Week 2 Post – Growth Mindset with blogging

My two biggest takeaways from this weeks readings/viewings are:

  • Blogs can be used as part of academic documents (thesis, articles and books) – I had no idea and this is brilliant new information for me
  • the Baby George video by Michael Wesch reinforces a philosophy I learned last year – Growth Mindset by Carol Dwerk.  I love this “not yet” idea and have even shared it with some students, who also loved it.

 

Networked Learning and Academic Citation

Frankly speaking, I haven’t taken web-based resources and communications like blogging, Twitter, or YouTube seriously as academic resources until last Wednesday. It was due to my lack of pedagogic experiences and knowledge as well as technology, and partly cultural differences from my country, I guess. Although one of my course, which was online, used the blogging activities every week, with just almost same way as the GEDI, I just thought it was because of the limits of the online course.

So, I not only read and watch the materials this week, but also explored what networked learning is, and why it has been emerging as critical teaching and learning methods. I really enjoyed the TED talk particularly, assuming most of you might be the same.

Anyway, they were totally new fields of discipline for me, but I found the fundamental values under the practice would be what I pursue through my research and teaching. I am all for the ideas of sharing and interacting knowledge, information, and materials through open and public channels, so that students can get themselves engaged in the learning activities, and also diverse kind of people are able to access to them. I believe the exclusive access to privileged knowledge would harm social dynamics as well as its quantitative and qualitative development.

In this writing, I would like to pose a possible issue of networked learning that we could face and might already happen. The first one is how that web-based informal information could be integrated into academic environments. For example, so far as I know, universities or scholarly journals might not be allowed for students to use the information and data borrowed from the blogs or YouTube. I’d like to share the blogging, titled “The legitimacy and usefulness of academic blogging will shape how intellectualism develops”. She provides pros and cons of citing blogs as formal academic resources.

The legitimacy and usefulness of academic blogging will shape how intellectualism develops

 

Networked Learning

Blogging, twitting and sharing your ideas, notes, writings, and experiences publically can have several advantages, not only in social awareness about science, politics and etc. but also in education and research. The learning is a special journey for every individual and sharing it with others can be helpful for others in their way. However, it can be easier for some than others. For instance, extroverts are more comfortable with thinking out loud or writing is not as easy for every individual and posting videos takes extra time and energy.

Moreover, blogs, twits, youtube channels and other forms of sharing information are not scientifically valid to refer in science and formal publications. It can be handy to explain steps of your research for fellow researchers in your field but you cannot rely on it in your journal paper. Therefore, if you want to be really helpful, it needed to be referenced. this type of blogging about your research takes times and for sure not anyone would be happy to share these details. On the other hand, it can be used to your own benefit in asking others comments and suggestions. Also, in some special cases in at can make you famous if your posts go viral.

I personally do not feel very comfortable sharing post even on linkedIn. So, blogging can be a good practice. But for sure it takes time and effort and also some courage to say your ideas and thoughts loud although you know you might change your mind later.

New Ways of Looking at Learning

I recently watched a TedX talk on YouTube called “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning” (Wesch, 2016) as part of a cross-disciplines class I am taking about pedagogy. Pedagogy is an area that I only began to pay significant attention to recently and in which I am still forming my own foundational views. I found the video emotionally engaging and was encouraged by the speaker’s emphasis on asking and addressing such questions as “Who am I?”, “What am I going to do?”, “Am I going to make it?”, and how to “build a life worth living”. These are all questions that are also found and emphasized in my own discipline, counseling.

The class discussion that corresponded with the assignment of this video brought up some interesting ideas regarding learning and how we measure, and even police, that learning. We have found plentiful ways of keeping students accountable for what they are doing in their classes, but we may have lost some of the focus on growing, transforming, and becoming. As I am forming my perspective on pedagogy, I am increasingly coming to believe that these are an essential part of true learning.

I do, however, continue to feel conflicted on the topic. My personality tends toward structure, rule following, and the concrete. On the other hand my field (counseling) tends to place a much greater emphasis on growth, development, and “being” rather than doing. My hope is that these conflicting pulls in me will contribute to the development of a healthy and balanced view of learning that I am able to apply in the real world.

Reference

Wesch, Michael. (2016, April 15). What Baby George Taught Me About Learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP7dbl0rJS0&feature=youtu.be

“Networked Learning,” or rather, taking my first step.

