Etale – Life in the Digital World

interdisciplinary musings on life and education in the digital world

Freelance Writing on the Web

Jan 24

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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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Mixed Reactions to the News from the National Institute of Family and the Media

Nov 21

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Yesterday I received an email from the National Institute of Family and the Media, announcing that it will be closing at the end of this year. They point to the current economic climate as the cause. The NIFM is known for things like their annual report card on video games, providing information about things like which video games exhibit varying degrees of violence or which ones contain sexually-explicit images. Other programs run by the institute include:

Switch – A program intended to help parents, schools, and communities encourage youth to manage their couch and screen time. It is focused upon promoting healthy and active lifestyles.

Through-U Families Become MediaWise – A program intended to help parents and others address poor media habits among children. For example, they point to statistics about the dangers of too much screen time for children and how it may impact their academic success.

Say Yes to No – A program based upon David Walsh’s book of the same name, designed to help parents discover the secrets to “raising happy self-reliant kids.”

A review of comments on the NIFM blog include a number of lamentations about the decision to close the doors of the NIFM. Ann Ricketts wrote, “I was so saddened to hear about the Board’s decision. The work you and the Institute have done through the years has changed the lives of many.” The tone of comments and announcements about the news elsewhere on the web indicate a different reaction. For example, Matt Snyders started his article about the closing this way: “The National Institute of Family and the Media, a Minneapolis-based collection of busybodies obsessed with video game violence, has decided to shut its doors.”

And yet, Dr. David Walsh notes that the formal closing of the institute does not mean the end of the institute’s efforts. “As a result, the Institute’s board of directors made the decision to close the Institute, effective December 31, 2009 and to begin transitioning the programs to other organizations who share our mission and values.” Time will tell what this transitioning will constitute, which programs will remain vibrant, and which will fade into the history of digital culture.

As a concluding editorial comment, I consider the work of the NIFM and similar organizations to be an important element of balancing views and conversations about life in the digital world. Digital culture is rich with diverse perspectives, but it it is also steeped in the drive of digital fashion, corporate influence, consumerism, propaganda, and unprecedented marketing campaigns intended to shape the habits and attitudes of their intended audiences. In such a world, one can’t underestimate the importance of critics and others who are committed to to asking difficult questions and urging parents, teachers, communities, and youth to avoid living the unexamined digital life.

How is the Web Changing the Life of Artists?

Nov 3

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Have you noticed how online sales are changing the life and work of artists around the world? Today you can find artists selling their work directly on sites like Ebay or Etsy. In the past, some of these lesser known artists may have had the opportunity to sell work at a local or regional exhibit or craft fair. Now they are able to showcase their work to the world. I am fascinated by how is creating opportunities for folk artist in all parts of the world, allowing them to sell their work at a price that is reasonable but far more than they may have gotten locally. How is this changing or affirming the vocation of artist in the 21st century?

A Call for Theological Thinking About Life in a Digital Age

Sep 8

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Here is a slightly revised version of a previous presentation, shared with the faculty at Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne on September 3, 2009. It is called, “A Call for Theological Thinking about Life in a Digital Age.”

A Manifesto on Graduate E-learning Programs – Part 6

Jul 4

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The Importance of Disciplinary Thinking

Feedback is an essential part of all learning, and intentional plans for providing frequent feedback are essential in quality learning experiences. I know that I’ve already written about this in earlier parts of this ongoing manifesto. I return to the topic of feedback, but now with the goal of eventually talking about the importance “disciplinary thinking.”

From an instructional design perspective, I consider it important that there are planned and explicit sources of feedback throughout the entire learning experience (whether it be a program, course, unit of learning, or more organic learning community). Failure to provide adequate feedback decreases retention, student satisfaction, and student learning. It also makes it unlikely that students will learn to engage in disciplinary thinking.

In traditional education, some faculty have become convinced that the lectures they dispense to the students are their greatest contribution. I disagree. It is a rare faculty member who dispenses truly unique content that is unavailable in a variety of free or inexpensive sources. The faculty member who clings to this conviction is at the greatest risk in the future of higher education. This is not an attempt to minimize the importance of content or the expertise of a professor. Both of these remain integral parts of higher education. However, the more I look at what does and does not result in student learning, the more I am convinced that the most important trait of an effective teacher is that he or she provides the learners with frequent and meaningful feedback. Of course, being able to provide such feedback requires that the instructor is well-equipped to teach a given course, and that he or she has reached at least a moderate level of expertise in the discipline associated with the course.

Expertise involves a deep understanding of vocabulary, skills, big ideas, problems, and essential issues in a given domain. It involves the ability to identify, frame, or solve difficult problems within that domain. It entails sensitivity to nuances that would go unnoticed by the novice or untrained eye. It is more than head knowledge about a topic. It moves beyond simply having a great deal of information. Experts have true knowledge and a growing measure of wisdom within a given domain.

If one simply wants more information about a subject, then a college education is not a good investment of one’s money. Information, even knowledge, is freely available on the web, in libraries, or through a modest investment of a few good books or other sources of media. However, if one desires to pursue expertise and the ability to think and act within a discipline, then mentoring and feedback become essential and higher education becomes a valuable option. Mentoring, when done well, is rich with meaningful feedback. That is what takes place in a quality higher education experience.
Feedback can and should come from a variety of sources. It can come from:

-A qualified instructor who has developed a level of expertise within a given discipline,
-Peers (often in the form of well-designed group interactions and learning activities),
-Individual and/or group experimentation and reflection,
-Computer-generated feedback (in the form of computer-based quizzes, simulations, games and practice exercises that provide helpful instant automated feedback),
-And through self-feedback.

