follow directions well. And that’s particularly true for these students–they’re on tracks to be design engineers, quality managers, product development, etc. They’re headed for positions that require a great deal of communication and interpersonal skills. Many of the companies they’re looking to work for have many different facilities scattered across the country, so being able to showcase their talents at group collaboration in an electronic medium sounds like it would have a very strong appeal for them. Thank you!