100

In September 2008, Jane Hart created a list of 100 learning professionals to follow on Twitter. Inevitably the list grew to more than 1000 individuals in the Connexions Directory, and now she has compiled another list of 100 featured learning professionals, who in her own words: 'will provide you with information, inspiration and interaction on a range of educational and workplace learning topics from around the world - via their blog, on Twitter or on other social networks'.

It's a bit like the movie '300' I think, except that this list is only a third of the size, it's not quite as epic, and none of us are wearing loin cloths (well, I can only speak for meself of course). And I'm not sure who we would be fighting until the last (wo)man against - possibly After-Dinner-Jab or some such similar middle eastern dictator? No, seriously it's simply a useful list containing a number of well known and some lesser known educators, learning technologists and theorists, all of whom, according to Jane, are well worth following. The list has the added bonus of also listing not only each professional's Twitter links, but also their blogs and websites too, so it's eminently clickable.

I was very pleased, nay honoured, to be included in the list, so I am apparently considered as one of those who provide the three 'I's for those who are interested in e-learning. No list is perfect and I suppose many out there will argue that some people who they would include are missing, and others don't deserve to be there in the 100. Some may even argue that we shouldn't have lists, because they emulate a kind of taxonomy which simply isn't on in the Social Web. Maybe there should be a meta-list (a list of lists)? Whichever way, it will never be perfect, and any list is just a set of recommendations. Thanks anyway Jane for adding me to your recommendations. I will reciprocate if ever I compile a list of my own!

Another nail in the coffin?

I will be speaking in a symposium at ALT-C in Manchester in September along with James Clay and Graham Attwell. The title of the symposium is 'The VLE is Dead!'. I'm looking foward to it because it promises to be controversial and should generate a lot of heat and (I hope) some light too. I was very interested then to spot a recent Ofsted report which suggests that e-learning is failing in many schools and colleges. The report is quite damning, suggesting that many institutional VLEs are being poorly used. The survey was conducted across a wide range of educational and training settings, including schools, colleges, work-based learning and adult and community learning centres. The results showed that the VLE concept was still a relatively new idea and that no institution had a VLE that covered all aspects of the curriculum. The best VLE deployments were generally reliant on single enthusiastic teachers rather than whole institutions. VLEs in most schools and colleges, says the report, represent only a small proportion of the student learning experience.

These disappointing results point up a number of issues, but most notably, many teachers, when forced to use something as complex as an institutional VLE, tend to take the short cut and simply dump their content into it (a kind of 'shovelware'). They then expect it to work in a similar manner to content delivered in a face to face classroom setting, which of course, it doesn't. The e-Learning Lounge Blog puts it rather well:

"The key lesson from the report is clear enough; good elearning programmes require good implementation. It’s about more than just the technology. There is little point in stamping VLE, DLE or elearning on something and hoping that everything will take care of itself."

I have previously argued that VLEs tend to constrain students into particular ways of thinking and stifle creativity. I also maintain that most proprietary VLEs have been designed by businesses not by teachers, and therefore are unfit for purpose. This latest report shows that in the schools and colleges surveyed, the VLE is hardly a popular or successful tool and that there is minimal uptake on its use. More to be concerned about however, is the vast amount of money that has been poured into providing tools which are just not being used appropriately or effectively. Is this yet another nail in the VLE coffin, and should we now be looking toward more simplified, personalised learning environments based on individual needs?

Related links:

Martin Weller The VLE is dead
JISC Advantages of VLEs for tutors
Steven Verjans The VLE/LMS is dead
Pontydysgu F-ALT09: Symposium on VLEs
Martin Weller Some more VLE demise thoughts
Anne-Marie Cunningham In praise of the walled-garden (VLE)
Podcast The VLE debate

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Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The edgeless university?

This just in from JISC: British universities will lose their leading international standing unless they become much more radical in their use of new technology, a JISC commissioned report says today. British universities occupy four of the top ten world rankings and the UK isone of the top destinations for international students. But the Edgeless University, conducted by Demos on behalf JISC, suggests that a slowness to adopt new models of learning will damage this competitive edge. The research showed that the recession has put universities under intense pressure as threats to funding combine with increasing demand. A wave of applicants is expected to hit universities this summer as record numbers of unemployed young people seek to ‘study out’ the recession.

The report says that online and social media could help universities meet these demands by reaching a greater number of students and improving the quality of research and teaching. Online and DIY learning can create 'edgeless universities' where information, skills and research are accessible far beyond the campus walls.

Malcolm Read OBE, Executive Secretary for JISC, which supported the research, said: ‘The UK is a leading force in the delivery of higher education and its universities and colleges have been punching well above their weight for some time. Safeguarding this reputation means we have to fight harder to stay ahead of developments in online learning and social media, and embracing the Web 2.0 world. ‘This is a great opportunity for UK universities and colleges to open up and make learning more accessible to students who would not traditionally stay on in education. 'Edgeless universities' can transform the way the UK delivers, shares and uses the wealth and quality of information its institutions own.’

The report also calls for universities to acknowledge the impact of the internet by making academic research freely available online. Author of the report, Peter Bradwell, said: ‘The internet and social networks mean that universities are now just one part of the world of learning and research. This means we need their support and expertise more than ever. Just as the music industry may have found the answer to declining CD sales with Spotify, universities must embrace online knowledge sharing and stake a claim in the online market for information.’

The report makes a series of recommendations for opening up university education, including making all research accessible to the public. It says teaching should be placed on a more even footing with research in career progression and status and teaching which uses new technology rewarded.

Read the full report www.jisc.ac.uk/edge09

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Mashing it up

Earlier today I was invited by my good friend Maged Kamel Boulos to write a paper on educational mashups for inclusion in a special issue of Future Internet - an online open access journal, which he is guest editing. So I have put together a title and an abstract which I hope fits the bill.

The paper is based upon some talks I gave recently at Online Educa Berlin, the Plymouth E-Learning Conference, and the JISC Regional South West Conference. I also had a paper planned for the EDEN Conference in Gdansk, Poland last week, but health issues intervened and I never got to give it. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, so the paper has been repurposed. Here it is, awaiting your comments.

Wiki Blog Space Mashups: Combining Web 2.0 tools to create collaborative and reflective learning spaces

Recently teachers have used wikis, blogs and other open architecture Web tools to encourage student interaction (Richardson, 2006). Wikis can promote collaborative learning, and serve as repositories for user generated content (Wheeler et al, 2008). Blogs can encourage greater reflection on learning and enable students to enter into dialogue on specific topics (Kop, 2007). Wikis form a part of a community space, whilst blogs are situated within an individual’s personal space. Interest is growing about how social software tools can provide added value to the learning process, and this is reflected in the growing literature on the topic. Less is known about how wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools might be combined and mashed up to create dynamic new learning environments. In this paper, Web 2.0 tool combination is explored, with reference to two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces. Students offer their views about using these tools, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. There is also discussion about aggregation of content and a theorisation of how community and personal spaces can create tension and conflict. A new ‘learning spaces’ model will be presented which aids visualisation of the processes, domains and territories that are brought into play when content and Web 2.0 tools are mashed up within the same space.

References

Kop, R. (2007) Blogs and wikis as disruptive technologies: Is it time for a new pedagogy? In M. Osborne, M. Houston and N. Toman (Eds.) The Pedagogy of Lifelong Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P. and Wheeler, D. (2008) The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating Student Generated Content as a Collaborative Learning Tool. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-995.

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In person

There has been a lot of talk recently about PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) and everyone it seems, wants to know what they are, what they contain, or if they will replace current institutional VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) or LMS (Learning Management System) provision. No one seems to be able to agree on what a PLE is. I've heard several people complain recently that they can't find enough published research in the area of PLEs either. I simply point them in the direction of the journal I edit: Interactive Learning Environments. Last year we ran a special issue on PLEs, and to give you a flavour, here are two of the abstracts:

The first article, written by the guest editors Mark Johnson and Oleg Liber, examines learner agency:

We present the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) as a practical intervention concerning the organization of technology in education. We explain this by proposing a cybernetic model of the “Personal Learner” using Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). Using the VSM, we identify different regulatory mechanisms that maintain viability for learners, and how physical engagement with tools is of fundamental importance in learners being able to manage their learning environment. We explain how the PLE, in exploiting Service Oriented Architecture, attempts to address this issue of the engagement with tools by allowing learners to control their own instrumentation. This, however, is more than a practical issue. In shifting the locus of control over learning to the learner, the ways in which learners exercise that control becomes an important educational issue. Drawing on sources ranging from Bandura's work on self-efficacy, and philosophical work on social ontology, we argue that self-regulation and technological personalization are issues which strike at the heart of current debates about the organization of education and the nature of the relationship between institutions and learners, and more deeply, the human condition in the modern world. Some anecdotal practical implications are reported in the final section of the paper as we describe the response of learners to the challenges of increased personalization.

Johnson M and Liber O (2008) The Personal Learning Environment and the human condition: from theory to teaching practice. Interactive Learning Environments, 16 (1), 3-15.

The second article I can draw your attention to was written by the so called 'Father of the PLE', Scott Wilson. In the article, Scott examines design issues surrounding the deployment of PLEs:

The use of design patterns is now well established as an approach within the field of software systems as well as within the field of architecture. An initial effort was made to harness patterns as a tool for elaborating the design of the elements of personal learning environments as part of the University of Bolton's Personal Learning Environment project; however, this earlier effort had a number of limitations that prompted a revisit to the pattern language documented here. In particular, the initial patterns, while functionally useful, lacked some of the moral and generative qualities that are the essential qualities of an effective pattern language. This paper presents a revised pattern language focused around two primary categories, learning networks, and personal learning tools.

Wilson S (2009) Patterns of Personal Learning Environments. Interactive Learning Environments, 16 (1), 17-34.

Related Links:

Scott Wilson et al: The Personal Learning Environments Blog

Mohamed Amine Chatti: LMS vs PLE

Clarence Fisher: Reflective Spaces and Learning Networks

Steve Wheeler slideshow: Self organised learning and PLEs

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Latest MUVEs

Several articles have been published recently on the use of MUVEs in education. My mate Steven Warburton's article appeared in the British Journal of Educational Technology earlier this year. He takes a critical approach to the evaluation of Second Life as a learning environment. Here's the abstract:

Second Life (SL) is currently the most mature and popular multi-user virtual world platform being used in education. Through an in-depth examination of SL, this article explores its potential and the barriers that multi-user virtual environments present to educators wanting to use immersive 3-D spaces in their teaching. The context is set by tracing the history of virtual worlds back to early multi-user online computer gaming environments and describing the current trends in the development of 3-D immersive spaces. A typology for virtual worlds is developed and the key features that have made unstructured 3-D spaces so attractive to educators are described. The popularity in use of SL is examined through three critical components of the virtual environment experience: technical, immersive and social. From here, the paper discusses the affordances that SL offers for educational activities and the types of teaching approaches that are being explored by institutions. The work concludes with a critical analysis of the barriers to successful implementation of SL as an educational tool and maps a number of developments that are underway to address these issues across virtual worlds more broadly.

Warburton S (2009) Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 414-426.

Another good friend of mine, Palitha Edirisingha and his colleagues at the University of Leicester, have also published an article on the potential pedagogical power of Second Life. Although it's a small scale project, the findings may yet be far reaching, particularly around our understanding of social presence in 3-D virtual environments.

This paper reports findings of a pilot study that examined the pedagogical potential of Second Life (SL), a popular three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment (3-D MUVE) developed by the Linden Lab. The study is part of a 1-year research and development project titled 'Modelling of Secondlife Environments' (http://www.le.ac.uk/moose) funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee. The research question addressed in this paper is: how can learning activities that facilitate social presence and foster socialisation among distance learners for collaborative learning be developed in SL, a 3-D MUVE? The study was carried out at the University of Leicester (UoL) within an undergraduate module on Archaeological Theory, where two tutors and four students took part in four learning activities designed to take place in SL within the UoL Media Zoo island. The learning activities and training in SL were based on Salmon's five-stage model of online learning. Students' engagement in SL was studied through interviews, observations and records of chat logs. The data analysis offers four key findings in relation to the nature and pattern of in-world 'socialisation' and its impact on real-world network building; the pattern of in-world 'socialisation' stage in Salmon's 5-stage model; perspectives on students' progress in-world through the first stage of the model—'access and motivation'—and perspectives on their entry into, and progress through, the second stage of the model—'socialisation'—and the role of identity presented through avatars in the process of socialisation. The paper offers implications for research and practice in the light of these findings.

Edirisingha P, Nie M, Pluciennik M and Young R (2009) Socialisation for learning at a distance in a 3-D multi-user virtual environment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 458-479.