In the early stages, self-feedback is guided. It is modeled for the students. Students are given rubrics, checklists, and lists of questions to use for self-evaluation. However, as students progress, they also develop the capacity to do more of this self-feedback (within a given discipline) simply by tapping internalized vocabulary, skills, knowledge, priorities, and values. This intrapersonal capacity becomes a key to lifelong growth and development within a given discipline.

Quality learning communities provide this sort of disciplinary feedback. And, over the course of study, these programs move students toward mastery within a discipline (or field of study).

Mobile Devices, Volunteerism, and Social Change (or Saving the World on an iPhone)

Jul 3

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There are still quite a few people who have an outdated view of how the Internet is impacting society. It just isn’t as black and white as some suggest. While some studies are indicating that Internet use is deteriorating family time and other face-to-face social interactions, that isn’t the full story. The other side of that story is that people are using mobile technologies to be more active in trying effect positive change in the physical world, in connecting with others in meaningful ways. Toward that end, Linton Weeks wrote an excellent article at npr.org on The Extraordinaries: Will Microvolunteering Work? Weeks writes, “Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.”

This article highlights the side of mobile technologies and the digital culture that is actually grounding us even more in the physical world around us, not to mention the physical world half a planet away. The fact is that many of us have, in the words of John Muir (although I’m admittedly re-purposing the quote) lived “on the world but not in the world” for quite some time. The full quote is, ““Most people are on the world, not in it – having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them – undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate”” Even when we are AWK, wandering the physical sidewalks, we often walk right past the hurting and the problems all around us. While I’m the last person to propose that mobile technologies or any other invention will improve what I consider to be a fundamentally flawed human nature, it is fascinating to see how some are making use of these mobile devices to get back into the world, reach out, help out, speak up, get up, chip in, and live in their local communities…even if it is just via a text message or a quick cell phone photo sent to public works in order to fix a pothole. Or, thanks to services like kiva.org, donorschoose, and globalgiving; we get a very different picture of what is taking place when we see that person sitting on the subway typing on a two inch keypad, seemingly oblivious to the people around. Who knows, that person might be the in the middle of giving a no interest loan to a needy and aspiring low income entrepreneur on the other side of the world.

Thanks to Linton Weeks for reporting on a wonderful and fascinating side to this new digital world.

When Educators Marry the Spirit of the Age

Jun 30

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The American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner, William Inge, once wrote, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.”

When it comes to the digital world, there is much that is, “the spirit of the age.” As a student of digital culture, I recognize the fact that I am often studying digital sand castles. Each technology and educational trend will soon be washed away, assimilated into, or used as a foundational idea for the next. Or maybe another metaphor works better. It is like I am a student of digital clouds. The clouds come and go, take new shapes each day, and sometimes disappear in what seems like minutes or hours. So it is with the digital world. At times, I’ve become caught up with this study of digital clouds so much that, upon remembering the fluid nature of it, I fall into small moments of despair. What is the point? All of this is fleeting? Cloud shapes are nice, but there comes a time when we crave something solid, something stable.

Solid and stable ideas are not popular today. Sand castle and cloud metaphors for truth, life, reality, and the digital world are much more in vogue. However, the more I look at the digital world and each time I reach those tiny moments of despair, I find comfort in discovering that not all in the digital world is shifting sands or clouds. People are at the heart of digital culture. Studying people in the digital world often leads to revisiting the fundamental truths and yearnings of humanity.

1) Humans are social creatures. From our beginnings, it was evident that it was not good for us to be alone.

2) Humans are constantly seeking new ways to connect with others…and at the same time seeking new ways for self-autonomy.

3) We are drawn to things that give us pleasure and avoid that which is painful…and yet there are other things at play in the human experience that sometimes leads us to disregard reject the pleasure/pain principle.

4) We yearn for unfailing love an acceptance.

5) We are continually seeking to build the next Tower of Babel. And when we manage to do so, it very often amplifies the worst in us.

6) We seem to be born with a craving for something that will last forever.

7) As a general rule, we are drawn to things that are similar to us, and we create personal worlds that reinforce our existing beliefs and ideas about the world.

There are many others that we can list, items that some would consider both positive and negative. But as I think about the digital world, these are the types of truths that I find myself rediscovering and revisiting. It is not as much about technology or digital environments as it is about digital spaces full of people with yearnings and traits that go far beyond the spirit of the age. I suggest that this is an important perspective for the educator and educational technologist of this age. When educators ignore this, and marry the spirit of the age, education becomes a lever for pedaling the next technology or product. We turn our schools into advertising agencies; “educational research” becomes synonymous with market research; and lesson or courses become commercials for programs, products, fads, and fashions.

We study, live in, prepare for, educate amid, and seek to serve as active citizens in the digital world; but we do so aware that much may wash away with the next tide. And so we ground our thoughts and ideas on those truths which stands firm across high and low tides…truths about humanity, the world, and (if you are able to tolerate such a notion in this day and age) divine reality.