The Ed Techie

Some YOFL goodies

I have 'created' (ah, what does created mean nowadays anyway), a couple of aggregating goodies for YOFL. First up, a Twitterfountain:

And next, a Yahoo pipe. Actually, Tony just let me hack one of his.

I've put both on the wiki too. Now, you see there is some point in engaging with my half-arsed idea - you'll get to appear on one of these!

Twitter Flash debate - inducing virality

Scott dropped me a line the other day saying that, in relation to YOFL, one of the skills he was interested in was 'creating virality'. I think this is exactly the sort of modern digital skill that we should be considering as educators. I'm not sure if this is what Scott meant by it, but I can see at least three reasons why it's interesting as an educator:

1. You want to create the same engagement with learning material for your students, as you see in popular memes or viral ideas.
2. A viral spread of an idea, concept, approach or technology is an excellent way of engaging other academics. Indeed it may be the only way to really address many of the issues of training and staff development, as Jennifer Jones has tried to do with her concept of Viral Professional Development.
3. As a means of engaging your wider network in distributed research, then what you are suggesting needs to have a 'viral' quality.

Of course, all this begets the question 'what do you mean by viral?' I don't want to get bogged down in definitions, but I think in essence it is an idea that people consciously or not, want to spread because it creates some level of engagement.

So, as my first YOFL experiment, here is what I am proposing - on Friday 30th Jan we have a 'flash debate' (you know, like Flash mobs where we all get together at a specified time, but in this case do something interesting and not just have a pillow fight) in Twitter around 'creating virality'. Tag it #YOFL and I should find it. I'll try and summarise it then next week.

(I realise this is all getting a bit recursive - I'm creating a viral activity about creating viral activities - if it doesn't work then that probably answers my question!)

Couple of good educator links

I don't do enough of this just linking lark. Here are a couple of good resources that people may find useful:

Not your Grandpa's blog - Jim Groom, Alan Levine and Cole Campese did a session on academic use of blogging. I'd particularly recommend Jim's page as an overview of using blogs in education (and for a Princess Bride clip):

"What if we didn’t understand what we do in education with blogs as “blogging” but as a quick and easy way to publish online within a learning community? Or a place to feature a portfolio of students’ best work? Or a site where professors and staff track their professional and personal development? What if we understood “campus blogging initiatives” as a community publishing platform to share, learn, and integrate various resources from around the Web into a more specific community?"

OnRamp - Jennifer Jones is creating her own guide to new media and technologies for educators on her blog. It covers blogging, RSS, twitter in an accessible, easy manner. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to give introductions to academics on this stuff. It's a series of blog posts, hopefully it'll be pulled together when she's finished into a nice site too.

Year of Future Learning - an experiment

I want to try something out, so would like people's views on it. My idea is to try and get some focused activity going around the concept of the learner of the future. Think of it as either a distributed research process or adding a layer of intentionality over some of what we do in the blogosphere.

I have this feeling that between us there are often very good conversations, excellent resources, great ideas, etc but we don't always take the next step in synthesising or collecting these. 

Here is what I have in mind: A loosely coupled, distributed research 'project'. We declare 09 the 'year of future learning' (#YOFL or #FLY - take your pick). I accept that 'the year of X' is a bit naff, and comes with all sorts of anti-arguments, (what about next year?) but as a means of focusing our energies, providing opportunities for review, and giving a broad enough umbrella it provides a useful framework.

This is a means of aggregating existing resources and events by tagging them - in the Weinberger sense, we may as well put our leaves on as many branches as possible, so for instance there will be sessions at Northern Voice and Alt-C which could be made part of the YOFL simply by adding the tag.