Related links:

Kamel Boulos, Wheeler and Toth-Cohen Designing for Learning in 3-D Virtual Worlds

Kamel Boulos, Hetherington and Wheeler An overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical education

Wiki working

I published two journal articles recently on the use of wikis in teaching and learning, and I'm making them available here on this blog. The links below allow you to download the full papers in .pdf format. I have also published several book chapters recently on the use of wikis in education which I will make available here over the next few weeks - so bookmark this space! A key message from both papers is that although students enjoy working and learning together, to facilitate effective collaborative learning, tutors need to know how to optimise the affordances of wikis. The first article came out of a whole term of gathering data from student teachers who were using wikis to support their study, and as a tool to encourage sharing and collaboration. It appeared late last year in the British Journal of Educational Technology:

Wheeler S, Yeomans P and Wheeler D (2008) The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-965.

This paper explores the potential for wiki-type open architecture software to promote and support collaborative learning through the use of student-created content. It delineates some of the affordances and constraints of wiki software as an open architecture that has the potential to facilitate collaborative learning through community-focused enquiry. It seeks to promote debate in this key area of development, and highlights some recent key contributions to the developing discourse on social software in what has been termed 'the architecture of participation'.

The second article was written from the same data, but this time with the emphasis on the use of wikis to promote quality academic writing. It was published in Learning, Media and Technology journal.

Wheeler S and Wheeler D (2009) Using wikis to promote quality learning in teacher training. Learning, Media and Technology, 34 (1), 1-10.

This paper discusses writing as a social practice and speculates on how wikis might be used to promote higher quality academic writing and support collaborative learning. This study of undergraduate teacher trainees' online learning activities focuses on how shared spaces - wikis - might be used to communicate ideas and generate course-specific content. The study also explored how students, through such activities, were able to improve their academic writing skills and engage more critically in learning. Data captured from student discussion boards and a post-module email questionnaire (n = 35) were used to map student perceptions of the usefulness of wikis in support of their academic studies. The data indicate that most students raised their skill level in writing directly to the publicly viewable wiki space, in sharp contrast to the more informal content they posted on the discussion boards. The scope of collaborative writing was limited due to students' reluctance to edit each others' work, but students appreciated the shared environment as a means of discussing their work and the content of the course. Students reported that their academic writing skills had improved through their formal participation in the wiki.

21st Century Learning

No one talks about the Millennium anymore, which as I've said a thousand times before, is perhaps a good thing. Once it was 'millennium this', and 'millennium that', and we all got a little sick of it. But the turning of the century was significant if only as an artificial, psychological transition from the 'old' to the 'new'. In the first few years of this new century we have made some tremendous advances in social media use, mobile technology and telecommunication. Educators are putting these tools to use, and the relentless advance of technology seems to be inspiring teachers everywhere to innovate and create new ways of teaching. But as I was at pains to emphasise during one of my talks this week, learning remains the same. We learn because we have to, but we also learn because we want to. The tools are there simply to support, enhance and extend the opportunities to learn.

A report landed on my desktop yesterday, courtesy of my good friends at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona. Entitled 'What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century?', the report captures the intensely creative two days some of us spent together in Barcelona last November. The name check was impressive: Vijay Kumar, Sugata Mitra, Brian Lamb, Paul Kirschner, Neil Selwyn, Mark Bullen, Debby Knotts, Paul West, Albert Sangra, Ismael Pena, David Wiley.... In fact, many of the people whose work I had been reading seemed to be present at the Open Ed Tech Summit. Some interesting, and perhaps far-reaching ideas were generated and articulated at the event during our discussion session, and these are now presented for you to read. We don't know what will be the final outcome from this report, but we will all be meeting again in Barcelona in October this year, to continue our discussions around how we think education will shape up in the coming years. As ever, your comments on this report are most welcome.

In the pictures: Paul Kirschner, Paul West, Debby Knotts, Brian Lamb and Steve Wheeler

Subverting the system

The deepening crisis in Iran surrounding the violence and protests over recent election results has raised the profile of a number of social media tools, including blogs and Twitter. Foreign press photography and reporting inside the country has been banned, but still the images emerge, courtesy of brave souls with mobile phones and other devices capturing and then webcasting their footage for the world to see. Still the stories come out of the country, courtesy of those keeping personal accounts and making them available on the web through blogging and twittering. It seems that no matter how repressive or reactionary a government is, there is no silencing the truth.

