I've linked to Alan Levine's site 50 web 2.0 ways to tell a story before. I just listened to a presentation that he delivered on ustream (it takes a minute or so until the audio starts). The first time I came across his wiki, I was focused on the tools themselves. But, listening to Alan's presentation, it dawned on me that this model could be a great approach to curriculum development for faculty (or trainers) who might not have access to instructional designers...but are wanting to incorporate different technologies into their teaching.
An interesting look at various networks, particularly revealing of the strong presence of a small minority in acquiring the majority of links - Between Friends: "The idea of a social graph--a representation of a person's network of friends, family, and acquaintances--gained currency last year as the popularity of online social networks grew...The push to understand the nature and potential value of links between people online has led to imaginative ways to represent such networks."
The article focuses on social networks and ways they can be visualized. Obviously, those are two separate issues. How and why social networks form online has not been extensively researched (social networking sites (SNS) is still only about four years into its popularity cycle). Sociologists such as Watts, Castells, and Wellman have extensively researched social networks, but the online component has not been fully considered in light of SNS tools. The other aspect - visualization - is of far greater value than just exploring how people are connected through links. The visualization of data has the potential to significantly improve how capacity to handle information abundance, gain new insight and meaning, etc. Plus, I have yet to see a significant focus on how network analysis can be utilized in education (Gruzd and Haythornthwaite offer a consideration (.pdf) of interaction patterns in online communities)
The concept expressed in this post is reflective of a McLuhan-like notion of new tools being first adopted to do the work of the old. Only after personal experience and time do we realize that some new media/technologies are fundamentally different and continued adoption and use forces systemic ripples of change. The Strength of Walled Gardens: "What we end up seeing here are instructors who want to use wikis, but want to restrict access to them to their particular class. Most want to restrict write and edit access, some also want to restrict read access. They want to use wikis behind the garden walls that LMS’s have long offered. They want to use wikis on their terms.
To me, this is symptomatic of a growing disconnect of mindsets that we are witnessing as we move into an always accessible, open publishing, information saturated environment. I don’t want to assume this disconnect of mindsets is based on generational lines but I believe that the practice of protecting intellectual property through means such as copyright is a mindset that is being challenged in profound ways."
I haven't had time to read this book in its entirety, but from the sections I've skimmed, it's worth taking a look at: The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. The entire book is available for download.
Rough day. Apparently new research suggests we don't have free will and the resulting deterministic messages have the potential to lead to general moral decay. I'd do something about it. But it wouldn't make a difference.
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business: "Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It's as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)
You know this freaky land of free as the Web."
I wanted to like this article - it deals with concepts that many of us experience in our daily lives such as the reduced of cost for computing and online participation. But several aspects of the article don't resonate with me. Software and content are free on the surface. What has happened, however, is not a full scale revolution as Anderson suggests (he is, after all, ramping up for publication of another book, so attendant hype and jargon are to be expected). Instead, the value point of content has shifted. Google is definitely not a company built on freedom, openness, running through meadows holding hands, etc. Google is very much concerned with selling and revenue. To compete, however, it has been forced to adopt a different model than what Microsoft was built on. It has managed, however, to adopt the television model - free for users but sponsors/advertisers pay. Facebook is now in a similar position - they need a revenue stream as there current valuation is based on potential, not reality. When generic content is free, then we pay for other things - such as high quality content or first access (such as movies). While certain examples of free-simply-because-it's-right exist (wikipedia and emerging discussion of P2P and gift-based economies), it is certainly not the norm. Just because something is free on one end of the value continuum does not mean it is no longer to be found on the continuum at all.
Robots, long common in industrial settings, are now approaching a degree of sophistication to perform jobs within the service sector. Is this where e-learning becomes r-learning?
