Noughties ... but nice

The first decade of the 21st Century was highly significant for personal learning. Such a vast array of new personal devices and web applications was introduced that have become so deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, many of us would probably feel at a loss if we were suddenly transported back to 1999. If we time jumped from then to 2009, the way we now communicate, learn, search for information, share content and consume entertainment would be unrecognisable. The concept of personal learning environments was also introduced, as a counterpoint to the notion of the VLE. Here are just a few of the personal technological innovations (good or bad) that emerged in the noughties:

Mobile ringtones: OK.... perhaps we could do without ringtones. Those irritating little tunes you hear on the train, in the supermarket queue and even interrupting performances in the theatre have actually grossed over £112 million in sales in the UK alone, and they ain't finished yet. As the next generation of mobile users comes of age, they too will demand that their favourite tunes be made into ringtones. The music industry must be rubbing its hands with glee.

iPods and Podcasts: The Touch, the Nano, the Shuffle, the Classic, you name it, versions of the iPod popped up and grabbed our attention in the noughties. First appearing in 2001, the iPod series is now the most successful digital audio player in history with over 220 million worldwide sales at the time of writing.

The Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) appeared in 2004 and was one of the first handheld games consoles with a built in microphone and wireless connectivity. The dual screen technology was not as smart as we first thought, but never the less, it's a great little device to amuse yourself with for a few hours whilst waiting for a train, on the bus, or in the dentist's chair (eew).

The iPhone: Apple strikes again. For most people who have them they are the best thing since sliced bread. But there are those who absolutely hate this smart, touch surface mobile phone. Battery life sucks, the camera on the first series was naff and they are expensive when you are locked into an O2 contract. But they have revolutionised mobile phones with their pinch gesturing and responsive multi-touch screens, and with several copycat devices available, there really is no going back now.

Social networking sites: Facebook (2006), Myspace (2003), Bebo (2005), LinkedIn (2003) and other sites together have changed the face of social networking for ever. For good or bad, millions of users worldwide flock every day to their favourite social networking sites for their daily fix of pokes, foodfights, online games status updates and live chat. Friends and friends of friends - the race is on to see who can collect the most links to people they will never ever meet. Seriously, social networking has blurred the boundaries between public and private, business and leisure, even good and bad taste. The way you manage your on-line identity is more important than ever. Nothing it seems, is 'yours' anymore - once you have posted personal information or photos to Facebook, they are no longer simply 'your property'. They are there forever, and burying the past may prove to be a problem for many...

YouTube: Freaking out, spoofing, parodies, pirated music videos and plenty of dross - that's YouTube for you. Before Youtube it was very difficult to upload your video clips to the Internet. Youtube made it easy for millions. If you want to know a fact you Google it, but if you want to see a clip, you YouTube it.

Nintendo Wii: This small object of desire appeared in November 2006. If we were cynical, we could surmise that Nintendo worked out if all their games playing customers continued to sit on their backsides, they would get fat and die of heart attacks. So they invented an active sports style handset to get games players up and moving about, thus keeping them alive longer so they could earn more money and spend it on Nintendo games and Wii technology. Clever.

Wikipedia: Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly to become one of the largest reference web sites, attracting approximately 65 million visitors each month. It's the first stop students make when they need to know something, and also the most vilified reference source for many scholars and academics. Where else would most of us go though, for quick information.

Google apps: Streetview, Scholar, Google Earth, Docs, etc - all of these applications appeared in the last decade, and have revolutionised the way we learn, work together, look up information and generally play out our online lives. Augmented reality was introduced as a result of the combination of a number of smart device apps including mashups, global positioning and touch screen technologies. The coming decade will see smart devices, augmented reality and haptic semantic applications coming of age. We will then see how these can be applied to enhance and extend the personal learning environment.

...and of course.... there was Twitter: Forget all the celebrity rubbish and media hype. Twitter is one of the best stripped down social networking tools available to humankind. Don't be deceived by it's simplistic appearance though. It's a powerful tool with plenty of filtering capability and its amplification and connection potential is yet to be fully tapped. Twitter and its third party bolt-on tools will be one to watch in the next few years.

So what are we to make of this truly technological ten years? We have seen radical shifts in our views of identity, relationships, copyright, communication and learning. These are deep changes that will not be recinded, and as we move into an ever more connected society, the changes will increase in their pace and intensity. Personalised learning has never been so easy to establish, and never more contentious. No-one can quite agree on what a personal learning environment is, but that is predictable, because for each of us, it is something different. And what of the future? We don't know what the next decade will hold, but we do know this - it will be increasingly connected. It will also be different - probably more different than we can begin to imagine.

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Top 10 TV ads of the decade

I watch my fair share of television, and often find myself watching the commercials in the breaks. Normally it's the time to go and make a cup of tea, or flick channels, because many adverts are nothing but dross. But on occasions, an advert catches my eye.

