Digital Culture and Education

I was recently invited to join the editorial board of a new and exciting open access journal called Digital Culture and Education. In the words of the journal editors Christopher Walsh and Thomas Apperly: "This new journal is concerned with the changing demands of education and the especially central role of digital culture in preparing students for labor in the context of the ‘knowledge economy’. DCE is a new international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal focusing on research in areas of digital culture which are relevant for education." The editorial board of DCE includes some of my old friends such as Chris Abbott and Victoria Carrington, as well as some of those whose writing I have found extremely engaging, including James Paul Gee, Julian Sefton-Green, Michelle Knobel and Gunther Kress. I'm truly honoured to be listed alongside such luminaries of the digital age.

In their first editorial, Apperly and Walsh provide readers with a clear idea of what they can expect from the journal: "Digital culture has transformed many fundamental parts of our working, public and personal lives in terms of how we communicate and consume, create knowledge and learn and even how we understand politics. The scale and speed at which digital culture has become imbricated in everyday life is unprecedented. Its impact on politics, aesthetics, identity, art, culture, society, and particularly education is thoroughly deictic. In response, we founded DCE to provide a forum for dialogue around the educational, economic, political, cultural, social, historic, legal or otherwise relevant aspects of living in a society increasingly dominated by digital communication and media. DCE is interested in work and scholarship theorizing identity, globalization, development, sustainability, wellbeing, subjectivities, networks, new media, gaming, multimodality, literacies, entrepreneurship and related issues. The journal provides an interactive scholarly context for the uptake of new technologies alongside the emergence of digital culture and its impact on teaching, learning and research across institutional and non-institutional contexts. We are committed to publishing print and digital work that takes a critical approach to the issues raised by the increasing importance of new technologies in all facets of society; in particular, research that examines the uneven uptake of technology, and perspectives on new media that emphasize its materiality, production, or environmental impact."

Well there you have it. An exciting new peer reviewed journal which has engaging and leading edge content for teachers and researchers of the digital age .... and all of it is open access. I hope you enjoy reading it, and perhaps you will also consider contributing in the future.

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See you in Brisbane

Announcing an event that some will find irresistable...

We're holding the IFIP World Computer Congress at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 20th to 23rd September, 2010. Each time it is held, the WCC event attracts expert presenters and thousands of delegates from around the globe. The congress combines content from commercial, industry, associations, and research sectors and so offers an extraordinary opportunity for showcasing and discovering innovative and leading ideas and approaches. The research, partner conference and industry content will be presented in eight unifying streams, which will host 18 world class IFIP Conferences and will partner with local and regional conferences in each stream. As well as the conferences and content, delegates at the World Computer Congress 2010 will be able to attend the Expo, enjoy technical tours of local research and commercial technology innovators and gain industry leading certifications and network with international peers and experts.

Papers are invited on your answers to questions including:

• What do you consider to be the key competencies of the knowledge society?
• How do you think key competencies could be attained through formal, non-formal or informal learning?
• How do you envisage assessment of such competencies to raise learners’ efficacy and the acknowledgement of society?

The conference provides educationalists with an international forum where ideas, practical educational experiences, research and project-oriented work can be presented and discussed in a professional way in relation to the conference themes.

I hope to see you in Brisbane next September!

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Peak practice

I have made it up over the Alps by train into the sleepy Austrian town of Villach, where we hold the annual Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference (ICL). The train had the old style compartments, and I managed to blag an entire compartment to myself. We are in the Karenthia part of southern Austria, on the Italian/Slovenian border, and it's all very pretty, with the grandeur of the mountain peaks all around us, and the ponderous river Drau meandering slowly by.