The Downside of a Good Idea - a short critique of the challenges of too much openness and sharing (to the point where innovation is negatively impacted as good ideas are overlooked while everyone is busy trying to manage and share). Beinhocker makes a similar point in emphasizing that "densely connected networks become less adaptable as they grow" (p.152). But the study itself doesn't make much sense to me. Is it comparing connections? Or effective group size for solving certain problems? And what about trust? I don't just randomly consume and share information. I do so in a context - or more accurately, a network of people I trust or have some familiarity with.
I've updated my conference presentation page with links to some previous conference recordings, as well as my presentation schedule for 2008. If I'm in your area, and you'd like to meet/chat/or have me present at a conference, let me know - always great to put faces to names I've only encountered online.
I should mention as well, two conference where I'm involved on the Steering Committee are both in "final call for papers" mode...see ALT-C 2008 in Leeds, UK, and ED-MEDIA in Vienna, Austria.
Ken Carroll sent me this link to a Chinese translation of elearnspace. Not sure who is doing the translation...but, it's important to note that the ability for extending ideas starts with openness - i.e. Creative Commons license. This type of translation (re-creation) is discouraged under traditional copyright. Result? A person might own the content, but in a context of limited influence and discourse. I'm not suggesting that elearnspace will be widely read because it's open, but rather that a model of openness permits the extension of learning and idea sharing in a network manner. OLDaily is also translated...as is Infinite Thinking Machine and Weblogg-ed.
After receiving a fair bit of feedback on my initial post on collective and connective intelligence, I posted some thoughts on my connectivism blog: Collective or Connective Intelligence?
While this comes from the school of "well, duh, of course", it does serve to make explicit the value of dealing with people who are well-connected to ideas, concepts, and people within a certain field (we used to hire for expertise, today, it makes more sense to hire based on how connected they are to the field). Understanding productivity in the Information Age: "...researchers found that information workers whose strong e-mail networks allow them to receive new information sooner than their peers — or to receive more pieces of new information — are likely to be more productive than their less well-connected counterparts. Workers who are “information hubs” complete more projects in a given period of time and thus generate more revenue for their firm."
I like the idea being expressed, but I'm a bit disappointed in what appears to be a narrow research focus (e-mail networks? Hello, 1998) and vagueness in reporting results ("likely be more productive").
Last year, while attending ED-MEDIA in Vancouver, I lamented about lack of opportunity for participation. This year, we're trying to add more interactivity to the conference through the use of blogs, wikis, and podcasts. We've set up a conference blog and will continue to add interviews and resources as the Vienna event nears. I posted an interview (links to audio file) I conducted with Randy Garrison and Norm Vaughan on blended learning...
A bit of a rash of comments on "what skills are obsolete". A wiki has been setup to share obsolete skills. Scoble (the Paris Hilton of bloggers) has his own list. And, on a slightly more practical note, ACRLog has put detailed obsolete skills for librarians. Wonder what types of skills educators no longer need...
The NMC/EDUCAUSE 2008 Horizon Report (.pdf) is a great resource. Educators and administrators will do well to consider its contents in their planning. I have a small concern. Something about the notion of collective intelligence doesn't sit well with me. I can't quite put my finger on it. I can (and have) used the term myself to explain the combined efforts of "the many" in achieving an outcome, solving a problem, or determining the value of a resources (such as voting/rating systems in Amazon and Digg). As a term, it resonates with people - the value of being part of a larger community and sharing and creating information together is valuable, if not necessary today.
I'm not comfortable with collective intelligence - I prefer the notion of connective intelligence.
Derrick de Kerckhove explored this concept in 1997, well before we had the distributed collaboration tools we're using today. James Surowiecki explored a similar concept in Wisdom of the Crowds. Surowiecki's book is often misunderstood. He makes the point that people do not think together in coming to certain conclusions, but rather than people think on their own and the value of the collaborative comes in the connection and combination of ideas. Each person retains their own identity and ideas, but they are shaped and influenced by the work of others. The concept here is related somewhat to Stephen Downes' discussion of groups vs. networks. At stake in these discussions (Surowiecki, Downes, de Kerchove) is how we are to perceive the individual in a world where the collaborative/collective is increasingly valued. Collective intelligence places the collective first. Connective intelligence places the individual node first.
