Archive for December 16th, 2008
Tag Clouds Instead of Business Cards
In a recent post from one of my favourite bloggers, Martin Weller, he postulates:
It seems to me that your tag cloud becomes a sort of shorthand for your online identity. In the future we won’t swap business cards (even cool Moo ones), but rather tag clouds. Perhaps dating, and recruitment services will be run by matching the compatibility between tag clouds?
I think it’s a great idea and up there with an idea from Peta Hopkins where she was heard to suggest that all reports, papers, and similar documents should have a tag cloud as part of their abstracts. She hasn’t blogged about this particular idea yet but has mentioned tag clouds a few times.
Trying to Change My Teaching Role
Judging from my teaching during the last semester I am edging slowly towards the new role for the instructor as espoused by Mark Pesce below. Instead of feeding my students my favourite links to resources I had them discover the resources for themselves. Did it work? Yes, in part. Perhaps 80% of my semester 083 cohort had good searching skills and collected useful resources, and some even blogged the links. It seems I have to refine my own approach and will do so when next I have a suitable teaching opportunity – in two semesters’ time.
The role of the instructor has changed as well; as recently as a few years ago the lecturer was the font of wisdom and source of all knowledge – perhaps with a companion textbook. In an age of Wikipedia, YouTube and Twitter this no longer the case. The lecturer now helps the students find the material available online, and helps them to make sense of it, contextualizing and informing their understanding. even as the students continue to work their way through the ever-growing set of information. The instructor can not know everything available online on any subject, but will be aware of the best (or at least, favorite) resources, and will pass along these resources as a key outcome of the educational process. The instructors facilitate and mentor, as they have always done, but they are no longer the gatekeepers, because there are no gatekeepers, anywhere.
From Mark Pesce ‘Inflection Points’
