The Ed Techie

VLE vs PLE fight club

<Image Pirate Test by Danksy http://www.flickr.com/photos/petedanks/2770208173/>

I did a debate with Niall Sclater for the upcoming OU course Technology enhanced learning around PLEs and VLEs, 'refereed' by John Pettit. We pitched it as me being the PLE guy and Niall the VLE man, for the sake of discussion, but we're probably closer in agreement than this would suggest.

You can listen to the audio here (including jazzy intro and fade-out music). [Update, jazzy music is courtesy of http://www.oliverledbury.co.uk/]

For a one take shot, I think it comes out reasonably well, although I am the least coherent of the three.

G20, media and trust

<Image - G20-London-Protest by Room1834 http://www.flickr.com/photos/0742/3405203655/>

There are so many lessons, pointers, revelations, areas of concern and epiphanies from the G20 protests that blogging about them seems almost superfluous. But to add to the comment mountain, here are my thoughts.

Social vs Traditional media
I listened and watched the coverage on the BBC and Sky, while simultaneously tracking events on twitter and Flickr. At the time the traditional coverage seemed biased against the protestors. Traditional media needs to go after a 'story', a narrative it can use to conveniently bundle events together, and it had decided crowd trouble would be that story. Some of the commentators on the traditional media bordered on the offensive - one business expert bemoaned that the protestors won't achieve anything and it will inconvenience people working in the city. Inconvenience? Bloody inconvenience them? Their behaviour has done far more than 'inconvenience' the rest of us.
Over on Twitter the picture was much more of aggressive tactics from the police and of protestors being penned in. This is just as biased in its way, but what it revealed was that 'the story' emerges from the stream, it isn't determined (or worse, predetermined) by a few.
Subsequently it turns out that the real story, or at least the 'feel' was better conveyed by social media than traditional media.

Policing and accountability
I think it is very easy to portray it as protestors = good, police = bad in this scenario but that is naive and simplistic. It was obvious to me that we would have some such accounts of police brutality at the event by watching the twitter stream where the general sense was of antagonism towards protestors. This should be no suprise really - prior to the demonstrations the police had been told  to expect violence, by police chiefs, but also by various protest groups. It had been set up for the police and protestors as a conflict situation - if you come into any situation expecting that, then you will interpret actions accordingly.

The key then is not a review of police practice so much, but a review how the protest was represented to the police. Senior officers could have pitched it along the lines of  'Our job is to help these people protest safely. They're angry at what has happened and to be honest, we know how they feel, so help them demonstrate, but any signs of trouble and we'll stamp it out quickly.'  That creates a different mindset and relationship with the protestors.

I also wonder if the police send in officers, or use trusted people, to report back to them on what the experience was like from the other side? A sort of customer review. And then to have these people come and brief officers prior to demonstrations. Does anyone know if they do this? One of the issues seems to be that some police have stopped viewing protestors as people with whom they have any connection, and vice versa.

Counter-terrorism

The danger for the police is that we are seeing a politicization of policing last realised during the 1980s. This is largely a result of many of the counter-terrorism laws, which themselves have become political vehicles for maintaining control over the general populace. I'm not particularly radical (you've guessed that eh?), and when many of the laws were introduced I didn't really see how they would affect me. But as John Naughton points out the manner in which photography is now regarded as an illegal or subversive act does not reflect the type of society we expect in the UK.

It is not the groups who always mistrust the police that are a concern, it is when they lose the trust of the general population that problems arise. It makes all aspects of their job much more difficult, and ultimately that isn't good for any of us. If the police become divorced from the general public, and seen more as servants of large businesses and politicians, it will take a very long time, a lot of community inititiatives and lots of money to rebuild that trust, so my advice would be to stop and reconsider their role now.

Policing of demonstrations is now often under the guise of anti-terrorism which gives the police powers to do pretty much what they like. This is tempting - why be constrained when you can be free to do what you want? But they should resist the temptation to go to the anti-terror well too often. Trust in the police had been on the increase, and this after a lot of genuine hard work. Here's a simple rule they should bear in mind, adapted from running:

• Trust is like muscle - it is hard to get and easy to lose.
• Suspicion is like fat - it is easy to get and hard to lose.

