The Ed Techie

Some quick opensocial thoughts

What with travelling back from Oz and catching up on work I've not had time to really look at Google's opensocial much. Not that there is much to look at currently, except some big announcements. If you don't know what it is, it is an open API approach from Google with a host of partners to allow users to easily create social tools which can be used in more than one location. So, here a week later than everyone else, are my thoughts on it.

Let's get the Facebook thing out of the way first - opensocial is the social networking technology equivalent of a politician waiting to see what their opponents propose and then suggesting the opposite as policy. So, whereas Facebook allows people to develop applications for Facebook, those applications are not easily portable anywhere else, and the data stays inside Facebook. It's classic walled garden stuff. This is the biggest complaint against FB, so naturally it's where Google should attack. Opensocial, in theory anyway, allows you to create tools which will port across to any platform or site that signs up to their API. This is smart - Google doesn't have to go and develop a social networking platform to compete with FB, it just makes the other networks suddenly seem more attractive to developers in particular. And if developers start creating cool opensocial apps, but don't bother with creating a bespoke FB one, then suddenly those other networks look more attractive to users too.

Ironically, FB being closed may be a good thing in the long run, because it forces Google to be open. Google have a decent record here with Google Maps (and the famous don't be evil motto), but without FB on the scene would they have gone for such an open approach? Maybe not.

From an elearning perspective, it has potential. We have been developing FB applications, but if we developed opensocial ones then users could port them wherever they like. The implication is that the PLE is a step nearer - we (the university) could create opensocial tools, for users to assemble in the platform of their choice. As RSS does for content, so might opensocial do for collaboration, and that's no bad thing.

I just need Tony Hirst to develop an app now...

A lexicon for the virtual/real world intersection

It strikes me that there are a number of new social behaviours that are arising when our online/web 2.0/social network selves intersect with our real, physical, everyday lives. So, while awake with jet lag I started compiling some new terms. I have put these up in a Wetpaint wiki, so you can add to them yourselves:

• Twintle - a knowing look someone gives you when you meet them face to face, who is also a Facebook friend or Twitter follower, where they debate whether they should mention your status updates, or whether that would be impolite. e.g. "I met Kathy the other day, and I'd been saying about how much I hated work at the moment on Facebook, and she gave me a twintle, but didn't say anything."
• Unpoke - the disappointment of meeting someone in real life and finding they are not as interesting or amusing as their online personas. E.g. "I met Psychopony the other day at a conference, he was really dull, definite unpoke."
• BackBacn  - when a post generates a lot of real life traffic, for example every second person at work comes up to you and comments on it. E.g. "I did a rant about the RAE the other day, talk about BackBacn!"
• Twetch - when someone reveals rather too much about themselves online. E.g. "Dave's a real twetch, he was twittering about his operation in graphic detail, I almost fetched my breakfast."
• Friendgap - the awkwardness when you meet someone whose invitation to be a friend you declined.

So have a go yourself - okay, it was an excuse to try out Wetpaint, did I mention I'd set up a wiki?

The best compliment

Dora/Silenciosa has translated my Future of content post into Brazilian Portugese. That someone would be bothered to do so without payment is flattering, so thankyou, but also speaks of the value in giving your stuff away to start with - in fact, it's a perfect example of the fame vs fortune argument that the post discusses.

Twitter guide

Next year I plan to get my students to sign up to Twitter at the start of the course (it won't be compulsory though). My hope is that it will help with social presence, knowledge sharing, support and a form of micro-recording as they study. I have tried with IM before to promote this 'I bumped into Jenny outside the refectory the other day and she mentioned this great paper' type of dialogue, but ultimately IM is just a bit to instrusive I feel. So I'm hoping Twitter will be useful - I'll let you know how it goes anyway.

With this in mind, I was pleased to come across Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juice Twitter Guide, which I've pointed my students at (hat tip: Judy O'Connell).

Now, that's security

Chip and Kerching
Originally uploaded by Auntie P

My wife went off in the car yesterday, with my wallet. I needed to get some stuff so she told me to use her card. The good thing about chip n pin is nobody looks at the name, you insert the card yourself. So I was able to spend happily in Toys R Us, BP, Threshers and then I went to Tesco. I needed to get some fireworks which were available from a special stand. To my discomfort they printed the receipt out and asked me to sign, no chip n pin. I tried to forge my wife's signature and made a poor effort.
'The signature doesn't match', the assistant told me.
'No,' I mumbled, rather embarrassed.
Then.... nothing. She just handed the bag over and I left with the goods. There's no getting past that level of security eh?

Is academic referencing anachronistic?

One of the hallowed practices we teach students is how to properly reference sources. This is deeply entrenched in academic practice - we often give explicit marks for it in assessment, teach it as a key skill, give explicit methods to follow and demand it in publication. As such you could view it as a cornerstone of the enculturation process that is higher education - we are bringing people in to the culture of higher education and referencing is one means of exhibiting your membership of this club.

Let's think about why it's important. There are two main reasons that I can see:

1. To properly acknowledge the work of others. The act of referencing provides a clear framework for avoiding plagiarism since it positively encourages students to reference others and thus removes ignorance as an excuse.
2. To allow readers to locate any sources for themselves. This acts as both a check on the author (they can't make up references or misrepresent them), and also promotes knowledge sharing.

Reason 1 is still valid obviously, now more than ever perhaps. But reason 2? Isn't that a pre-Google motivation? The reason why I think it's worth raising it is that the necessity for strict referencing guidelines and their structure is determined by the need to locate physical objects in a library. Also there is an inherent bias in these guidelines towards a) text and b) traditional forms of publication. The attempts to incorporate online resources often seem clumsy.