The BBC News site is currently carrying a list of links to Iranian blogs, where people can go to read the latest about what is happening out on the streets of the troubled city of Tehran. It is the users of the mobile devices who are subverting government edicts to ensure that the truth is known. People power it seems, is now particularly dependent on technology. Twitter's planned maintenance downtime in Iran has been postponed because they realised how much Iranians were relying on the microblogging tool to tell the world what is happening. The Iranian government may be trying to block news by issuing press embargoes, shutting down internet connections and denial of services, but like previous authorities, they will never repress the human spirit, and the truth will always emerge. The Iranian situation shows that social media provide the world with an immediacy of news coverage that is unprecedented.

Yesterday, during our expert panel discussion at the JISC South West Regional Support Centre Summer Conference, I made the remark that in schools where social networking services are blocked, children subvert the system by using mobile phones to access the forbidden sites. Even though mobile phones are banned in schools, studies reveal that children still use their phone during teaching hours and one study shows that when they are permitted to use their phones, childen generally behave responsibly. Mobile phones and social media both have a key role to play in education, just as they do in bringing news. So let the kids use them, and let's build some serious learning around them. If we don't, they will use them anyway. There is no stopping people. And neither should there be. Whether it is a life and death situation like repression in Iran, or a freedom of choice situation like schools blocking social network sites, the human spirit will find a way.

See also: Internet brings events in Iran to life

Clay Shirky on how Twitter can make history

Howard Rheingold: Mobile media and collective political action

Associated Press: Twitter stayed online for Iran chaos

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Self organised - Me?

Here I am in the idyllic surroundings of the Rookery Manor Hotel deep in the Somerset countryside. The sun is streaming in through the windows and everyone is happy. It really is cider country round here, and to prove it I sank a pint of the golden stuff last night in the company of @jamesclay and @dsugden. Today is the start of the 2 day JISC South West Regional Support Centre Summer Conference, and we will soon be listening to a keynote from Professor Derek Law entitled: Building on Excellence. It's also my birthday today, and tonight I will celebrate in style when we have our conference Bar-B-Q in the grounds of this excellent hotel.

Later today (after lunch) I will be speaking on the subject of 'Self Organisation and the Management of Virtual Student Learning'. It's a bit of an oxymoron because I don't think you can, or should manage something that is self organised, unless you are the person who is self organising. It was a title given to me to work with, so there you have it, and I have posted the PowerPoint slideshow for anyone interested in reading more. I will explore PLEs and VLEs and will look at mashups of tools and spaces too. In the afternoon I'm also member of an expert panel with James Clay, Derek Law and John McKenzie.

Right. That's it for now. I'm off to hear the keynote.

Mountains, microblogging and mashups

One of the papers I will be presenting in September is entitled: "Learning Space Mash-up: Toward a Collaborative Personal Learning Environment". It will be presented in the special track on Mashups and Education at this year's Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference, which as usual, is held in the beautiful Alpine town of Villach, in Austria. Nestled in the mountains in the silubrious Holiday Inn Congress Centre, the conference is a stimulating and enjoyable event which attracts around 600 delegates attending each year. Last year, our post conference social event was an unforgettable day trip to Venice.

There are many ideas I will be trying to convey in my paper. Firstly, I will be arguing that Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) will be the way forward for future distributed/blended learning. Secondly, I will want to reinforce the idea that PLEs, which are developed by individuals rather than through institutes, can be optimised through mashups - combinations and aggregations of tools and services that suit the individuals approach to learning. Thirdly, I will revisit the idea that mashup PLEs will rival and perhaps ultimately supplant the institutional Learning Management System (LMS) or VLE. I will outline and expand upon my reasons for this belief based on some of my recent blog posts. These include Monkey Business, Changing the Architecture (about the future of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services) and The Emperor's New Clothes? I also want to emphasise the power of collaborative working and interpersonal communication within PLEs - something that has been largely ignored in the quest for personalised learning spaces.

I will also be co-presenting a 90 minute workshop on Microblogging at the conference with my good friend and colleague Dr Tara Alexander and I'm also chairing the posters and demonstrations streams, so it will be a busy event for me. If you're there in Villach for ICL 2009, say hello!

