H. bloGGus

Jim/Andy – just a quick note to say I enjoyed seeing you again and thanks for the info about UMW for my son.

It was great to hear first-hand about DS106 and its “massiveness”. Please forgive me for raising the FERPA issue the way I did. I didn’t want to be that guy who throws out the C or F word. That was always a show stopper for my Web 2.0 presentations years ago and a big detractor from further bringing out the beauty and the potential of Web2.0 and what it could do if we embraced it instead. I just wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with my questions and kind wound up there and forgot what a downer the word is for any presenter. Sorry I couldn’t find a better way to frame it. I agree. And it takes some courage to hold the position you do on this.

I did read the FERPA report by Educause and came away feeling that as long as no student grade/evaluation info was being discussed publicly, then nothing to fear. You must have seen that too. I also used a release form from that report and had all my online Web2.0 tools course students sign a social networking release – in part to see how grad students felt about doing it and a FERPA CYA.

After you left, I brought up my Bb based course to talk as a counter point to your experiment/model that I thought would squeeze out some interesting issues and drive conversation vs. pit these two extremes against one another. I think a few things came out in my session – it certainly was meaningful for me. I hope we can continue squeezing out the insights that contrasting these two extremes makes possible.

Andy – I missed a response to you about your point (I think) that science can be just as creative as the arts. Of course it is. And there are a few faculty who would embrace the massive model, but in many science/engineering/ technology departments we struggle to get them to use the Bb discussion board effectively for a simple assignment interaction component, let alone community building. Adopting and then effectively using the massive approach adds another level to this. I could see the massively open approach being used for just a sectioned off part of a course designed for community building — that might be a place to start. I use other tools like delish or Diigo and Twitter now to plug students in to my social bookmarking network and groups – for some courses this is the place to start.

I love to continue this conversation some more.