Reflections on the process thus far

I realise there is still a little way left to go, and that even when this particular course is over, it is more the middle of the beginning than the end of the middle (apologies to Churchill), but I still think this has been a most useful experience.
There are thing I have discovered that I didn't know were there to be discovered - some of them I perhaps will put aside to rediscover later, others will be useful from now on.
I agree with the comment on the Bb site that "when I'm at work I'm at work, and when I'm at home, I'm at work" and this seems to be happening more and more. At no time previously would I have felt bad about being on leave in Ireland and unable to connect to the web. My students are also of this belief, and I think it was Brabazon who gave the example of a student emailing at 8pm and then again at 10pm wondering why the earlier email hadn't been answered. We are already getting this from (some) students, so perhaps a blog is a way of engaging with them.
Perhaps even this could have been badged as Engaging Tutors with Students' use of Social Software - or would the end result be the online equivalent of the tutor who turns up in a leather jacket trying a little too hard to be cool? Maybe students don't want us to engage - one colleague commented in a meeting that her daughter has moved away from Facebook onto Bebo, as Facebook "had been taken over by her parents generation."
The course has given me lots of tools, and lots of answerrs, but I tihnk has raised even more questions, which I'm going to try and get to the bottom of over the next academic year or two.

Week 2 Readings and things

Slightly behind the curve at the moment, due to the over-relaxing nature of a week in Kerry. A lot of the reading from last week was very illustrative, and the idea that because most students do use social networking sites we should consider having some sort of presence there is right I think. I also agree absolutely with the idea that we can't just migrate to these sites, as both comments in the discussions and the briefing document pointed out, there are still lots of students who don't (or won't or can't) use these sites, and we must not lose touch with them.

Prensky's 2001 ideas about the current generation being digital natives and learning differently to we digital immigrants seems t make sense, but I'm not sure I am quite as happy with his ideas about helping students learn in an almost secretive way - the idea that "we eliminated any language that even smacked of education" (p4).

I've set myself up on Twitter (stsatbrookes) but I can't really see a place for it in my teaching or with my students. Maybe the light will come to me in due course though...

University of Google

What a fascinating book chapter. I read this on Saturday and it was almost as though I wasn't sat in ther middle of Milton Keynes shopping centre. I think that a lot of what was said fits just as well with my own experience of teaching and students - the bibliography of some final year undergraduates is often very poor and we spend quite a lot of time going over how to evaluate web sources. I think I'm going to have to find another way of doing it though, as on a recent piece of coursework, many could still not distinguish between a refereed journal article and a student online submission.
I'm going to be away from a computer for the next week, but if I can get Twitter to work and do it via my mobile (that is two very big if's!) then I can still join in while I'm away.

Ownership, copyright, privacy and security

I think this is perceived to be a major issue with online working.
Security I suspect is the easiest to deal with on a practical basis, and that would be to restrict access to content to those registered on the course/module, rather than open eveything to the wider public. Encouragement (and training) about not posting sensitive information would also have to be given.
Privacy could again be dealt with pretty easily, though Mason & Rennie (I think, though I can't find it now) mention something about second-level privacy - a suitably secure and private blog being linked to an open access Facebook type site.
Ownership and copyright are trickier I would argue. I would imagine that all FE/HE institutions already have pretty robust IPR provisions covering student essays, VLE postings and so on, and the first step would be to extend those rules to blogs and wikis. Not the best solution, but at least it gives a measure of consistency from which things can be taken forward.

Added Value

I think that the use of Web 2.0 applications in my teaching would add a level of richness to the modules and to the experience of the students (and me!). The use of a blog or social bookmarking would enable students to keep each other up to date with developments in subject-related material (the two main courses on which I teach relate to Organised Crime and Terrorism, both of which are extremely fast-moving), and also allow them to develop their own ideas in a fluid and (in some cases) familiar environment.
The drawback could be that as a WP institution, we have a significant number of students who do not fit into the "digital native" / millenial / homo zappiens model, and do not necessarily have as highly developed a set of e-skills as some other students. I also agree with the comment on the VLE about students from areas where openness and visibility are not necessarily a good thing.
For my purposes though, as long as the online offering complements rather than replaces the offline(?) work, and is relevant, it cannot help but to add value.

Reeves' Characteristics

The list of "ten design characteristics of authentic activities" outlined by Reeves et al makes for interesting reading. Some of it is (intentionally I presume) quite self-evident and even simplistic, but they are useful as markers to guide what I hope to develop in my own teaching.
As a law tutor, the real-world relevence (point 1) will have to be geared more to subject specific tasks, such as giving advice to a fictitious client or arguing a particular point of law, as most of the practice-based skills are still carried out almost exclusively face-to-face
I think as a point to aim for, the rest of the characteristics are really good..

Why the Pic?

I'm not particularly worried about my face appearing online, but I thought it would be interesting not to do it and see what the reaction was, if any.
Why the Watchman picture?
As a kid in the mid-80s I was very much a follower of the Watchmen comic book series, along with V for Vendetta, 2000AD and things in a similar vein. Still am a bit.
Also, Alan Moore is from Northampton, which is where I am based. I also remember the PWEI line "Alan Moore knows the score" on Can U Dig It, but it took me a while to make the connection.