Comments on: The Olympics Effect Theory

By: “The Bloggers’ Cafe” » “That’s going straight to the Pool Room!”

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 02:49:09 +0000

[...] light of the conversations that have been happening lately here and here about how the blogosphere seems to be distinctly American in flavour, I am going to add a bit of [...]

By: Dissenting Voices : thinking 2.0

Dissenting Voices : thinking 2.0 — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:14:42 +0000

[...] but dissenting voice is Graham Wegner who questions the need for standarised tagging, in The Olympics Effect Theory, and raises the importance of taking an international approach to education and blogging. In a [...]

By: Standardized Tagging - Best Idea I've Had in a While (right?) at Bionic Teaching

Standardized Tagging - Best Idea I've Had in a While (right?) at Bionic Teaching — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:26:54 +0000

[...] Teaching Generation Z added an extra level of complexity by reminding me that there’s more to the world than the U.S. Dang. Forgot about that. [...]

By: Graham Wegner

Graham Wegner — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:42:10 +0000

Well, there is a good diversity of opinion here which is a tribute to the power of twitter as edublogs doesn’t appear to be updating in Bloglines and Google Reader at present. Thanks for all of your input here. A couple of things seem to be the focus from my post so I’ll try and acknowledge where you’re all coming from.
I only ever try to challenge and discuss, never to provoke or antagonise so my choice of the tagging standards as an example was in that same spirit. Claudia, your longer post link is definitely reflective and delves into the issue in greater depth than I have even considered up to this point. I was just using Vicki’s notes to point to ideas that seem to demonstrate the point I was trying to make. And yes, Vicki, I do acknowledge that your notes were raw but the expanded ideas on educational tagging you point to over on your wiki still look designed for the North American education system from my perspective. And all I’m talking about in this post is the conscious acknowledgement of multiple viewpoints. I’m not denigrating the idea by doing so (at least I don’t think so) and believe that the web will sort the issues in a way that we cannot predict or control.
Sharon, your comment was very useful in confirming some of my ideas and I know you definitely think in international terms. I’m pleased that you felt the Edubloggercon was thinking beyond who was able to make it to NECC – the next challenge is how can those of us in different spots of the globe get to be involved and absorb some of the warmth and sparking of ideas that the event generated.
Hey, Durff, just to clarify – the green I was referring to was the jealous variety!! Vincent, great for you to chime and for me to add you to my learning network – I’m in awe of truly international educators – you are right that your experiences give you unique perspective but the blogosphere at least brings those of us country-bound educators a blog’s eye view of other systems.
Cheryl, I applaud your global perspective and if all edubloggers worked towards this goal, then this post would have been totally off the mark and you could have really let me have it here. And Sylvia, I could have been accused of doing some tall poppy lopping motivation here! Brian – cheers – you’d better watch out for an annoying Skype request soon.
Terry, the lack of response was due to not many ears down under in the first place and as Sylvia points out, Australians who self promote or offer expertise can be seen to be “getting too big for their boots”.
Vicki, take your time and return to the tagging standards conversation when you are ready. I may just be a paranoid Aussie with “small country” syndrome and I definitely only did surface research on the ideas you have obviously thought deeply about.
Thanks all – roll on Beijing 2008.

By: Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:11:06 +0000

I think that the tagging standard needs to be discussed — I think that yes, it does need to be inclusive of all. I’ve been thinking through it and after I finish working through a personal matter, I’ve begun drafting my thoughts on tagging standards that I think perhaps you would consider. One of our discussions at the international conference were the need fo r inclusive standards and the fact that grades are different and standards are different — educators need to find things — right now the issue is creation it is finding. Bottom line is that when an organization like ISTE creates something called a STANDARD it should include a tagging sTANDARD so if something is explicitly created for that standard, it can be found. I think to take it further than that is taking the discussion out of context and perhaps putting words in our mouths from the raw notes I took.

By: Terry Freedman

Terry Freedman — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:47:35 +0000

I agree with you Graham, but on the other hand, my call for Australian contributors to Coming of Age largely fell on deaf ears. So it seems to me that sometimes contris exclude themselves in effect

By: Brian Crosby

Brian Crosby — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:12:43 +0000

Graham = All points well taken – I know myself and others were concsious of who wasn’t there – and you do get caught up in the moment. I also agree wholeheartedly with your Olympics coverage – I always feel we shoot ourselves in the foot by generating anti-American feeling based on our coverage – I can also tell you (and I hate this) that whichever American TV network is covering the games, that they have paid hundreds of millions to cover, will tell you that their ratings are not good – and as soon as they cover much beyond events that Americans are in and could win their ratings drop off the scale. They do try to hype, hype, hype some other atheletes – but usually to no avail. Also sports in America pretty much are American football, baseball, basketball, to a MUCH lesser degree hockey and even less soccer and it goes downhill from there – so there isn’t much interest beyond – that an American might win a medal in whatever sport it is – sad, but true.

As far as NECC – I hope based on our experience this year that perhaps we can use Skype and other sharing technologies to include as many as possible. I would be more than willing to audio Skype others into sessions I attend (maybe video too). And who knows what other ways will be available in a year!

By: Sylvia Martinez, USA

Sylvia Martinez, USA — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:32:36 +0000

Graham, Great post. But think of the advantage you have over us US-based educators. Members of any minority group always need to understand two points of view, their own and the majority, because they navigate in both worlds. It offers a broader perspective and means that you might be able to see the forest for the trees better.

So don’t worry about being a tall poppy – keep us honest!

Now all the non-aussies will have to figure out what tall poppy means

By: Cheryl Oakes

Cheryl Oakes — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:04:02 +0000

I do think in global terms when I post to my week on the TechLearning.com/blog where I try not to use ideas that only people in the Northern part of the United State will appreciate. I try and make my post as inclusive as I can. My first Web 2.0 online class I took was with the Webheads. It was immensely humbling to be one of a few English speaking participants, who didn’t also speak 2 or 3 or 4 languages. The best moments for me were when I had conversations, asked questions and listened to other voices. Thanks for your post.

By: Vincent Jansen

Vincent Jansen — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:58:43 +0000

I do agree with your view that the need for standardized tagging profile is through a narrow lens. Someone will begin to do it anyway but it seems to me that it is counter to the creativity and personalization of web2.0 to have a standard. Is this the operating process in education, where items are categorized, labeled, boxed, shelved, archived and stuffed into a system where each person needs GPS to navigate? Yesterday, I was working with a math teacher who is part of my graduate course. We were discussing tags for her math course she teaches and we began to build a tagging profile for her and some of the people in her network. I think her response “I can use tags to collect posted stuff on math from other teachers who teach THIS course, once they are told how to tag.” speaks volumes of the need for local context and situational links that a teacher can actually use. We did subscribe to the tag ‘math’ and found very few useful resources so there may be a need for multiple tags but we need to avoid googlizing tag searching.

As I read your blog post, the Olympic effects theory, I raised a glass of Jacob’s Creek. As an international educator, I have administered learning environments in Asia, Australia, Belgium, Kenya, Philippines and Canada over my career and thus have worked in many multilingual diverse education cultures. I do believe edublogosphere brings together our views which enriches our practice and affords the opportunity to share either through global projects, blogs, wikis and collaboration; however, this is simply the tourist visa approach and to fully comprehend other learning systems (and perhaps the importance of your point) you need to work there. Thanks for a thought provoking post on an issue I have personally worked in for many years.