As I was completing the reading for my Contemporary Pedagogy class, particularly the blog post “Twitter and blogs are not just add-ons to academic research, but a simple reflection of the passion underpinning it” (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/07/28/twitter-and-blogs-academic-public-sphere/) and the TEDx talk by Dr. Wesch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP7dbl0rJS0&feature =youtu.be), there were many thoughts that swirled through my head. I’m going to attempt to share them with you in a (hopefully) coherent fashion. To make it easier for you (and me!), here is a list of topics:

1) It can be difficult to take a first step, but once you form a habit, you can do so much more than you believe you’re capable of doing.

2) Dr. E. Scott Geller’s Intro Psych lecture on why pop psychology exists and why psychological scientists must do better—and how they can.

3) From competition to collaboration—embracing group work

Alright, starting from the beginning (a very good place to start). I have always had some difficulty taking the first step in adding some new practice to my life or beginning a long project—even if (really, especially if) the practice or project is important to my goals. For example, I have been distressed at how out of shape I have been since college. However, even though I have had a gym membership since coming to Virginia Tech due to the recreational sports fee included in the tuition and fees, I never went during my first year. I could not motivate myself to add regular exercise to my schedule, even though I knew it would increase my energy and body positivity. I had decided I was too busy. However, despite graduate school’s requirements being such that everyone is very busy, no one is too busy to do things that they prioritize. I was making an excuse to not go to the gym. Similarly in completing research, I’m very slow to come up with new ideas for projects. This is partially because I prioritize what is easier for me—completing class work, grading coursework for my assistantship, etc. Why am I putting off these important things? Following lots of introspection (and lots of watching baby George fall down trying to learn to walk down the steps), I know a lot of it is because I fear failure.

I wish I could pinpoint exactly where this fear of failure began, but I cannot. However, I know I used to be like George when I was a child—I would do anything for learning, regardless of inevitable failure. If I “fell down,” like when I could not complete the necessary number of math problems in 5 minutes, I had my parents get me a book to help with my math skills because I was excited about the possibilities of what I could do with a solid understanding of mathematics. I smiled, like George, at the possibility of picking myself up and trying again until I understood. Eventually, because of putting in so much work for learning, my school work began to reflect it. I think this is when my fear of failure began. I was good at something, and being recognized for it, by my parents, teachers, and peers—I was a “smart kid,” and eventually entered “Gifted & Talented” programs. Now I had a persona to live up to that was honestly separate from my learning—I had to “learn,” but really I just had to be good at knowing how to operate in the school system. Because as Dr. Michael Wesch points out in his TEDx talk, the kind of “learning” we do in the classroom is defined in a very narrow way. Regardless, being forced to conceptualize learning through traditional classroom success with a huge focus on achievement, I lost my love for it. I stopped going beyond the narrow scope of my assignments, I rather just focused on perfecting the work that had to be done, without giving the material the opportunity to interest me and expand my worldview.

Part of that is on me, certainly. But part of it is also on my teachers. One teacher did take the time for me in high school to expand my learning outside of the classroom. She knew I could memorize the historical facts necessary to pass her American History class, but she could tell by my essay responses there were greater connections I was seeking. She loaned me some books, met with me once a week after school to discuss, and helped me make the connections between history, the arts, and my life that I was seeking. Maybe as teachers we cannot give that level of attention to every student, but maybe we can do better about getting them to take the first step towards taking charge of their learning—we can help them smile and get up when they “fail.” Because it is all about that first step—back to my personal anecdotes—all I had to do was go to the gym for the first time this semester, and I have gone every day since. All I had to do was pitch the idea for my Master’s thesis, and now I am organizing the writing of two different publications from it. I don’t know how yet to inspire that first step in students, but I hope to explore that idea further this semester and throughout my teaching career. Hopefully it will be as easy as in this song from a classic Christmas movie I hum to myself sometimes to get me going:

This taking the first step relates to points 2 and 3 that I wanted to discuss (much more briefly). For point 2, I mention a lecture Dr. E. Scott Geller. I was his TA for Introduction to Psychology for two semesters. In both, he would discuss that pop psychology has such influence. Included in the lecture is this slide:

