The Ed Techie

Seesmic and the Nabakov equation

Yesterday AJ Cann posted about his frustration with Seesmic, which he felt was going backwards in terms of usability. This led to an exchange in his comments via Seesmic (and cool, Seesmic founder Loic LeMuir joined in). If you haven't used it, Seesmic offers threaded video dialogue, much like the threaded text-based forums we have been so accustomed to in VLEs.

Seesmic has had some financial problems recently, it'd be a shame to see it go under. The outcome might be that this type of functionality ends up as a YouTube add-on. Personally I think Seesmic should pitch themselves much more as a direct educational tool, rather than general use. But then Loic LeMuir probably knows more about running web businesses than me.

What it did get me thinking about was 'the video threshold'. AJ related his experience with trying to get students to use Seesmic (they didn't, preferring Twitter instead). There is a resistance to using video in a casual, informal manner I think that has two causes:

1) Parsimony - for those of us older than 30, my suspicion is that we have grown accustomed to regarding video as 'expensive' in some sense - video tapes, DVD, broadband requirements - it's always video that costs. It costs in terms of storage and it costs in terms of effort. We used to have clunky VHS cameras, and complex editing suites to produce anything on video. The idea that you use it casually for a half-formed idea takes a bit of getting used to. This I think is a hangover from pre-digital, or expensive storage days. We'll get over it.

2) The Nabakov equation. Nabakov said "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child". Many of us suffer a similar degradation in terms of communication quality. Me? I think like a distinguished author, write like a blogger, speak like an X-Factor reject. So, there is a reluctance to use video in a casual, unscripted manner because it exposes this rambling incoherent self (you only need to look at the exchange I had with AJ to see this in action on my part). I wonder if this is a generational factor too - teenagers now are used to videoing everything.

So why should you use Seesmic? My feeling is that although the initial threshold may be higher, once it is reached, you get greater buy-in. You make a slightly stronger connection when you are engaged in a video dialogue, which makes the motivation to respond greater.

Here's some research we should do - give one student cohort standard structured text forums and another set Seesmic and compare usage. My bet is that more people would use the text forums, but those who used Seesmic would use it more intensively and derive greater benefit from it.

So, below is a quick Seesmic vid from me to start the conversation, please respond via Seesmic, particularly if you haven't used it before.

Seesmic and the Nabakov equationAs part of a blog post at edtechie.net, where I am discussing the pyschological barrier people have to using video.

In defence of Powerpoint

Okay, it's not going to win me any popularity points, but I thought I'd take a look at the fairly standard Powerpoint bashing that takes place. This article features John Sweller, saying that Powerpoint is counter productive because, according to his cognitive load theory, it is more difficult to process information that is coming audibly and visually simultaneously. Garr Reynolds (via Downes) picks up on this, and makes the distinction between Powerpoint as method and as a tool, arguing:

"I am assuming that what Professor Sweller means is that the way PowerPoint is used should be ditched, not the tool itself. Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused and abused to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish."

I know it is common to complain of death by powerpoint, and I have sat through enough dull, bullet-listed, tiny fonted, montonously delivered presentations to make watching the entire DVD box set of Sex and the City seem like an interesting alternative. But, I want to know what these complaints are measuring against? Did I miss some public-speaking Camelot, when every lecture was given with such insight, focus and wit as to make it seem like an evening with Peter Ustinov? As I recall my (pre-Powerpoint) university lectures they were largely dull, mostly incoherent and almost deliberately lacking in humour.

The complaints about Powerpoint often come from people who are good public speakers. This is just not the case for most of us. Sure, we can make improvements (I'll return to this), but in the same way many people are not gifted comedians, or actors, most people are not talented orators. I am to public speaking what George W Bush is to free form jazz - it's just not my thing.

But, Powerpoint saves me here - by using Powerpoint (and I'm using Powerpoint as a shorthand for all presentation software, I accept that Keynote is a nicer tool), I can structure, practice and improve my presentation skills. Yes, it's a crutch, but if you need help walking, crutches are good. Powerpoint provides a framework for developing presentation skills. Over the past couple of years I have abandoned bulleted lists, moved to use of images with one message per slide and greater use of (YouTube) videos. My presentations have improved (I think) as a result. I did this by thinking through not only how I could give better presentations in a general sense, but specifically, how I could improve my Powerpoint slides.

In this sense, Powerpoint is a valuable tool. Like any technology that democratises a skill, it means that most of what you get is poor, but it also allows a mechanism to explore and develop. After all, we don't complain that most of what gets written in blogs is rubbish, we accept that is the price we pay for mass democratisation. The difference with Powerpoint is that it is delivered to a captive audience, they can't look elsewhere.

