Web 3.0 Social Network

For many people the Social Web is simply far too complex to organise. Many of us have unwanted or unused Facebook, Myspace, Flickr or Bebo accounts 'out there' that we haven't visited or done anything with for a very long time. These stagnant accounts clog up the Web and use up valuable memory on someone's server somewhere. Messages, pokes and invitations for vampire food fights wait forlornly for an answer. Some complain that they find it difficult to follow Twitter, update their LinkedIn site and carry on blogging, because there is just not enough time in the day. Some people are completely confused over the whole Web 2.0 thing and simply don't get it. They fail to make optimum use of their social network because they don't know enough about its potential. Well, all that is about to change with help from the Semantic Web.

Software company Avinuon have just announced a new Web 3.0 tool that will give you more time by doing your social networking for you. Plonkr will not only organise all your web tools and services in one place, it will also regularly update dormant sites on your behalf using the latest, state-of-the-art intelligent agent software, even without being asked. Plonkr is 'intelligent' enough to send responses back to your network buddies in a manner that perfectly emulates your own style. Are you drinking in the pub when you should be working? Use Plonkr, and your boss will think you are still hard at work in the office. Using recurrence plotting and fuzzy measure analysis the software will be able to predict what you want to say even before you say it, or in some cases, according to its critics, whether you really want to say it or not. One critic of the new service, Dr Frank Lee, of the Paliamentary watchdog FIDO (the Federated Independent Digital Observatory), believes Plonkr may be a step too far. 'Call me a luddite if you like', he said, 'but do we really want machines doing our thinking for us? Here in Parliament we are quite capable of making our own mistakes without the aid of computers, thank you very much'.

Kurt Prilalofo, CEO of Avinuon, is clearly more positive about his new service. 'We are looking at the future of Web 3.0 social networking, right here, right now. This is a seamless, costless service that is at once both seamless and costless', he said. Prilalofo's new intelligent agent software algorithms are expected to break the mould of previously available systems, enabling people to 'literally be in more that one place at the same time' he said. Whilst this is neither here nor there, Plonkr seems like a great idea, and may well be the beginning of something truly monumental.

Learning without Limits

We are gearing up to host the 4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference in a few weeks time, and with over 200 delegates already registered, and more than 80 presentations, workshops and demonstrations on offer, it promises to be a memorable event. But even before this event is put to bed, we already have the theme and title for PELC 2010. And yes, the eagle-eyed will note that I have borrowed a little from one of my heroes, Sir Arthur C. Clarke. The first call for papers for PELC 2010 will be out soon with the eye catching space motif. The full title for the 5th Conference which will be held in Plymouth on 8-9 April 2010, is 'Learning without Limits: Facing the Challenges', and here's your first sight of the conference theme:

The theme for the 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference – Learning without Limits - will address the notion of anytime, anyplace learning. It will highlight the growing number of contexts in which learning can take place. We will focus on the challenges and opportunities brought by formal and informal learning, social networks and personal technologies, mobile learning and innovative on-campus education, virtual and real teaching & learning scenarios, and how teachers and learners are harnessing the power and potential of new and emerging technologies.

As in previous years the conference welcomes proposals for papers, workshops, symposia and demonstrations from across all sectors of education and training, focused on topic areas such as:

• Emerging Learning Technologies
• Classroom Learning Technology
• New Pedagogies and Practices
• Mobile Learning, Ambient and Pervasive Technologies
• Games for Learning
• 3D Multi User Virtual Environments
• Social Web and Social Networking
• Multi-Media
• Digital Literacy
• Digital Identity

So, if you are not able to make this year's event, we hope to see you in Plymouth for 2010. Start writing your proposal now, and .... book early!

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Feeling the pinch .... again

Multi-touch screen technology is the way forward apparently. I can see just how persuasive this argument is when I look at my own iPhone and see all the possibilities. I picked up my wife's phone a few weeks back to call someone back, and forgot. Hers is not a touch screen phone, and I found myself trying to pinch gesture, in vain. How long will it be before other phones are going down the route of the iPhone?

Erik Klimczak, creative director of Clarity Consulting believes it won't be long. Second Light, the second generation of the Microsoft Surface Computing device is only a couple of years down the road, and as experience tells us, second generation devices are less buggy than the first versions, have a lot more support from manufacturers and user groups, and most importantly for the success of adoption, are a lot cheaper to buy. "Everything is moving to touch and multi-touch so you had better jump on that bandwagon," Klimczak said at a recent developers conference. It won't be long before we find out if he is correct.

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Is Twitter the Semantic Web?

Saw a blog post from Alan Cann over at the University of Leicester this evening which got me thinking. His post was entitled 'Twitter drives traffic to blogs and social networks', and in it he claims that Twitter is the semantic web. He has a great poem on his site called 'The Semantic Web will not be Televised' which expresses this idea perfectly.

Although the Semantic Web (Web 3.0?) is still somewhat ill-defined and there are disagreements over exactly what it is, or what it looks like, most people agree that elements of it at least, have been with us for some time. The key presumed attributes of the semantic web are its psuedo-intelligent predictive and filtering capabilities:

Back in 1999 Sir Tim Berners-Lee declared: "I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers."