But I see it as much more than just another meme or tag, I also want to use it as a means of instigating some new open, distributed activities. I have in mind the following:

• A set of interesting questions generated by the community
• Connected blog posts around particular topics - blog-carnivals Tony has pointed me at
• An open, special edition journal
• Combined research results
• A workshop format that anyone can run, and share results via a wiki
• 'Live' events eg George Siemens' Elluminate sessions
• 'Flash debates' in twitter around a specific topic, which are then summarised
• Face to face sessions at various conferences
• A wiki/blog/site collecting all of this material together
• An end of year review

 I want to avoid any perceptions of elitism  so the idea is that this is open to anyone. I've emailed a few blog chums to see if they would be interested in doing some of the above, to give it some traction, but essentially it's open. If there is a topic of burning interest to you, run an activity and it'll be pulled in.

In addition, my colleague Grainne Conole also has lots of links into various communities, so we will be running a number of face to face activities also. This involves 'talking to people' - not sure what that is, probably some cool web 2.0 service.

The experiment for me is whether the online community can work this way, or whether it really does need a more directed, formal research project. At the moment I think we have good conversation. Conversations and dialogue can be spontaneous but they can also be focused, with a specific aim. Similarly, we have a loose-knit community of sorts, and communities can be around general areas of interest, but they can also have a common goal ('overthow a president', 'find Dave a date').

It is this second, more intentional layer that I was hoping we might foster this year. I like finding other people's posts and riffing off (or ripping off) ideas, but I want to explore whether the edublog community can do a bit more. Whether we can have purposeful conversations, aimed at addressing a specific problem.

To kick off I have created a wiki here for setting out the big questions.

I am go to aggregate anything with #YOFL and #FLY tags at some point. I make the solemn promise to summarise these once a month and try to put some interpretation to them, although anyone else is also free to do the same of course.

I will also set in motion a few activities, such as those listed above.

So, what do you think? Oh, here's a logo:

Blogging impacts on formal academic output

I exported my blog posts yesterday as a back up and thought I'd have a quick play around. I counted up the posts from 2006 when I started, 2007 and 2008. Then I wondered what my 'proper' academic output had been over this time, as I have the feeling it has fallen off somewhat. And yes, whereas I was averaging around 6 or 7 publications pre-blogging, since 2006 it has been about 3.

I think there are two main reasons for this:

1) The motivation to write papers has decreased - apart from getting an RAE ranking, the main reason to publish is to share ideas and fulfill a creative urge to write. Blogging meets these needs better than formal publications.

2) There is more than one way to network. I'm not a big fan of attending conferences (I've got enough bags, thanks), but I used to go to quite a few as this was the only way of getting to know those in your field. So, I used to write conference papers to achieve this aim. Now, I have a much wider and richer network through blogging and twitter, so that motivation is also reduced. I still think it's valid, and meeting people face to face adds to that network, but it doesn't have the monopoly it once did.

Here is a graph of my publishing versus blog activity (no. of blog posts is divided by 10).

Obviously this won't be the same for everyone, Grainne for instance still keeps up a formidable publication record despite taking up blogging. But I think we might see a similar pattern for many academics who get bitten by the blog bug. I think it's a good thing, but if I was an aspiring, newly qualified academic and formal publications were what counted, I guess I'd have to be wary of this effect.

Anyone else noticed a similar trend?

With friends like these, musicians don't need enemies

Nothing in this post is new, but I had a reminder of the idiocy of copyright today. I got a message from YouTube telling me my Edupunk video had been blocked because of a copyright claim. The account read:

"Your video, Edupunk, may have audio content from Anarchy In The U.K. by Sex Pistols that is owned or licensed by WMG."

Well, I can't argue, that is obviously true. But let's examine the logic of this and ask a few questions:

Question 1: "Is it likely that my use of Anarchy in the UK as the soundtrack to an ed tech video will damage sales? Will anyone who was going to buy it, now not do so, because they have my video?"
Answer: No, the opposite is probably true, someone may be reminded they don't have it and purchase it.

Question 2:  Am I, an individual likely to pay them for usage?
Answer: No, it's non-c0mmercial use, I am not going to be the type of licence fees set out for a commercial world.

Question 3: Are the artists harmed in any way?
Answer: Not as far as I can see. The use of the song to accompany the visuals surely creates something new, which they would never have intended. So, I am not stopping them from doing something they were likely to do.