Okay, I've not convinced you to go easy on Powerpoint have I? Tomorrow: In defence of Clippy ;)

You are your (tag) cloud

My tag cloud for this blog is a bit rubbish, I don't create enough categories, and when I think of adding a new one, I've already blogged about it a few times and so I face the dilemma, do I now go back and republish those posts with a more appropriate tag, or do I carry on with a more general one?

Anyway, most of the blogs I read make a better job at tagging than I do, often using delicious as the means by which they categorise both their own, and others posts. It seems to me that your tag cloud becomes a sort of shorthand for your online identity. In the future we won't swap business cards (even cool Moo ones), but rather tag clouds. Perhaps dating, and recruitment services will be run by matching the compatibility between tag clouds?

So here is a quick Christmas game to test my theory. Below are the tag clouds taken from the following people:

• Tony Hirst,
• Scott Leslie
• AJ Cann
• Jim Groom
• Grainne Conole
• George Siemens
• Brian Lamb

See, if you can match the tag cloud to the blogger:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

Had a go yet?

Here are the answers, how did you do?

1) - Scott Leslie
2) - AJ Cann
3) - George Siemens
4) - Jim Groom
5) - Tony Hirst
6) - Grainne Conole
7) - Brian Lamb

Booing as legitimate protest

(Warning: Mainly football related post)

There was some fuss at the weekend that Arsenal fans booed one of their own players, Eboue, to the point where he had to be substituted. Most of the pundits have been outraged, and the common complaint is that it is counter-productive, as well as vicious. Not being an Arsenal fan, I don't really know the history, but my guess is there is some background as to why they booed Eboue, and it wasn't just a random attack. Football fans may have a mob mentality but it is a highly contextualised mob mentality.

A few months ago, a similar event occurred during an England game when fans booed Ashley Cole after his error led to a goal. There was again a lot of self-righteous indignation from players and pundits, here is Graeme Le Saux in The Telegraph:

Their behaviour was nothing short of a disgrace. Treating one of your own like that doesn't benefit anyone. Not only will it affect Ashley, but that feeling will spread to the rest of the team. The mistake he made with his lobbed back-pass was a bad one and nobody will have been more painfully aware of that than Ashley.

What these commentators fail to mention is that this is probably a result of the way footballers have distanced themselves from fans. In his autobiography, Cole famously said that when a new offer of £60,000 per week came in from his agent to stay at Arsenal he pulled over to the side of the road and yelled in the phone:

"60 grand a week, they're taking the p**s Jonathan."

And what is particularly telling is that he relates this tale, expecting sympathy. In this context they have effectively severed the relationship with fans, and thus the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Graeme Le Saux have no legitimate claim on fans' loyalty. The behaviour of the fans is not as stupid as they like to paint it - they are trying to send you a very clear warning: Lose the community that creates you, and even when things appear great, you will have to pay in the long run.

I personally wouldn't boo, and feel it shouldn't be used lightly, but I'll make this prediction: Booing at matches will become increasingly common, and commentators will continue to dismiss it as the action of a small-minded minority. They should instead interpret it as a siren warning - football fans are trapped, you can't change allegiance, but you can fall out of love, and it is this love that pays those wages ultimately.

What has this got to do with education? Well, maybe not much, I can verify that Professors do not earn football player type salaries, nor do they have the adulation of thousands. While we may not see booing in lectures, we should be conscious of the equivalent signals in higher education. We do not have the same relationship with students as football teams do with fans, but higher education is generally tolerated, indulged and often viewed affectionately and respectfully by society (not by all sectors I agree). The dangers of failing to be relevant, of sticking to traditional methods, of refusing to listen and being aloof are the same as those that face footballers - we will undermine the foundation of our existence. Listen for those sirens...