So why do we need it anyway? If I quote from a paper, I can either link to it, or you can simply find it by Googling the quote. Search replaces memory - I don't need to remember where I saw something, just what I saw, since I can always find it again. While teaching people to properly acknowledge the work of others is essential (and here I think blogging provides a very useful example of good practice), increasingly I feel that the need to master the Harvard (or whatever) referencing method is anachronistic. We should teach the important of the process , ie that you must properly acknowledge work and make it easy for people to locate.

Why it's important that the Radiohead album is good

So I downloaded my copy of In Rainbows and have spent a lot of time listening to it in Australia. I should confess that I like the 'difficult' Radiohead albums (I rank Amnesiac just below OK Computer as best Radiohead albums), but I rather thought they were treading water by the time of Hail to the Thief.

In Rainbows is great though, it contains at least four outstanding tracks which rank with any of their best. The reason I'm blogging about this is not because I'm a frustrated MySpace user who suddenly wants to do album reviews, but because it is really significant. Releasing your album free is fine if you're on the way down, and no-one is going to buy it anyway. It was important therefore that In Rainbows was a 'proper' album, ie one that would have been a normal release any other year. And it is. What that says is this - the game is up for record companies. They may lumber on for a few years, like a mortally wounded dinosaur, but it's over. Or at least the business model they think they know is over.

I like the whole back to the future flavour of this - musicians used to make their money from live performances. The advent of recorded music became a means of generating interest in the artist as a means of promoting their live performances. It then became the main revenue source for artists. For a few stadium bands, with the Rolling Stones leading the way, live shows have again become the major revenue source. Now it looks as though gigging will be the way artists make their money again, but it won't be just the stadium bands now. I have no idea what this will mean for the music industry, for artists, for fans, and whether it will be a good thing or not. But it will happen.

Learning design as aspirin for the web 2.0 headache

In the last couple of posts I talked about some of the ways being online, and web 2.0 in particular, challenges some of our assumptions of higher education. The whole web 2.0 thing represents something of a problem, or headache if you will, for higher ed. On the one hand we can see how enthusiastic people are for it, and how it genuinely creates user participation, community, and quality content. All things we'd like to have in higher ed. And on the other we cherish lots of aspects of higher ed that seem at odds with it, such as the quality assurance of content, careful support and structure, hierarchical structures, etc.

So, one of the things I've been working on at Macquarie is how we can bridge this gap. I've been focusing on learning design (in its broadest, not IMS sense), but I would see that as only one means of attacking the problem. I've written a paper for the LAMS conference on this with James Dalziel, so when I give that I'll post the slides and do slidecast, and I'll also work it up into a longer chapter.

For now though, here are some ways in which learning design could help ease the 2.0 headache:

• Meno’s paradox – or, the need for guidance if you prefer. Learners still often seek guidance and structure. For some subjects they are satisfied with creating this structure themselves, for example by finding resources such as blog postings, tutorials, articles, podcasts and video clips. For other subjects, particularly when the subject is itself complex, or the learner feels less confident in the subject area, then providing a scaffolding structure is essential to help the learner build concepts and skills in a robust manner.
• Granularity of learning – in the post on granularity, I argued that the size of educational unit we commonly recognise has been largely determined by physical factors. If learning designs were created and shared by a community of users, what might be thought of as a Flickr for learning designs, and these could be run by individuals, or by groups of interest, then many of the restrictions on size which derive from a hierarchical, centralised model disappear. I've used the the music industry as an analogy previously, but in education perhaps a more relevant model is that of blogging. Prior to the advent of blogs, the type of academic output was usually limited to books or journal articles. The granularity of these was partly driven by the economics of publishing, as Shirky argues:
  “Analog publishing generates per-unit costs -- each book or magazine requires a certain amount of paper and ink, and creates storage and transportation costs. Digital publishing doesn't. Once you have a computer and internet access, you can post one weblog entry or one hundred, for ten readers or ten thousand, without paying anything per post or per reader. In fact, dividing up front costs by the number of readers means that content gets cheaper as it gets more popular, the opposite of analog regimes."
  With the advent of blogging, academics (as well as many other bloggers) have found the format liberating, so that blog posts can vary in size from small links with comments to full essays.
• Topography of formality – as with granularity, a set of user generated learning designs allows users to bundle their recent experience together into a course which can be formally recorded more frequently. This would be possible not only because the monopoly of formality is removed from universities, but also because a distributed model of learning design production is the best way to attack the long tail of possible learner interests. If a user wants to find small courses to formally accredit their understanding of highland knitting patterns, history of Sydney in the 1960s or anthropology amongst football fans, then most current formal providers will not meet their requirements, but a sufficiently distributed pool of user generated designs might.
• Web 2.0 quality – much of the concern educators have around web 2.0 is of the quality, and how it can be assured. A set of user generated learning designs could go someway to addressing this by providing a pedagogical structure around resources, and those resources are then changeable. Users can see who has created any given learning design, so some designers may be trusted more than others, rather like sellers and buyers on eBay gain reputational status by recommendations from other users. Similarly, users will be able to comment on designs, thus providing information and context for other users. However, by allowing users to create and select learning sequences it is necessary to accept some of the bottom-up metrics mentioned previously, as the ‘filtering on the way in’ approach currently used in education is replaced by filtering on the way out. This is necessary to encourage participation.
• Personalisation – if a learning design pool reached a sufficient critical mass, then users will be able to select designs that are appropriate to them in a number of different ways: subject area, style of learning, level, range of resources, duration, assessment method, etc.

For these to be realisable we would need very easy means of generating and sharing learning designs, which is where tools such as LAMS and also the OU's Compendium (we have adapted a prototype of this for learning design, which I'll release soon).

Last in the series, gratuitous Home and Away daggy tourist photo: