Etale – Life in the Digital World

interdisciplinary musings on life and education in the digital world

Archive for category sites and sources

Freelance Writing on the Web

Jan 24

Posted by etale in editorials, journaling, sites and sources | Comments off

I recently started to explore the world of freelance writing on the web (beyond blogging). Up to this point, most of my writing has come in the form of blogging, so I thought it was time to start exploring some of the “write for pay” communities. My interest is less in making significant money than it is in better understanding this part of the digital world.

So, I created an account at three of the more popular options: ehow.com, associatedcontent.com, and textbroker.com. I’ll spend some time browsing and getting to know the dynamics of each community, but here are some of my initial thoughts:

Associated Content – Users are able to post unique articles or to submit work that they have published elsewhere. In addition, one can get a flat fee from some writing (if what they write is accepted). I’ve read several articles about how people are trying to make a living at this, but it seems difficult. Based upon the articles that I’ve read so far, those boasting of making a living at Associated Content are talking about an annual income of less than $30,000 a year by putting in 6-8 hours a day. Given that you have to pay for your own health insurance and benefits, I’m not sure that this would work for many. Nonetheless, it seems like a great way to contribute solid content on the web, refine your writing amid an online community, and to even make a little extra money. I don’t have a good sense of the social dynamics yet, but I hope to learn and post more over the next year.

Textbroker.com – The registration process for this one felt more like you were applying for a job. You even submit a brief writing sample that gets reviewed. Based upon the review, you get an initial rating, somewhere between one and four stars. They reserve five stars for the “professionals” although I’m not yet sure how they define “professional.” Your rating impacts the writing projects for which you are eligible. Then, like with Associated Content, you can review a list of writing projects for hire. Most of the ones that I saw were offering payment of under $5 for what would probably take me 30 minutes to 1 hour to write. So, in terms of income, we are probably talking about reasonable shooting for $3-10 / hour at the most. Again, I’m new to this community, so I hope to get a better sense of how the social networking plays out.

Ehow.com – I’ve read Ehow articles in the past when I came across them in a Google search. The content has ranged from great to mediocre. Until two days ago, I didn’t have an account. The moment that I created one, I started getting a litany of invitations to be friends (think Facebook-like interface but far more friendly to newcomers and strangers). This is clearly a way that writers network and help each other out. You can help others by rating their articles, posting comments on their articles, and subscribing to a feed of their work. Among the three, this is the most social. Yes, people are there to make money, but there seems to be some genuine human interaction taking place also. Given the immediate human interactions, I’m most excited about further exploring this community. I even jumped right in with posting a few articles. If you are interested, you can follow me here.

Or, you might want to go straight to my first two articles:

How to Teach in a Way That Others Learn

How to Get a Job as an Online Adjunct Professor

How to be a Good Digital Citizen

I’ll write more as I learn more :-) .

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Five Technologies / Movements that Will Turn Textbooks into Antiques

Jun 6

Posted by etale in blog, books, digital scholarship, editorials, education, educational technology, sites and sources | Comments off

Open Source Textbook Initiatives - Historically, textbooks have been the single largest line item on many school budgets when it comes to curriculum. We now see initiatives like Curriki and the California Open Source Textbook Initiative that might challenge this. Imagine a day when that line item is cut or reallocated toward people (curriculum specialists, instructional designers, etc.) and support technologies. With Open Source Textbook Initiatives as well as WikiTexts, we get a text that is continually being updated (not having to pay for a new version / edition every few years?); that can be easily customized to meet the needs of a given course, school, district; that can be used as a whole or in part; and that can be easily distributed in a variety of formats. Oh, and it many cases this option might be free or, if one needs a paper version, the cost of printing.

Electronic Reading Devices – The Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Netbooks, and a variety of emerging devices make it possible to deliver content, even entire textbooks and course readers electronically. These technologies are bridging the paper and electronic world of text and other media. While the book is an amazing technology, it has limitations that can be overcome by these new devices. With an iPhone or similar reader, I can be on a hike in the local forest and have immediate access to all of my texts; not to mention the ability to make use of the GPS capabilities, communication tools, and the ability to record or discuss my experiences (record notes, take and share pictures, watch video tutorials on how to identify poison ivy, email someone, talk to someone live or asynchronously, mark my current location on a map). Rather than walking through the woods with a backpack full of books (not that anyone would do this), I have my textbooks in my pocket (backpack optional, bug spray required…at least here in Wisconsin).

Online Social Networks and Mashup Technologies - I already mentioned wikis, but this deserves a separate category. In the first item, I was thinking more in terms of systematic organized projects. However, online communities and social networks make is easier for educators and course designers to learn about a variety of individual sources, organize them into themes/topics/units/chapters, link to them or embed them in a central course resource location, and bypass the use of a textbook altogether. If I am teaching Geography, I can use Google Earth and Google Maps, embed links to relevant sources right into my course blog/wiki/iGoogle page, create or borrow YouTube videos for mini-lectures, have students contribute their own resources… You get the idea. Before long, I have a customized, powerful, content-rich, multimedia textbook for my class. It really isn’t even a textbook is it? It is a multimediabook. Why would I even consider using a traditional textbook if I have the time and resources to do something like this? Maybe I just answered my own question. How many educators are willing to set aside the time and resources to do this? This does require creativity, the ability to analyze and synthesize information, and good instructional design sense. Take a look at the National Educational Technology Standards for Students and Teachers. These are the very skills that we are expecting of the current and upcoming generations of students, teachers, and administrators in the k-12 world. And they certainly seem to be abilities that we should expect from University professors who carry titles before and after their names that are supposedly connected to mastery or expertise in one or more disciplines.

Custom Texts / Readers - These have been around for years, especially in higher education. A professor creates a collection of articles, book chapters, and essays; and it is sold as an inexpensive text at the University or nearby bookstore. Now let’s add the digital element. Imagine a bookstore that will take a box of articles, books, essays, disks, files on flash drives, images, audio files, and video clips. They will take care of getting all of the necessary copyright permissions, then, based upon the instructions of the teacher or design team, they build an indexed electronic text that could be purchased online and made immediately available to students. If something changes mid-year, even mid-semester, the text can be updated with the new resources with minimal effort or cost. If a student has a learning disability, the content can be easily converted to a form that works best for that student. The instructor could even gain permission from students and include examples of exceptional student work in the next version of the reader. I may be stretching the boundaries of reality a bit, but imagine this. Imagine that people put their readers on the web for others to purchase…a ready-made option for the lazy (or busy) instructor. And those student examples that were included? What if the students received a small source of revenue out of the deal? Now that would be a brand new motivation for students to perform well on an assignment.

Hybrid Organic Textbooks (HOT) - We already have a decade of textbook companies building electronic versions of their books, rich with web-based resources, multimedia resources, pools of quiz questions, even full learning activities. In fact, some of these web-enhanced textbooks have become so full-featured that the textbook and web-based resources become the entire course (something that I lament…the last thing that we need is to further confuse the words “textbook” and “curriculum”. I’ll save that for another post). However, there is potential here. Imagine if textbook companies embraced the best of grass roots social media while also providing a core paper / electronic hybrid resource. This might include a paper-based text that could also be used on a mobile reader or device. At the same time, the publisher would have a web presence, adding new and quality resources to the text. Add to that a dynamic community and repository of client-produced lessons, resources, images, videos, discussions, keypal programs, scheduled guest presentations, and collaborative activities. Now we get true convergence of paper-based textbooks, web-based supplements, open source texts and wikis, electronic readers, and grassroots social networking. If publishers or a small group of motivated educators can catch this full vision, then everyone will get a chance to experience a powerful and positive disruption in k-12 education. Do I have any venture capitalists readings this post?

What type of communication technology user are you?

Apr 29

Posted by etale in sites and sources | Comments off

Check out The Internet Typology Test at pewinternet.com. It will tell you which category of user best describes you. If you are interested, I’m a Connector :-) .

Happy Birthday to the Blog – Get to to Know the Culture of Blogging

Dec 28

Posted by etale in blog, educational technology, sites and sources | Comments off

In honor of the ten year birthday of blogs, here are the top five best online resources about the culture of blogging.  If you take the time to read and digest each of these you will have a good introductory understanding of blogging in digital culture.  Don’t expect simple articles in this list.  While these are not all academic sources, they are all deep and rich explorations and musings on the blogosphere.

‘Web Log’ Celebrates 10th Anniversary - A wonderful and informative NPR series on “the evolution of the blogosphere.”

A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers (PEW Internet and American Life Project) from July 19, 2006 – This is a year and a half old, but provides some rich data about blogging culture.

Carlson Analytics – Blog Statistics and demographics – If you want a solid understanding of blogging in the digital world, take the time to work through this information.  This is a thorough and up-to-date introduction to blogs.  Don’t stop at the first page.  This takes you page by page through different topics about blogging (statistics, blogging types, tools and primers, community, journalism and politics, issues, law, dollars, enterprise blogging, genres, lingo, and more).

What’s the Ballyhoo about Blogs-  From the abstract:

“Ten librarians offer spontaneous, even off-the-cuff, opinions about the pros and cons of blogs and blogging. Are blogs a substitute for print communication or older electronic resources such as static Web pages and electronic discussion lists? What will the future hold for blogs and their content? The librarians reflect on these questions and describe their own use of blogs.”

While often speculative, this is a useful and thought-provoking piece.

Blogpulse - Now that you have read about blogs, you can use BlogPulse to begin your own research on worldwide blogs.  You can use tools on this site to identify and chart trends among bloggers around the world.  Is President Bush being blogged about more or less over the last two months?  Which is being blogged about more; Shiites, Sunnis, or Kurds?   Or here is my favorite feature.  You can use the  BlogPulse Conversation Tracker to watch stories travel through the blogosphere.  This lets you track the origin of a story as well as learn about low bloggers blog about other blog entries :-) . 

