The Ed Techie

Living in a twitter world

(The last in my trilogy of ALT-C related posts)

Two things brought home to me that we live in a twitter world (whether David Cameron or John Humphrys like it or not, and indeed, all the better that they don't).

The first was that I attended the ALT-C for the first time post the development of twitter. I have been to this conference (it's the UK's main ed tech conference) three times before. Usually my approach was to hang around on my own in a corner, maybe find a couple of OU people and stick with them, or stand on the edge of a group and hope someone notices me. But this time I went feeling that I knew nearly everyone there because we follow each other on twitter. Here is a list of people I know well on twitter who I actually got to say hello to face to face for the first time (and I've probably missed a load off, sorry):

Brian Kelly, Alan Cann, Josie Fraser, Graham Attwell, Steve Wheeler, James Clay, Stu Johnson, Sue Folley, Theo Kuechel, Haydn Blackley.

And then there were the people I have met only a few times but keep in contact with via twitter. I was practically high-fiving my way down corridors. Well, maybe not, but it was a distinctly different real-life social experience because of twitter (and blogs).

Given this it struck me that I need to work on some new social skills. What is the appropriate type of conversation when you are pre-introduced via social networks? I had a few good discussions, but often I would shake hands with someone and we'd both go 'good to finally meet you. Errrm...' So one upshot of living in a twitter world is that we need to tweak our social interactions to have a mode that is somewhere inbetween being introduced for the first time and being old friends.

The second twitter related moment was watching TV last night. I was watching something else when someone on my twitter stream said they were about to watch the Derren Brown 'event' on Channel 4. In this he 'predicted' the national lottery numbers live, see this clip:

I'm not particularly interested in how he did it (it's TV, he can make it look anyway he wants), but rather what it reveals about the changing nature of television. Last year I mentioned that for TV creating events that appealed to twitter users (or any network, obviously not limited to twitter)  and allowed them"to share the experience online may be the the thing that saves scheduling". This seems to me an example of a broadcaster attempting to do this. There are two key ingredients:

1) It is a live event so participation at the moment is crucial

2) It provokes discussion - the acid test is does it get to be a trending event in twitter? The answer for last night was yes:

 

I'm not arguing that it makes good television, merely indicating that this can be seen as an example of the impact of social networks on an existing broadcast behaviour.

Celebrity as social object

<image: Flowing Systems by exper http://www.flickr.com/photos/exper/2016537402/>

Having bemoaned the influx of celebrities on to Twitter and the manner in which it warps dialogue, this post is about a more positive impact of celebrities. I've noticed that a few celebs seem to act as a focus around which conversation and dialogue  concentrates. The ex-England rugby captain Will Carling is one such. During the rugby people who follow him on twitter use his tweets as a backchannel and counterpoint to the official commentary.

I've seen a similar effect with ex-footballer, Stan Collymore, (I didn't say the celebs were nice or anything), and during Comic Relief one of the few places for discussion was at Robert Llewellyn's twitter page (ex Red Dwarf actor).

One thing to note here is that these are middling celebrities, real megastars probably have too diverse an audience. Another factor is that their twittering doesn't seem to be related to direct commercial activity (Collymore is a talk show host, so his twittering can be seen as a related activity, but not for the others, although I'm sure they're happy for any work which arises from it).

In these cases it is very much about interacting with an individual - these celebrities are not broadcasting, but engaging in conversation. They are utilising what I suppose we must refer to as their 'personal brand'. In essence, their celebrity status acts as a social object around which the rest of us congregate.

Maybe this is okay for sport, but what about in education? Perhaps a similar model would work around particular subject areas, with popular academics. For instance, I quite like Brian Greene's books on string theory, if he had a twitter account (I don't think he does), it might usefully act as a sort of Great Attractor for ongoing educational debate. If we accept the personal brand theory then, what universities (or any organisation) needs is not a corporate twitter identity but a few of these social object personalities.

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.

Twitter events

The other day I mentioned that I like to Twitter when I'm watching football on TV. My wife doesn't watch, and if I'm not in a pub, it's a way of sharing the experience. Then on Saturday it was the Eurovision Song Contest. I started to watch it, but put a DVD on, then when I looked at Twitter it was awash with Eurovision comments. It struck me that Eurovision was in many ways the perfect Twitter event. It is, in fact, quite boring (none of the songs are any good), so there is plenty of time to Twitter. At the same time, it is quite enjoyable and provokes comment, so there is a desire to share. And you know that it is a communal event, so others will be watching too.

There's not much broadcasters can do with this, except maybe set up a Twitter id (e.g. Woganesque commentator during Eurovision), but this ability to share the experience online may be the the thing that saves scheduling. Sky Plus and the iPlayer have pretty much destroyed the notion of scheduling, but for programmes and events you want to share, then it has to be done at the allotted time. This obviously applies to live events (sports mainly), but also to any programme people might congregate around. It could be The Apprentice (AJ likes to tweet about this), or Eastenders.

Gapingvoid may have been dismayed by the Brits twittering about Eurovision, but in this respect his talk of social objects is correct. The future of television is not in it being a solitary experience, but in being a social one.

Think of these as 'flash social networks' - Jyri Engestrom argues that "social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object.” Around TV we may see these social networks form for the duration of a programme and then dissipate. The key challenge for broadcasters is to facilitate this without stamping all over it, or going creepy treehouse on it.

[Update - Darren Waters had beaten me to it on this]

FlatWorld Knowledge - the publisher I've been waiting for?