Surveillance
After years of being watched and monitored tables are now being turned. Without the video evidence would there have been any enquiry about Ian Tomlinson? And like DRM, trying to control the use of video and photography is an ultimately doomed enterprise - it's too easy, to ubiquitous and too quickly disseminated. Paul Carr has a good piece on this, and how we'll all have to learn to accept there's no such thing as private any more, and why this may not be a bad thing.

So, overall what is all about? Technology and Trust, and the changing relationship between the two. We will have a new relationship with trust because technology demands it.

On economy as metaphor

Stephen Downes takes me to task over the reciprocity economy, stating that

"One thing people tend to get wrong about networks is to interpret them as some sort of economy or value proposition... I think this metaphor is really misleading. As I write in the comments, "It's not about reciprocity. It's about sharing. Completely different concept."

I'll defend the post against these counter-arguments in a couple of ways. Firstly by talking about the nature of metaphor and secondly by exploring the role of sharing.

I knew Stephen, being the lovable old socialist he is, wouldn't like an economy metaphor. But we don't have to like, or take all of the elements of a metaphor, in order for it to be useful. Metaphor is a form of mapping across domains, from a source domain (in this case economy) to a target domain (in this case PLNs), with the intention that the source domain will help us understand the target domain better. Of course, no metaphor is perfect, indeed can not be, otherwise it would be the target domain. So we should only map across certain elements.

Viewing something as an economy has some potential benefits, but we must always be careful not to extend the metaphor too far. For example, we can view nature as operating some form of economic principles (indeed Malthusian economics helped Darwin formulate the theory of evolution), but that doesn't mean we extend the principles of intentionality from the agents - we don't anthropomorphise animals and plants as selling and exchanging goods.

So when I said we could view PLNs as a form of reciprocity economy, I was suggesting that we build up a sense of identity capital, and that reciprocity is the 'currency' through which exchange is realised. I didn't mean to suggest that, for example, we set out to utilise our personal network for monetary gain. In this respect I think the metaphor needs flushing out, but I think Stephen's argument that I interpret a network solely as a value proposition is simplifying it.

Secondly, Stephen said in the comments and in the post that it is about sharing, which is a completely different concept. I'm not convinced they are as widely separated as he suggests. I tried to make it clear that I was proposing a more subtle form of reciprocity - it is far beyond a simple 'I'll do something for you if you do something for me' kind of exchange. And I was talking about the manner in which one develops a personal network, which adds value to your life. This, it seems to me, goes beyond merely sharing. I admit that sharing is the base, the sine qua non, of your network, since if no-one shares then you cannot even begin to establish a network. But, when that network becomes meaningful is when you form relationships, and have exchanges. It is when an element of reciprocity is added over the blanket sharing that the network attains a more significant role in your life.

Sharing is to reciprocity as gold-mining is to jewellery making - the latter cannot exist without the former but it is the latter which adds real value and interpretation.

But ultimately metaphors come down to choice - they aren't really right or wrong. Often it is by arguing around the metaphor itself that we come to understand the target domain better. Some people will find the reciprocity economy useful, others not. I'm still not sure myself how useful it is, but for the moment I think it's worth kicking the tyres (to use another metaphor).

Someone Once Told Me (format matters)

Via Sam Easterby-Smith I came across a site called Someone Once Told Me. The idea is simple: the photographer, Mario Cacciottolo, either takes, or gets people to send in, a black and white photograph with the person holding a sign on which is written something someone once told them. It's simple, yet this format throws up a lot of interesting photographs and comments.

I told my daughter about it, and asked her what she would put on a sign. Her instant response was 'It's against the law to sing Christmas songs when it isn't Christmas.' Turns out a friend at school had imparted this piece of knowledge to her, and she had vehemently disagreed with it. I was hoping she would recall one of the many pieces of advice I had given her, but no, this was it. She then wanted to take the photo of course, and today it appeared on the SOTM site.

There are a number of things this brought home to me. The first was participating in sites such as these will become fairly normal for her generation. It is not like appearing on TV. Secondly, this is a good example of a hybrid of expertise and crowd-sourcing. Mario sets up and takes a lot of the photos, but he also gathers them from others (I took our one). This works well both ways.

