Identity in a digital age

Much of my understanding of digital identity was founded in my studies into personal identity, whilst a student of social psychology. The work of William James and George Herbert Mead influenced my thinking, as did the study of sociologist Charles Cooley into 'the Looking Glass Self.' Essentially, in this hybrid early school of social psychology, known as symbolic interactionism, theorists tried to explain the influence of audiences/other people on the behaviour of individuals. It was a fluid theory that allowed for behavioural adjustments on the fly, as people saw themselves 'reflected in the eyes of the other' - the impact of what they were saying - as they conversed. Therefore, 'in order to develop and shape behavior, interactions with others must exist. People gain their identity and form their habits by looking at themselves through the perception of society and other people they interact with.' (New World Encyclopedia)

I did some research of my own back in the 90s based on the presentation of self in everyday life. Those who are familiar with the work of the social anthropologist Erving Goffman will recognise this as the title of one of his seminal works. Goffman saw social interaction as a drama performance, in which the actor's behaviour was framed by front stage and back stage roles, scripts, props and costumes. One of the most important, but often ignored features of Goffman's Dramaturgical Model is the presence of an audience, to which the actor consciously (or unconsciously) performs. This has great import in our understanding of how we perform to audiences in social media (of which more later in this post).

The research I conducted in 1994 involved a small team of psychology students and one of my friends, the actor and TV personality Matthew Kelly. Now a successful actor of stage and film, during the 1990s Matthew appeared on everyone's TV screens several times a week and was instantly recognisable. He was ideal for the study and when invited, he agreed to take part. We wanted to test out our ideas on the 'celebrity effect' in which people change their behaviour when they meet face to face with a famous person. In today's celebrity soaked society, where in Andy Warhol's terms 'anyone can be famous for 15 minutes', we are perhaps living in what Malcolm MacLaren dubbed 'the Karoake culture.' This means that just about anywhere, at any time, without warning, anyone can bump into a celebrity - there are enough of them about. Although it's possible, it's not probable, but there are occasions when this happens with no warning and no preparation, and you find yourself looking at a well known face. In such situations, people behave differently. They stare. Or they deliberately avoid staring. Either way, they know that they are sharing a space with a famous person, and can't help behaving differently. I was intrigued as to why this should be.

So we set up and conducted a naturalistic series of experiments in the high street of an English City. We wanted to know if, as Isen and Levin (1972) predicted, people would be more likely to help others if they felt good themselves. There was also research to suggest that helping behaviour increased depending on the status and influence of those present (Latane & Harkins, 1976). My study went something like this: In the experimental condition, two of us walked into a shop and posed as customers. A minute later, one of our team, an unknown person, walked into the shop accompanied by Matthew Kelly, and made straight for the counter. The unknown person showed the shop assistant a £10 note and asked if s/he could help by giving him some change from the till so he could make an urgent call home (this was in the days before mobile phones). We observed the interactions and timed the conversation. In a control condition, we also performed the same situation where two unknown people walked into similar matched stores and acted out the same scene. This same scenario was acted out 11 times for each of the conditions. We analysed the data from the 22 shops and saw immediately that there was a marked difference between the experimental (famous) and control (unknown) conditions.

In the control condition, our team was refused help (told they could not have change unless they purchased something) on 6 out of 11 occasions, and minimal interaction was observed between the unknown people and the shop assistant. In the experimental condition, on every occasion, the famous person and his partner were helped. If the shop assistants couldn't open the till, they found the change from their own pockets/purses or those of their colleagues'. Another interesting effect was that on each occasion, although the only speaking person was the unknown person, the shop assistants were observed answering Matthew Kelly, and maintained eye contact with him rather than the speaker. The unknown person was virtually ignored, even though he had initiated the conversation and was doing all the talking. Non verbal interactions such as smiling and nodding were also more numerous in the experimental condition than in the control condition, where minimal or no eye contact was observed between the shop assistant and the two unknown people.