Every year the ICL conference seems to be veering more toward e-learning and away from computer science, which I think is a good thing. We need to concentrate more on the learning and less on the technology - more on the pedagogy and less on 'this is the technology and this is what it does'. There are some excellent special tracks at the conference this year. At this conference, thanks to the good offices of Martin Ebner and Sandra Schaeffert, we have a complete stream of papers on mashups in e-learning, and I'm looking forward to hearing some of them. There is also a section dedicated to e-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments this year, which is a welcome addition to the conference programme. Serge Ravet is heading up that special track. I will try to get to some of the sessions and report back on what is being talked about. The full conference schedule is up on line.

My own session today is a 3 hour marathon on microblogging, and in particular, Twitter and its use in teaching and learning. I have 52 delegates signed up for it, and although it's supposed to be a pre-conference workshop, it's in the mainstream programme - the first time this has happened I think. As usual, I will try to report as much as I can from this event, and keep you posted on all the important issues being discussed.

Ljoving Ljubljana

Yes, it's that city I can never spell or pronounce properly, but it's been great fun here in Ljubljana and I'm ljoving it. I stopped off here and spent the night in a town centre hotel to break my long journey, up for the Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference in Villach, Austria. The bus ride into town from the airport is absolutely stunning, with miles of swaying golden cornfields, high sloping Alpine cottages and the ubiquitous purple mountains in the distance - and with the sun shining and the temperature a balmy 26 degrees, I am in heaven.

My hotel is modern, and I have a 'premium' room - which means the drinks are complimentary, and I have my own balcony overlooking the river, with an excellent view of Ljubljana castle. I enjoy a relaxing shower and change - it's so nice to get out of my travel clothes after 15 hours of bus, taxi, bus, plane, queues for immigration and passport control, being shoved, pushed and half-throttled by the silver brigade as I try to retrieve my bag from the carousel. (What is the name for worrying about whether your luggage has arrived with you? 'Baggonising'), and then finally another bus before reaching my destination. I don't bother trying to purchase a train ticket for tomorrow. That can be done in the morning. In my hotel room I have flawless, fast internet access and I catch up with about 70 e-mails and delete more than half because they're spam. Deep joy.

Time to venture out. A slow, gentle stroll down to the river and a few stops to sample the local fayre are a great start to the evening. The Union beer is very nice, and the food is great too. I choose steak and potato done Slovenian style, complete with red peppers and other stuff I can't even begin to identify. But it looks great and tastes great too. Ljubljana appears to be quite a 'young' city - most of those who emerged as the night fell were twenty-somethings, and many of them were speeding around on bicycles, and descending in hordes to drink the city dry. Cycling drunks? Just keep your wits about you as you cross the street...

There is plenty of live music, and as someone with rock in the blood, I am drawn inexhorably, wherever I find myself, to the places where the music makes yer ears bleed. I find a live rock stage right in the middle of the town to finish of the evening in style.

I don't know the name of the band, who were obviously Slovenian, but this three-piece were clearly fans of Jimi Hendrix, and stylishly performed - nay replicated, many of his old tracks, including Purple Haze, Foxy Lady, Hey Joe and All Along the Watchtower. The small crowd were very appreciative, even though most of them culd have been no more than 25 years old. Great stuff and a nice way to pass an hour in a foreign city, and so, with my ears ringing, I slope off to find my hotel and prepare for the Alpine train ride in the morning...

Do you follow?

As you may be aware, I have been playing around with TweepML recently, creating groups of Twitter users that people can follow with one click. It's a nice little tool, with one or two bugs, but generally easy to use and people, it seems find it very useful. Those whom I have included in the lists (below) are flattered that I have included them (just as I feel honoured if someone has included me in a recommended list), and judging by the number of follows generated in just 3 days (almost 4000) follower numbers are rising. I chose the people listed in my groups because I consider each of them is contributing something significant to their own community of interest, they are all very knowledgeable and all are willing to discuss and share their ideas with the wider community.

