Comments on: Talking to the experts

By: Atul Varma

Atul Varma — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:16:12 +0000

Agree with the ability to undo–this is part of why the Hackasaurus X-Ray Goggles support infinite undo, so that any mistakes you made can easily be undone.

Undo/revert is also one of the first things I tell people when teaching them how to use a wiki or etherpad, to make them feel more secure about playing around and tinkering with things.

By: Greg Wilson

Greg Wilson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:57:15 +0000

+1 — experimentation all too often leads to “it doesn’t work, I don’t know why not, and I don’t even know where to start to figure out”, which discourages play. I think learning environments ought to be checkpointable like games…

By: Jeffrey Yasskin

Jeffrey Yasskin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:12:43 +0000

I bet part of Rochelle’s problem is that people _have_ broken things by doing things that looked innocent at the time. The systems have to be forgiving enough that experimentation isn’t permanently painful, but way too often we only give people access to the production system, and we don’t give them an undo button.

By: Michelle Levesque

Michelle Levesque — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:49:50 +0000

I think “lack of playfulness hurts people” is right on!!

I think if we can get people to PLAY on the web, we’re more than halfway there.

By: Rochelle

Rochelle — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:03:54 +0000

Oh I think another thing, that is a symptom again and not an actual skill: people are scared to try things. They’re always afraid of breaking something by clicking the wrong thing. I think it’s part embarrassment and part shame. That lack of playfulness hurts people too.

By: Rochelle

Rochelle — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:54:22 +0000

I have a growing list of things that are leading me toward an understanding of what that essential knowledge might be. My list is really a set of symptoms though, not the knowledge itself, I think. For instance: we have a drupal website. People keep asking me what folder certain pages on the site are in. Or about finding orphaned pages. Or, when we were working with a theme designer to change our CSS, people stopped working on content thinking that we had outsourced the creation of the website. I had someone who was convinced that if he uploaded a column from a excel file, the system would get confused because two people have the same last name, and surely it would reverse them and give them each other’s grade. As if the system just copied and pasted a column like he would do by hand. So I sense that there is a massive disconnect on the subject of databases. I think we have a metaphor problem on this one. They are pinning other, physical experiences on this very non-physical thing, and it’s resulting in either a) confusion, b) paralysis, or c) distrust. It’s actually an obstacle to getting anything done. The ways in which they are able to innovate are entirely restricted by this lack of understanding, I have objective proof of that.

Okay, that’s kind of an aside I guess, but these experiences are what is leading me toward understanding that web literacy is a thing I need to address/needs to be addressed in my context. None of the people I was talking about above are students, they are all librarians or faculty.

By: Michelle Levesque

Michelle Levesque — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:54:20 +0000

Note to self:
Add some questions (to certain applicable folks) about how they think about teaching CSers versus “normal” (non warped — haha) people.

By: msurman

msurman — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:03:34 +0000

Good questions to start w/. I’d modify / add:

* What web skills do you think everyone should know? **WHY? TO WHAT END?*

* Some variation on:

-> What skills do you teach?
-> How do you teach the ‘essential skills’ listed above?
-> What are some good routes to the ‘essential skills’ listed above?
-> Do you know of sneaky and effective ways to embed learning these skills into other experiences (e.g. learning HTML by setting up a blog for your course on pop stars)?

I flag this second part because alot of people are *teaching* code and web stuff at a grassroots level with out any abstract analysis of what skills they want people to know. In my experience, it’s hard for these people to answer your ‘what web skills’ question concisely.

So, in this case it’s important to ask about the teaching and then infer about skills. Likely involves a huge bunch of raw data collecting from people, then a pattern analysis against what they say and do.

Flip side, I think some of the computational literacy and academic people will be good at your ‘what web skills’ question but may not have experience on teaching / mentoring at grassroots level. So, good to see which of them have concrete (and tested) ideas about grassroots pedagogy (ie. not in formal computer science classroom) that map onto their abstract analysis.

By: Greg Wilson

Greg Wilson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:14:23 +0000

* “If there was one page you could get everyone in ed-tech to read, what would it be?”
* “If there was one empirically-grounded fact you could get everyone in ed-tech to learn, what would it be?”
(Basically, what’s in the “Physics for Presidents” version of educational technology / teaching people the web?)