David Wiley is part of a startup called FlatWorld Knowledge. Their aim is to release digital textbooks free of charge, with students paying for the print copy if they want. What is more interesting though is the way they take the notion of the text book and make it more of a social object. So the educator can edit the book for their class, the student can interact with other students around it, and people can sell related services and content. In fact, when you view their little cartoons it makes you realise just how limited the traditional text book model is in education. Why didn't we do this years ago?

From my point of view, I have a book proposal and want a publisher. I am currently with Routledge, but they have a traditional attitude to publishing, they wouldn't even let me put a couple of chapters up on this blog. So what I want is a publisher who will allow me to give away the digital version, but still charge for the print version. So I contacted FlatEarth, but it seems that at the moment they're just focusing on Business books, as they're in startup mode. Makes sense I suppose, but it means I'll either have to find another publisher or wait for them to open up their portfolio a bit. Does anyone know a publisher who isn't living in the dark ages?

Social objects - meaningful or meaningless

(Image 'Socializing' Noamgalai http://www.flickr.com/photos/noamg/218169158/)

This is a follow up to my earlier post on Social Objects in Education, and is an attempt to wrap up some of the discussion around it and the thoughts these have prompted.

In my Twitter stream John Connell said he wondered if there was something of a tautology around social objects. I think I know what he means, and it relates to a point I'll come to later on definitions. Put simply the argument goes something like 'what's a social object?' Answer: 'It's an object that's social.' Something is a social object if it acts as a social object - the danger with this kind of circular definition is that it doesn't really get you very far. (I have similar reservations about deep and surface learning by the way). For now, let's park this objection (hope that's okay John) and hope it will work itself out if we continue to explore the concept.

Josie Fraser commented that

"Profiles ARE social objects. They're not a real person - they're a constructed representation around which interaction takes place - a specific kind of social object. They are artifacts which connect and make visible networks."

This extends the definition of a social object beyond the 'mere' content I was considering. Your user profile in Facebook, say, is itself a social object since you choose what information to display. I think this is true, if one considers FB, by choosing what applications to install on your profile you are creating a social object. In essence, you are throwing out a number of social hooks to the community to see which ones catch. For instance, if I install the LastFM application then presumably it's because I think the information about the last music I listened to is of some social value to my FB friends, however small that value is (I know most people's waking thought isn't 'what's Martin been listening to?'),

My colleague Andy Lane  argues that  content can be seen as a mediating artefact, which  reminds me of the work of Grainne who argued that

Mediating artefacts help practitioners and students to make informed decisions and choices in order to undertake specific teaching and learning activities. By using this concept of MAs and grounding this in relevant socio-cultural literature it is possible to begin to identify which MAs are appropriate for particular users in particular circumstances.
(Conole, G. (2005), ‘Mediating artefacts to guide choice in             creating and undertaking learning activities’, presentation             at CALRG seminar, Open University, 1st November 2005)

She argues that models, narratives, learning designs can form this function. Does this mean we should bundle them in under the social object umbrella too?

Stephen Downes says he doesn't agree that the network is built around the object (Hugh MacLeod's conjecture), instead arguing that

these so-called "social objects" - images, videos, and the like - constitute a vocabulary that is used by members of a network.

Let's say the social objects in this case are some academic pieces of content for now, e.g. some AV, articles, books, etc on a particular subject. In the sense that the objects inform the dialogue between the participants, and they talk about the objects, then yes, they do constitute a form of vocabulary. For example, learner1 might say 'but we saw in the Wisdom of the Crowds that the mass can make immediate judgements that are better than any single member of the group.' Here 'the Wisdom of the Crowds' is part of a shared vocabulary, the book is the social object, and that is used by the members of the network as Stephen suggests.

However, also imagine this scenario - learners with an interest in, say Ancient Greece in a social network share content resources (through something like the visual bookshelf) and then decide to come together for a discussion on, say, the role of Themistocles in ancient Greece, around a wiki article on him. In this sense,  it is more than a shared vocabulary they are using (although they need that too), but the social object (the resources and the wiki article) are the social objects which are igniting and focusing their discussion.

Lastly, David Wiley links us back to the work on learning objects, and in particular the metaphor he proposed then of the campfire - ie the social glue that brings people out of their tents:

Without a campfire all you have is a bunch of tents setup and people wandering around disconnectedly. The campfire provides a place for people to congregate and interact. The campfire appears before the singing starts.

That last point is significant - the campfire appears before the singing starts, not the other way round. In the comments I replied to David saying that the link to learning objects occurred to me also for two reasons:

i) Are social objects just learning objects that you deliberately create with social interaction in mind (lots of work on LOs seemed to be about interaction with the LO itself, ie they were conceived as multi-media objects)

ii) like with LOs the debate around social objects quickly becomes bogged down in one of definition. Almost every discussion I had about LOs started and ended with ‘but what is a learning object?’

I'm not entirely sure where this leaves us regarding social objects. Part of these blog posts is to help me think it through in a social manner, as all the above comments demonstrate. Rather like terms that become popular in academic circles the debate is often about whether they really add anything. Affordances was another such term, which once it moved beyond the strict Gibsonian interpretation became too loose for many people to be comfortable with. I take a fairly pragmatic stance on the use of such terms - don't get bogged down in an exact definition, if you have an intuitive take on what they mean and it helps stimulate thought, debate, development or research then that's good enough. And that's where I am with social objects at the moment.