He states that pop psychologists are like consultants; their mastery is in dissemination of information. As researcher’s, we often disseminate our research to the places with the most prestige (academic research journals), which are not accessible nor comprehensible to the majority of the public or those outside of our specific field. So, if all the public hears is pop psychology because those who create it know how to reach and convince large swaths of the public, then that is what the public will believe about psychology. Because of this, Dr. Geller pushes his students and colleagues to be better disseminators of research. Tim Hitchcock suggests in his blog post I mention above that blogs and twitter may be a way to do this. While he focuses on these as a way to connect more to others in your field and share ideas, get feedback, and increase interest before publication, blogs and Twitter are a way to connect to the general public and accomplish the goal of better dissemination of actual research. Starting this blog for this class is my first step in being a part of that change in dissemination practices for the field of psychology. While I have an account with Open Science Framework because I believe in the concepts of open science, we, as scientists, should not just be open amongst ourselves for the purpose of improving the quality of science—we should be open to all, because our work isn’t just for the intellectual elite.

This leads me to my last point about moving from competition to collaboration. Too often in school and even “the real world,” the focus is on competition. Grades are a competition. Publishing an idea before someone else does is a competition. Just having more publications is a competition. Or, outside of academia, getting a promotion is a competition. While trying to reach the top of these hierarchies can be motivating, reaching the top isn’t always rewarding. Always getting a 4.0 gave me recognition, but did not increase my level or love of learning. Watching the animation from Dr. Wesch’s TEDx talk where all students helped each other reach the top of the mountain that was his course and finding they were the final project—that was inspiring though. Because that’s what I’ve wanted form courses and learning for myself and others—the betterment of ourselves as the inherently curious and social creatures we are. I never embraced group work as a student. I, in fact, HATED it. Because the focus of the course was the grade, and I felt I couldn’t count on anyone else to do their part to a sufficient quality (by my standards). But what if group work wasn’t about the final product produced, but about the learning of each group member? I think then all students would be willing to help their partner get on the same page. I’m teaching a lab in psychometrics this semester for my assistantship that involves group work. I’m hoping that I can find a way to make their final project about the learning of each group member, rather than the final product, because everyone should know that the mountain to climb should be exciting, rather than daunting, because even if you can’t pick yourself up with a smile, you have a community of learners to help you make it up. t involves grou

Networked Learning and Higher Education

In the article (Networked Learning as Experiential Learning), Gardner Campbell believes that George Kuh missed a very important form of experiential learning in his monograph. Indeed, it is true that networked learning in the form of online technologies is a handy and emerging tool for the students.  As Gardner points out, it is not only about learning apps, social media, and the web but about learning the organizing principles of networked learning. Digital libraries and electronic journals are some examples of the experiential nature of the cyberspace.

Nowadays, it has become easier for students to network with other professionals across the globe. Social media platforms like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Academia.edu, ResearchGate and, Linkedin make it possible for an emerging student researcher to share work. According to Tim Hitchcock in his article (Twitter and Blogs ), blogging and tweeting regularly helps to spread your work to an eager audience who sometimes like it and sometimes critic it. A healthy debate and discussion are always fruitful – it might lead to finding collaborators for your research work.

Martha Stone in the article (Unleashing the Power of Networked Learning ) poses some good questions on this hot topic. She says, “The educational design of any course in higher education institution has not changed much in the past few years, so what has changed?”.  She goes on to answer that “The top-down, center-out approach to traditional education is dramatically diminished. Learner-generated, informal interactions, short messages, and nonverbal media are the norm in these networked learning situations”.

I think the students are accepting the norms of Networked Learning in Higher Education and it is high time that the teachers, education administrators and course designers understand and incorporate this. What do you think about Networked Learning in Higher Education? Are there any changes? Are we going in the right direction?

Instructor Provocation, Student Imagination: Networked Learning(?)

As someone else noted, the most notable takeaway from this week’s materials on ‘Networked Learning”– those connections maintained and transfered in a near reciprocal level between educator and student on and via networked platforms –there are immeditae concerns raised when entertaing such a concept; perhaps its just me (?). Before digging into the materials I feel I was definitely conflicted if anything. On one hand, having just taken GRAD 5004: Preparing Future Professoriate (Fall 18), I am more sensitive of the responsibilities that young academic instructors (us) have in being the intellectual and developmental role models for undergraduates. As Dean DePauw mentioned to us last semester, in an age where more emphasis (at least in US) is placed on entry-level academics to not teach but rather achieve and produce ‘deliverables’–tangible proof of one’s worth in research, publication, and, arguably more measured in corporate academic models, grant money–maintaining and honoring the position we have as college instructors is, while maybe at times less under scrutiny from universities, more important than ever. As Dr. Nelson discussed, along with many of us after her, the use of these “innovative” technological platforms for learning are increasingly flawed in their presumptive algorithems aimed at gathering quantitative data in aggregate to model not student -intructor experience, learning, and development, but instead ‘bottom-dollar’ stats for admins in deciding future course assignments and platform efficacy.

