Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue

Description

Chris spent the summer of 2009 working with Education Technology Services, exploring how Web 2.0 technologies impact scholarship in philosophy through open forms of dialogue.  The goal, according to Chris, is to “…explore the possibility of pursuing rigorous academic philosophical research and teaching using digital media and innovative technology.” The Fellowship led to experiments in open dialogue through a variety of mediums, such as blogs, podcasts and other forms of multimedia.

Chris spent a great deal of his time exploring various technological tools and platforms for communication and dialogue. One characteristic of many of our TLT Fellows is a willingness to try new things.

Chris’s specific use of blogs to engage students in philosophy discussions is now the de-facto model of blogging used by many instructors at Penn State. By having a diverse blogging community, conversations often go beyond course, semester, and university boundaries. Chris also developed a great rubric for the use of blogs in his course, that he can share with other faculty.

You just have to be open to new things, ready to change your workflow and ready to change your technologies. You also need to be ready to fail, and learn from those failures. You only really learn about these technologies by using them in the flow of your scholarship and your teaching.

Chris created several videos, such as the one below, that outline his thinking about the intersection of blogging and pedagogy.

Cohort

2009

Focus Area

Open Educational Resources
Theme: Web 2.0