In the Metro section of the October 10, 2006 New York Times, an article appeared about a police investigation into the case of a Brooklyn man named Michael Sandy, who was hit by a car after two men pushed him onto the Belt Parkway near Sheepshead Bay. The article featured a screenshot of Mr. Sandy’s Friendster homepage, and summarized information about him gleaned from the site.
Michael Sandy’s Friendster page as it appeared on page B6 of the New York Times on October 10, 2006.
(Sinister technology-related update to this case here, Times subscription required).
While I know from conversations with real live journalists that they often use resources like Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook in their research and reporting, this was the first instance in which I’ve seen an actual reproduction of a page from such a site in a newspaper (though I admittedly haven’t been looking too hard for it). If users didn’t realize how “public” these public sites really are, the Old Gray Lady’s screen grab should make it perfectly clear. (for a related post, see Kate Moss’s “Excuse me sir, but your online persona is showing.”
The relationship between technology and the question of what’s public and private has come up recently in our conversations about how to stimulate blog usage within the Baruch community. When BCTC rolls out its Movable Type blogging package, all Baruch blogs will come equipped with a disclaimer that indemnifies the college against the worst efforts of community users. What’s not clear yet is whether these blogs will be open to the public, restricted to the Baruch community, or restricted to a group determined by the blog’s administrator.
I feel strongly that course blogs should be seen initially only as an extension of the classroom for the use of participants in the class, and that they should be closed off from the public unless the community they immediately serve wants them to be open. A learning community–faculty and students–should be able to take advantage of the ease of information transfer afforded by new technologies without worrying about who’s watching (tenure committees, parents, and intellectually property attorneys come to mind!). At the same time, we are trying to study how course blogs are being used across academia, and we are finding that our access to them is frustrated by the very philosophy we embrace.
The solution, it would seem, is some combination of public/private sections in a course blog, where only collectively approved content goes out over the airwaves. Ultimately at Baruch we hope to build a community of faculty who can share their blogging experiences with and learn from one another. Whatever happens, though, users—faculty and students—should be educated about the implications of their choices and should know who, potentially, has access to any work they put up on a server.
Blogs have owners and stakeholders. The owners are responsible for who is allowed to do what on the blog. For example, see the first post of SUNY Maritime Masters, a blog I own, at http://suny-maritime-masters.blogspot.com/2006/08/welcome-to-suny-maritime-masters.html.
On the other hand, the owner would be shortsighted if he or she made decisions without considering the needs, wants, and wishes of the stakeholders. For example, I’ve been approached by an undergraduate wishing to become a member of the SUNY Maritime Masters. I will be putting this question to the blog members seeking their advice.
In a somewhat related example, I have contacted the authors of a report being used as the basis for a course project this term to see whether they would be interested in the student reports. They are, but I am polling the students to understand their point of view.
My sense is that each of these situations needs to be considered on its own merits and, in particular, consideration of the individual interests of the stakeholders is required. That is, individuals should be able to opt out of the larger decision.
Consider Grigory Perelman, the reclusive Russian mathematician who may have proved the elusive Poincaré Conjecture, was awarded with a 2006 Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians–and turned it down. A rather significant example of opting out.
“Excuse me sir, but your online persona is showing” is a marvelous wakeup call to all of us and a rather significant example of opting in without consideration of the consequences.
Data on the Internet has a quality of strong persistence. I am continually amazed to find posting on the Internet I made some 15 years. This has given rise to Drogan’s Third Law: Never put things in an e-mail you would not like to hear read in court.
Reply to James Drogan
Great stuff, Luke. Managing permissions is key, and I would really like to know how enterprise solutions like Moveable Type will allow for this. In my opinion, if it ain’t open (or at least partially open), it ain’t poppin’.
Reply to Jim
I have mixed feelings about emphasizing the need for privacy on educational blogs. On the one hand, I think that educational institutions have some responsibility to ‘look out for’ undergraduate students (and graduate students too, I suppose). I think awareness of physical safety-related issues is important. On the other hand, making blogs ‘private’–while perhaps an initial practical solution, misses a bit of the point I think.
I have mentioned this somewhere here before, but one of the fascinating things about communication technologies is the way they change the old division of private-public. We’ve seen what television and talk-show culture have done–when everyone else’s ‘private’ matters came into our living rooms, that private-public divide began to break down significantly. The change appears in literature as well, in the form of rampant memoir-writing. Live journals and blogs are just another example. That is not to say that I think the best use of blogs is to encourage students in confessional writing!
My point is really to echo what Jim said above, “if it ain’t open, it ain’t poppin’”! I happen to feel pretty strongly that we ought to talk with students about these changes in communication that technology has wrought, so that they see the process changing as well, and have to learn to negotiate the shift. Further, the openness is partly what helps students take their writing more seriously, or at least think of it differently, because it changes who their audience is. Over-emphasizing password protection and security, seems to me to shrink the potential impact of blogging.