Shiny Show

In the first of an occasional series I offer up Shinies to the following tools, as potentially interesting in higher education:

TwitterFountain - oooh, shiny. Picked this up via a tweet from Brian Kelly. It aggregates tweets and flickr photos that have been given a specified hashtag, in a nice visual interface. Educationally, it's just a nice way of aggregating some feeds that can be embedded in a page. So, a course might decide upon a hashtag and in their course page (WPMU?) have a twitter fountain running. Not sure it adds much pedagogically, but it provides a stimulus for conversation. One problem - it will pull in any flickr photo with the tag, so my initial idea of having twitter fountains displayed around the OU is probably not a good idea as some wag would doubtless think it's a great laugh to take photos of their private parts and post them with the #OU tag.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score - 2/5

Tweetstats - bit old, but was thought of it the other day when I wondered 'what times of the day to I usually tweet at?' (sad, this is the kind of thing I wonder about). Here is the answer for me, I tend to tweet during the morning, and not much at weekends and during August, when I'm on holiday which shows I do have something resembling a real life. Tony and Alan Cann are the people I do most replies to and Thursday is my Tweetest day of the week. Educationally it's not advanced statistics but does help show the different types of communicators you may have in a group.
Shiny score - 3/5 Educational score 2/5

Xtranormal - ok, I've already blogged this, it's a tool that lets you create short animated movies very quickly. Good fun and very quick to get the hang of. After I'd done one, Patrick, Glyn and Nigel also shared their quick efforts, to demonstrate the point. If one begins to thing of a course not as a collection of content that is given to students, but an aggregation of different types of media they produce, then getting them to use Xtranormal will both make something fun for them, and because they have to really think about the subject to produce a movie, be educationally beneficial. Alan Levine has already mentioned it as another way of 50 ways to tell a story.
Shiny score - 4/5 Educational score 4/5

Platform - bit incestuous this one, the Open University launched it's Drupal based social platform for students, called, Platform. This is the work of colleagues such as Stuart Brown, nothing to do with me (hence it works). Tony has, of course, already blogged it. This is the successor to the OU's student newspaper, Sesame, so what is interesting for me is the combination of top-down and bottom-up mix. The communications team will be finding stories and publishing and at the same time we'll be looking for students (and alumni) to engage with it and share content and stories. What will be interesting is whether 'OUness' is a strong enough bond to tie people together in a community. But the approach seems right and it's not just a bunch of print stuff stuck online, they've really engaged with new media.
Shiny score 3/5 educational score 4/5

Now, I really must go and create some shiny badges...

We are digitalists - these are our tools

<Image Tatuagem geek no Barcamp - Tiago Doria http://flickr.com/photos/tiagodoria/432822929/>

To avoid the digital natives and immigrants debate, let's opt for the term digitalists instead, and define them thus:

"Those who are comfortable using a range of digital media and are open to the changes that digitisation brings to society."

It's not exclusive, anyone can become a digitalist, and it's not absolute, you can be a digitalist in some areas and maybe have reservations in another. But you're not Andrew Keen.

This follows on from previous post, where I took Scott Leslie's post about just sharing to argue that the mode of sharing has changed. Digitalists know this because they do it every day through blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. In that post I suggested that institutions developed complex approaches to sharing because they either didn't know, or didn't believe that the simple methods would work. Scott commented that the flipside of my just because complex solutions were once required, doesn't mean they will always be ending was that complex problems don't necessarily require complex solutions.

And this is key to the tools available to the digitalist, they are simple. It's Really Simple Syndication after all, not Massively Complex Syndication. So here are my list of tools that a digitalist packs in their bag before leaving home:

• Embed - as Tony says in his video, Embed changes everything. What the embed tag allows is for a wide range of media to be, well, embedded, across the web. Not in itself amazing, but its implications are profound. It means you don't have to agree how to share, you don't have to develop metadata or format standards - you just take the embed code. And what this means is that content becomes widely, massively distributed. And the result of that is that a) people can create multimedia sites without any expertise, b) people get used to sharing, c) content is no longer tied to its originating site, d) content is no longer tied to its originating context and e) models which work against embed (ie locking down content), ultimately fail because if it can't be embedded, it may as well not exist. Embed is the conduit for content across the web, and thus the key element in understanding new models of ownership, creation, business, distribution and presentation.
  
  
• RSS - I've said it before, RSS is the universal acid of the net. It allows you to subscribe to any feed which will be updated regularly. Again, not mind-blowing in its basic form, but it is what this allows which is significant. It means we can all become broadcasters, because the 'schedule' is created by the user. It means you can personalise the information you receive, by selecting blogs, podcasts, video feeds you want to subscribe to you are in charge of the information you receive. And because it is a standard, subscribing is simple, just a click and its there. Which means anyone can do it. RSS is also the means by which meta services can be constructed. Take any output as RSS and you can build a site around it - Friendfeed is a good example of this. To an extent, your online identity is a list of your RSS feeds. If you were sad enough to want to know about me, you'd get a long way subscribing to my blog, Twitter, YouTube and Slideshare RSS feeds.
• Hashtags - once we have all this information flowing around, we need to filter and organise it. Previously this would have meant establishing a committee, agreeing a new metadata field, informing all participants of the correct label, etc. With hashtags users themselves tend to think of a useful term, and put a # in front of it, which allows it to be easily located in search. For instance, there was a CETIS conference on widgets last week (I was supposed to be there but had to pull out). The participants settled on #cetis08 as the tag, and so any twitter posts, Flickr photographs, delicious bookmarks were tagged with this. Thus if you go to Twemes and enter cetis08 as your search term, you get a good feel for the conference. Hashtags allow us to filter and reorganise content - without the ownership of the label, and more importantly what is deemed worthy of a label, being determined by an authority.