From these statistically significant results (p<.005), I theorised that (in Goffman's terms) shop assistants who were in their rule bound front stage roles (e.g. I must not open my till to give change unless someone has made a purchase, because the note may be a forgery), were forced into back stage (relaxed and informal) roles prompted by a pleasant surprise. They broke their own rules, because they recognised the famous person (someone who perhaps they had seen often in their back stage informal roles in their own living rooms) and behaved in a way that was incompatible with the rules they would follow in their front stage, official and formal roles.

In my conclusions I noted: "The celebrity effect has obvious consequences for the promotion of pro-social behaviour. Front stage roles (rules) are subjugated by the desire of the actor (shop assistant) to appear helpful and pleasant to the well-known person. However, this helping behaviour occurs at the expense of anyone else who happens to be nearby. Attention is focused on the famous person, while the requests from others, although not ignored, become marginalised".

Applying this research in today's digital world, I wonder what the presentation of self in a social media world would entail. Applying Goffman's theory to the performance spaces of social media, we could cast a spotlight on videosharing services such as Youtube and text based performace spaces such as traditional blogs. Do bloggers see themselves as interacting with their audiences in a front stage context? If they do, then they will possibly be more guarded and less personable, avoiding as much self-disclosure as they can? On the other hand, if bloggers see themselves as performing in a less formal space, in a more relaxed style, are they then back-stage? Do they then feel licensed to self-disclose more personal information about themselves, or share their emotions, their beliefs? Perhaps the questions should be framed the other way around? Does self disclosure and informal sharing of personal information push bloggers into a back stage role, and what is it that enables some to do this? Is it the pleasant experience of having a large appreciative audience? One more question springs to mind - are bloggers who disclose information about themselves of a personal nature more readable (and more personable) than those who write whilst remaining in a front stage, formal role? These and other related research questions are of course, up for grabs for someone to investigate.

References

Cooley, C. H. (1918) Social Process. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.

Isen, A. M. and Levin, P. F. (1972) Effects of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(3), 381-8.

Latane, B. and Harkins, S. G. (1976) A multiplicative power function of audience size and status. In R. L. Atkinson, R. C. Atkinson, Smith, E. E., Bem, D. J. and Hilgard, E. R. (1990) Introduction to Psychology, 10th Edition. San Fransciso, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Image source by Ocadotony

Identity in a digital age by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

...before the ink is dry

Had a great conversation at lunch today with Peps McCrea over at the University of Brighton. We were talking about our common interest in the educational benefits of blogging, and I made a suggestion that digital identity was a significant factor in the way teachers and other professionals use it (I will blog on this idea in a future post). I expanded by talking about my own use of blogging. I had to examine my own motives which I have already reflected on in previous posts such as Why do I bother? So what are my reasons for expending so much of my time on blogging?

Essentially, I blog not just because I want my ideas to be shared as quickly as possible, but also to receive feedback in the form of discussion. Journal articles take so long to publish, they are often out of date long before the ink is dry. This is because they go through a process of peer review and revision, and then they can hit a brickwall if the journal has a significant backlog of accepted papers, and a page count limit (which most do). I know that peer reviewed academic journals are the lifeblood of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which comes around every few years (and by which all participating universities are judged on the quality of their research outputs, and subsequently awarded money for more research). I know that great store is placed on high impact journals in th REF and there is always a mad scramble at this time in the cycle, where everyone is submitting articles in the hope they will be published before the deadline. But how much value is there really to be had in publishing articles in high impact, double blind, peer reviewed academic journals beyond the REF? You have to be in it to win it, but the general rule of thumb is that the best research institutes scoop up the lion's share of the cash each time, and the rest are left to grab for the crumbs. An enormous amount of energy and time is taken up during the submission process, often with little or no reward to show at the end.

