The Ed Techie

Virtuous circles - a blogging quiz

A 'how addicted to blogging are you' quiz available here, which of course, anyone who is addicted to blogging will take and then blog about (via What counts). You can't stop this stuff even if you want to. This is a promotional aid for an online dating service, which has nothing to do with blogging, but they know what we're suckers for. I didn't want to blog about it, but felt compelled to. It's not as good as my connected academic quiz though.

81%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Dating Site

The butterfly learner

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm encouraging Patrick McAndrew to blog. His first proper post is a goodie - it sets out his concept of the Butterfly learner. This is an idea we have discussed over beer/coffee before, but he has never got around to publishing formally. Enter the blog and you have an immediate outlet.

Anyway, the idea is that small changes in the environment can have unforeseen effects on learners. As Patrick says, this may have significant implications for learning design work, since it may be that learning is just intrinsically chaotic. There are too many variables and the inter-relation between them is too complex to model effectively. I have seen something of this in practice - when I chaired the large first level course T171, we had around 12,000 students. We couldn't house them all on one server at the time, so we split them across two and replicated the forum structure on each. They were studying the same course material, had the same activities, and the same support structure. What emerged was two markedly different groups however. On one server they were very active, loved the course and engaged in all the activities, and on the other server the forums were dominated by complaints, arguments, calls for clarification, and not much activity around the actual course material.

This might not in itself demonstrate that learning is essentially chaotic - one of the influencing factors seemed to be the nature of the early dominant voices in the forums. If they were positive then the cohort tended to follow and if they were negative then we got a largely negative cohort. This is a well known phenomenon in group psychology, and you can see how it would happen. So it is a variable, and one I didn't control for, but that doesn't necessarily mean learning is chaotic - just complex.

But if there are enough such effects, then it may as well be chaotic as far as the average educator is concerned, because it becomes impossible to control for all such variables. Take the example above - even if I had thought about it beforehand it would have been difficult to control with such a large cohort. I could have split groups according to the outcomes of psychometric tests maybe, or planted some 'happy' stooges in each forum to get it going on the right note, but these all seem rather unlikely (not to mention dodgy from an ethical point of view). And that is assuming that a happy forum is best for learning anyway. What I didn't do (and regret now) is look at the results between the two sets of students. Did the nature of the dialogue have any effect on outcome? My guess is it probably didn't in the end.

Back to learning then, and maybe this is why the standard lecture has persevered for so long. Learning may be chaotic, so we should remove as many variables as possible. The lecture is a fairly stripped down educational experience. We also tend to know a good lecturer when we see one. The problem is that even if we wanted the lecture to continue unchanged (and I don't) the nature of learning has changed - when I am online I have access to people, resources, my own notes, tools, services, instantly. Learning becomes much more embedded in our everyday lives and not something we parcel out to a specific room. We are going to have to learn how to learn in this environment. And if it is chaotic, then we will need some ways of controlling that chaos (I'm mixing definitions of the term chaos in that sentence, but never mind for now).

Becoming a blog mentor

As part of my mission (that may be aggrandising it somewhat) to promote blogging in the OU, I have offered to be a blogging mentor to three or four colleagues. The idea is to help them become regular, stable bloggers. They will then promote it to others and soon the whole world will blog! What do you mean pyramid schemes are dodgy?

Anyway, I have no idea what I mean by being a blogging mentor, so we'll have to make it up as we go along. If anyone has done something similar I'd really appreciate any tips. My plan is to be open about it, hence this posting, and to encourage them. I figure if I name them here that will be a motivation to continue for a while anyway.

First out of the blocks is Patrick McAndrew. Patrick has had a few attempts at blogging before, most notably with OCHRE. This was a semi-official blog for the evaluation strand of the openlearn project. I'll let Patrick say more about why he didn't blog as much as he would have liked with this - I think official blogs can feel a bit limiting both in scope ('can I talk about my cats?') and style ('can I make jokes?'), which makes you less inclined to post to them.