Some TV commercials are amazing, and others thought provoking. Many rely on the application of state of the art technology to achieve their impact.

Some adverts cause me to ask - now how did they do that? It was very entertaining then to see a TV programme this week which showcased some of the greatest ads of the decade. Here are the top ten TV commercials (voted by viewers) that have graced our screens over the last 10 years. They are inventive, creative, funny and entertaining. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did.

10: PG Tips: 'It's the Taste' (2008)

9: Sony Bravia: 'Paint' (2006)

8: John West Salmon Advert (2001)

7: T-Mobile Dance (2009)

6: Guinness: 'The Tipping Point' (2007)

5: Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate 'Coming in the Air' (2007)

4: Honda Accord: 'Honda Cogs' (2003)

3: Compare the Market: Alexander the Meerkat (2008)

2: Skoda Fabia: 'Original Cake Car' (2007)

1: Hovis Bread: 'Go on Lad' (2008)

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Networked noughties 2006-2009

This is a continuation from yesterday's post and the last in my series on the technological innovations of the last decade.

March 2006 was the year I first began to take an interest in Web 2.0 and social networks as potentially useful educational tools. With my colleagues Boulos and Maramba I published my first Web 2.0 article: Wikis, blogs and podcasts. 2006 saw the launch of Twitter - now one of the most popular live status update tools worldwide. Twitter is perhaps best known in the media for its many celebrity users, and their ability to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of 'followers', but it is increasingly used as a conference backchannel, and is now finding its footing in education.

Another major player in the world of social networking was birthed the same year. In September 2006, Facebook came late to the party, but within a short time (March 2008) it overhauled Myspace as the world's favourite social networking tool. Facebook now attracts more thrid party apps than you can shake a stick at, including popular games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille.

March 2006 was the month we bade farewell to the standard video tape as major retailers stopped selling VHS on the high street. The same month saw the Blu-Ray format being launched in the UK. Google purchased YouTube in November for an estimated 1.65 billion US Dollars, and just in time for Christmas, Nintendo launched the Wii handset.

2007 was a momentous year for touch screen technologies - in June the Apple iPhone became available and changed the way people used their mobile phones. In August of the same year, it was announced that Google had become the most used search engine on the web.

2008 saw the launch of Spotify - a peer to peer music streaming service, the purchase of Bebo by AOL for 850 million US dollars, and the start of the UK digital switchover (in the Border TV region).

The year just gone has been a relatively quiet one in terms of social networking, but behind the scenes, it is highly likely that the digirati are working away at the next generation of apps, widgets and services. In June 2009, the UK Government published its Digital Britain Report, committing the UK to a universal broadband provision by 2012.

Time will tell how many of these innovations will survive, mutate or crash and burn, but this much is clear: The way we communicate, share and access information, and consume entertainment has changed forever. The decade just passed is a significant decade in terms of technology, but it is also significant in the ways it has altered our perceptions of privacy, property, identity, copyright, commerce, relationships and society. Some shifts have been subtle, others more radical. We don't know what the next decade will bring, but we do know that change will accelerate to meet the demands of a volatile economy, uncertain future and an entirely new generation of technology users that will pass through our education institutions.

I wish you and those close to you a peaceful holiday season and a successful new year.

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Networked noughties 2003-2005

Yesterday I mapped the significant technological events of the years 2000-2002. Today I continue the retrospective with a review of the years 2003-2005.

The launch of one of the first social networking services Friends Reunited in 2000 paved the ways for a welter of new social networking tools which would revolutionise the way people connected, communicated and shared. The first of the 'giants' was launched in August of 2003. Myspace was to become the trend setter - within 3 years it had signed up an astounding 100 million users.

Just a couple of months later in October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg launched a small scale service for his friends and colleagues called Facemash at Harvard University. It was later to be renamed Facebook. However, we wouldn't see Facebook officially launched until September 2006. The history of both Myspace and Facebook are very well documented on their respective Wikipedia entries. In June 2003 we also saw the inception of a little known 3D multi-user virtual environment called Second Life.

2004 started off with the launch in February of the photosharing site Flickr. Flickr was yet another new concept in social networking, where conversations and connections were based upon the sharing of digital images. Currently it is estimated that Flickr hosts in excess of 4 billion images.

Music fans were delighted in June 2004 to witness the commercial launch of iTunes. Interfacing with the iPod, it allowed users to download just about any music track they wished to listen to... for a small fee. The music industry quickly capitalised, and by December of the same year, online downloads (including iTunes) surpassed physical sales of music for the first time.