What these all have in common is that they are bottom-up, simple and focused on sharing. It is this democratisation and emphasis on sharing, reuse and reorganisation that is the fundamental difference between old content models and new ones, so these aren't just geeky technical matters - they're the combustion engine of our society.

I've focused on data techniques, not actual technologies such as blogs and wikis, and I've tried to keep the list simple and easy, but I'd love to hear of any other suggestions you have for the digitalist toolbox.

The cost of sharing

I've mentioned Scott's Planning to share, versus just sharing post in passing, but here is a slightly more considered response.

Scott sets out his frustration with top down, planned approaches to sharing:

"I have been asked to participate in many projects over the years that start once a bunch of departments, institutions or organizations notice that they have a lot in common with others and decide that it would be a good idea to collaborate, to share “best practices” or “data” or whatever...

But inevitably, with a very few exceptions, these projects spend an enormous amount of time defining what is to be shared, figuring out how to share it, setting up the mechanisms to share it, and then…not really sharing much."

Compared with the bottom-up social sharing that happens every day in the blogosphere, via Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare, etc

"Now I contrast that with the learning networks which I inhabit, and in which every single day I share my learning and have knowledge and learning shared back with me. I know it works."

He then sets out a series of good reasons why this is so, including "We develop multiple (informal) channels while they focus on a single official mechanism".

For me, the key difference is this: The 'cost' of sharing has collapsed, but institutions don't know this. This means they behave in perfectly logical ways if sharing was still a costly activity. I am using the term cost here to refer to both a financial price and also the effort required by individuals.

Clay Shirky argues that the cost of organisation has disappeared, and I believe this is because sharing is easy, frictionless. If I come across something I share it via Google shared items, Twitter, my blog, etc. If I want to share I stick it up on Slideshare, my blog, YouTube. There is a small cost in terms of effort to me to do the sharing, and zero cost in anyone wanting to know what I share. Sharing is just an RSS feed away.

But institutions don't believe this, or know it. It used to take consortium agreements to share, conferences, best practice guides, incentives, metrics. How can all that be replaced by an RSS icon? Obviously it must be something different they reason, so for our needs we have to invent a system. Except it isn't.

Just as the record industry thought this online stuff was something different, it couldn't possibly relate to their chain of record shops, their carefully maintained back catalog, their army or A & R professional, their logistically beautiful distribution chain, the sophisticated marketing campaigns. All of this had to be different to this online stuff, it just didn't make sense for all of these carefully constructed elements to be replaced by the same, messy uncontrolled online world. Except that, oh yes it did.

The moral here is that just because something used to be expensive, time consuming and complex doesn't mean it will always be.

SatNav - a microstudy in digitisation

<Image Mapa antiguo de America del Sur - thejourney1972>

We have only recently got a SatNav system for the car (it's invaluable if you are towing a caravan, no matter how small and trendy, as doing 3-point turns is not easy, or popular). Using it has made me reflect on how the process of digitisation and connectivity changes behaviour and our relation to certain artefacts. I think what is true of SatNav and maps, is probably true across all forms of content.

Here are the changes as I see them:

1. The need for a particular skill (in this case map reading) which was previously thought essential becames largely irrelevant.
2. This democratises the behaviour for use by nearly all member of society (navigation).
3. The skill becomes highly specialised then, and possibly as a result, highly valued when it is needed.
4. We gain in functionality because the community can create content - we have map mashups, numerous filters placed on maps, regular updates, recommended routes, new voices (Darth Vader "You have reached the dark side), etc.
5. The presence of the tool begins to alter behaviour. A small example, but when driving in France over the summer, we were more likely to explore because we could put in a destination, or a place of interest and not have to be concerned how we would get back to our original destination - the SatNav will do that for us. It has also removed the need to shout at each other while wrestling with a map.
6. We lose some of the richness and affection that is attached to a physical artefact, particularly with a history, in this case, maps - these are a thing of romantic wonder. Authors will not write of SatNav systems:

"when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my  finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.'"