Patrick's new blog is here:  http://openpad.wordpress.com/ If he doesn't post at least twice weekly, we'll be after him...

Books, playlists and the granularity of ideas

I have mentioned this before, but thought I'd revisit it (hey it's the summer holidays, time for reruns all round). In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger gives a nice analysis of how the digitisation of content has altered our perceptions of what we thought was the basic unit. In talking about music he says

"For decades we've been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs ... As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track."

Nick Carr disagrees with Weinberger, stating the artistic structure of the album, using Exile on Main Street as an example (wonder why he didn't choose a Steps album, say). Clay Shirky has a good refutation of Nick's claim saying that if the artistic integrity of Exile were as strong as he claims, then it would survive digitisation - it doesn't when you look on iTunes, most people download Tumbling Dice. I'm with Shirky/Weinberger on this, although I know what Nick Carr means, but the album didn't have an intrinsic artistic integrity, rather the economics as outlined by Weinberger came first, and then some artists began to explore the album as an integrated unit. If digitisation had come first then maybe they would have explored artistic avenues open to them through that means, but they would have been unlikely to come up with the album as the logical conclusion to musical output. It's atoms and economics that made this so.

I wonder if the same isn't true of books. They have a longer pedigree and greater cultural value than albums, but essentially they are containers for ideas. Their format, size and existence is largely a result of the economics of atoms. An individual could only be in one place at one time and speak to an audience of limited size. Therefore to get an idea across to a wider audience you need a format that is transportable, easily interpreted and has a low(ish, illiteracy still being a big problem) threshold to participation. This is something the church understood early on.

In the academic world we also have the article, which because of the economics of stuff, is bundled together with other articles in to a journal, ie a smallish book. So even though the article may be smaller in size, it still follows the economic route determined by the book (with the interesting addition that the publishers don't do any of the work involved in its production and take all the money). But with the digitisation of knowledge then it is free to follow its own path.

I don't doubt that the book will continue to exist, but it will not hold the monopoly on being the conduit for ideas. Just like Exile on Main St, some books have an integrity that justifies the format (ironically Weinberger's book is one such), but just like many albums used to be a couple of good singles plus filler, so many books seem to be a good idea stretched over 100,000 words. This isn't the author's fault necessarily, they had a good idea, and the book is the dominant means of getting it out.

But this need no longer be the case - an online essay, a blog, a podcast, a collection of video clips - all these are perfectly viable means for disseminating ideas. As well as the book losing its monopoly, so does text - audio and video can be used effectively. We only used text because it was transportable when ideas were tied in with physical objects. And if ideas become the equivalent of tracks, then perhaps the user creates the equivalent of a playlist by pulling these together around a subject of their choice.

Simpsonize yourself

(via John Connell) Burger King offer the ability to Simpsonize yourself. You upload a photo, do some adjustments and hey presto, there's a Simpsons character that doesn't look much like you. But it is fun. Here's me:

Whoever devised this for BK deserves to have their meal maxed - this is exactly the kind of marketing that works online. It's fun, irresistible, quick and very viral. Look - even grumpy old professors do it and then blog about it. Whether it will make me buy a whopper is another question though.

Blogging the course design process - leftovers and sausages

I've mentioned this in passing before, but it deserves a full posting I think - my colleague James Aczel is keeping a blog as he chairs the production of a new course in our Masters in Online and Distance Education. The course is H809, "Practice-based research in educational technology", and the title was even voted on by readers and students. I would like to see more courses keeping blogs during the design phase, because a) it might help create a buzz around the course before it starts, b) it acts as a useful resource once the course has started and c) it probably aids the design process itself if you have to explain and reflect upon it.

There are two views on this. The first is that, like James, you should make the process open. Another colleague of mine has commented that the course production process sometimes feels like a big feast where we have all these great ideas and discussions, and then what we give students are the leftovers. While I think that's a bit of an extreme way of putting it. Most OU courses are not light on content, so if it is leftovers, it's a lot of leftovers, but he means intellectually I suppose. Keeping a blog is one way of inviting everyone to the feast.