At this point, the distinction between collective and connective intelligence may not be very pronounced for most people. As we continue to engage in collaborative work, I think the distinction will become vital. For reasons of motivation, self-confidence, and satisfaction, it is critical that we can retain ourselves and our ideas in our collaboration with others. Connective intelligences permits this. Collective intelligence results in an over-writing of individual identity. In fairness to the Horizon Report, their focus is more on self-correcting attributes of collective activities, while my criticism is leveled at what happens to the individual in the process.
Better than free: "When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied....In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits."
A few nodes - Ken Carroll of ChinesePod and Curt Bonk - in my information network recently received coverage in NY Times: Learning From a Native Speaker, Without Leaving Home: "The best way to learn a foreign language may be to surround yourself with native speakers. But if you can’t manage a trip abroad the Internet and a broadband computer connection may do the job, too, bringing native speakers within electronic reach for hours of practice." Curt provides additional commentary on online language learning options.
CNN appears to understand some of the foundational shifts occurring with how people create, share, and consume information - in this case, news. In response to the popularity of citizen journalists, they have created an uncensored, user-created news resources called iReport. Take a few minutes and contrast the iReport site with the main CNN site. What's different? iReport is more cluttered, more democratic (you can vote on stories), and more personal. Maybe I'm too much of a product of YouTube videos and blogs, but choppy video recording a steam pipe explosion in New York - complete with people scattering - is more interesting than a news anchor telling me what happened. However, I don't think these two sites are in conflict. They augment each other.
Machines 'to match man by 2029': "Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil.
The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health."
To quote Yogi Berra, the future isn't what it used to be. And predicting 20+ years forward is, at best, good for headlines (and it worked for me, obviously!). I suspect there is a degree of inevitability to computers matching our cognition. The article is a bit confusing - on the one hand it talks about melding human and machine intelligence, but on the other, it appears to allude to standalone machine functioning of the human brain by 2029. Regardless, I'll be convinced once I see/hear a computer laugh or cry. Of all the human traits, these seem to me to be the essence of life - the capacity for joy and sadness.
Ok, so, as mentioned yesterday, Seesmic is the latest life sucking tool I've found online (apparently they've received several million dollars worth of funding). It has Twitter like options for following others and replying to them. Here's my seesmic post for today. I found Alan Levine in seesmic as well...replied to his video...but for some reason can't directly link to it here (which unfortunately robs the world of the rich exchange Alan and I had :)). Once you're logged in, you can add friends as you do with twitter and start to respond (with video) to the video posts of others. As a learning tool, it could serve as a slightly different way of handling threaded discussions. As a time wasting tool, it could serve for the exact same purpose it has for me so far!
As the world currently does not have enough software tools that we can use to waste time (and create deep meaningful connections (in 140 characters)), I was most pleased to encounter Seesmic today. It is described as the "twitter of video". After I posted my first few videos, I had several "threaded" video responses in about 3 minutes. There is always a unique feeling as new tools come online. They have that "new book" smell/feel. Then, after a few short years, they become more like, well, Twitter.
Somehow, one link led to another, and I found myself on this site: Soft peer review? "Traditional peer review has been criticised on various grounds but possibly the major limitation it currently faces is scalability, i.e. the ability to cope with an increasingly large number of submissions, which—given the limited number of available reviewers and time constraints on the publication cycle—results in a relative small acceptance rate for high quality journals. Although I don’t think social software will ever replace hard evaluation processes such as traditional peer review, I suspect that soft evaluation systems(as those made possible by social software) will soon take over in terms of efficiency and scalability."