But most significantly it reveals how a good format helps unleash creativity. There are some very good photos on the site. If they had been given the freedom to take any photo then most wouldn't be as good. The essential paradox is that by limiting scope you encourage creativity. There are lots of such examples around: Carl Morris, a Cardiff acquaintance, runs Sleeveface, where people take photos using album covers to represent faces, and via Gardner Campbell I came across a Flickr group that tells a story in 5 pictures.

I think coming up with such formats, that encourage participation and provide a sufficiently broad, yet narrow, format will be a skill to develop in many sectors.

Course to Dis-course

As part of my Year of Future Learning thang (yes, you hoped it'd gone away), I've organised with George Siemens an online mini-conference called 'From Course to Dis-course', runs May 14th - 15th. The aim is to look at the future of the course in a digital world. I think that the course, as we know it, provides a nice tight focus, but at the same time it is the base unit of education - it's something we all understand. So using it as the means to explore the impact of digital technologies will provide a useful indication of changes in higher education overall.

And what a line-up we have for you, ladies and gentlemen: George, Grainne Conole, D'Arcy Norman, Josie Fraser, Tony Hirst, and, err, me. Plus a few more to come.

So, it's free, it's informative, it's fun - what more do you want? See you there.

BTW - hashtag is #course09

OpenEd conference - be afraid

Scott asked me to be on the committee for the Open Ed conference, which is in Vancouver this August. These are dangerous people - unfortunately I can't go, so I urge other right thinking Europeans to submit papers so they can go undercover and report on their activities.

[For non-UK readers this is a remix of the current paranoia posters in the UK. See Boing Boing for better remixes.]

The Reciprocal Times

Following on from the previous post about The Reciprocity Economy, I am going to try another of my rarely successful experiments. This time I want to test whether Twitter can act as an easy aggregator for examples of the reciprocity economy in action.

So, I've set up a Twitter account: @reciprocaltimes (see, it's like the Financial Times for the reciprocity economy?).  I will use it to tweet examples of when I encounter the reciprocity economy in action. But also, by sending a reply to @reciprocaltimes you, yes YOU, can also help collate them.

We can then analyse them and see if there are any common themes and if the reciprocity economy concept has any value in considering online interactions.

I'm in danger of compounding experimental variables here - I am both testing whether the theory has any merit, and also whether twitter is a useful collation method, so a failure won't tell me which one is wrong necessarily. To overcome this I have set my success criteria as low as  I can: ten replies from someone. Go on, make me a sucess.

	The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
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	Found at skreemr.com

The reciprocity economy

<image Reciprocal roof decking by Ziggy Fresh http://www.flickr.com/photos/smallape/2943537392/>

In my talk on digital literacies I mentioned a 'reciprocity economy', and just wanted to expand on the idea. We are accustomed to the idea of the attention economy - it's getting eyeballs that counts online. As each person develops their PLN online it seems to me that it's not attention that is significant, but establishing reciprocity.

I have come to believe that your personal learning network (it probably doesn't need the 'learning', it's just your personal network) is increasingly the most valuable asset you will have. And that's valuable as in 'adds value to your life', not economic value. It will help you with work, socialising, personal life, interests, hobbies, entertainment.

To deploy probably the most over-used analogy around, it's like a garden - you've got to sow, tend and weed it to get value from it. But it's more of a country garden, a bit organic and unplanned rather than the highly structured garden. It takes time and effort and you have to give something of yourself to it.

Think about how your PLN is constructed. It probably centres around twitter, a blog, your blog reader, delicious, Flickr, a few wikis, and maybe some other tools where you follow people (eg Slideshare). There will be different types of reciprocity in this, for example most of the people whose blogs I read also read mine.  Similarly in twitter, I tend to follow people if they follow me. This is fairly standard reciprocity - do unto others as they do unto you.

But can we extend the notion of reciprocity? Continuing with the examples of blogs and twitter, I will give you my continued readership if you give me interesting and regular updates. We can then build on this notion of reciprocal, but not identical, activity for more subtle interactions, let's call it shifted reciprocity. I can put out a lazyweb request on Twitter if I have either responded previously to such requests (standard reciprocity) OR I have given enough of myself to twitter, such that people feel well disposed towards me (shifted reciprocity).

If you're still with me and have accepted the proposal that your PLN is significant and reciprocity underpins it, then we can begin to think of an economy of reciprocity. This isn't something we make hard calculations about, it is probably what we do in most social relations all the time at a subconscious level. In this economy, the more you give online that is of value to those in your network then the more 'credit' you establish.