The other view is that the design process is a filtering one. While we may have lots of great discussion, we also have a lot of needles digression also. What the final course represents is not some much leftovers but finally crafted perfection. Continuing our food analogy, course production is like making sausages - you can enjoy the end product but seeing how they're made would really put you off.

I'm going to take a middle route between these - part of what we do as educators is devise our best guess about what students will need and want. This is the finished course. But increasingly we are appreciating that one size doesn't fit all (education may be the last bastion of this approach), and exposing the process at least helps broaden your perspective. Keeping a blog represents a good middle route too I think - James is being open about the design process, but he will also filter what he blogs about (he's not going to write "X spent half an hour talking rubbish again today", for instance). I would hesitate to make blogging a compulsory part of producing a course, since then it just becomes a burden, but if it does turn out to help the process or recruitment, then I'd certainly encourage it. 

BT Vision - the sound of failure

A while back, as part of the Broadcast strategy review, I was in a meeting with BTVision. Their new broadcast package sounded interesting, you get Freeview through the aerial and then they use broadband to deliver on demand services, and some subscription. I liked the hybrid nature of it, so I decided to test it out. What followed was a catalogue, no, an encyclopedia, of errors.

You have to subscribe to BT Broadband, so I did this on the phone and signed up for the BTVision package I wanted. The chap set an installation date for me (morning of 8th August). The broadband hub arrived and I installed that reasonably easily (although it did make IE7 go loopy, but Firefox worked okay).

Yesterday I sat in waiting for the engineer. Here is my account of the day:

• 12pm - I decide to ring as I haven't heard anything. I wait 14 minutes in a queue before I am told 'they'll be there by 1.'
• 12.40 - I ring again, I wait around 15 mins again. I speak to someone who says she will check with the engineers. When she comes back she says they won't tell her where they are. Not a good communication policy I thought, but shrugged it off. Once again I'm assured they'll be there by 1.
• 1.25 - I ring again. After a 20 minute wait the woman tells me 'you're not down to have an installation today.' I am transferred to someone who tells me that when I was initially sold BTVision their systems were down, so they couldn't check whether I had sufficient broadband speed to receive BTVision. They have since done the checks and I can't. Needless to say they didn't mention any of this at the time. They have sent me a letter explaining this, which hasn't arrived yet (a letter mind - you're a telecoms company, trying ringing me!) Feeling very irate now I ask to speak to a manager. I am put on hold for 15 minutes, then speak to someone who says I shouldn't have been given a date for installation but instead should have been told I would get an email. I wasn't, so have spent the day waiting indoors. She offers 3 months free telephone line rental as apology. I explain that I don't want BT broadband as I wanted a complete package and only took it because it was part of BTVision. She says she has to transfer me to the broadband department. I am put on hold.
• 2.30 - I am still holding, but have another meeting to go to, so hang up.
• 6.10pm - I ring the Broadband dept. After 15 minutes I speak to someone and explain I need to cancel as I was missold BTVision and need a Mac code. She says she will investigate and puts me on hold.
• 6.55 - after 25 minutes of further holding, I am cut off.
• 7.05 - ring again. After 14 minutes I get through and explain the situation again. The chap informs me that I am on a contract so can't just withdraw. I am now sobbing in frustration. I explain that the only reason I have BT Broadband is because I was missold BTVision. He says he will raise an issue, which means they will investigate and let me know within 4 working days.
• 7.45 - exhausted, I collapse, twitching everytime a BT Broadband advert comes on the TV.

Even if we accept the more generous interpretation that the initial misselling was just a mistake, (although if they try and keep the contract my darker suspicions will be aroused) what really bothers me about the above is the manner in which telephone holding is used as a weapon against disatisfied customers. I suspect I wouldn't have had to wait as long to speak to sales if I was a new customer.