This is a grand architectural design of course, most of which is not completely accessible to the average computer user. What we do understand however, is that 'intelligent agents' in software will enable computers to filter out what we don't want and push to us what we do want, based on our previous use of search engines, network transactions, etc.

In this context, Alan Cann is probably correct because Twitter can act as a network filter - still under the control of the user, with little intelligence built into it other than the choices of the user - but never-the-less possessing a form of filtering capability beyond that of the average user. We are still some way off from truly intelligent agents that predict accurately what you want, when you want it, delivered to your current location. But Twitter is much more than the glorified e-mail system many claim it to be. Twitter is certainly a huge step toward semantic predictive filtering - it allows you to lock directly into and maintain your own personalised community of interest, where you can follow or un-follow who you wish, communicate across boundaries and push/pull information as you require it. It employes a number of simple and abbreviated filtering features such as #hashtagging, @names, RT (Retweeting) and DM (Direct messaging) which many social networking tools do not have. It is only a small step from here to automated versions.





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YouTube is skill in music

YouTube is blocking all music videos from its service in the UK from today, due to a disagreement with the Performing Right Society (PRS). YouTube has clashed with other media owners in the past too, and there seems to be no end to the disagreements that could be had between old and new media. Having been a full member of the PRS myself since 1984, I am of course, torn between the two viewpoints, as I can see the arguments for both sides. Forget about the very small percentage of mega-stars who earn an absolute fortune when they enjoy chart success with a string of number ones. The majority of musicians struggle to make a small living from the royalties on the number of plays of their songs, administered through PRS, and sometimes this is their only income.

I remember when I was a semi-professional musician, on a low income - having spent a small fortune on amplification, instruments and lighting - trying to recoup some at least back from recording and selling my own songs (that's me pictured playing in 1983 with my trusty Gibson Les Paul). The initial outlay was alarming, with studio and production costs very steep. Travelling to gigs, marketing and upkeep of equipment and instruments was an ongoing hidden cost. It was an expensive business to be in.

On one occasion, a whole group of 'fans' came up to me after a gig and told me how much they enjoyed listening to the tracks I had released on cassette tape. This may sound strange to you but it made me quite angry. You see, I had never released cassette tapes of those tracks, only vinyl disks, so the cassette tapes were illegal copies of my music. I had certainly dug deep into my own pockets to record and produce the disks, but someone had gotten hold of one and copied it, and was distributing it. It was as if someone had stolen something from me, which in a way, they had. 'I think you probably owe me some money' I thought, but didn't say. 'Home taping is killing music' was a slogan probably originating somewhere in the bowels of the PRS. Now the mantra might be 'YouTube is killing music', but this would not be totally accurate, as there is strong evidence that playouts on YouTube and other social web sites can actually increase the sales and downloads of music. We are caught in the maelstrom of a paradigm shift, with a collision of the old and new media. The question is not whether YouTube should be able to play these music videos. The only thing we really need to decide is how to get payments from playouts, whatever the medium, into the pockets of those hard working and very deserving musicians and songwriters. Please think again YouTube.

What you see is what you get

Human perception has been explained in many ways, from Decartes, through to the 'top-down' experiments of Richard Gregory, then J.J. Gibson's ecological 'bottom-up' model and a host of other theorists. Each clamours for our attention, attempting to explain the way we represent our version of reality inside our heads. The plain fact remains: What you see is what you get. You simply make your own interpretation of it, and believe what you want to believe. This is what allows illusionists and street 'magicians' such as David Blaine and Derren Brown to maintain their popular appeal.

Yesterday I took my second year teacher trainees over to our Virtual Immersion Cinema where for an hour they watched high resolution 3D images projected using a fish-eye lens onto the ceiling of the dome. There were a few inertia-sickness issues, but mercifully, there were no technicolour yawns. The wow factor was high though, and many were left afterwards with questions about how they could use such a facility to enhance the teaching of science, history, geography and other subject areas.

After this we went back to the classroom and I demonstrated the art of illusion using nothing more than a simple can of baked beans and my index finger. If you are sqeamish, don't watch this video. And please don't try this at home. You probably won't be insured.

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Centre of the Twitterverse

Yes, the Twitterverse is the name we give to the environment within which Twitter people do their stuff. All around the world, every minute of the day, someone, somewhere is tweeting something. It may be something trivial, or it may be something important - a link to a useful site everyone should know about, for example. Some people tweet to a small circle of friends. Others have a vast 'following' of thousands. Some, such as politicians and celebrities use Twitter merely as a broadcast 'send only' medium, to get their message across. They follow no-one or just a select few others, and I think that this approach is missing the point of Twitter, because they lose out on the dialogue.

You see, Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media for many reasons. But the most important reason is that Twitter can connect people to each other, and enable immediacy of communication. During an evening teaching session recently, with a group of novices, I sent out a tweet to ask those on Twitter to simply say 'hello'. The group of students were amazed that just a few minutes later, over 30 responses had come through, from all parts of the world.