Immediacy is one of the greatest factors of soft peer review. Traditional journals assume that an article is complete when it's published. Posting an article online with options for feedback and interaction, assumes that an article is the starting point for additional development. I find this immediate idea dissemination process valuable - one blogger posts an idea/article and the concept is quickly distributed/disseminated/extended through various forums (blogs, twitter, added to a wiki, etc.).
Google continues to explore ways to extract revenue from advertising (and in the process make the final transition into a media company with technology as a secondary concern - at list if you view a company's roots as being in the industry from which it derives its revenue). YouTube held an advertising coming-out party recently: "But the event was clearly centered on getting advertisers to spend more money on YouTube and convincing them that the site has more than just homemade clips." With advertising dollars continuing to shift from traditional media to the online market, Google is nicely positioned to take a significant share of the flow.
As part of a series of workshops on emerging technologies at University of Manitoba, I delivered a session on Facebook. The supporting wiki is available. Facebook has an increasing Greek tragedy feel. On the one hand, due to its popularity, I would love to use it for communicating. Or to experiment with its use as a teaching and learning tool. On the other hand, they've destroyed any visage of trust with my data.
Yahoo announced layoffs this week. We often hear of layoffs, downsizing, and such fun stuff. What is unique about this round of layoffs is the immediacy and personal perspectives generally lacking in press releases. Consider the twitter history from one individual impacted by Yahoo's decision. While everything may be miscellaneous today, stories and experiences are becoming more immediate and more personal.
When trying to expose faculty at University of Manitoba to the concept of networked learning, I find social bookmarking tools (such as del.icio.us) are a great starting point. Why? Most people can relate to having a mess of bookmarked pages in their browser and are periodically motivated to make sense of it. And most people work from more than one computer (home and work, desktop and laptop). While social bookmarking addresses both of these concerns, its real value is discovered only once faculty start using it. In additional to helping organize personal information, social bookmarking connects people who have shared interests. Each tag is a potential portal to a relationship. If someone tags resources in a similar manner or has similar interests, I learn from following them. Thomas Vander Wal presents this experience from the perspective of the enterprise: "Every organization needs to know itself better then they currently do. The employees and members of the organization are all trying to do their job better and smarter. The need to connect people inside an organization with others with similar interest, contexts, and perceptions is really needed."
A good example of how so much of our understanding of technology use is largely anecdotal and why we need more formal research to gain a better understanding of what is really happening with learner views of technology (the article cites statistics about declining rates of interest, inability to convert social network sites ads into revenue...but fails to address why...and what it means): Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up: "The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore."
Athabasca University is known as "Canada's Open University". They lay claim to offering the world's first online MBA program. AU also serves (for me at least) as a reminder of the promise of elearning in Canada - and how unfulfilled that promise is today. In late 90's, early 2000, Canada was clearly a world leader in exploring educational uses of technology. And it only made sense - we are a large country with a geographically dispersed population (especially in many remote communities). Since then, it appears that country after country has exceeded Canada's role as innovators (CCL has acknowledged Canada's declining role in elearning in their last several annual reports on the "state of learning in Canada"). We lack a national strategy (well, that's what CCL says, I think we lack a national conversation - strategy is only valuable to the degree that it influences policy and funding. I'm much more interested in conversations about how learning technologies can improve quality of and access to learning). In spite of these short comings, I did find this announcement from Xerox to be encouraging: "Xerox Canada has partnered with Athabasca University to develop a research program focused on advancing mobile learning and e-learning for students living in remote or rural areas of Canada". Now, if we can just get that national conversation going, perhaps we can catch up with UK, AU, and others.
I spent much of this week presenting and discussing a paper that I submitted to ITFORUM...here's the paper if you're interested - Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers: "Current developments with technology and social software are significantly altering: (a) how learners access information and knowledge, and (b) how learners dialogue with the instructor and each other. Both of these domains (access and interaction) have previously been largely under the control of the teacher or instructor."