This allows us to see that, obviously, spamming is bad - you are not establishing a reciprocal relationship. But also if we look at, for instance, Sarah's list of following behaviour in Twitter, we can see that most of them relate to establishing reciprocity. If someone doesn't have a profile, or doesn't update then their reciprocal currency is diminished. It also helps us frame our behaviour in any new tool, for instance setting up auto-follows and direct messages in Twitter is devaluing the reciprocal nature of following - I know you'll follow me back if I follow you, but that means that decision isn't based on any assessment of my value to your network. Therefore we're unlikely to have much reciprocal value to each other.

It seems to me that what we're discovering is that like any economy (and economy doesn't have to mean money, natural selection arises because of nature's economy) establishing any 'wealth' requires effort, time or innovation. How this economy sits alongside the other, fiscal (broken) one will be a key question for social media.

Shiny show #4

The latest edition of the highly unanticipated Shiny Show. This month's shinies go to the following, who can bask in shiny glory.

AudioBoo - sort of Flickr for audio, so you can upload audio clip, tag them, follow someone, sort by tags, embed clips, etc. It's restricted to iPhone and computer upload at the moment, but the mobile emphasis is interesting. You can imagine students using it in a number of ways:
i) An audio reflective journal for thoughts, ideas, etc
ii) Gathering around a topic, for example agreeing a tag and then having global projects where students share audio clips ('What's the dawn chorus like where you are?')
iii) Finding content from educators.
Here is the video explaining it:

Walking through Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.

Mailana Twitter network analysis - I try to avoid doing Twitter apps because a) everyone else does them and b) they don't often have much value. Mailana is a commercial tool for analysing corporate data I think, and this twitter analysis is driven by it. It's nice, it shows the network of your twitter friends and lists your BFFs ('Best Friends Forever'), based on the number of replies you send each other. Here is my twitter network.  Not particularly educational, but I think getting to know and analyse your PLN will be something we all do regularly (maybe it's a digital literacy?)

Glogster - this is quite old, but I didn't get around to blogging it last year. It creates multi-media 'posters' so is really just a cool way of aggregating a lot of embed items together. As for a lot of shinies, this one could be used just as an alternative activity for getting students to engage with a subject. Here is one ccosmato did for edupunk:

We tell stories - from Penguin, six authors tell a story using different means, such as Google Maps (21 steps). Really neat, simple ideas, which would work well in a number of educational settings. Want to tell the history of computing? Use a map approach and see what locations and elements students think are significant. Discuss. Get good grades.

A literacy, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little

I did a presentation for an online session on digital literacy hosted by Josie Fraser last Friday. Here is my slidecast:

Digital literacy for educators

View more presentations from mweller.

It was well attended with some of my favourite online people and we had some good discussion.

A few things occurred to me:

i) We forget the literacies we wear in life  - it's a broad term, and we all come to it with different sets of skills and concerns. If you're interested in schools, then digital literacy has a whole different set of connotations and issues than for higher education. It is debatable even whether lumping all of these groups together is useful.

ii) It is the best of terms, it is the worst of terms - we debated back and forth about the term, and whether we should even debate the term, whether it should be literacy or literacies, etc. In general there was consensus that a) we shouldn't get bogged down too much in terminology, b) as the term is out there we may as well stick with it, c) there are issues with it.

iii) There is a literacy of the head and a literacy of the heart - conventional literacy is reasonably well defined, and while it is not an either/or, we can at least set some definite targets. Should digital literacy be specific or aimed at more general skills? For example, is it a checklist of technology mastery eg have captured and uploaded video to video sharing site, or more general skills eg using appropriate technology to communicate effectively.

I have some reservations (see my post about being a spoilsport) that whenever we cast our bespectacled academic eye over such a subject we over-analyse it. The result is then something which can be implemented but has had much of the initial spirit that made it attractive removed from it, in the process of pinning down exactly what we mean. This is a dilemma we will need to work around carefully. Don't get me wrong, it may seem that I don't carry in my countenance a letter of recommendation, I really think it is an important debate and task. Just want to make sure it's not a tedious checklist and instead is a joyous explosion of creativity (and flowers no doubt).

(Apologies for extended, laboured Dickens theme, no real message from it, just playing).