We are increasingly connected to each other, sometimes through friends of friends, or even more tenuously than that, and Twitter is exemplifying the concept originally proposed by Stanley Milgram of 6 degrees of separation - that we are connected through each other to everyone else in the world via other people. Twitter makes these connections probably better than any other medium, and that includes the likes of Myspace and Facebook. It does it better because this microblog is easier, quicker to use and things are kept to a minimum (restricted to 140 characters only) and you need to follow someone to read their Twitter stream.

I was interested then yesterday to see that several visualisation tools have emerged recently amidst the plethora of third party Twitter tools. The 5K Twitter Browser by Neuro Productions places 'you' at the centre of your Twitterverse, with the most recent 16 twitter follows connected to you. Click onto any one of them and they become a second hub with their 16 most recent follows also connected. Then it gets complicated, because you can continue clicking ad nauseum, to see who else is connected to whom and whether there is a mutual connection. I'm not sure just how useful this tool is, or what it can be used for yet, but it is worth a look if you haven't seen it, just for a nice visual treat.

Oh, and by the way, the Timbuckteeth image (yes, that's my Twitter name) above was generated using another online tool I have been playing with recently, called the Parody Motivator Generator. If you have a spare minute or two, have a go with this too - it's great fun.

Once more with feeling....

Now I can take a breath and sit back (even if it's just for a few hours). The provisional programme for the 4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference is complete and has been posted onto the Conference Website. It's an exciting programme I think, and tops all the previous ones in both scope and depth. There are keynotes from Mike Blamires (Day 1) and Graham Attwell (Day 2) and an invited plenary presentation from Charles Oppenheim and Naomi Korn on Web2Rights. There are over 70 paper presentations dealing with such diverse subjects as using Web 2.0 tools in teaching (wikis, blogs, podcasting, Facebook, YouTube), papers on mobile technology, Second Life, the VLE vs the PLE debate, aggregation, transnational perspectives on e-learning, e-assessment and e-portfolios, audience response systems, collaborative content management, and even a paper on terrorism and the web! Delegates are attending from about 15 different countires as far away as Australia and New Zealand, as well as from all over Europe and the UK.

Tickets for the spectacular Conference Dinner, which will be held in the National Marine Aquarium on Plymouth's historic Barbican quayside are going fast. There will be 10 workshops presented over the two days (including ones on Twitter and mobile technologies) as well as some exciting leading edge demonstrations such as the 3D virtual immersion cinema. There will also be a full vendor exhibition across the two days. All this will take place in the amazing Roland Levinsky Building, in the heart of the university campus. Oh, and of course, there is the wonderful, non-fattening Devon Cream Tea on the afternoon of the final day. Throughout the event, delegates will be encouraged to twitter, blog and txt their thoughts, and we will aggregate all images, tweets etc, under the hashtag #pelc09. Should be fun. Looking forward to it. Come and join us. Hope you can make it.

Down to a 't'

Google Scholar is a very useful tool if you are in the business of research. It's also a nice surprise when you put your own name in and up come your own publications with all the citations listed beneath them. I was very pleased to see that one of the papers I co-wrote with Maged Boulos in 2007 has been cited 77 times. The paper was entitled The Emerging Web 2.0 Social Software and was published in Health Information and Libraries Journal. So I went through a few of the citations just to see what other researchers were saying about our article.

To my amusement, one author had cited me as Wheelert, S. Well, that's me all right, but I had never seen my surname spelt with a 't' on the end. My amusement turned to irritation however, when time after time, other citations also used the same spelling of my surname - Wheelert. In all Google showed 17 incidences of my name being remixed.

So I checked my birth certificate. No, I was born Wheeler. I checked my marriage certificate - something must have happened in the act of getting wed that changed my surname without my knowledge perhaps? No, that happened to my wife instead, so I was still Wheeler. Must have been the article then. No, in the original article we published, our names were spelt correctly too. So ..... it was obvious what had happened. Someone had cited my article and misspelled my name with an extra letter in it by mistake. Then others had come along, without reading my original article and simply lifted the quotation out from the secondary article and had requoted the error in their own article. The error has spread virally. I'm not going to name and shame all the authors here, because that would be churlish - but you can check it out for yourself if you care to. Simply paste this reference into Google and you will see what I mean:

Boulos, K. & Wheelert, S. (2007) The emerging web 2.0 social software

Perhaps I should simply be happy that other people are quoting my publications, I hear you ask? Well, there is a deeper problem here, I retort. If this is happening to my work, how much more endemic is this practice out in the world of academia? How much of this copying and pasting gets past the reviewers? How potentially damaging is this practice to a) the integrity of academic research and b) the veracity and accuracy of what we read in academic journals?

Let me ask a question here. How many of us have actually read the work of Lev Vygotsky directly? And how many of us have quoted from his Mind in Society book without reading it? I did this once or twice myself, I must admit, before I realised my error. Are academic researchers becoming lazy in their literature reviews? And if this copying and pasting is a widespread practice, which I suspect it is, how can we without being hypocrites, expect our students to be more diligent than us? I guess that's academia down to a 't'.

(Image source: www.education.asu.edu)