Some have raised objections to these lists. One argument is that communities of practice should be allowed to grow organically, as each individual becomes more engaged. My response is that many of the participants of the Twitter workshops I am doing at present are newbies to Twitter and one of the questions frequently asked is: 'How do I know who to follow?' Well here is a kick start to the process. Another objection is that such lists smack of elitism. Who has the right to decide who should be included and who is excluded from a list? My response is: just see these lists for what they are. They are personal recommendations from the people who created them. If you don't respect or trust the list creator, don't follow the recommended people. Or make your own list. If on the other hand, you have respect for the list creator, then it is well worth a punt to click on the follow button and then prepare for some interesting conversations. If it all goes pear-shaped, you can always unfollow.

My TweepML Lists:

Learning Technology Professionals (academics and learning technologists)

Teachers using Technology (these are primary and seconday educators)

Learning theorists and thought leaders (people who have significant impact in e-learning)

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Twitter vs blogging

There's going to be another fight. It's not the VLE vs the PLE. This time it's whether Twitter is killing blogging. Strewth, it's like waiting for a bus. You stand around for ages and then suddenly two big debates come along at once. I was only on the periphery of the Twitter vs blogging debate when I chaired a F-ALT (Fringe ALT-C) session late at night over at the Contact Theatre in Manchester last week. The antagonists were Josie Fraser, who argued for the merits of Twitter, and Graham Attwell, who claimed that Twitter was quite simply not as deep and meaningful as blogging. The handbags were out. There were no fisticuffs, but lots of finger pointing and gesticulating was witnessed as like two sumo wrestlers, they circled each other in the sawdust (stop mixing your metaphors - Ed). The final vote was a resounding victory for .... the abstainers. Now, sitting on the fence is not a normal occupation for regular F-ALTers - they are normally quite opinionated. But this debate obviously divided them. And, lo and behold, a similar debate was also emerging online when I arrived home. Grainne Conole, Matt Lingard and others were weighing in on Cloudworks to debate whether edubloggers were being sidetracked into using Twitter and beginning to neglect their blogging. One of the questions is: Now you are using Twitter, is your blogging activity tailing off? Do check out the Cloudworks site - it's a fascinating discussion.

My answer of course, is no, in my experience, the two can live side by side. My blog output if anything is increasing, and Twitter is a useful tool to make the community aware of those new posts, and it encourages me to write more when I see Twitter driving larger numbers of readers to my blog. So try RSS, I hear someone say. Well, RSS is a great tool but difficult to set up sometimes, and not everyone understands it. However, more and more people are turning to Twitter as a means of short messaging, because it's relatively simple to use. And the community is growing, with new tools such as TweepML, useful lists of people to follow can be created and communities quickly grow around themes of interest.

I believe that there is a synergy between blogging and Twitter. They are in my own personal web at least, becoming interdependent. My Twitter stream is incorporated into this blog (in the right hand column) and Twitter can be used to link to this blog. Take one away, and the other would be somewhat diminished. The debate will continue, and we shall see whether Twitter kills blogging, or whether the two can live comfortably together. So is Twitter killing blogging? Is Twitter killing RSS? Will there be a murder trial?

Related posts:

Is Twitter killing the blog? No. (Terry Wassall)

Is Twitter killing blog comments? (Danny Brown)

Is Twitter killing blogs and blogging? (Mark Evans)

Is Twitter killing blogging? (Chris Eden)

Is Twitter killing RSS? (Jeff Nolan)

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Lost in translation

There has been a bit of discussion on Twitter, and at our recent ALT-C VLE symposium, on the importance of naming things. Web 2.0 is a case in point. A lot of people don't like the name 'Web 2.0', because of its connotations, and some have tried to rename it. Doing so of course, they fall into exactly the same trap, because the alternative names - such as 'social web' and 'read/write web' - only tend to create certain expectations around those tools which may be unrealistic, and can also limit our imagination too. This belief is based upon Linguistic Relativity theory (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) which suggests that language and thought are intertwined, and that spoken or written classification of objects affects the way we behave toward them. But is it really so bad to give a 'name' to some new thing? And just how does a name come about? Is it by mass consensus, or is there some uber-guru up there such as Tim O'Reilly, giving names to new things and expecting all of us to adopt those new names?