Here's something else to consider: How many people actually read your journal article when it's finally published, either in paper format or on the journal's webpages? The journals we are talking about here are almost all paywall journals - if your institution doesn't have a subscription and you are not in the mega-rich academic club (and let's face it, who is?) then you are unlikely to be able to read it, and neither are many others. Will publishing in a high impact journal ensure that you are promoted? Possibly, but not probably, as many academics have discovered. How about some monetary reward? Not a hope of that, sunshine - the publishers have tied that one up at both ends. In some business models, they even get you to pay for the priviledge of publishing in their journal. Nice trick if you can do it. If I was to be cynical, I might suggest that the publishing houses have conspired to convince academics that they should spend inordinate amounts of their time dreaming up research ideas, running their experiments and studies, and sweating and toiling over the write up of the research, before giving it away for free so that the publisher can then make a lot of money out of it.

For me, and for an increasing number of fellow academics, publishing in traditional journals is becoming increasingly anacronistic in the digital age of social media communication. We can be our own publishers now. We can build up audiences and loyal followings that are larger than most journals and publishing houses could ever boast. For me, blogging is now the first place I consider when I want to disseminate my ideas quickly, directly to my own community of practice, and in a form that is considered relevant and accessible to those who are engaged in that particular sphere of activity. Blogging is freely accessible, and it is usually concise enough to be assimilated in a few minutes.

Please don't misundertand me - I am not totally dismissing the place of the academic peer reviewed journal. Heavens, I'm an editor of a major learning technology journal, and if I believed they were totally irrelevant, I would resign immediately. No, journals still have their place. What I am arguing here is that the blog is a more rapid, concise and appropriate medium to disseminate important ideas, and it is also a better environment within which to engage critically with colleagues to discuss, argue and otherwise develop a discourse around the subjects in question. I have seen some journals attempting dialogue between protagonists occasionally, but often the result is a stilted, and seemingly contrived dialogue which is somewhat divorced from real-time, real-world conversations. How is the blog different? For me, the blog is an interactive record of ideas; an open archive of opposing viewpoints; a meeting place for live discussion; a repository of thoughts; a testing ground; a launching pad; a dynamic environment within which disagreement can sit comfortably with accord; a fertile ground for the planting and growing of disparate content.

Image source by Hakan Dahlstrom


...before the ink is dry by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Best years of our lives?

They say that our school years are the best years of our lives. But for many children, that is untrue. About a year ago, I wrote a personal account of an incident during my primary schooling that shaped my young adulthood. In That'll teach him, I recounted an incident where I asked a question in class, and the teacher ridiculed me. It was a bad experience. Being laughed at by the whole class on the teacher's instigation was humiliating, embarrassing and also a very powerful negative influence on me. I learnt never to ask questions in school again. It took me a long time to shake off that stigma and be bold enough to ask questions again. And it was important for me, because we learn by asking questions. Teachers have such power and influence over their young charges, and many are largely unaware of it. It's true that doctors save lives, but teachers make lives. That post served to illustrate some of the bad practices some my teachers adopted, and said a lot more about that particular teacher than it did about me. From that bad experience, eventually, came some very positive outcomes. But what about my positive experiences in education? Well, there have also been some very inspirational teachers...

The teachers who have inspired me most are those who have been accessible not remote, personable instead of standoffish, and knowledgeable without being arrogant. One of my lecturers in my first year of my undergraduate degree (he is now a well respected colleague of mine in the Faculty of Education) inspired me to learn more and to push myself to my limits to become more knowledgeable in my subject area. He did this through the use of nothing more than a whiteboard and pen, and constant discussion and questioning. This kind of simple socratic discourse was deceptively powerful, and did wonders for both my self esteem and piqued my appetite for more knowledge. He didn't need to use any other visual aids or learning resources. He simply pointed us in the direction of useful reading, and strategically slipped the names of key theorists into his discussions with us. For me this was a skillful, but relaxed and unobtrusive kind of pedagogy, involving everyone in the room, debating, deliberating and generally exploring together the nuances and intricacies of our subject. There was no lecturing, and there were no absolutes. Just the inspiration of the discussion and the joy of knowing that you were going to leave the classroom with more questions than when you came in.

