The Proverbial Lead Balloon


I admit, I have always been a bit naive, and perhaps a bit overambitious. I remember that when I was five or six, I was lingering down by the barn on my Grandpa Elder's farm, contriving a way to catch one of the cute piglets that was in the feedlot (in the shadow of its grumpy 200 kilo mother sow) so as to keep it as my own. I had to have my own pig! And now I recall how I had also brought my small tricycle to the feedlot gate and set it there as a corner post for my would-be pen, along with a hodgepodge of boards, a watering can and some string.


Oh yeah, sure, I was really gonna catch that piglet and keep it fenced within that crude set up. 

Several years later, I had another ambitious plan: to start my own museum. In my hometown of Thornville, Ohio, Grandpa Blackstone had a hardware store. On the second floor of the stately 19th-century building, there was an empty room, overlooking the front sidewalk and the village's main street. There was also a staircase that ran down to the street from my would-be museum space.

What a perfect place, I imagined,  to display my various collections of heirlooms and collectibles, including some Native American artifacts, old jars and jugs, a minor coin collection, and souvenirs from multiple family trips to Canada. So I worked relentlessly at cleaning that empty room; I convinced my patient great-grandfather to build display tables, which I then set up, and I set out all of my treasures with carefully measured attention.

In all my effort though, I had missed one important point:  Why would anyone besides my grandpa, my great-grandfather and my bullied younger siblings ever make the effort to walk up those dusty stair to visit a lackluster museum with my odds and ends? 

I had similar big ideas in a couple other stages of my life, with similar results. The proverbial lead balloons.

That's a bit how I now feel about having my students utilize the NUS Wikispace for their group research projects. It's great for everyone to be able to view and comment on each other's work. It's useful for a tutor to be able to access, assess, and admire student achievements. It's a good idea having students archive their group work in a common, mutually-accesible space. And so there it is on the NUS Wiki Dashboard, Professional Communication BB, neatly available for student use.

What I discovered today though in reviewing student work was that several research teams had set up their own wiki space right there on NUS Wiki but not in "my" space. Others had understandably used a space more familiar or workable to them, like Google Docs.

And so, I faced a dilemma. Castigate those who had created alternatives that were more suitable for their own research team's needs or be amenable to the deviation from my plan and adapt to the "beautiful" reality of the situation. 

Being more realistic and practical than I am either naive or ambitious, I decided I could adapt, that I should accept the learning apparent as students developed a system that worked best for them. 

The pigpen idea I gave up when I suddenly realized that separating the tiny piglet from its gargantuan mother was going to be a life-threatening affair. The museum idea I dumped after my first visitors walked up and back down the hardware store stairs *without* making any entrance fee contributions to my coffee can at the door.

And what of NUS Wiki? Why persist in forcing students who had set up other wiki sites for archiving their research project documents to export them to my long-established space just for the sake of ceremony? 

Well, I think you know the answer already.

I will be happy to review my students' materials on the site they have created, wherever that might be. That's more practical and realistic than transferring data just for the sake of some prescribed scenario.

Adaptation is survival.