At the VLE is Dead symposium, there was an issue over the term PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Some people objected to it being named as such, because they argue, the PLE is not a 'thing', but a concept or more accurately a counterpoint in the discourse of the VLE. James Clay summed up the problem quite well by saying that if we find a new species of animal, do we let the animal name itself, or do we try to describe it by giving it a name? The answer is obvious - we name it and the name enters our shared consciousness, our spoken and written culture, providing us with a visual and conceptual representation of that animal.

Let's take this idea a little farther. What if nothing was ever named? How would we know what thingamabob or wotsit others were talking about? Would we need to go completely overboard with an elaborate description so that everyone knew what was being talked about? Pidgin is a simplified language that arises when people need to communicate without sharing a common language. There are examples of over-description in Pidgin because no shared name exists for the object being discussed. Take 'corridor' - the Papua New Guinean Pidgin for this previously alien idea is: 'ples wokabaut insait long haus' (walking about inside a long house), or antiseptic: 'marasin bilong kilim jem' (medicine that is made for killing germs). There are numerous examples of this in the online Pidgin English dictionary. Simplification of language often leads to complexity of expression. And what about so-and-so over there ... you know .... 'thingy'. Does he have an opinion on this? He certainly doesn't appear to have a name...

No, if we name something, we tame it. We provide it with definition and enable it to become a shared concept. Whether it is a bad name or a good name is another debate really. If we try to rename something after it has already passed into common parlance, we run into a lot of trouble. Rebranding in companies is one thing. And the artist formerly known as Prince may have something to add. Trying to take something like Web 2.0, or the PLE and rename will be a little more difficult, I predict. But what other names could they possibly have that would be acceptable to all, and not just those who object to the first names that were given? I think we should be told...

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Audio grilled ... a radio star

I got to be a radio star for a day last week when I flew to London to record some podcasts and a series of radio interviews to coincide with 'Back to School' week. Hewlett Packard roped me in, after they did some research into how children use information technology in the home, and the roles parents think technology will play in the future of education. Home computers are often dominated by parents to extend their work hours, and the kids sometimes don't get a look in, but UK parents are beginning to view computers and printers as essential tools for home study according to the survey. So it's increasingly important that the parents are educated in the use of ICT too.

So HP invited me in to be grilled on my opinions about the research and to give listening parents some advice on how to encourage their children to study smarter. One of my sound bites was: 'Kids will always have imagination - it's how we challenge that imagination that will help them to develop creatively.' ICT can clearly play an important part in tapping into children's imaginations and setting them creative targets, at school or at home.

And there I sat to do this series of interviews to local FM radio stations including Heart FM (syndicated out), Juice FM (Brighton), Star FM (Cheltenham) and Imagine FM (Manchester and Stockport). I really didn't know what questions the stations would ask. As each called in, I took my best shot at their questions and just 'winged it'. Some they threw at me were very open questions, such as: 'How does ICT help prepare children for the future?' Well, what can you say to that? My response was .... well, how long have you got? I replied that teachers are in an almost impossible position, because they have to prepare children for a world of work which doesn't exist yet, and no-one can accurately predict what that world of work will look like when they eventually leave school. All teachers (and parents) can do is help children to learn how to learn, I said, and to do so in a manner which enables them to be adaptable to change. Knowledge of how digital technologies such as the internet and mobile phones can be used to 'learn how to learn' will be a vital component of children's learning, I advised. Encouraging children to share the content they find on the Web through their favourite social networking sites, working outside on wireless connections and capitalising on the audio and visual capabilities of digital technologies were all things parents could focus on to support their kid's homework, I told the radio interviewers. The podcast links are below:

Interview for the HP website

Children learning with technology

Related posts:

10 Must have Firefox extensions for kids

No-one is anonymous

I forget sometimes just how connected we all are. At today's ALT-C plenary Martin Bean took a question from the floor after ending his superb keynote speech. The delegate said his name and then asked his question. While Martin Bean answered, I noticed one or two people in the auditorium checking out the questioner's website to see who he was and what his research profile was. I wonder how many more times that's been done during this conference? People are surrepticiously checking each other out all the time here it seems, using their iPhones, laptops, searching on Google, and so on. It will be QR tags and facial recognition software next. No-one is anonymous anymore.