2005 was an eventful year for the digirati. In January of that year Bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often) was launched and has steadily grown in popularity, particularly with younger age groups of users. Following close on its heels in February was a video sharing service we now know as YouTube. Launched officially in November 2005, YouTube became one of the greatest success stories of social networking, because B.Y. (Before YouTube) it was not an easy proposition to upload videos to the web. YouTube made it easy, and it is estimated that there are 15 hours of video uploaded each minute, and that Youtube attract 100 million viewers each month. Videos hosted by the site include cult classics amateur clips such as 'Star Wars Kid' and 'Charlie Bit My Finger'.

2005 was a great year for games enthusiasts too, with the introduction of the Nintendo DS (March), The Sony PSP (September) and Microsoft's XBox 360 (December). Each of these games consoles contributed in advancing digital gameplaying to a new level. 2003-2005 were three eventful years for the networked nation. What would 2006 bring? This series concludes tomorrow with a review of the years 2006-2009.

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Networked noughties 2000-2002

The last 10 years will be known as the networked decade. At the risk of sounding Churchillian : "Never before have people been able to communicate so quickly, and never before has so much information been available to so many people". Sure, previous years saw the telephone, CB radio, television, the Web and e-mail, but this decade was the one when social networking came of age, and where unprecendented access to vast storehouses of knowledge became common place for millions across the globe.

The speed at which these technologies have become a part of our every day experience is quite astonishing and it is exemplified in the noughties. In this short series of blogposts, I want to look back over the years 2000-2009, to map the key moments when the digital decade changed our lives.

Once the frenzy of the Millennium celebrations had died down (Millennium - is this now a derelict term?) we began to see signs of what the future would hold. We didn't need to wait too long. July 2000 saw the launch of one of the first social networking sites: Friends Reunited. The basic premise of the site was to reconnect people who for some reason had lost contact with each other. The promise of 'reunion of old friends' became the basis for much of what was to follow. Within a year Friends Reunited had grown to over a million users, establishing that connecting and sharing online were going to become a very popular pastime.

The 'hive minds' concept was realised with the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001. Just about everything that can be said has already been said about Wikipedia. But for better or worse, Wikipedia is here to stay, has broken a lot of new ground about what is meant by 'knowledge' and has opened up the doors for a sea-change in open, collaborative knowledge building.

Other significant events in 2001 included the launch in July of Sky+, prompting a shift in our perceptions of what digital television could bring, and Interactive TV became a reality for many when it was made widely available in November of the same year. The ability to stop, start and replay live action, and to interact from a handset with TV was an exciting concept. Apple gave birth to the iPod in the US, bringing handheld technologies to the masses, and 3G mobile phone services were available for the first time in the UK in time for Christmas, opening up an entire new vista of telephony.

In 2002 there was failure and success for digital TV. May saw the closure of the fledgling ITV digital service, which had only been established (as a rebirth of ON Digital) in July 2001. But UK TV viewers rubbed their hands in anticipation when Freeview became available in October.

Our viewing habits were changing, and information communication technologies were beginning to take a more prominent place within the home, office and classroom. The first 3 years of the new decade were only a prelude though - these developments merely laid the foundation for the digital maelstrom that was to follow. This series continues tomorrow with a review of the years 2003-2005.

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Spanish inquisition

Do you agree that it's important to be acknowledged for the work you have done? I find it particularly rewarding when someone else finds my work useful enough to retweet it on Twitter, or better still write a blog post about it. Linking back to my blog or giving me a name check is all the reward I need. I'm a simple soul. I give my stuff away free, papers, slideshows, images, because I believe in the value of 'share and share alike'. I fully support the ethos of open scholarship and think the world would be a better place if all academic ideas were free and didn't need to be paid for. But that is too idealist for some perhaps. I don't mind other people using my ideas and work as long as they acknowledge where it came from. I'm also open to constructive criticism too, so I can improve things if I need to.

I am particularly proud of some of the "teaching with Twitter" uses I have developed - 'Lingua Tweeta', 'Twitterstalking' and 'Micro-Write' (See Teaching with Twitter from earlier this year). They give description to language tandems and other learner centred activities which can be supported by Twitter. It's easy to use the terms to track other blog posts about these and allied Twitter teaching uses I described in that blog post. One Spanish blog called Clarión recently carried some commentary about my ideas (which were translated into Spanish) and cited the link back to my original post. Clarión's post was subsequently reported by several other blogs in the Spanish speaking world and elsewhere. Unfortunately though, none of them acknowledged the original source. I guess this is the point I start getting a little aeriated. I have also seen slideshows listing my 10 Twitter Teaching ideas without citing the original source. Perhaps I'm wrong, but doesn't this constitute some kind of plagiarism? If my students used a whole list of ideas without citing the source it would be deemed as such. On a blog shouldn't it be the same?

