Last month I gave a presentation on the ‘Visitors & Residents’ principle at the ALT-C conference which was well received so I thought it would be worth videoing the talk under laboratory conditions…
Some of you might also be interested in our paper on Visitors and Residents:
Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement
by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu.
First Monday, Volume 16, Number 9 – 5 September 2011
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3171/3049
- A larger format video is available or can be downloaded from iTunesU here.
- An English transcription of the video has been created and a version in Spanish (with thanks to Linda Castañeda)
Just a few notes to go with the video:
The original ‘Prezi’ presentation is here: http://prezi.com/x0nxciep_mlt/
The tinyURL that is supposed to link to Andy Powell’s ‘Twitter for Idiots’ post is incorrect. Please follow this link instead.
At points I use the term ‘real life’ which seems to imply that anything which is online is somehow not part of ‘real life’. A better phrase would have been ‘offline’. Language in this area is difficult at best…
The quote “…just knowing how to use particular technologies makes one no wiser than just knowing how to read words” is a quote from Prensky’s recent paper on ‘Digital Wisdom’. In the journal ‘Innovate’. In other versions of the talk I refer to Prensky directly but seem to have omitted it when I was in front of the camera. All other non-attributed quotes are anonymised statements from our students.
The images I used are under the Creative Commons license:
‘Tourist Trap’ visitor image http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharpshutter/232909207/
‘Rusholme’ resident image http://www.flickr.com/photos/raver_mikey/2224048987
‘Sunny Park’ web as a space image http://www.flickr.com/photos/nhudson/2504679411
‘Tool Box’ web as a toolbox image http://www.flickr.com/photos/howardstrong/3238293371
jim October 15, 2009
hi
very interesting video, i think the general principles are useful and very portable. I’m not sure the example at the end really captures the point though. What i hear here is 2 different pedagogical appoarches. in the case of leaturer 1, would this not be the same in real space. That students that work together and create a stong community become more questioning of authority?
Vince Samios November 1, 2009
Agree with Jim… on an aside, I’ve just read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” – highly recommended as a very intelligent read. One of his deductions is that success can be predicted based on a childs learning patterns, and children that “question authority” become more successful..
Steve Mackenzie November 10, 2009
Davo – excellent enunciation of the online world and peoples approaches to it. I think the point is – if i may be so bold is this.
If you believe that the sociocultural approach is useful and productive way of learning and that it has equal or if not more value than transmission mode and/or self directed autonomous learning then as an educator you have the duty/right to encourage communication/collaboration/co-operation/ interaction i.e participation.
As you correctly pointed out a student will not appreciate the value of social media until they USE it. It’s the teachers job to facilitate this potential pathway to educational gain. The teacher has the right to set the educational context and that to me includes stating that this program, course module is run in a participative way. If the teacher explains constructively and leads by example i think the students will follow, but having said that i would give marks for participation to give a bit of backbone to the approach.
What it all means is that massive emphasis should be given in supporting teachers to understand the pedagogic benefits of learning by adopting a sociocultural approach i.e its enjoyable for both students and teachers and similarly students should be encouraged and supported in the early days to realize the benefits.
Some discussion of digital footprints and online behavior would probably be good to include in an induction – The distinction between personal and educational lives can also be emphasized to make it clear that you can use these tools just for educational or business/work purposes.
From a batch of students there will be many different personalities and learning styles and a different educational approach may seem strange at first but with the right encouragement students will see the obvious benefits – i think it’s a bit like dancing at a wedding, initially you are a bit reluctant, but once you are finally dragged up you damn well enjoy it.
Steve Mackenzie November 10, 2009
Just to add i mentioned enjoyment as a pedagogic benefit. I could mention a few other things like for example serendipitous learning, but my main point was that teachers will enjoy it, they will find out more about their students and be rewarded in being able to help their students more. Of course for the students if they are enjoying their learning, ‘things’ are more likely to stick 🙂
@daveowhite December 1, 2009
@Steve I think you have captured what I was trying to put across. Although that it is worth remembering that self directed autonomous learners are much more likely to be successful within the traditional education system.
The current challenge is to integrate a more sociocultural approach into educational reward structures so that the approach isn’t always an extra ‘layer’ of engagement on top of what ‘has’ to be done.
Eva Birger June 7, 2010
Thanks for this great explanation about the approach towards the net.
This enjoyable post – video and prezi – explains so many items and gives answers to the question of privacy, therefore I placed it in my blog for educators, who teach German as a foreign language.
The integration of more digital engagement into the educational structures rewards the teachers and the students alike. What has to be done becomes what wants to be done.
Katy August 1, 2010
I liked Vince’s comment about Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. It’s only when we break free of traditional pedagogical constraints that the true learning starts.
Tannis Morgan October 22, 2010
Just seeing this excellent presentation for the first time! I appreciated much of this presentation…my only quibble is more of a caution: in our own research (http://digitallearners.ca) we’re finding that both “residents” and “visitors” are goal-oriented with their use. I would also argue that all technologies are sociocultural platforms (in an Activity Theory perspective at least), so associating tools with residents misses the point and potentially takes us down the natives/immigrants/net gen discourse again. I would suggest that the concept of “cultures-of-use” (Thorne, 2003:http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/thorne/default.html) is more useful in describing use in relation to technologies, and is grounded in a sociocultural perspective.
Elizabeth Anne June 21, 2011
Wow! As a reluctant resident coming from a system where only visitors are tolerated (National Ed in France), I can only say THANK YOU.
You have really helped me get a handle on things 🙂
Although it seems true among educators that, as Tannis says above,
– both “residents” and “visitors” are goal-oriented with their use –
maybe the digital/immigrant dichotomy could be in there somewhere since instinctively, I don’t feel that this would apply so much to young (and very young) users.
Like all the best research – the result is simple and obvious!
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Nick (@largerama) September 29, 2011
Really like this and it gives me a far more down to earth practical explanation of the theories you outlines in http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049