The Ed Techie

Does 'David after the Dentist' tell us anything?

Many of you will have seen the YouTube clip of a seven year old boy, rather spaced out on his way back from the dentist:

It's amusing, and bound to get a lot of hits as it is the sort of thing that 'goes viral' easily. But what's really interesting is the way it has set off a host of remixes. We have:

• Chad Vader (Darth's brother) after the dentist
• A funky electro remix
• A mashup of Christian Bale's swearathon and David
• A parody with Josh after the Boozer
• Translation

Following on from the previous posts, this is just like a virus - it spreads and, more importantly, it mutates. It is this mutatability that is key - simply forwarding or embedding it is one level of interest, but when people take it and adapt it in unpredictable ways, then it becomes interesting at an educational level. I don't believe it's possible to analyse this and isolate the elements that make it prone to this with the hope of recreating it, but here are some contributing factors:

• Humour
• Quotable ("Is this real life?")
• Instant recognition (anyone who has seen it will instantly recognise a parody of someone sitting in the back of a car, which gives you an easy frame of reference)
• Popularity (it has to go through the more simple, pass it on phase first, as remixers are then 'cashing in' on its popularity)

I'm not sure there is much we can learn for education - maybe the lesson is 'don't fight it', ie if you want media students to learn about remixing then give them whatever is popular.

Oh, okay, it's just funny.

Reflection on flash debate in twitter

Last Friday I attempted a 'Flash debate' in twitter. The idea was that, like Flash mobs, we'd come together via twitter to discuss a particular topic, in this case virality in education. In my previous post I drew some conclusions about the topic, but here are some thoughts on the process.

Overall, I'd say it had only middling success, you can see some of the conversations here. Although the inputs I had were good (and thankyou to those who contributed), it didn't really take off. In short, my debate around virality didn't go viral. My aim in attempting this, and indeed the whole YOFL thing, is to explore what ways of using new tools work for educators. There are several factors to consider in the Twitter debate example:

i) Topic - maybe 'virality in education' isn't that exciting, or more probably, what a debate needs is a straightforward opening question, whereas this was a bit unfocused.

ii) Timing - Fridays may not be the best day of the week, and I did most of it during the working day in the UK. This may make it difficult to catch on in other time zones.

iii) Medium - it could be that maybe twitter isn't the best medium to conduct this. It has an advantage over setting up a specific forum or wiki in that you may catch people as they go around their daily business, but it has the character limit, poor threading and is limited by the people who follow you.

iv) Initiator - I kicked it off, and it's possible that a) I don't have sufficient cache to make it fly (imagine Downes or Will Richardson doing it) and b) that debates need more than one person driving them along.

I may try another one later on, but probably more focused. Any suggestions on whether it's worth it, or how to improve it are welcome.

Creating virality in education - some thoughts

So, we had the flash debate on twitter about creating virality in education (I'll reflect on the success of that in a separate post). As promised here is some synthesis and thoughts.

What does virality mean?
Inevitably some of the discussion was around what we mean by something being viral. Is it the same as a meme? Does it just mean something that is passed on by 'word of mouth'? Can we define the key characteristics of a viral idea? AJ suggested that one factor was novelty and JoeNicholls suggested that it needed to provide a quick meaningful return on effort.

This return on investment is interesting in virality I think. At it's most basic a viral idea is simply someone forwarding a link or resource - a retweet in Twitter, or passing on a YouTube clip in Facebook. This is potentially useful, but as there is no modification by the transmitter, it is of limited educational use.

Next in terms of engagement we have a blog meme - these usually have a strict format for you to follow, but require content creation by the transmitter within these guidelines.

Lastly, we have an idea that catches on, more of a meme in the Dawkins sense than the formalised blog meme. This is an idea that causes a reaction in people often because it encapsulates a concept neatly. A recent example is Jim Groom's edupunk, which caused a proliferation of blog posts and debate. In this sense the concept is viral, because it spread rapidly within a week, but the spread was caused by the creation of new content, and discussion. It is this type of engagement and reaction that I would propose we want to see in education.

Courtesy of Crappy Graphs, I have tried to summarise this below:

Can it be used in education?
I also pondered the negatives of virality, which for me are that it can come across as a bit desperate (please make my idea go viral), it can be irritating (ie when you get sent urban myths which someone has forwarded by email in the belief they are true), and it can just promote repetition (at the bottom left of my graph). AJ suggested it can be perceived as social, rather than authorative and in education both students and staff place great value on 'authority'. Carmen Tschofen was wary of commandeering virality for education.

I think the wariness arises from invading student space, but also from promoting a form of surface level learning. Can you really teach quantum physics by virality? Well, probably not all of it, but you might get students to think about it by creating a viral idea such as 'if we lived at the quantum level...' (eg 'I could be at home and at school at the same time').

So what?
A possible accusation of all this is that it is a tautology - we have such a loose definition of virality that if something catches on we say 'it went viral'. But, I do feel there is something for educators to look at in this. Why do some YouTube videos catch on and get millions of views? Why do some ideas catch on and create the type of discussion we would love to foster in education.

So my suggestion is that alongside what we do normally, it would be worth attempting to create a viral idea in a course, even if it is to provide light relief and discussion with each other. And the good ones will be shared, and err, go viral.

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.

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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).