Who were your inspirational teachers?

Image source

Best years of our lives? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Smartphones in mobile healthcare

I have just had a new paper published on how smartphones are being used in patient education and remote health care. The paper appears here in Biomedical Engineering Online and is entitled How smartphones are changing the face of mobile and participatory healthcare. I see it has already been labelled as 'Highly Accessed' which bodes well, and of course, it is published as an open access article complete with downloadable pdf file. Written in collaboration with my colleagues in the Faculty of Health at the University of Plymouth, the paper covers a range of telehealth issues as detailed in the abstract:

The latest generation of smartphones are increasingly viewed as handheld computers rather than as phones, due to their powerful on-board computing capability, capacious memories, large screens and open operating systems that encourage application development. This paper provides a brief state-of-the-art overview of health and healthcare smartphone apps (applications) on the market today, including emerging trends and market uptake. Platforms available today include Android, Apple iOS, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows (Windows Mobile 6.x and the emerging Windows Phone 7 platform). The paper covers apps targeting both laypersons/patients and healthcare professionals in various scenarios, e.g., health, fitness and lifestyle education and management apps; ambient assisted living apps; continuing professional education tools; and apps for public health surveillance. Among the surveyed apps are those assisting in chronic disease management, whether as standalone apps or part of a BAN (Body Area Network) and remote server configuration. We describe in detail the development of a smartphone app within eCAALYX (Enhanced Complete Ambient Assisted Living Experiment, 2009-2012), an EU-funded project for older people with multiple chronic conditions. The eCAALYX Android smartphone app receives input from a BAN (a patient-wearable smart garment with wireless health sensors) and the GPS (Global Positioning System) location sensor in the smartphone, and communicates over the Internet with a remote server accessible by healthcare professionals who are in charge of the remote monitoring and management of the older patient with multiple chronic conditions. Finally, we briefly discuss barriers to adoption of health and healthcare smartphone apps (e.g., cost, network bandwidth and battery power efficiency, usability, privacy issues, etc.), as well as some workarounds to mitigate those barriers.

Image source by C Frank Starmer

Smartphones in mobile healthcare by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

New blends in learning

I started a discussion on Twitter today about blended learning, after reading an exchange between @simfin and @whitec. Unfortunately, the limit of 140 characters, on this occasion at least, badly let me down. Now look, just like any other academic, I don't mind a bit of a verbal punch-up, in fact I relish it. If you want an argument, I'll give you one, and just when you think it's all over, I'll come back for some more. But what I don't enjoy under any circumstances being misunderstood. Today's discussion about blended learning on Twitter was for me at least, somewhat unsatisfactory. I was away for some of the time, engaged in editorial work, and as I wasn't able to make my point clearly, I didn't persist. But, knowing me like you do, you know it's not over. So I'm using this blog to elaborate on my ideas in the hope that a more informed discussion can ensue and that this time I will not be misunderstood. Here's what I originally tweeted:



By this statement I meant this: Blended learning (in the established, traditional sense) means a mix of learning activities that involved students learning both in the classroom, and at a distance from the classroom, usually mediated through technology. I am claiming that this type of blended learning - in concept at least - is now outmoded because the boundaries between local and remote have now been substantially blurred. The tyranny of distance has been fractured. My students now learn across a continuum that encompasses the classroom, home and all points in between, any time, any place. They use the same or similar technologies in the classroom as they do at home, as they do on the bus, as they do... you get the idea. Geography (location of study) matters less and less as technology becomes more familiar, transparent and affordable, and students are connected with their peers, tutors and content in continually new and dynamic ways. This is why blended learning, in the old traditional sense is now a fairly meaningless term.

