Category: Education

I have decided to add links to the blogs of my classmates so that it is easy to browse between our blogs. It occurred to me that the best way to make use of the blogs is if people in our class were using RSS to keep up with the blogs rather than having to find the sites repeatedly, or bookmark the sites. I also realize that few of the non-bloggers are likely to be using RSS. The next best thing, I figured, was to have links between the class blogs.

After I added the links I noticed that Matt had already quietly added links to my blog and Paul’s blog on his site. I guess I am not the only one to have this idea.

In an effort to have a week-long conversation – rather than a 36 hour conversation each week – I am going to put some less considered thoughts out here for everyone to consider.

As I was reading chapter 3 of Where the Action Is I was immediately caught by the idea that sociologists are involved or should be involved in the design process of technology. That makes perfect sense to me in light of the fact that actions influence context and context also influences action. In creating new technologies we should consider how they will change the context of human interactions. That is one good reason, but there is a second good reason to have the involvement of sociologists. We must also consider the actions that people might take that we had not intended for them to take with our technology which might also affect the context of human interaction. We need to look forward to the consequences of unleashing the internet on the world and how people will misuse it as well as how the world will change as people get used to having access to so much information on demand.

I tried to connect a thought to an assumption and failed before, but now I have a question that arose whole considering one of Strauss’ assumptions (#15)

“[A] joint action cannot be resolved into a common or same type of behavior on the part of participants. Each . . . necessarily occupies a different position, acts from that position, and engages in a separate and distinctive act.” (Blumer 1969, p. 70 as quoted in Strauss 1993 p. 40)

From an instructional standpoint that leads me to question when it is appropriate or necessary to distinguish between the learning of different participants in a social learning environment and how that distinction could best be made.

I was having a conversation about interface design with Matt Schmidt who quoted Steve Jobs saying that if the interface is not intuitive it is not right. That took me back to my interface design class as a computer science undergrad. We were often told that right handed control was more intuitive to users – unfortunately I can no longer cite the research that was based on. They complained that the web was wrong because web pages overwhelmingly have lefthand navigation.

If the righthand navigation is really more intuitive, why is it confusing to navigate a web page with righthand navigation (if you ever come up against one of those rare pages). The truth is that we have socially accepted the idea that – at least on the web – navigation is generally on the left of the page. This is social negotiation.

When I had the thought I believed that it connected to one of the underlying assumptions in the Strauss book, but upon looking into it I find that it does not directly connect to any one assumption.

As a longtime fan of recursion (from my computer science days) I love observing the meta-cognition that is so prevalent when studying in this field. We learn about learning, teach about teaching and think about thinking.

It was fun to begin to see the book taking shape as Strauss illustrates the interaction of ideas and people that lead to this book about a theory of action and interaction. (Mostly in the introduction of Strauss)

I was suffering from a deplorable lack of interest in the text until I finally connected with the author as he described himself as a “graduate student, terribly naive about most of the world and its happenings, but resonating in [his favorite theories of his field].” (Strauss p. 6) Suddenly I knew how he felt and I have been much more interested in his narrative since then.