Reply to Deborah Gambs
I certainly can see your point of view, and think that it can be reconciled with mine through the process of delineating “open” and “closed” areas of a course blog. But I also think that when integrating these technologies with what goes on in a class, a password-protected site would do as much to open up student communication as would the pressure of a potentially unlimited audience. Students are still writing through new technologies for a new audience—they’re writing for each other, not just the professor. Blackboard and WebCT sites are behind passwords in part to protect the learning environment, and though those applications are more limited than blogs in their ability to integrate various types of content, I think they’re still quite useful as a model.
(Though he can speak for himself, I think Jim (Groom) was referring to open source v. closed source when he noted that “if it ain’t open it ain’t poppin’.” The flexibility of an open-source solution, such as Wordpress, is more bendable to the purposes of a teacher than a rigid, closed-source application. Of course, there are benefits to closed-source, too… but we won’t get into that here).
I’m advocating the use of blogs as a tool not to teach blogging, not even to teach writing (though both of those are great potential uses), but rather to create a space where students can write to learn (and look and read to learn), and where faculty can bring all the fruits of the Web to bear on their courses. If part of that process—when determined useful by the faculty and deemed acceptable by the students—is to open up that work to the world, great. But they should all have the option no to.
Reply to Luke
Luke & Deborah,
When I said “open” above, I meant open to the public as well as open source. I agree entirely with Deborah that the craze for locking down these resources, while at times appropriate, seems to undermine the very logic of the usefulness of the technology. Why are we so concerned with protecting the process of education from larger exposure? Is it inherent mistrust of the gov’t? Ourselves? The rogue ex-boyfriend/girlfriend? Our colleagues? Lawsuits?
All these concerns within the institutional setting seem to intefere with the very currency these technologies derive their value from, i.e., a network of sharing ideas and possibilities beyond our immediate environs!
Reply to Jim
A classroom works best when it is a labaratory for ideas. I have been in more than one classroom where the expression of deeply personal and previously confidential information has been one of many elements that has propelled the learning process for both the individual and the group. There is little doubt in my mind that if these classrooms were open rather than closed, that process would have been interfered with.
The course blogs that I envision are more oriented towards the process of learning rather than the product of learning. For those of us urging faculty to use this technology, doing all we can to give them total control over that space and that process seems to me to be a responsible starting point. And I’m all for showing the product, if and when the participants are ready.
About another point that I raised in my initial post… and I’d love to hear a intellectualy property lawyer chime in on this. What does password-protecting do for the concept of fair-use? Is it any different to post an mp3 of “Beat It” behind a password than it is to play it in class? It certainly would be if there were no password. While I’m not advocating copyright infringement, and would never, ahem, cough, share my digital music with anyone… the possibility of getting around such issues even while educating students about them is another reason to lock up at least parts of a course site.
Reply to Luke
But Luke, are we talking about learning as a confessional space or a process through which others can engage from outside? Locking down a class site is something I do often, but I am not so certain the reasons for locking it down are all that good. WordPress, as I have seen it used, is a space for managing content (audio, video, and text) as well as students sharing their ideas, all of which can be protected on an individial post/page level if need be. Yet the tool, as I see it, is always already an extension of a physical classroom, where most of the learning, sharing, confessional exorcisms, etc., happen. Making this content public is not necessarily mandatory, but I wonder if by keeping classes open sharing ideas and the process of writing, learning, and thinking more widely becomes just as valuable and accessible as the product.
As for copyright, depending on the subject matter, there are tons of public domain resources easily accessible online making the copyright game not necessarily a concern. As for password protecting copyrighted material, would that question be any different for a CMS like BlackBoard -which I know professors and students have used to share copyrighted articles, music files, videos, etc. Which leads me to my last question that was sparked by your penultimate comment:
What are the benefits of BlackBoard over a system like WordPress? I know the administrative integration with Banner is a big deal for most administrators and professors (which I, for the moment, must relinquish), but beyond the administrative systems (which BlackBoard is first and foremost in my mind)- where is the value in baby blackboard?
Reply to Jim
Jim:
I think learning is many things. I think it is a process that can be confined to a limited space, and it’s also a process that can be engaged with from outside. Ultimately, I think the confined version can become an open product–a valuable open product– and those on the outside can then engage with it. But that would be a new and different process than the one that began in the classroom. Believe me, I WANT these blogs to be open so I can see them. But I do believe that there are both pedagogical reasons for limiting access to the space, which I’ve outlined above, and ethical reasons to keep control of the space in the hands of the users.
As to your question about proprietary wares… I think the benefit of a Blackboard or a MT over WordPress derives from their manageability in large-scale implementations. While I’m far from an expert on matters of security and network maintenance or the training of those that do this type of work, I do have the sense that it is easier for a large institution—say, like CUNY—to manage a system like Blackboard and to integrate it with the many other scalable systems it employs than it is for the colleges to support WordPress or Lyceum on a large scale.