Is Uniglu what I need?

A warning upfront: I think this post may expose my ignorance, and there may be a 'duh, we've been working on that for ages', type reaction. But based on previous experience, I've found that my ignorance is often shared by others, I'll forge ahead.

I'll give you the background: On Friday I had a quick play with video in Googlemail. Naturally it works fine, so I put out a rather facetious tweet about why do we bother to design software specially for education when this stuff is just there. Niall responded saying:

"can it be linked to student registration systems for automated population of tutor groups etc? "

This is a good point, and one that people like Scott and co have kicked around a few times.

The IMS Tools Interoperability Spec seeks to do some of this, stating:

"The IMS Tools Interoperability (TI) approach addresses the growing demand for a reusable mechanism for integrating third-party tools with core LMS platforms."

And Chuck Severance pointed me at something he is playing with called Simple Learning Tools Interoperability.

I may be wrong, but these don't quite seem to be what I'm after. What I want is the tools equivalent of eduglu, which for the sake of not bothering to come up with an original name, we'll call Uniglu. Here's my user scenario, so you can tell me if these will do what I want:

Tom is a lecturer at Strummer University in French Language. He wants his students to get used to engaging in online audio/video discussions, capturing mobile input. He has distance as well as campus based students so wants something asynchronous. Seesmic seems to be ideal. But rather than tell his students to sign up there and swap ids, he just wants them to be able to use it as a suite of tools. If they decide to go there, it will be already configured for them.
So he speaks to his IT services dept. who tell him that Seesmic is one of the 2138 applications that are listed in the Uniglu directory. This means they are trusted and are capable of accepting university data. They pass the secure data to the Seesmic API which automatically creates accounts for all the students, using their OpenID and preferred user names. It adds in all the students in the cohort as Followers and Following.
Similarly, in the course wiki, Tom is using Wetpaint. This also adds in all the students, and also sets up Tom and the two course assistants as moderators. The access to the wiki is set to registered only (ie the course cohort only, not public) which is the default option when it is available.

It seems to me that we aren't far off doing this, and that a combination of existing data standards would get us some way there, for instance OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial?

I accept there would be issues around data protection and privacy, but one could imagine universities being declared trusted data owners and that applications have to be vetted to be in the Uniglu directory. The difference here with the IMS spec is that we are sending data out to these apps, not requiring them to come into our systems. I'm not sure if that's significant or not. The standard is probably something that is in the domain of IT Services, not individual educators, but it would need to be easy enough to implement for application providers if want the rich tapestry of apps to choose from, and of course, from the user's perspective it must be seamless.

So my questions are:

1. Does this make sense?
2. Is it desirable?
3. Does it exist already?
4. If not, could we do it easily?

And here I am asking the question in Seesmic:

UnigluWhat I want is Uniglu>

My edublog 2008 nominations

With all the usual provisos about awards not mattering, the Edublog 2008 nominations are open, so I thought I'd spread a little love. Here are my nominations (it's okay not do every category isn't it Josie? I don't have a best use of virtual world).

Best Individual Blog - I'm going to nominate John Connell here. John manages to combine quality and quantity. Almost every post sets me off thinking. I have at least ten unwritten posts which are responses to things John has posted about. I particularly liked his grandfather's social network post.

Best group blog - Pontydysgu - they're Welsh, they like edupunk, they do a crazy internet radio show and have challenging posts. What more do you want?

Most influential blog post - I'm going to go with Jim Groom kicking off the Edupunk thing. This was easily the most edublog fun this year, and took off so quickly that within a week people were declaring it old hat. Keep up the good work my wonky spectacled friend!

Best librarian blog - falling into the obvious trap, but if all librarians were like Lorcan Dempsey we'd pay them more than bankers.

Best ed tech support blog - I'm not sure if it counts as ed tech support, but perhaps rather obviously I'm opting for Brian Kelly's blog. Brian manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services, but does so with intelligence and insight into the practical issues.

Best educational use of audio - again, not sure it fits in this category, but I'll nominate the Talis Podcast series (and not just because I'm one of them). Always worth a listen.

Oh, and I think they should add in a new category: Lifetime achievement award. If there was such a thing, the obvious nominee would be Downes, but I'd opt for Scott Leslie. Back in 1782 I remember looking at Ye Olde Blogs for the first time and Scott's was one of the first ones I came across and found relevant. And he's still at it, and still writing great stuff, witness only the other day his post on planning to share.