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Christmas in Second Life

Dec 26

Posted by etale in blog, sites and sources | Comments off

I didn’t spend more than ten minutes in Second Life today, only enough time to grab a quick screen capture. But on Sunday night I did spend an hour or two scanning for Christmas-related activities in Second Life. My quick scan revealed:

  • Dozens of Christmas-related sales (see image below)
  • Over 150 Christmas-related events
  • A wide variety of locations with Christmas decorations, including a few nice nativity scences (see image below)
  • A handful of Christmas parties scheduled, including one that gives prizes for the best costumes.
  • Some Christmas-related meetings from a few Christian groups
  • Second Life Churches adding Christmas decorations (See picture below from ALM CyberChurch)

What I had hoped to find were live nativity scenes, Christmas services, etc. I didn’t find any, although I only looked for an hour or two and they may have been announced only to members of a given group. I have visited many of the Second Life churches over the past year and attended several hosted events (including worship services). It is an interesting element of cyberculture, efforts to represent traditional and new strands of spirituality in the digital world.

Of course, Christmas is an interesting one. A central teaching surrounding Christmas is the Incarnation, God coming in the flesh. Think about that one for a moment- celebrations of the Incarnation in virtual worlds.

Nativity

Christmas Sale

Cyberchurch

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Generation Y Teachers

Dec 22

Posted by etale in reviews, sites and sources | Comments off

My favorite quote for the week comes from an article published today by Sabrina Laine at Education Week (You may need to register first to read the article).

“Generation Y teachers want to create, not conform. They want to color off the page, but are told to teach to the test. They want to work in small groups, but are given unmanageable numbers of students. They want to commune with colleagues online and across the school, but they are confined to their classrooms and limited to one-on-one teacher mentoring.”

The author is director of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, a site that I checked out after reading the article- like the article, it is worth a few minutes of your time.

Neo-Luddite Educators…Malpractice?

Dec 21

Posted by etale in blog, editorials, reviews, sites and sources | Comments off

There was a day when I was a conference junky. I took copious notes and sought every opportunity to touch base with speakers who captured my imagination. Being a teacher, I also got easily frustrated with colleagues. Our school would pay for us to attend the conference and then some would skip out to go golfing with a group of friends. While I never fell into the golfing group, my interest did begin to dwindle over time, to the point where I would sneak out half or two thirds of the way through a given conference day.

But my favorite conference, the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning hosted in Madison, Wisconsin is always different. While I have stumbled across a few less than interesting talks, the quality and practicality of speakers is consistently high. So, it was odd for me to skip out of the final presentation at the conference this year. Chris Dede, Professor of Education at Harvard, was giving a talk on Evolving Emerging Models of Learning and Teaching via “Cyberinfrastucture.” Instead of listening to the talk, I had a great lunch with a former colleague who now works in Madison.

But I didn’t miss the presentation. I postponed it a few weeks until the video was put online. Then, over lunch, I opened up the presentation on one monitor and my digital notepad on the other. I expected a great talk, but I didn’t expect to find a quote in the first two minutes that was so engaging, so provocative, that I could even hear a room full of forward-thinking distance learning leaders mumble or possibly engage in a little nervous laughter.

On Chris’s first slide he explained that we are moving from a position where people ask “Can distance education be comparable in quality with face-to-face instruction?” to a time where we instead ask, “Is pure face-to-face instruction professional malpractice? “ He briefly explained his point, but not much, so while I eventually listened to the rest of the talk, I had to pause it and spend some time on that last part. Professional malpractice? I wasn’t even sure what he meant, but I intuitively knew that he had spoken something very important. So, I typed the quote and printed it out as a poster that still sticks to the bookshelf in front of my desk, occasionally evoking a confused, surprised, or inquisitive response from visitors.

I look at the quote several times a week. The more I think about it, the more I agree with it. Some may disagree with it on different levels. Some might argue that technology is simply a tool. But is it an optional tool? What if you hired a handyman by the hour who insisted upon not using power tools to get the job done? Or how about a doctor who preferred to bypass modern medical tools for those used a century ago? According to Dede, this is what people will think of educators today who are resistant to the use of current and emerging educational technologies.

While I agree with the spirit of Dede’s comment, I’m not sure if the research supports him quite yet. There are still plenty of highly effective educators who use little to no current technology. But the truth behind his statement begins to appear as we think about preparing people for 21st century living. What if I am preparing someone for a vocation that requires strong Internet research skills, digital communication expertise, the ability to effectively collaborate at a distance, and an understanding of the ethical issues in the digital world? If I refuse to model and explore these elements with my students on some neo-luddite ground, then perhaps I am venturing into a type of malpractice. As explained by people at The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, we are obligated to prepare students for life in the world of the present and the future, not the world of the 19th and 20th cenutury.