The second part of my statement was more contentious to those who responded to my tweet. I said that the 'new blend is to blur formal and informal learning.' This provoked a storm of responses. Someone said that the idea of formal/informal learning wasn't 'new'. Let me clarify - by 'new' I meant it's a new challenge for teachers. It means they may have to consider replacing some of their practices and it means that schools may need to revise some of their rules. Let me explain again:
Young people now bring so much informal technology into the classroom (mobile phones, handheld games consoles, etc), which they use constantly outside the formal boundaries of formal learning. Without really thinking about it, they use these tools to create and share content, connect, communicate and collaborate for their informal learning. Presently many schools simply ask their students to 'turn off' the devices when they arrive in school, because there are concerns about innappropriate use (cheating, bullying, recording and posting images or videos, etc). One challenge for school leaders today is to balance the risks against the benefits and decide what role if any these informal tools have in a formal context. The major challenge for educators then is to decide whether they wish to harness the power, excitement and allure of these informal technologies with a formal context.

A point was made by Anne-Marie Cunningham that the formal and informal have always been naturally blended by students, and it's nothing new, and to a great extent this is true. However, there is something new we need to consider. With the advent of emerging digital technologies, there are now more opportunities than ever to exploit the potential blend between formal and informal learning. To simply say that it's not new, has always been there, and therefore we don't need to be concerned with it, is ignoring the incredible potential we now have within our grasp to enrich, enhance and extend student experiences.

Mike John implied that because there is only learning and teaching (of which of course I agree) we shouldn't be labelling it with other terminology, because in doing so, we are 'taking our eye off the ball.' I know what he's getting at - the learner should be central - but I counter this by pointing out that if you are discussing the pedagogical theories behind the multitude of different practices observed in the classrom every day (my stock-in-trade) you need different words to engage fully and effectively in the discourse. Differentiating these practices necessitates giving them terms that describe, define and delineate them from each other. Yes, in the final analysis there is only learning and teaching, but we are not taking our eye off the ball in this discussion, we are merely finding out how many ways there are of kicking the ball. Education would be poorer without variety.

Finally, I want to make the point that blended learning in the new sense will also see the boundaries between teacher and learner blurring. I believe the two are a part of a continuum, because we learn by teaching. Sure, the teacher will be paid to develop and facilitate learning processes, but they will accompany students rather than leading them, and students in turn will surely teach each other more. We know that one of the most powerful and persistently positive learning outcomes in all sectors of education arises when reciprocal teaching is employed - the metastudies of John Hattie have established this across multiple contexts. So my prediction is that learning and teaching as activities will blend too. So there you have it. Blended learning as a concept is outmoded, and the new challenge for educators is to bring the excitement and affordances of informal technologies into the formal context. Other boundaries will blur as teaching and learning begin to coalesce. I hope I have been clear, and I'm quite happy to debate this further. Am I right or am I wrong? You tell me.



New blends in learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Running a MOOC

Over at the University of Brighton, Peps McCrea is currently blogging about MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courses) and is speculating how they might influence the future of Higher Education. Having taken part in a MOOC run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens a couple of years ago (as a speaker not a student), I can say that it was a very enjoyable experience. I was grilled by Stephen for a sustained period of time about my ideas on Personal Learning Environments, and in true gladiator style, I enjoyed the cut and thrust of my live, widely distributed debate.

I have also presented recently at one of Steve Hargardon's live Elluminate global webinars, and have to say that the experience was very similar to the MOOC. You present your ideas, including slides and audio connection, live to a massive group of participants that span the globe, and then you discuss those ideas for a while. I know that there is more to a MOOC than participating in live webinars. MOOCs also host online discussion, solo and group activities and other learning activities designed to promote critical discourse, reflective actions and discursive learning.

Everyone who participates enjoys the experience, and everyone goes away with more questions than they arrived with. That's learning. That's connectivism too, according to Siemens and Downes. And connectivism is one of the major underpinning theories of the MOOC. It's not so much what you know that matters anymore, but who you can connect to and learn from that is the key principle of learning in a digital age.