I don't know whether to feel flattered that others have found my ideas so useful they have decided to list them on their blogs and slideshows, or annoyed because they overlooked the original source. You see, as others copy the list across onto their blogs, so my original efforts gain visibility, but my intellectual property rights are increasingly buried. This might sound petty, but I have gone as far as to post comments on some of these blogs thanking the blog owner for finding my ideas useful, and then suggesting politely that they might wish to acknowledge the source. But.... am I being too precious about this? Or do I have a point? Maybe once I have posted an idea to my blog I lose the right to ownership of that idea? And what about intellectual property? Have others had a similar issue with other bloggers using their ideas without acknowledging them? Maybe others could discuss this in more detail. Perhaps I'm too close to the issue to be fully objective.... and after all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

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Limitless learning

We're holding another conference in Plymouth next year! The theme for the 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference is Learning without Limits - we will address the notion of anytime, anyplace learning. The conference will highlight the growing number of contexts in which learning can take place, and how technology is playing its role. PeLC10 will take place on April 8-9, 2010 in the iconic Roland Levinsky Building on the main University of Plymouth campus. 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. Our two keynote speakers are Josie Fraser and Donald Clark - the conference website holds further details of costs, joining instructions etc.

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

We hope to see you in Plymouth for 2010. The deadline for proposals (300 word abstracts) is 15th January. Get your proposal in soon, and .... book early!

Join the Pelican Fringe

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A Web 2.0 wonderland

Instead of simply recommending some Web 2.0 tools to you in the traditional way, I thought I would do something different. It's the festive season after all, and if that's not a licence for a bit of fun, then what is?

So here are the links to some tools some of you already know about and may have been using for some time, and perhaps a few tools you have not heard of, or would like to try out. Many more Web 2.0 tools can be found with links on the Go2Web20 Website.

And here's a little Christmas gift from me to you.... I had fun creating it, and I hope you have fun reading it and exploring some new tools.

An API New Year to all!

'Twas Brizzly, and the Stixy Hyves
Did Plurk and Tinker in the Waze;
All Moomeo were the Blogger posts,
And the Jing Googlewave'd.

"Beware the Jabbify, my son!
The apps that bite, the widgets catch!
Beware the Joomla blog, and shun
The Posterous Bricabox!"

He took his Skrbl sword in hand:
Long time the Meehive foe he sought—
So rested he by the Twitter tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in Qwiskish thought he stood,
The Chatterbox, with eyes of flame,
Came Mixin through the Digsby wood,
And Yoople’d as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The Skrbl blade went Flickr-Flock!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went Twalkin back."

And hast thou slain the Chatterbox?
Come to my arms, my Bebo boy!
O Delicious day! Yahoo! Yuku!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas Brizzly, and the Stixy Hyves
Did Digg and Dropbox in the Wayn;
All Memoove were the Blogger posts,
And the Moof Feedjit Scribd.

(With a tip of the hat to Lewis Carroll)

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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.

Eddie and me

Well, as you can see in the column on the right, my three nominations for best individual blog, best e-learning blog and most influential blog post in this year's Edublogger awards have been confirmed. This morning I posted up the new style badges that have been issued, and whatever the outcome of the voting, I will be able to keep them up there for ever. It's a very nice feeling to be honoured in this way by one's peers. I feel as though all the late nights and early mornings I spend thinking up and writing out these posts is worthwhile, because I have an audience that seems to appreciate what I do. It's great having comments back on posts, particularly if they either challenge or inform further. It's a great learning experience.

Earlier this month I posted up my 7 reasons for blogging. I received some great comments on that one. I do not count being nominated for awards as an eighth reason. That is simply a bonus and a nice surprise to me. A positive stroke that encourages me to keep going and blog some more. Whoever you vote for in this year's Edublogger Awards, I am sure you will bring encouragement to them and add to the value that blogs clearly bring to the learning process. If I win an Eddie, I will feel extremely honoured, but if I don't I will still feel very proud of the fact that at least 3 people have seen fit to nominate me in three separate categories. All the nominations can be found on the Edublogger Award website, including voting instructions. So, good luck to everyone who has been nominated in all the Edublogger Award categories!

Image source (Photo by James Clay taken at 2009 Plymouth e-Learning Conference)

Weapon of mass detraction

It became a phenomenon in 2009. No, not Twitter. I'm talking about the use of Twitter as a weapon of mass detraction - as a means of heckling keynote speakers at conferences. As a way to vent your spleen when you feel that the speaker you paid to come to hear is missing the mark. Such heckling using Twitter is now a new word in our lexicon: Tweckle (twek'ul) vt. to abuse a speaker only to Twitter followers in the audience while he/she is speaking.