I thought that Martin Bean nailed it on the question of how we can engage our learners. He told the story of a 14 year old boy who was heard to remark that going to school was like getting on a plane. 'You sit in rows, place your trust in someone you don't know, and you have to turn off all electronic devices,' he said. It raised one of the biggest laughs of Martin's talk, but there was also a very serious underlying message. Why should we cut young people off from their connections just when they need them the most? In many cases, formal education simply does not offer enough encouragement for flexible learning through technology.

Bean talked about massification, privatisation and other moves to bring education to the masses. One of the questions from the floor was whether massification ran counter to personalisation of learning, but Bean believes that the two are not contradictory. Massification brings learning to populations who were previously disenfrachised, whilst the personal element can still be achieved through innovative use of Web 2.0 technologies. He clearly sees e-learning as a major component in the future success of higher education, and advocates using any tools that have a cultural relevance for youth. He's not afraid to criticise government attempts to jump onto the bandwagon either, and thinks that there are smarter people outside government than are inside it.

I think Martin Bean will be a good Vice-Chancellor of the Open University when he assumes his post in a few weeks. He is following in some illustrious footsteps, but I don't think he will disappoint. He is not so much Mr Bean, more like Martin the Magnificent.

Fun in Madchester

What can I say about Madchester? We are all having fun and we are all staying up late and tiring ourselves out as we squeeze the juice out of the conference. I'm at the 16th annual conference of the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, and we have around 800 delegates here on the excellent inner city campus. It's just as well organised as previous events I have been to in Leeds, Nottingham, Edinburgh etc, and this year we are on the main University of Manchester campus (the last time we held ALT-C in Manchester we were located on the old UMIST site). It rained down buckets yesterday afternoon/evening, but the weather didn't dampen the spirits of this passionate and friendly crowd of individuals. Everyone I met, old friends and new (and I had too many conversations yesterday to shake a stick at) was positive and energetic and willing to learn new things about their chosen field of expertise - e-learning.

Mike Wesch's opening keynote set the scene for the event, played out to a packed hall. We started 10 minutes late due to huge queues outside in the registration hall. Wesch gave a talk on how technology changes relationships and dwelt very much on previous talks I have seen him give on the 'whatever' disengaged youth culture, and concluded by remarking that we need to change the don't care attitude of 'whatever' into the 'we will do whatever is necessary' to engage young people in meaningful formal learning.

The delegate list at ALT-C is eclectic as ever. There are people here from just about every university in the UK and some from a lot farther afield. Meeting a number of people face to face for the first time, whom I already 'knew' online, was an interesting experience. Stu Johnson, Alan Cann, Martin Weller, Theo Keuchel, Oleg Liber, Brian Kelly, Jo Badge, Alex Mosely ... I have been in touch with all of them prior to this conference, but now I can put faces to names.

There were some interesting and captivating debates on Day 1, including of course, the epic VLE is Dead debate (see the video above) which was attended by approximately 150 people, all squeezed into a room fit for 80 so that many had to sit on the floor or stand at the back. I also chaired a late evening Edublogger face-off between Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser about whether or not Twitter is killing off blogging. Nobody won the vote as most people abstained, but it was very enjoyable none the less.

Day 2 beckons, and the skies have cleared over Madchester, but the arguments and debates will continue as usual. Such as who has the largest delegation at ALT-C... Leicester or Plymouth....?