Question 4: Am I profiting from this in any way?
Answer: No, not really unless being slagged off by Donald Clark counts (and in a way, it does).

Question 5: Isn't there something rather ironic in this song in particular being locked down this way?
Answer: Hell yes!

These questions (apart from no 5) seem like the type of ones artists and copyrighters should be asking in a digital age. Their preference though is to that no-one sees my video, even though, as I suggest above, the impact is at worst negligible and at best, positive to sales.

Oh well, there's always Blip.Tv.

Adblock

Blogging as occupational therapy

It is a bit incestuous to blog about blogging, but as it is still relatively new as a medium, I do find it interesting when it reveals the way in which blogging has forced itself into the interstices of your life.

As friends on Twitter may know, my wife was recently diagnosed with tongue cancer. Please don't post comments of support - I know people mean it, but it will make me feel as though I was only blogging this for sympathy. I mention it only to give the context to what follows (the long term prognosis is good by the way).

With hospital visits, surgery, nursing at home, ongoing radiotherapy, plus childcare, this has inevitably meant a disruption to work. I had to hand over SocialLearn directorship to my (much more competent) colleague, Simon Buckingham-Shum as it was entering a very intense phase and I wouldn't be able to give the mental attention it required, or be present at enough meetings.

But during this period (I've been on annual leave for most of it) I still wanted to feel intellectually active (no jokes about why change now). In addition I didn't want to disappear off the organisational or professional radar. Blogging has proved the ideal solution. I can fit it in around my newly disrupted life, it offers feedback, and it can be broken down into convenient chunks. It is flexible, and at the same time rewarding.

And more than that, freed from some of the everyday constraints of an ongoing project, I have had time to look at tools, read blogs (and even the odd journal article), and just do some thinking. The blog has been the framework for this.

Given that during most people's working life they will have periods such as this, the blog can be a useful means of lessening their impact. One of the big issues the individual and the organisation face is that the individual becomes distanced from what is happening at work, and so when they start back in earnest there is a considerable barrier to overcome. I feel that blogging and of course, twitter, may help reduce this barrier. This is probably only true if the individual is already active in these areas, this wouldn't be the time to start them.

It would make an interesting research project to investigate whether social media use in your professional capacity reduces the work impact of life events. Come on, someone must have a PhD student looking for a subject? (I'm not volunteering to supervise it by the way).

Ownership ain't what it used to be

I recently signed up for Spotify, a music service that allows you to find, and listen to, whole tracks and albums. It's less social than LastFM, say, but more focused around the specific music you want - whereas LastFM uses the artist you like as a springboard for finding other artists, Spotify uses it just to give you that artist's music.

It brought back to me some considerations I'd had about the nature of ownership. My generation will have a distinctly different concept of ownership to that of my daughter's generation. For my generation you partly constructed your identity around what you owned - your bookshelf, record collection and DVD archive were important aspects of who you were (as anyone who has read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity will appreciate). But for the digital generation this strong link with ownership has been broken.

It took time and money to build up any of those collections. Therefore they demonstrated a commitment which was worth exhibiting. In a digital world this effort is greatly reduced, and as a result so is the emotional attachment one feels towards them. How often would people say that their book collection or record collection would be the things they would want to save from a burning house? This simply doesn't apply anymore - you can just download again (iTunes keeps a record of what you've purchased or you just download ahem, free, versions from BitTorrent).

But even more than this, the need to own anything is reduced. Imagine a service like Spotify greatly increased so you could find any artist, and with mobile devices, get access anywhere. Why do I need to own any of these tracks then? I can get them whenever I want, and isn't that the point of ownership, to have access under your control?

Obviously there are some things you still need to own (clothes, cars, phones, etc), but if so many previously coveted items move to cloud services, what will the next generation cherish? I think the answer is evident already in where they spend their time - it's in their identity. This was one of the functions of owning these items in the first place after all. For the digital generation things that cannot be easily duplicated will be important - this will be the MySpace or Facebook page they have generated over a long time, the network they have created. These represent the 'things I'd save from a fire' in an online world.