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Through the keyhole

The Apostle Paul once wrote that he could see things 'through a glass, darkly'. He was trying, I feel, to capture what it felt like to see things, but without complete clarity. And I know what he meant, because this week, when I should have been over in Gdansk to speak at the European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN) Conference, I am sat at home recuperating after keyhole surgery. As I have previously written, EDEN is one of my favourite annual events, and I have attended at least 7 over the last 10 years or so. It is a delightful meeting place for e-learning professionals and academics, and although the quality of the presentations can be something of a curate's egg at times, a certain honesty and resilience pervade the proceedings. The settings are always grand, and the company is erudite and entertaining. It is quite a melting pot of ideas, and a number of notable trans-national collaborations have been spawned there over the years.

But I have to follow the event remotely, from my sitting room, using participatory media this year. I am following the conference blog which I am happy to see is this year carrying some interesting video clips that people have thoughtfully posted up. These give a sense of participation - almost a social presence, without actually being there. But it is all a little like looking through the keyhole (if I can use that term in two different ways in the same post). You aren't there, and what you can see and apprehend is limited due to the distance and lack of presence. The media can ameloriate some of the barriers, but it also imposes constraints.

Twitter may be the best participatory media as a conference backchannel, and I have previously eulogised over its affordances in this area. I feel that it has more immediacy than blogging even with video clips embedded. This is because it provides a constant stream of snapshots (some of which really are snapshots thanks to Twitpic et al) and you can respond in kind, and enjoy almost synchronous dialogue even though you are not physically present. Also, the limit of 140 characters encourages accuracy .... so brevity forces clarity. We worked this well at the recent Plymouth e-Learning Conference, trending in at number 3 at one point due to the high volume of tweets. Many people who couldn't attend reported that it was the next best thing to being there. Twitter provided quite a large keyhole to look through, in fact.

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This generation learning

"Kids are so lucky!" read the tweet. This was in response to a video link I reposted on Twitter today. The title was 'Next Generation Learning' and in the short video, an 11 year-old boy called Harry takes us on a tour of his school. In year 6, he and his classmates use interactive white boards, Wii technology, voting systems and a whole range of ICTs to support and enhance their learning. There are also links so that he and his parents can participate in the life of their school wherever they are, using Internet links and handheld technology. Here's the video:



It's not so far from the truth, and some schools in the UK are already tapping into these tools. I know. I've seen them using them. How long before all schools in the UK and elsewhere in the industrialised world adopt these tools wholesale? What is stopping them? Political issues? Teachers or headteachers reluctant to use them because they are problematic? Economic constraints? Simple fear of the unknown? All of these are reasons some schools stumble in the march forward to new ideas. But I think the most trenchant barrier to grand adoption of emerging technologies is time. Teachers quite simply don't have enough time to do anything other than survive during the working academic year. And then the holidays are spent recovering from the relentless onslaught of planning, teaching and assessment cycles. When the governments of this world stop testing and measuring everything to destruction and start seeing learning as a means to an end rather than as an outcome, then we may see some changes. Then it won't be next generation learning - it will be 'this generation learning'.

OK. End of rant. (Steps down off his soapbox).

Hasta la (MS) Vista Baby

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to ditch textbooks in favour of Internet resources and other digital materials in Californian schools is a bold one, but it's hardly original. I'm a fan of Arnie as both an actor and politician, but I suspect on this occasion he is more interested in saving money than he is in raising the quality of learning on the US West Coast. True, digital material is easier to update and children do tend to have a natural affinity with gadgets and gizmos, notwithstanding all the rhetoric over Prensky's digital natives theory.

However, the cynical amongst us will point to California's state deficit of more than 24 billion dollars as the real inspiration behind Arnie's decision. But his decision may, and probably will, pay dividends of another kind in the future, providing he can drag the teachers along with him on his scheme. It will need to be more than just 'Hasta la (Microsoft) Vista, baby' for Arnie and his team, though. The use of digital media, and particularly social media such as Facebook and Twitter, must surely be the way forward to transform education in all sectors. But it should not be at the detriment of other forms of established, successful learning through more traditional methods. Books still have a place in pedagogy and probably always will have.

My research for the statewide project to wire the schools of South Dakota 7 years ago showed that digital technologies sit comfortably side by side with traditional media. We also found that learning is not transformed simply by the deployment of technology, but by its creative use to enhance learning opportunities and create new experiences. And only then, if the teachers will buy into it.