Hopefully, the skill sets (and will) to roll out and support open solutions will become more common at places like CUNY. You can find many higher ed IT shops (including at CUNY) that embrace open source for a variety of purposes, ranging from HR to content management to budget management. But a good shop won’t choose an open solution if it does not have the ability to fully support and integrate it in a safe way. IT groups each have certain skill sets, and it’s up to each of them to choose solutions. Some won’t entertain open source. Some will look at it and choose not to use it. And some will intrepidly go forth and make it work.
There’s a lot to be said, when implementing something on scale, for having a manual and a phone number for help when you run into problems. When I was an ITF with the Honors College, some folks were agitating that we should drop Macs and go with Linux machines and open software. I shuddered at the thought of developing a support structure for hundreds of college freshmen running only open source products. The money was there to go with Apple and their support, and the Power/i/Macbooks do the trick nealty and let you build and be creative… so why not go with it? This cost/benefit analysis has a lot to do with Baruch’s choice of MT over WordPress.
At the same time, I realize that even if MT or BB support scale more easily (or maybe the word is “naturally”), they are also rigid in a way that makes them teaching tools with less potential than WordPress. So, if there’s a benefit in the proprietary, it comes from the fact that the “system” is set UP to benefit the proprietary. IT shops that can afford to would rather pay the money for the fix than figure the fix out themselves.
Until the open source revolution is complete, I’m guessing only the boldest and most advanced institutions will choose open solutions for programs where things like blogs are available on a large scale in one system. (Wordpress, of course, CAN be modified and integrated into broader systems. See here, here, and here for more…)
Reply to Luke
Thanks Luke,
I really needed such an exchange for I will soon be presenting a paper on open source applications at the CUNY IT conference, and I was hoping my enthusiasm, sometimes bordering on mania, would be appropriately tempered by a well-grounded, long-range thinking historian, much like yourself.
Scale, for the moment, is the real issue with open source solutions, and I entirely agree with you that presenting an ad hoc management solution for systems like WordPress and MediaWiki throughout the “enterprise” is untenable -if not undesirable. Also, I am coming from a much smaller liberal arts college with 4,000 students, not a city university with 400,000.
Nonetheless, I wonder how many faculty at the moment would be willing to experiment with applications like Wordpress, MediaWiki, Drupal, Typo3, etc. At UMW I would safely say about 30-40, would that number at CUNY be roughly ten times that with the onus for management spread out over 10-15 different colleges? Point being, a distinction might begin to be made between advanced (perhaps a loaded term), and in some cases experimental, online teaching tools and administrative systems like BlackBoard. That seems, at least in part, the mission of the Bernard Schwartz Communication Center. A space for the research and development of these tools that invests in people, not corporations, working through these ideas in a classroom setting collaboratively, rather than systems framing the logic of learning (in all its protean guises) for us while seamlessly integrating into coke machines and laundry coin-ops.
The technology has to be mediated by a groups of people experimenting with its potential in a laboratory of teaching a learning, and this will never be the case for all the classes of any university system, nor should it be expected. Yet, the move towards scalability itself may be the death knell for many of these tools I currently find myself positioning as the the next wave of enterprise solutions. I don’t know, you give me much to think about and work through, peer-review at its finest - and I sure as hell know I am always in desparate need of it!
Reply to Jim
Jim: I think you’re on to something differentiating between the types of users these solutions attract, and particularly about the role of the Institute in mediating those approaches. The trickiness is that open source products, though they have greater potential for our purposes, require more responsive and closer support… a nameless, faceless, ticket-submission process ain’t going to help faculty unlock what this stuff can do for their classes. At the same time, I can only support so many WordPress blogs in my capacity at the BLSCI– I am suPPOSED to be working on my dissertation! There’s a very good chance that if demand for the sites grows, we’ll need to expand and refine our support structure, and/or start to make choices about the users/classes/projects we support.
We’re in the process of sorting through all of this with the Technology Center in preparation for our faculty development seminar on blogging next week. We’ll see how it shakes out, but my guess is that a lot will be yet to be determined regarding MovableType and WP, and just exactly what support will look like.
Reply to Luke
Here’s a good link on the legal implications of blogging.
Hit me.
Reply to Luke
Wow– how did I miss this fascinating exchange? I realize the conversation is more or less died down, but I do want to register that (as some of you know) I feel quite strongly in favor of public student blogs. As Jim suggests, the ability to lock down individual posts with password protection (either at the point of writing OR when they become difficult, problematic, confessional, or whatever) means we don’t have to lock the entire conversation behind a wall.
I think public student blogs are hugely valuable.
If you read students’ contributions on a regular basis (which is not hard — wordpress sends updates to your email inbox which can be scanned quickly, and RSS feeds work too) you can catch things that need to have a wall put up. You can encourage students to use password-protection when needed, or alert you.
Lots of us teach with the classroom door open. We can get up and close it when we need to, but there’s no reason to keep it closed all the time.
Reply to Kate Moss
The Web-based Bloglines a sophisticated interface, and delivers such snappy responses…” More… i “…stay plugged into the world of politics,science and technology, and they show business or any other area,spectacles and ideas about it.
Reply to david