Yet, on the other hand, as a public historian and humanist, I LOVE and live by the model of networked learning in public venues, engagements, and practioning. Shared knowledge and coocreation of knowledge and dispersal thereof is the trademark of my own last four years of work in documenting, registering, sharing and provoking peoples on a social network site dedicated to one Appalachian county in southwest Virginia. Not only is it a way to document the material culture heritage of a region historically trivialized and stigmatized as ‘others’ and/ or ‘backward,’ but it aims to develop relationships with locals, typically reserved from providing oral history and tradition; thus a reciprocal process of education is triggered and (hopefully) burgeoned.

I suppose, to quote Gardner Campbell, as globalized creatures, the internet “was designed for just this kind of collaboration.” The web provides just as much security as it does take away in our teaching and learning abilities. Yett, Campbell’s point on student “experiential learning,” is lofty, admirable, and appreciative. However, I still have reservations. Having taught e-campus courses on behalf of VT for Summer Sessions (1&2) of 2017, Winter Sessions (17-18′; 18′-19′), I have often found difficult ways to fully embrace Campbell’s calling. Above all, I took more from Doug Belshaw’s insistence on “working openly.”

Yet, putting Belshaw and Hitchcock to task: is there really a true open anymore on the internet? I do not know, I am a bit stunned.The feedback and conversation from our first meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 23rd was, perhaps [keep in mind, historian talking whose thrived off small grad seminars at VT] , the most heated debate on one great inquiry raised by my colleauges in-class.

My response and ultimately to this week’s topic; cherish, embrace, and, above all, accept and PROVOKENo. Do not become another Alex Jones etc., who leeches off disinformation. But, I am at a bit of a reservation this week at least in considering our previous day one discussion.. Some, at least I witnessed, I have never seen so passionately EVER after two MAs and now a doctoral student at VT, a discussion in a room of 40 graduate students engage on day 1 of any course.

To be fair, I brought in at the get go of this post my reservations c. 2015 Spenser. Originally typing this post I thought “They are not, however, contemporaneous to the person currently typing on this late-Sunday afternoon.” Call me cheeky, but, like networked learning, human education through such means (rightfully promulgated by Dr. Nelson), once corrupted in a world of for-profit platforms merits inquiry and investigation for a twenty-first-century world community.

The wisdom of Foucault rings in my mind: “We are more than scores” echoing Dr. Michael Wesch

Blogging? Honestly, blogging has never been a thing that I would do in my life. When I learned that I had to do for GEDI class, I said to myself “so… it is a part of my Ph.D. program, so I am going to do it.” Well, after all, I have been well ‘disciplined’ throughout my education and more importantly my whole life, in a very Foucauldian sense. Being exposed to Foucault in my first semester at VT, maybe I am over thinking about the disciplined aspect of my agency; perhaps more precisely, my whole being…

 

“Punish and Discipline: The Birth of Prisons”

 

Source: https://educationmuseum.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/discipline-and-punish-the-birth-of-the-prison/

 

However, why not to give a shot to express my agency and my “humility” in blogging? In other words, not considering blogging as a tool to feel a sophisticated person or to resist by articulating my way of thinking or raising my voice; rather, as a way to find my words, to do self-reflection, and to critically see “who I am.” Along the line of Seth Godin’s speech on blogging, blogging can be really about “humility” that comes from writing, thinking about what I am going to say in three paragraphs. Seeing blogging as a way to respond out loud and to work ‘openly,’ as Doug Belshaw states, can be my excitement here, but not the continuation of my disciplinarity.

“Teaching” and “learning”… I have been heavily thinking about these as I start to ‘teach’ this semester. How am I going to have a connection with my students? What does ‘a good teacher’ means to me? How do I learn, so that teach them to learn and study? How can I create a space for a friendly, open, and respectful environment to my students while they have been already exposed to political, cultural, and social divide? How to present “International Relations” as a fun class to them while we have been already living in a fragmented and more importantly unfair world? And, how should I “grade” them at the end of the day? By putting them in a ranking system, again in a Foucauldian sense?