So Mr Terminator, whatever your motives, do forge ahead with your reforms, but please don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Relevant links:

Anthea Lipsett: Education by ebook branded a cheapskate scheme
Terry Freedman: Some pros and cons of online textbooks

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Twittering on regardless

The BBC Online News headline runs 'Twitter hype punctured by Study', but I'm not convinced that there has been any more hype for Twitter than there was for any other social web service. In fact I think that both Facebook and YouTube have grabbed more column inches that Twitter over the last year or two. The only hype I can recall is the fact that several high profile celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher have recently jumped on the bandwagon for some shameless self promotion. You can tell them a mile off - they have a million 'followers' and they follow exactly ... no-one.

So along comes a study from Harvard University which suggests that just 10% of users generate 90% of the content on Twitter. So what? With 10 million users (and growing), that would still be 1 million regular twitterers. And the trend is upwards. One of the crass claims of the Harvard study is that "most people only ever "tweet" once during their lifetime." Well 'most' is unquantifiable, and are these people all dead, now they have completed the questionnaire? That would be the only way to make sure they only tweeted once in their lifetimes, wouldn't it?

The part that really gets my goat though, is the flippant statement that "This implies that Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network." Well, that may be true of the celebrity bandwaggoners (a very small minority), but it certainly is far from the truth in my experience. Twitter is probably the richest social networking tool in terms of information sharing, conversation making, contact maintenance, social presence and immediacy. And there are many other affordances in the microblogging tool.

No, I'm not convinced that this study (which is a survey of 300,000 users) is actually saying anything useful or positive. Some people don't get Twitter and others only get it partially and use it in a limited manner. Potentially, Twitter is one of the most powerful social networking tools ever to have emerged from the so-called Web 2.0 - and I think it will stand the test of time. There is a large and growing body of tools that support Twitter, and already a vast amount of evidence to show that Twitter can be used inventively as a teaching and learning tool. It seems to me that from their tone, the Harvard researchers can be numbered amongst those people who simply 'don't get' Twitter.

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Folksonomies, memes and misunderstanding

It all started with a message on Twitter from @stephendale who stated: "A taxonomist: One who organizes information in ways that makes sense to content providers, rather than content users." I thought this was a real gem, because it represented all that is 'corporate control' and 'top down' on the Web. I responded (as you do) with my own version: "A folksonomist: one who organises information in ways that make sense to his/her own community of practice or interest." It was retweeted several times by others and they seemed to like my definition. I was thinking about individuals tagging and organising their own content using tools such as Delicious, and then making them available to others. When we tag an object says Mike Wesch, we 'teach the machine'. In other words, the more we tag objects, the more they become visible to others who may be interested in them, and as Andy Clark has suggested, the more they become visible, the easier becomes the pathway to finding them.

@patparslow didn't like my definition though. Taking issue with it in his blogpost he says: "A folksonomy loses its qualities as a folksonomy once you have someone 'organising' it, and will quickly become a taxonomy." I hear what he is saying, but this wasn't what I had in mind and what he describes sounds suspiciously like a meme to me. Memes are units of information or ideas that are transmitted from mind to mind through speech, written word or, more than likely in the digital age, through a social network. They tend to emerge without being planned and spread virally. Look at the trending topics column on Twitter and you will see what I mean. Folksonomy is not chaotic though, and does require some organisation by individuals - there is always some intelligence behind it, or as James Surowiecki has aptly suggested - the 'wisdom of the crowd'. There always has to be some organisation at an individual level, or there would be no folksonomy at the community level - all would remain chaotic.

Then @3quarks said my definition of folksonomist sounded a little like a 'spin doctor'. Well, it might I suppose, but for the fact that the community of interest I intended was one in which people were not trying to influence each other, but simply going individually about their personal learning through organisation of content. The Holistic Web blogpost Taxonomy vs Folksonomy says it all really - a taxonomy is predictable, whereas a folksonomy is flexible. Taxonomies are imposed, but folksonomies are democratic.

Here's my opinion on this for what it's worth: In a taxonomy, the community defines the content. In a folksonomy the content defines the community. So, I don't want to be misunderstood, but neither do I want to misunderstand. Are we all singing from the same hymnsheet, (or are we independently harmonising)?

Thanks to Stephen Dale, Pat Parslow and Mel Phillips for kicking this one off. :-)=