Profiling oneself in the WWW - concerning especially the western culture - is a trend getting stronger and stronger. Petra Vitolini Naldini wrote about “How tawdrily can home videos be?” including an interview with Prof. Dr. Jo Groebel about this seeking for profiling oneself in our culture 

(This article is in German, sorry…)

In our ePedagogy seminar “Didactical Analysis of a Virtual Learning Environment” the method of ePortfolios shall be used to support and to document the (learning) process. During the course every student is supposed to put a draft for an essay online. This is to be peer-reviewed by the others. These annotiations should be taken into account and worked into the final version of the essay. So at the end the process of development including conflicts and problems can be followed.

So our first task was to put up an ePortfolio including our CV and our aims and interest.
This caused - at least under some of the students - a discussion about transparency concerning personal things like (study) interests and CV. One student - using a weblog as portfolio - had a strong feeling of discomfort now having a blog and writing down certain information about herself: “I really want to have this thing private and not open to the whole computer-world.” Although her blog is password-protected and only open to the participants of the seminar.

In my opinion using a blog that is only open to a seminar-group creates a kind of class-atmosphere, where everybody in the classroom can here what you say about a topic. So what is the difference between a face-to-face seminar with discussions and real-life presentations of the students? What is it, that discomforts?

One difference is the record of the thoughts in written form - normally there is no complete record of every word in a seminar, only the private notes or a protocoll. By writing in a blog different communication media are used - there is a focus on the visual sense. The communication takes place without interaction. The statements can be reconstruced by the author as well as by the reader (central perspective epistemology, See Michael Giesecke, 1998: Der Verlust der zentralen Perspektive und die Renaissance der Multimedialität (The loss of the central perspective and the renaissance of multimediality)). And yet in the process of formulating a statement demands more considerations. In an oral discussion statements are mostly spontanous, there can be direct interaction like inquiries and the possibility of reconstruction is not given to that extend.

Regarding the whole process of a seminar this possibility of reconstruction for author, reader and peer-reviewer can be taken as a chance. It supports the comprehension of conflicts. Becoming aware of a conflict evokes discernment. Following the variation theory and Oliver & Trigwill (Martin Oliver & Keith Trigwell, 2005: Can ‘Blended Learning’ Be Redeemed? E-Learning, Volume 2, Number 1) discernment is the basis for learning to occur. It would be worth discussing this point of the impact of ePortfolios on the learning process more extensively… I try to put up a wikipage on this topic…

But back to my initial question, the discomfort. One main reason might be the obligation to put a CV online. What is the use of implementing CVs into the learning process? In my opinion there is no learning process but a preparation on how to sell oneself on the global job market - presenting oneself in a straight-forward way with a linear CV and clear goals with everything you do. This is one point where I would assume transparency to end and surveillance to start - related to the panopticon. This is a tool to discipline yourselve and the others by surveilling the learning process of the peers having their CV and their aims in mind - and knowing to be surveyed by peers and coach.

And still, it should be up to every student how much he or she wants to present to the pbulic (even if the public is limited to the seminar’s participants). But it is also up to the students to express this discomfort to the coach of the seminar - and to provoke a discussion on it.

To make the whole project process transparent we decided to store the records of our regular Skype-meetings (every two weeks) online in the wiki. So you can have a look at what we talk about besides this blog and the wiki.

Record of the Skype-Meeting 27/11/06

When we start talking about survaillance we actually simulataneously start thinking about a guy known by name Jeremy Bentham. He was active back in times but his model design of prison building is still up to date. His “panopticon” is about a “sentiment of an invisible omniscience”

This omnipresent survaillance is well known feeling and fact for example in shopping centers. We know that we are observed all the time when we are in there without actually being able to verify it, escape from it or trying to stop it. It is enough that we are awared of it´s existence and we change our behaviour. We all “pretend” to be good customers, deviant ones are turned back right at the main doors.
~~~

The first step of our project work, leading to a learning object about transparency and surveillance in education, surveillance culture and ubiquitous education is done: the tool for the transparent documentation of our process is now online.

We will use this blog for the communication about our topics, to publish the state of the our work, to start discussions about question and arguments… Everybody is invited to follow this process and to be active by commenting, asking, writing down ideas… And please feel free to link to this page to help us in our try to be test objects of our research about transparency and surveillance - especially in the era of web 2.0.

Next to this blog we use a Wiki to collect our material, to structure our thoughts in an order using semantic criteria, not in a chronological order. References for literature or other material are highly welcome!

At a point, when we feel we need to close/interrupt our process of research and regard our collection of material as a useful learning object for other people - also thirsty for knowledge - this blog will be closed and becomes thus the process becomes part of the learning object; but the starting point to the learning object will be a more static possiblity to enter the transparency of our project.

Brotherly love,

Christina