Related posts:

Reports of the demise of the VLE are exaggerated (Niall Sclater)

The VLE is Dead: The Movie (James Clay)

The VLE is Dead... or is it? (Graham Attwell)

Hot debate on VLEs at ALT-C (Ask Auntie Web)

Yarn and Glue (Guy Pursey)

Kinda Learning Stuff (Sarah Horrigan)

The VLE is dead (Live blogging from Martin Weller)

VLE is (not) dead (Nick Sharratt)

The VLE is dead debate (Mira Vogel)

Is the VLE dead? This bus doesn't think so (Shelly Gibb)

The VLE/PLE debate and medical education (Natalie Lafferty)

The VLE is dead - or is it? (Sarah Bartlett, TALIS)

The VLE is dead (Joe Wilson)

If the VLE is dead... (Sally Ballard)

VLE is not dead yet (Bath Spa)

I come to bury, not to praise...

I'm here at ALT-C - The 16th annual Association for Learning Technology Conference - at the University of Manchester. It's not a bad place actually, and the campus is fabulous. Student accommodation - boo hiss. My room leaves a little to be desired as always - I couldn't find a connection or a socket last night, so this is the first time I have had the opportunity to get online. The coffee and tea sachets will go unused in my room too, because there is a distinct lack of kettle. I was told to look in the wardrobe as this was where kettles are usually secreted, but all I found was a lion and an old witch. Never mind.

ALT-C is very much like the gathering of the clans, with people popping up all over the place that I haven't seen for a year or two. It's great to catch up with all the news, talk over projects, ideas and debates around e-learning with people who are passionate about the topic - you learn a lot like this.

Names are too numerous to mention right now, but I'm going to present a symposium entitled 'The VLE is Dead' later on, along with Graham Attwell, James Clay and Nick Sharratt. Josie Fraser will be refereeing (sorry, chairing) and we expect a large audience, going by the Crowdvine sign up numbers. I will give a eulogy on the VLE - I come to bury it, not to praise it. The session starts at 1.40 British Summer Time (ooh, that's a joke). Please join us, even if you are not in Manchester, live on u-stream. We look forward to your comments...

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A hive mind?

I was quite taken by Gaurav Mishra's 4Cs Social Media Framework when I saw it a few days ago. It brings to mind the diversity of possibilities that are available for learners using Web 2.0 tools such as wikis and blogs and also places emphasis on the conversational nature of social media. Most importantly, there is reference to the 'wisdom of the crowds' - Mishra refers to it as collective intelligence. Several years ago I talked to some of my colleagues about the idea of a 'hive mind', drawn loosely from my interest in science fiction and in particular Star Trek (TNG)'s Borg collective (Note: The Borg characters are cold, unemotional, and ruthlessly efficient parodies of humanity - they should not to be confused with a certain Swedish tennis player of the 70s with the same name).

Superficially, there are similar lines to draw between the Borg and those who operate within a collective thinking. But there is a distinct difference if we dig deeper. In TNG the Borg were 'assimilated' from diverse races and cultures into a homogenous collective. They thought as one, and all traces of previous lives were erased or subsumed into the greater good of the hive. With learners using shared online spaces, thoughts remain individualised, and individual contributions to the space come from individuals. The outcome appears to be one generated by a hive mind, but in reality, it is a compendium of knowledge from many individuals that is buit up over a period of time, refined, edited and updated as the need arises. It is not so much a case of 'being assimilated' as accommodating the information one generates into a useful body of knowledge (yes, thank you Piaget!). The great thing about Web 2.0 tools is that we all remain unique individuals, we all maintain our individual thoughts, and although we may be swayed by arguments and information we find on the web, we still have the ability to decide for ourselves and argue our cases. In fact, by its nature, Web 2.0 positively encourages discursive engagement.

Web 2.0 is all about the conversation. And resistance is futile.