Tweckling (or back-channel-stabbing if you wish) has happened several times over the course of the year in high profile conferences. The first recorded instance had the unfortunate David Galper as its victim. Galper was keynote speaker at the High Ed Web 2009 conference held in Milwaukee, USA earlier in the year. On the conference's social network site the conference backchannel tool Twitter is announced as "what it means to embrace a truly free and open stream of communication in the digital age." And eye wateringly free and open it became during David Galper's keynote. He started off poorly and went downhill from there, presenting what was reported to be an ill-informed, out of date and visually poor presentation (yellow text on a white background and crowded slides). To compound the agony, the sound system failed to function fully for the first few minutes. Very quickly the harsh comments began to pop up on the Twitter stream, and very soon they became a torrent of abuse, disparaging remarks that took on a more and more personal hue, turning the event into a 'car crash keynote'. Ultimately, the dissatisfaction of the conference audience was aired to a wider audience as people from outside the event began to take notice, and joined in. The outcome was that the Twitter stream hashtagged #heweb09 began to trend.

It's not the only occurance of 'harshtagging' either. The now infamous incident of danah boyd's 'Twitter lynching' at the Web 2.0 expo echoed many of the regrettable features of the HE Web conference. Both times the speakers did their best. Both times, they were constrained by the organisation and technical provision of the conference. And both times, they were publicly ridiculed and ritually humiliated by audiences who thought they were free to be impolite and abusive. Regardless of the professional issues, we should ask ourselves, would we have joined in? And the honest answer for most of us (if we were not enjoying a keynote, and were being distracted by humourous comments flowing out on Twitterfall) would be: yes we probably would. This kind of incident is reminiscent of the wisdom of crowds descending to the level of the stupidity of mobs.

I'm left wondering what causes professional people to behave in such a manner? There are clearly many factors, but I would like to propose two in particular: The first is akin to those irrate drivers who yell and gesticulate obscenely to each other from the safety of their own car seats. They wouldn't dream of using such language or threats if they met face to face, but in the car they feel they can get away with it. There is a certain distancing afforded by sitting behind the steering wheel of your own car. It's the same with Twitter. You can snipe at a distance because you don't really know the person you are shooting at, and Twitter allows a certain amount of distancing to occur.

The second relates to diffusion of responsibility and disinhibition when people are in a crowd. Someone lying on a sidewalk is more likely to remain untended if there are many people milling around. No-one feels responsible because everyone is ignoring the body, right? Studies have shown that if there are fewer people in the street someone will usually take it upon themselves to intervene. It's easier to behave like the rest of the crowd and it's even easier to be dragged along with the mob. It is not difficult, and even pleasurable to make snide comments when the mob is egging you on (and retweeting you). But it takes some courage to stand up and challenge this kind of behaviour, especially when it is within your own community of practice and your own reputation may be at stake. How many of us would have tweeted a voice of reason during this Twitter storm? How would I feel if I was the keynote who was being tweckled in such a public manner? It's true that keynotes are booked (and in some cases hired) to set the tone of an event, to provoke deeper thinking and to challenge, and if they do not, it could be said that they have failed in their mission. But when the audience begins to turn into a mob, does tweckling not resemble villagers throwing rotten fruit at the man in the stocks? I would expect that many of those who took part in the tweckling of David Galper might feel a little uncomfortable right now, particularly as the #heweb09 Twitter stream is available for all to read. Perhaps there should be a Twitterquette - but who would write it?

Hammer a nail into the wall. You can remove it, but the hole remains. We're all human and harsh destructive criticism will always hurt. I'm sure we would all hate to see Twitter backchannels becoming so problematic that they receive a blanket ban from conference organisers. Yes, we should engage in academic discourse and we should feel free to criticise the views of others, but let's conduct ourselves in a manner that is constructive, non-offensive and professional. That's what our students would expect from us, isn't it?

Related posts:

Conference humiliation: They're tweeting behind your back. (Marc Parry)

Spectacle at Web 2.0 Expo (danah boyd)

The great keynote meltdown of 2009 (Michael Fienen)

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Scotching the myth

Just about every new technology that has been introduced has been criticised for its potential to corrupt, dumb-down or otherwise undermine society. A recent speech by the Open University's Martin Bean highlighted the fact that from the slateboard to the Internet, the doomsayers have been warning us that we are at risk and that innovation is to be feared and new technologies avoided.

Reading the recent interview of the celebrated language scholar David Crystal reveals that there is a tension between the expectations people place on the use of new technologies and their actual use. Crystal dashes the myth that young people's literacy skills (and in particular their ability to spell correctly) are being weakened by texting through SMS on mobile phones. It is true, he says, that there is some abbreviation used in texting, twittering and other forms of messaging where space is limited (in his new book entitled the Gr8 Deb8 he acknowledges this phenomenon). But this type of txting, he argues, is a pragmatic and context specific ploy rather than a sea-change in the way people are writing. He goes on to expose the hoax essay in which a student was purported to have written a holiday account completely in txt-speak. 'Squeeze text' has its place, is the message, but it won't damage our ability to communicate in more traditional ways. We have always had abbreviated versions of text says Crystal:

"And so the point to make to adults who are criticizing the situation is to say, "You actually did precisely the same thing when you were a kid, except of course you didn't have a mobile phone to do it on." There's the old example, "YY UR YY UB IC UR YY 4ME" ["Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me"]. As soon as you mention it, adults will say, "Oh yes, of course," and it gives them a bit of a shock to realize that in fact most of the abbreviations aren't new at all."