After spending last week traveling, and this week presenting a paper, I finally had some time to listen to several recent presentations by Stephen Downes. The first - Reality of Virtual Learning - starts with a discussion of reality and learning (the recording is not the best quality, so you'll have to crank up the audio to hear it), leading into an exploration of virtual worlds. One point that I've valued with Stephen's recent work is the emphasis on pattern recognition and rethinking the concept of knowledge construction. In this presentation he makes the (vital) distinction between meaning making as something that is grown, not constructed. He also provides an accessible description of AJAX. The second presentation - Web 2.0, E-learning 2.0, and the New Learning - is a shorter version of the above listed presentation and concludes with a return to the groups vs. network discussion.
One of the most valuable features of the edublog space is its leading edge innovation, creativity, and quality of discussion. I find many conferences and "experts" discussing concepts several years after they were dissected with bloggers. So I found this article on a presentation by Chris Dede on reinventing education via web 2.0 to be a review of what has been discussed extensively in podcasts and blogs...several years ago. I was also intrigued by the assertion that his talk had never been given before - I know many presenters find a topic and fine tune the presentation over a period of several months/years. I don't understand that. Maybe I just don't have the discipline and perseverance, but each talk I give, while sometimes incorporating previous elements, starts with a clean slate. That way I'm learning through the planning process, rather than fine tuning a message.
Will Thalheimer suggests that we need to explore learning applications of technologies that measure social interactions (see this article), with a particular focus on helping learners understand their "networking tendencies". I recall development of a visualization tool in Moodle (allowing educators to visualize how learners comment on each others posts). I have no idea what happened with that. Touchgraph shows relationships between documents/people in Google or Facebook. A tool that visualizes our physical interactions with other people would add an additional dimension to some of the analysis available based on online interactions.
Seb Schmoller links to an analysis of the popularity of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and other browsers. Firefox continues to make gains at IE's expense.
Everyone possesses some type of expertise that is worthy of communication or instruction. Barriers can be somewhat high when an individual decides to teach others. What society often defines as "important curriculum" is found in formal environments and under the guidance of school boards and educators. Today, however, everyone can be a teacher, even in rather mundane subjects or in teaching "micro skills". Howcast is a great example. Here, you will learn important skills like how to dance without embarrassing your self...how to fake an appreciation of art...how to hold a baby.
Peter Tittenberger asks for evidence of a crisis in education as presented or alluded to in many conferences and papers: "Maybe the arguments are right and we need a revolution in education - but the arguments aren’t coming from many instructors, educational administrators, governments, and most tellingly not from students or their parents".
On a given day, I have about 30 tabs open in my browser for resources I want to view when I have time. It's a bit of a pain and can slow computer performance. Enter Instapaper - install a simple button in your browser and save it to a website (your personal "paper") for later reading. What would be cool, as David Weinberger mentions, is the ability to make your own personal reading list public.
The hype of network approaches to information creation, sharing, communication, and web search continues to grow (and so it should). Perhaps the most substantive shift in our generation and upcoming decade (century?) is the move toward networked thinking. Once we start talking networks, a whole new mode of thinking emerges; one where cause-effect are slightly uncoupled and emergence and complexity theory play a greater role. Networks - which are required in today's information abundant and complex world - have the potential to reorganize much of society and education in particular. A few resources I've recently encountered on networks:
Social search based on personal networks
Google's social graph API "The public web is made up of linked pages that represent both documents and people. Google Search helps make this information more accessible and useful. If you take away the documents, you're left with the connections between people. Information about the public connections between people is really useful -- as a user, you might want to see who else you're connected to, and as a developer of social applications, you can provide better features for your users if you know who their public friends are. There hasn't been a good way to access this information. The Social Graph API now makes information about the public connections between people on the Web..."
I recently had the pleasure of being involved in an interview/conversation with Michael Wesch on the future of learning. The podcast runs about 30 minutes and covers the information cycle, social collaboration, roles of educators, and so on.