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The 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference

The 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference (8-9 April, 2010) will examine the theme of e-learning in a time of change, and will challenge notions of traditional boundaries, learning spaces and roles. We will focus on new practices, new technologies, new environments and new learning. There will be primary, secondary and tertiary education threads. We invite papers on the digital divide, e-learning methods and case studies, mobile and pervasive technologies, digital games, multi-user virtual environments, informal learning, new classroom technologies (PDAs interactive whiteboards, etc), personal learning environments, visual media (videoconference, digital photography), e-portfolios and social software (wikis, blogs, podcasting, etc). The event will once again be held in the spectacular Roland Levinsky Building, on the University of Plymouth main campus.

At the 2009 event over 200 delegates from 17 countries participated over the two days, which saw 2 keynotes, and more than 80 demonstrations, papers, and workshops. Our keynote speakers for the 2010 event are Josie Fraser and Donald Clark.

Josie Fraser is well known in the field of social media and learning, and writes regularly about her research on her blog SocialTech. Josie spreads her time and energy across a wide variety of social media/networking spaces, where she can be found experimenting with all manner of emerging technologies. At the ALT-C 2008 Conference, she received the prestigious Learning Technologist of the Year award and continues to be at the forefront of learning technology development. At this year’s conference Josie will talk about how social media can be used to liberate learners and how we might attain learning without limits in a truly anytime, anyplace context.

Donald Clark was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, which established itself as the leading company in the UK e-learning market, floated on the Stock Market in 1996 and sold in 2005. Describing himself as 'free from the tyranny of employment', he is now a board member of Ufi (LearnDirect), LINE Communications, Caspian Learning, Brighton Festival, and a school governor. He has produced over 40 papers, dozens of book reviews and many articles on e-learning. Donald has also won many awards for the design and implementation of e-learning, notably the 'Outstanding Achievement in e-learning Award'. He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and has won Best Speaker awards at several conferences. Donald is also a regular (and controversial) blogger on e-learning!

On behalf of the local organising committee, I invite you to join us in April 2010 for what promises to be another excellent, enjoyable and thought provoking event.

Darwikinism (and monkeying around)

Finally, it seems that Wikipedia has got a handle on things. Several announcements over the last few weeks have dragged the popular online user generated encyclopaedia into a semblance of trustworthiness. With over 60 million users each month, perhaps it is about time, if only to convince my fellow academics and colleagues that Wikipedia does after all have a place in the process of educating our students. I know, I know, there have been some notorious debates about how Wikipedia is just as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica - and there have been many detractors too, such as Andrew Keen who famously claimed that Web 2.0 was similar to content generated by monkeys with typewriters. There are similar debates too about whether or not students should be allowed to reference Wikipedia sources in their assessed work.

Recently, Wikipedia has drafted in a legion of volunteer editors to ensure that the contents of its pages are as trustworthy as possible. And here's the next news in the saga of its ongoing development: From this autumn, Wikipedia will introduce a new colour coding system where initially entered content will be flagged with an orange background to indicate that it is yet to be verified for accuracy. As more editors and contributors work on the text or content, so the background colour dissipates until it is pure white, indicating that the content is as accurate as possible. It's going to be the survival of the fittest content - a kind of textual evolutionary process that we will see from now on.

My colleague Maged Boulos and I wrote about destructive and creative evolutionary processes in the natural selection of online content back in 2007. We were by no means the first to do so, but we never the less outlined a number of editing and content generation styles that included deletionism, inclusionism and .... Darwikinism. Darwikinism is the name given to the social processes that shape the content of online collaborative spaces, and I would argue that it also refers to the generation and transmission of memes, in a manner similar to the passing on of genetic information. There is also the potential for memetic mutation of course, so there will inevitably be content that slips in under the net, so to speak.... Time will tell whether Wikipedia develops a better reputation among sceptical academics and teachers, but it is a move up the evolutionary tree, and the monkeys with typewriters may begin to look a little more human...

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