Alistair Creelman's summary of the interview is particularly useful:

"Teenagers, argues Crystal, are able to cope easily with different registers of language and realize clearly when texting language is appropriate. Interviews with many teenagers reveal that they can't believe how anyone would use texting abbreviations in school work. It simply doesn't belong there and they all realise that. In addition, by analysing large amounts of text messages Crystal found that only around 10% of words were abbreviated at all, thereby deflating the whole debate."

According to Crystal, txting is not going to end the world as we know it, and the tower of literacy is not going to come crashing down around our ears. My view is that children use new technologies to find new ways to communicate. They don't lose the ability to communicate in more traditional ways. They simply find new ways, and in effect, some are actually more adept at communicating than their parents, because they have so many more channels at their disposal. So teachers and parents can now rest easy and worry about other things. Now all we have to do is stamp out the grocer's apostrophe...

Related posts:

Iz txting uhfecting r students? (Writaholics Anonymous)

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Zip it, Block it, Flag it

80% of children in the UK have encountered unsuitable or harmful content on the Internet (Byron, 2009 - see report link below) and it has usually been down to parents to educate their children about keeping safe on the web - that is until now.

'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' is the tag line for a new campaign introduced by the UK government, which will show primary school children (ages 5-11) how to avoid nasty content and risky conversations on social networking sites. Zip it - keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online. Block it - Block people who send nasty messages and don't open unknown links and attachments. Flag it - Flag up with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline. The campaign is being supported by all the major players, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Myspace. CEOP - the UK Government's child protection agency who are also involved, recently criticised the social networking services for what it perceived as their lack of action over cyberbullying and other forms of internet risk. They may be slightly uncomfortable partners.

Although e-safety will not be delivered in formal online safety classes, the key messages will be integrated into all other subjects across the curriculum. This means that primary school teachers will now have to become more expert in their knowledge of social networking, instant messaging and other new technologies and will need to be a little more savvy about how kids use them. Whether teachers will have the time or the space to squeeze more content into an already overburdened National Curriculum remains to be seen. We shall see whether this campaign is a success over the long term, or whether it goes to the wall like so many other UK Government schemes, but on the surface, this approach should be welcomed by parents and teachers alike. It's just a pity it wasn't introduced sooner.

Related Articles

Online safety push for 5 year-olds (BBC News)

Code for online safety (The Guardian)

Schools to give lessons in internet safety (PC Advisor)

Green Cross Code for the Internet (The Telegraph)

Safer Children in a Digital World (Report by Dr Tanya Byron)

Brown launches Net Code for children (The Register)

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A drastic ban?

I was somewhat surprised - no, gobsmacked - this weekend to read in a blog post by Abel Pharmboy that one conference in the USA - the American Society of Cell Biology Annual Meeting (sounds full of life) - has expressly forbidden its delegates from tweeting during presentations. They were also banned from audio recording or taking photographs of presenters' slides. Here's the strident message sent out to all delegates from the organisers:

"Use of cameras and all other recording devices (this includes digital, film, and cell phone cameras, as well as audio recordings) are strictly prohibited in all session rooms, in the Exhibit Hall, and in all poster and oral presentation sessions. Twittering (see above) and other forms of communication involving replication of data are strictly prohibited at the Annual Meeting or before publication, whether data presented are in the Exhibit Hall, poster area, poster sessions, or invited talks, without the express permission and approval of the authors. Persons caught taking photos, video, or audio recordings with any device or transmitting such information with any device will be escorted out of the hall or rooms and not be allowed room re-entry. Repeat offenders will have their meeting badge(s) revoked and will not be allowed to continue to attend the meeting. This policy is necessary to respect the willingness of presenters to share their data at the meeting as well as their publication opportunities."

Wow. What do you think about that? Makes you wonder why they took such a decision and took such a threatening stance. I wonder what the delegates felt? Did they feel welcome and relaxed at the conference? If it was Twitter alone that was jumped on, we might point to some of the harshtags and Twitter lynchings of speakers that has been reported recently at other conferences as the spur. But no - it's all digital devices. Even the airlines aren't that strict. I know that conference organisers have a duty of care to ensure that everything is conducted decently and in order, but I am left wondering... is this all just a little over the top?