Just look at the amount of time I spend just waiting. An endless sequence of hold messages and muzak - these are the sounds a dying organisation makes.

The content law

Through the various projects I've been involved in recently (openlearn, broadcast strategy review, Flosscom), I've come to the realisation that something very significant has happened to the nature of content. It can be summarised thus:

"Digital content wants to be free, and will seek the path to maximum access."

Let's call it the content law. It can be seen as a variation on Dan Gillmore's 'the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it'. Evans and Wurster have argued that the digital marketplace has seen the unbundling of the economics of information and physical product. This is most readily seen in retail, where you have to see the physical object in a shop to know about it, but online the product information is separated out. David Weinberger explores the implications of this unbundling further, in that it allows  infinite recategorisation because the information, unlike the physical product, can be in multiple places at once.

When the product is digital (image, movie, text, audio) then both the product and it's information (and in the Weinberger sense the product is the information since everything is metadata), can be in multiple places. One of the consequences of this is that for any given digital market the ultimate outcome will be that eventually, and despite all the efforts to restrict it, digital content will be freely available.

Let's consider some examples. Firstly, photography: in an analogue world the physical photograph (or the negative) was the information and the product. If you wanted to buy a photo you would have to buy a physical copy. The numbers of these could be controlled, and thus so could the price. With digital photography the initial online offerings still attempted to sell costly images in the $100s. For the individual services like Ofoto allowed you to share photos, but only at a thumbnail, and only with limited people. They didn't want users to download the digital file, only to order prints from them. Then along comes Flickr and now we have largely free content, available to everyone.

In broadcast the changes haven't quite gone this far yet, but they will. As content moves online and companies like Sky and BT move in to each other's territory (Sky offering broadband, BT offering TV services), then the expensive subscription model of Sky begins to break down. There is too much free content out there to make it worthwhile. Large events (mainly sports) are sustaining the subscription model for a while, but eventually it will become unviable. Sky know this which is why they are branching out in to other services which people will pay for, such as broadband.

Lastly, music has been the one industry that has really struggled with this desire for content to be liberated. For years the record company ignored the internet (a case of commercial negligence), until Napster forced them to take notice. Suddenly content was free and everywhere. They fought back with legal action and restrictive DRM. The important thing for record company execs to realise is that the success of iTunes represents a step along the path to the liberation of content, not an end point. Increasingly artists are recording their own material, releasing it  online and establishing a live following. They are effectively disintermediating the record companies. Having established an audience the artist may then sign a deal with a company for some of the marketing, but this is only because we have the intermediate stage of CDs still.

There are a number of steps in all these scenarios. The process goes something like this:

1. The industry ignores the implications of digitisation and the internet
2. The industry sees the internet as a means to find a global market for doing roughly the same business model.
3. An initial outsider breaks down barriers, but the industry fights back with heavy handedness that demonstrate it wants to hold on to the original model and doesn't get it.
4. A halfway business model is found. The industry breathes a sigh of relief and execs open the champagne, because they think they have found a way to maintain their established business practice and enhance the possibilities of the net. They're wrong.
5. Through bottom up activity and newcomers to the industry content gradually becomes free and alternative business models emerge.
6. The established players finally realise the model has changed and adapt or die.

The content law may seem simple, but it has enormous implications. Let's try a thought experiment: imagine a matter transporter has been invented. The implications for transport industries, car manufacturers, holidays, property prices, retail etc would be enormous. The physical (including people) becomes digital content as it were, so there is no need to live near your place of work (or even to have a 'place of work').

The internet is a matter transporter for digital content. If you are working in any sector where the content can be digitised (broadcast, music, newspapers, movies, and er, education) then you should repeat the content law to yourself everyday, because it means you have to find alternative revenue streams for when your content achieves its nirvanic state of free and available to everyone. There may be some content which can survive this law, but you are probably going to do your organisation a bigger service if you assume the content law is true for you also and instead of trying to find ways to combat it, you seek ways to build new models around it.