Dr. Michael Wesch in his TED-talks can’t express better my concerns I listed here. Absolutely, “we [my students and myself too] are more than scores” and “learning is more than what can be scored.” He exactly articulates my feelings when he says

Real learning that questions that you take out from this class, questions that inspires you, can drive you, take you all over the world, open up new connections for you, and forces you to do things that you might think that you never do.

And, more importantly, teaching is about, Wesch says, “not to have small talk in the class, rather ‘big’ and ‘deep’ questions” that we, as educators, should ask to our students to find ‘their agencies’ this time: “Who am I?, What am I going to do?, and Am I going to make it?”

Let’s give a try to think deeply about these in order to achieve having ‘connections’ and ‘sincerity’ with our students and to provide them with a sense of compassion and an ability to love themselves in the process of real learning.

 

Maybe these questions take us to the moon! Who knows?

 

Cheers!

Şengül

GEDI Blogging and Humility

This reflection comes from the GEDI readings for this week, the links for which can be found at the bottom of this post.

This blog works as an exercise in humility. What does that mean? I mean that every time I post, comment, or reply to a comment, I make a public statement: “I am still learning. Read these words, and you’ll see my progress.” What’s more, I create an invitation. “Come learn with me.” At first glance, my idea might seem either painfully obvious or hopelessly idealistic. The beauty of the matter? It could be either or both of those things, but the idea is no less significant.

By using this blog to document my reflections and relating them to my academic interests, I give future students a show of trust. In doing so, I embrace not only hope but also accept consequences. I accept the hope that in doing so, they might know that they need not fear sharing partially-developed ideas or asking questions with me or (ideally) in the classroom. But likewise, I accept the consequence that comes by lowering myself in a public view. Lowering myself might very well lead to being viewed as foolish by students, leading to issues of respect in the classroom. It might lead to being considered idealistic by colleagues, leading to hesitancy sharing their progress with me. It might lead to being considered less professional by superiors, leading to increased scrutiny of my work.

Or maybe it might lead to none of these things as the blog never gets over a single reader. But I accept these possibilities and their ramifications because by posting to this blog, I, and by extension all the GEDI students, make several statements:

  • I am honest.  I’m honest about who I am. I don’t know everything about anything, and that’s okay. You can see progress. It’s linked to my peers and represents me as I am in the moment, and I choose to make that public.
  • We help each other.You can see us share our thoughts and learn from one another. We accept critiques and praise alike.
  • We’re committed to learning. Our blogs document not only our path towards becoming better writers or educators, but act as a reminder to students that learning persists throughout life, and begins by saying “I don’t know everything, but I’d like to learn a little about something.”

Reading Links Copied From Week One of the Spring 2019 Contemporary Pedagogy Course.

Thoughts on Blogging and Academia: One Political Science Student’s Perspective

I’ve found that the proliferation of academic blogging and tweeting has been beneficial for my own development as both a student and lecturer in the past few years. I’ve been curating a few lists of academics from fields related to my research over the past few years and it has provided a wealth of information that had not been easily accessible through things like journal articles. For an aspiring political scientist, the information generated on twitter or in personal or professional blogs is almost always more relevant and more timely than waiting for journal articles to be published.

In particular, I am a huge fan of the site “War on the Rocks” in which policy practitioners, academics, and other topic relevant individuals write posts about important topics and unfolding events in the national security field. It offers a public outlet for academics, graduate students, and others to publicly discuss and disseminate ideas and thoughts on national security issues that may go on to find homes in academic journals but without having to go through a 2 year process to get those thoughts out there. That type of collaboration and access to information is extremely beneficial for students and faculty alike, given the open exchange of ideas and the easy (and generally free) access to those concepts.

Finally, I think there is one other media that could be helpful for students attempting to improve their discourse and communication skills, one that has already been widely adopted by the academic community: podcasting. I’ve encouraged my students to listen to podcasts focused on issues related to their studies (such as national security, or foreign policy) and have assigned student projects that require them to produce their own podcasts. Podcasting gives students an opportunity to develop their oral skills with conveying information without having to have them stand up in front of 40-110 person classes. I think a combination of these techniques could be beneficial to students as they proceed through their academic careers.

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