I'm only speculating but the reason behind this stance might be something a little more prosaic. It is highly likely that given the highly scientific nature of this conference, many of the presenters at the conference are presenting new research and wish to protect their intellectual property from their peers until their work has been published. This may sound like a reasonable idea at face value, but I ask you - why do we go to conferences in the first place? People have many reasons, but an aggregation of these reasons might be to meet other people interested in the same subject, to hear expert commentary and reports of research in your specialist areas, and to discuss and learn. In my recent experience, the beauty of digital media is that it can include those who cannot attend a conference physically, but who can still participate remotely. I have done this with both Online Educa Berlin and ASCILITE in Auckland this last week.

So the organisers of this conference have banned the use of digital media. Exactly what will the conference police ban next? Chatting to each other over coffee? Writing down notes on a pad? Will there be 'thought crimes' too (Bless you George). Will we all need to sign non-disclosure agreements before we can register for such events? I'm just saying.

Look. I assure everyone who attends the Plymouth e-Learning Conference in April next year that there will be no such bans on any image capture, backchannelling or any other form of dissemination of what you have learned. In fact it will be positively encouraged. Those who come to present at my event do so on the understanding that their ideas will be 'out there' and shared with all who are interested as quickly as possible. I agree with Terry Anderson's sentiments which he aired at this year's ALT-C conference in Manchester. Open Scholarship, he said, is not only about sharing your work free to your peers, it is also about being open to constructive criticism from them. Here's to open scholarship, and also to open conferences!

Postscript

To be fair on the conference organisers, I draw your attention to a note of clarification from the conference chair Rex Chisholm who writes:

"I serve as chair of the ASCB public information committee and have discussed this with the executive director of the ASCB. The prohibition as written is being interpreted (...although I can see why) too restrictively. The real goal is to limit specific tweeting of prepublication data, not the general concepts, the enthusiasm (or not) for an idea heard at the meeting, or comments about the meeting itself. The ASCB enthusiastically endorses spreading of exciting stories from its members and encourages an open discussion about the meeting. After all, science is about debate and discussion. On the other hand it is important to respect authors presenting data prior to publication. Hence the policy against cameras and against tweeting of SPECIFIC data elements. I am working the the ASCB leadership to "officially" modify the policy on the ASCB website. But I want to assure all meeting attendees that as long as the rights of the authors to not have specific data widely disseminated without their permission, we would like to encourage sharing about the meeting."

So I was correct in my assumption that the ban was intended to protect authors/researchers who had not yet published their findings. Fair enough. But the wording of the edict could, as has been admitted, have been a little better phrased. This little episode serves to highlight the growing gulf between traditional academic values and the insurgent social media practices that are engulfing education. I'm sure we will see similar issues arising as culture clashes continue over the next few years.

Related posts:

The dark side of digital backchannels (Joe McCarthy)

Tweeting expressly prohibited (Abel Pharmboy)

What do you mean I can't Twitter? (Steven W. Anderson)

Banning electronic devices from conferences (Open Education News)

Image source (edited)

The naughty step

I'm feeling a little peripheral at the moment. You see, I have had several messages from Twitter buddies telling me that I'm being filtered out of searches, and I also notice that my hashtags don't show up in Twitter streams. This is most disconcerting. I tweet at conferences and my tweets get swallowed up in the miasma of the twittersphere as if they never twittered in the first place. It's as if I don't exist on Twitter at all. I'm a Twoutcast. It's as though the head coach has told me to sit the game out on the bench. Twubstituted for unsportsmanlike behaviour. Sidelined, that's what I am.

I guess I have inadvertently breached one of Twitter's many convoluted rules. You know, the ones they don't bend over backwards to explain to you in too much detail. I don't know what wrong I have done, but it must have been a heinous crime, and being punished I am (Gee thanks Yoda). Ah well, we shall wait and see. Kirsteen MacDonald (@k_macd) came to my rescue, recommending some steps to rectify the problem. So I followed her instructions, and sent out a help call to Twitter on Friday, and I am now completely in their hands. Whether I am restored to full priviledges is entirely up to Sir's whims, so until then I shall sit scowling on the naughty step.

I wonder has anyone else found themselves in a similar predicament? Did you get the problem resolved? What were the issues involved. Or are you still sitting on the naughty step too? I think we should be told.

Update:

I am delighted to report that as of the evening of Sunday 6th December, I have been able to participate again in the hashtag streams. This was just in time to take part remotely in #ascilite09 - I feel a part of the Twitter family once again! I'm also as of Monday night reinstated onto the 'Find People' Twitter search. I'm no longer the invisible man! Thanks Twitter.

Related posts (and solutions):

Shoq's Twitter Tips

Before there was Twitter

Image source

The naughty step by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Why do I bother?

