Accidental Pedagogy

Journals, scholarship, sponsorship and product placement

Like Graham Attwell I was given pause by the contents of an email in my inbox today. The online journal Innovate has a new sponsor, Microsoft. As part of this they will be doing the following sorts of activities.

The email made the following announcement, emphases mine.

The sponsorship program affords technology providers the opportunity to partner with Innovate to help 
spread the word about creative new uses of technology that will enhance educational effectiveness. In 
concert with this effort, we are offering sponsors a voice on our Web site via a new section, "From Our 
Sponsors." As described in the "About this Journal" link, we will publish articles in this section that focus 
on (1) how educators use our sponsors’ products to enhance teaching, learning, and administration, (2)
the services our sponsors have provided or intend to provide to enhance educational effectiveness, and 
(3) how our sponsors view the future of education and the role information technology tools will play in 
addressing educational problems and issues. These articles will meet Innovate’s high editorial standards
they will be rigorously reviewed and edited to enhance their value to the global community.

As part of the sponsorship arrangement with Microsoft, we invite you to submit manuscripts describing 
uses of Microsoft technology (e.g., Office, SharePoint, WL@EDU) that enhance, extend, or in some cases 
replace traditional pedagogical or research methods. 

I am always uncomfortable about scholarly or applied research articles or reports that use brand names or focus on specific, proprietary products. In academic technology we frequently cant help but write about specific technologies but the siren call of the vendor is one that I think we must resist. I think it's hard enough to really question technology and ask tough questions about its impact and how its used in our research without there being a sponsor like relationship there, operating even in a subtle and unobtrusive way.

But maybe I am guilty of double standards here. I believe that Apple has something of a history of doing some similar sorts of things and they have given me way less pause (and I am not a Mac user). And one could argue that so long as they have rigorous peer review standards and procedures things should be ok. Plus we need to find ways to fund these sorts of journals.

I guess part of my concern stems from the fact that I am just not that interested in reading articles about how to use Word, or SharePoint. I fear that apart from any pandering or distortion of the integrity of the process if you're trying specifically to write about a specific product from a particular vendor the questions that you're going to ask are going to be dull. I guess we will have to wait and see how it turns out.

Berman Center video on Harvard Coop textbook madness

The Berkman Center has posted a short video of a discussion between Angela Kang and Seltzer exploring why the Harvard Coop was wrong to claim intellectual property rights in their textbook prices and ISBN's.

Regardless of the copyright claims I think universities should post reading and book lists on their own websites. That would help students get the information earlier and more conveniently and help them make better decisions about where and how to purchase.

Anne Derryberry on gaming

I have been meaning to post a link to Anne Derryberry's blog on gaming for a while now. Games generally arent my thing and I think there's way to much talk about them in academic technology right now -- a sort of slavish, unquestioning hagiolotrizing of gamers and the people that write about them. Sorr4y for the vitriol, my brain hurts today (see below for some comic relief).

But Anne's blog, I'm Serious is different, and worth a read.

Center for History and New Media

The good folks over at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason recently got a big grant from the Department of Education to do a lot of good work on creating digital teaching and learning materials and helping train K-12 teachers in their use. These are the same folks that bring us the browser-based bibliographic tool Zotero. They also got another grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to continue work on Omeka "a next-generation web-publishing platform for smaller history museums, historical societies, and historic sites." I do wonder however how much this tool overlaps with Pachyderm. Hmm.

the history department at Mason as well as the CHNM have a number of avid bloggers, many of whom address issues of some interest to academic technology types, including Dan Cohen and Mills Kelly, among others. Mill's latest post is about work we're doing together on integrating blogs into the classroom as part of our Technology Across the Curriculum program.