Global citizenship. An interesting class. I’m always a little leary of an approach to global citizenship that suggests that I know what is good for someone else and it is up to me to make life better for that person. I’m thinking of Iraq.

I do know that I have a responsibility to be thoughtful about the decisions and choices that I make on a day to day basis. I have a lot of power, in terms of the consumer choices I make and the example I set for others. I guess it depends on where you are from. I live with a hidden disability, so for me, simply putting my life together on a day to day basis is a small victory. Perhaps that is why I feel primarily responsible to maintain a healthy lifestyle and support my children and grand children to the best of my ability. I can only do the best I can with what I have. For others, they might have the time, attention and energy to devote to a cause. I applaud them for being able to do that. I don’t think we can assume that everyone’s notion of social justice and what is possible for them to contribute is going to be the same.

Online course management. I’m noticing that having one face to face meeting a month needs regular online communication to maintain a sense of momentum. It’s not enough to have the web ct space sitting there waiting for contributions. The web ct discussions only come alive when there is an active community of participants using it to communicate. This means the communication is going both ways, that people are submitting their thoughts and gathering new perspectives by reading the other posts.

I’m noticing that when the instructors send out reminders and suggestions by email, it prompts me to go to the site and fulfill the request. Without the reminder, I am likely to forget I have anything to do for the course until the week before the next face to face meeting.

I like the email contact. I know some people find email overwhelming, getting too many emails. I don’t. Because I find the web ct site so fragmented and impersonal, I don’t feel a sense of connection to the class or the group process. When I get an email, I feel connected, that I am part of something that is happening in the digital space. It’s possible that by the end of this course I will feel differently about the web ct experience, I’m open to that happening.

Right now, I am noticing that the instructors have contacted us about posting to web ct and getting our reflections written up, and I am getting the work done. Maybe because it seems like someone is paying attention.

The web ct space.

These are mostly comments to myself, about how I would use this space, if I had to. I realize that it provides a space for course materials, calendars and conversations, and some modicum of security for the class. I have heard from other instructors that it is difficult to set up and they have had to resort to having an ‘expert’ take care of it. What I like about a blog is the way the conversation strings out behind itself, how the topics are listed at the side. In the web ct discussion space, I get a sense of fragmentation and dislocation. The content of the discussions is only seen (or as far as I have been able to figure out) as one post at a time and if I want to refer back to a previous post, I have to close the one I am looking at to do that.

I guess the strong point of web ct is that everything is in one place, even if it is a little confusing finding it all. My other problem with web ct is the interface. It is so dry and text based. Here we are in a course that is encouraging us to think about learning styles and teaching methods and the online interface is completely text dependent. For anyone that has trouble comprehending meaning from text, this would be a highly problematic interface. At the same time, the minimal visual content looks like clip art, generic visual representations that convey the impression of cookie cutter, a manufactured visual strategy. What does this say about the values or believes of the designers of the course?

I feel strongly about this, because we have an opportunity to occupy these spaces with our own visual content. We have an opportunity to expand our notions of communication and representation in education. When we use clip art, we are saying that is what we value in education. We have been passive consumers of radio, television and film because the technologies required to occupy those spaces were beyond the skill and resources of the average person. This is not true of these digital spaces. But if we don’t educate ourselves to value the development of our presence within these spaces, this opportunity is lost, to be able to communicate our teaching and learning beyond text only representation.

What I would like to do is create an online lesson space that was more identified with a sense of the course, as a visual and communication space. This might include populating the space with contributions from students of visual, audio, media pieces so that the identity of the course is a reflection of the learners’ interests.

My problem with something like KEEP tool kit is it constrains the possibilities of expression in the portfolio to a template. It also conveys the impression that making a website of your own is too difficult and the best and only way to do this is use the pre-set site. Folks, it’s not that hard to make your own. There are a few operations that you would learn, that are not that much more difficult than what you have to learn to use the templates.

This is a big part of what I want to teach. I do belief there are issues of democracy, citizenship, social justice, inclusion and diversity at stake. We cannot give up our ability to use communicative arts (text, visual, audio, media) simply because we have come to believe that we can only accept what is pre-fabricated.