Reading Tom Barrett's post 'Why Bother Blogging?' got me thinking about my own reasons for blogging. It can be hard work, but it can also be very rewarding. Some readers have remarked that they wish they were as prolific as me when it comes to blogging, and other have asked me where I get all my ideas from to blog about. Well, I'm not half as prolific as I would like to be, and others out there in the Blogosphere write a lot more than I do and on a more regular basis too. It is difficult to find material to write coherently about, but that is probably one of my main reasons for blogging:

1) I blog because it keeps me on my toes intellectually, thinking up ways to express what I know about how learning technology is progressing, how my ideas are being challenged by new methods and emerging technologies, how my own practice is being enhanced, my skills extended and how my students are finding new ways to learn through emerging media and devices. Thinking about the content of my next blog post often prompts me to read a lot, interact online and face to face more, and generally encourages me to reflect critically on what I believe.

2) I also blog because during the process of thinking and reflecting on my own professional practice and what is happening around me, I need somewhere to keep a record of these impressions. Blogging gives me a chronological record of my own thoughts, dated and time stamped, complete with hyperlinks to useful related online resources and materials, and images I have selected which have evoked an emotional response in me. All of these features combine to provide me with a digital artefact that captures a moment of my thoughts in time.

3) I blog because it attracts feedback from readers on my ideas and views, and the comments box can sometimes overflow with excellent responses from readers of my posts. I value greatly the comments of all those who take the time to respond to my posts, and I learn a lot from them. Many the time someone has commented on one of my posts and this has led me to either modify my own ideas, or to confirm to me that I am on the right track in my reasoning.

4) Blogging helps me to make concrete all the ideas I have, and reifies the thoughts I want to keep. Somehow, putting down these ideas in a manner that makes them publicly accessible, makes me strive even harder to articulate my ideas in a coherent way. In writing I am written, and blogging is more than just a part of my personal learning environment. It has become a key part of my professional development and practice.

5) Another reason I blog is to share my ideas and thereby contribute to the intellectual wellbeing of the community of interest I belong to on the Web and add to the shared knowledge we rely upon. Others share their ideas freely, and I want to reciprocate. This frank exchange of ideas and content is what makes my community of interest such a wonderful thing, and enriches all of us who claim to belong to it.

6) It's a creative process, and can be great fun. I often lace my posts with humour or irony, and enjoy the way my posts come together. Dreaming up pithy titles for these posts is also great fun, and it is surprising how many people make encouraging comments and give positive feedback on these little additions. It's a great exercise for my mind and keeps me from getting bored.

7) Being able to publish my ideas instantly to the world is a great asset. Knowing that more and more people are reading my posts, following regularly, and responding too - is both a pressure and a pleasure. It's a little like owning your own newspaper, but potentially a lot more powerful, because posts can be updated, enhanced and linked on the fly, and they enable interaction between the writer and the audience.

There are probably other reasons why people blog, but those are my personal 'magnificent seven'. Now tell me ... what are your reasons for blogging?

Image source (edited)


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.

This sceptred ILE

We have enjoyed a very successful year at Interactive Learning Environments (ILE), the journal I took on as co-editor in January. I'm working alongside Piers Maclean and Joe Psotka who are hard working guys. We have managed to bolster our editorial board with some impressive new members, including John Cook (London Metropolitan University), John Traxler (University of Wolverhampton), Palitha Edirisingha (University of Leicester), Ingo Stengel (University of Applied Social Sciences, Darmstadt) and Nicola Whitton (Manchester Metropolitan University). We also have an army of excellent reviewers without whom we would not have enjoyed the success we have had this year. We were delighted to hear that ILE has jumped up to 40th place in the Journal Citation Reports index with an impact factor of 0.941. We have extended the journal from 3 to 4 issues a year, and in January we start full online submission using Manuscript Central.

The December issue of Interactive Learning Environments is now out and all 7 papers focus on how Web 2.0 tools can be used to promote and support interactive learning. From over 50 submissions, guest editors Yueh-Min Huang, Stephen Yang and Chin-Chung Tsai have gathered together an interesting set of articles and my thanks go to them for an excellent job well done. Below is an extract from their editorial detailing the paper themes:

The seven papers included in this special issue elaborate Web 2.0 from various perspectives. One paper considers the limitations of learning styles and cultural values imposed to the usage of Web 2.0; one paper illustrates various paradigms for providing semantic services from a social perspective; two papers illustrate the usage of blogs for identifying learner and teacher behaviour patterns; one paper discusses online recommendation of tutors and experts for enhancing online learning supports; and two papers explore knowledge building and sharing through integrated knowledge repository and concept maps.

We are planning more special issues for ILE in 2010 that will be at the very leading edge of learning technology, and in 2011 we will go to 5 issues a year. Looks like we are going from strength to strength!

Image source