As for us? Ownership is a hard habit to break.

MixedInk - affordances for collaboration?

From the always useful Jane's elearning picks I came across MixedInk. It's a tool to promote collaboration to produce joint documents. Before you raise eyebrows and say 'not another one,' bear with me. It has some neat features - you are working towards a definite goal document, it has time limits to focus effort, but most intriguingly it positively wants you to take and adapt the text of other writers. As you type it finds similar phrases from other contributers, and you can add these in. Each submission can be voted on, so you can see which are the most popular/useful. And then when the document is finalised it shows which writers contributed each element.

This has collaborative assessment written all over it. You can easily imagine setting a group assignment and using MixedInk to produce it. Students can jointly create the document, and the role of each contributer is clearly visible. This is beginning to get at creating real affordances for collaboration, which are often lacking in the standard wiki. By suggesting other bits of text the tool is encouraging plagiarism, but in a good way. Using tools like this will be the way we can make assessment relevant to learners who work collaboratively in every other sphere of their lives.

I am about to try and kick of an experiment in crowdsourcing, mass contribution around understanding learning in a 2.0/participatory/digital/social world, so I've set up a quick trial with MixedInk to try and determine what the key questions are - I'll blog more about this later, but if you fancy having a play with MixedInk, here is my big education questions doc.

And here is the company's video explaining the technology:

MixedInk Demo from MixedInk on Vimeo.

Shiny show 2

Following on from the hugely irrelevant Shiny Show 1, I bring the next instalment, where I look at any new technologies that have crossed my path and evaluate them from an educational perspective. The usual proviso that some of these may not be that new, it's just when I get to them.

Odadeo - a social network site for dads. It is built around the concept of 'pledges', eg 'I pledge to be more patient', or 'I pledge to take my daughter to see High School bloody Musical 3'. You can then 'pip' your pledges when you do something towards them. You can share pledges and there is a 'Dadsdaq' which shows your progress. I like the way it gets you to define yourself according to various labels (you can invent your own tags), and then find others in those groupings. My concern was that it would be populated by either a) angry Fathers for Justice types or b) American dads who kept crying every ten minutes and hugging each other. But it's not, and is quite a fun place. If you're a dad, check it out.
What's more interesting for me though is if you replaced pledge with 'learning pledge' you've suddenly got the makings of a good learning social network site.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score - 2/5

PostRank - I covered this in detail in my previous post, but want to include it for a shiny award too. They get a shiny for their widget alone, see the left hand column on my blog. I think this way of measuring engagement with content is something we need to explore as educators (to help students) and under the digital scholarship banner, as a means of demonstrating the type of response and value there is to your online output.
Shiny score - 3/5 Educational score - 4/5

Shelfari - a social network for book readers. It takes the bookshelf idea from Facebook a little further, so you add books from an extensive database to your 'bookshelf' (I've added a couple to mine as illustration). This can be shared with others, and you can join groups, meet authors, etc. It's well done, and books are a subject people are passionate enough about to make a network viable. Books are sufficiently rich social objects to foster community.
From an educational perspective, like with Odadeo, you could see this being adapted to work around subject areas, or rather the user's bookshelf being imported into a learning environment so that they can join groups around other text books. Because you can tag books, it also adds to resource discovery for learners.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score - 4/5

Debategraph - takes the concept mapping idea and wikifies it. It looks nice, and being able to share maps and argument structures clearly has educational potential, but I found it difficult to use. Like a lot of concept mapping tools, it has a range of terminology (for example all the different nodes and types of links), that produce a high threshold to entry. They need to simplify I think, at least on the first play, so you can quickly bash together a mind map, without needing to take a course in mind map theory first. This is in competition rather with the Open University's own Cohere. There is definitely something in this shared maps for education, you can imagine them being legitimate forms of output, or group process, but the software isn't quite there yet.
Shiny score - 3/5 Educational score - 4/5

That's it for now folks, and remember - keep it shiny.