That is both the strength and the weakness of the MOOC. You see, you can connect to anyone, anywhere, at any time to learn from each other. But you can also miss those connections, if certain people decline to join in. MOOCs are also at their most successful when there is a critical mass of participants. So what if you gave a party and no-one came? A sparsely populated MOOC is just .... well..... an OOC, isn't it? There is also a debate about whether connectivism is actually a bona fide theory - it has attracted its fair share of critics. Peps is asking whether MOOCs will take off in the UK. Well, in one sense they already have because many people from the UK have already taken part in previous MOOCs. If it comes down to the location of the MOOC, there is none - the MOOC is location agnostic. I actually presented my MOOC talk from a classroom in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. If the question relates to whether British academics and specialists will begin to write, organise and deliver MOOCs, that's another question entirely. Here are some more questions: Is there actually a need for more MOOCs? How much preparation work goes into setting one up? Will individuals in the UK step in to set up and deliver their own MOOCs, or is this going to be the preserve of academic institutions? The question of open, free of cost participation in a MOOC is a given. But what about those who wish to receive some tangible form of accreditation at the end of the programme? Who provides that?

Good luck to anyone who decides to set up and deliver a MOOC this side of the Atlantic. And as to the future of the MOOC? I suppose we shall just have to wait and see...

Image source by SpoiltCat

Running a MOOC by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The road is open

In spite of the trials and tribulations of international travel, I actually had a wonderful time in Elmshorn, Germany this week during the two day Moodlemoot event. I met a lot of smart people, and engaged in some very valuable conversations about learning, technology, culture and life in general. The Sounds of the Bazaar Internet radio guys were also present and I managed to squeeze in a live interview on Day 1 with Klaus Rummler on the 'future of learning', as we stood outside in the spring sunshine. My opening keynote focused on openness in education, and I made a call for more open scholarship and open educational practices. Because I was 'preaching to the converted' (the audience was made up of around 300 teachers and other professionals who were already sold on the idea of using open source tools such as Moodle and Mahara in their work), my presentation was very well received, and there were some excellent, thoughtful questions at the end. My slides are here.

It was also a great pleasure to hear two other keynote speakers, Martin Dougiamas, Moodle's founder, who spoke live via Skype from Perth in Australia, and Max Woodtli, a Swiss academic who spoke on 'Visible Learning' - highlighting the work of New Zealand academic John Hattie. Although Dougiamas's presentation was marred by technical difficulties, he was nevertheless able to make his point, via a series of technical illustrations, including the announcement that a set of new mobile phone apps for Moodle will be released in the coming weeks. Max Woodtli was more pedagogical in his focus, talking about the most effective approaches to securing good learning outcomes. Although he spoke in German, I had the excellent services of Stephan Rinke, translating simultaneously for me. Woodtli showed how through a vast range of metastudies ranging from primary to tertiary education research, distance education and online web based methods have no more impact than traditional teaching, and in some cases have poorer outcomes. It is only when teachers forge strong working relationships with their students, and promote the use of methods such as concept mapping, reciprocal teaching and other active forms of problem based learning, that learning outcomes are strong and long lasting. How we transfer those methods effectively into digital learning environments will determine the future of learning platforms such as Moodle, he said.

My thanks go to all who organised Moodlemoot, and in particular, Sigi Jakob-Kühn, who invited me to speak at such an enjoyable event.

Image source by Stephan Rinke

The road is open by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The road is endless...

It's official. Brussels Air sucks. I'm very disappointed in them, and if they were one of my students, they would get a big fat zero. I have to admit that the only thing with Brussels in front of it that I dislike more at the moment is sprouts. I have just arrived home after a horrendous 20 hours being trapped in transit. And it was all Brussels Air's fault. It all started when I left the German Moodlemoot (#mootDE11n) which I keynoted this week. T'was a great conference with plenty of good stuff to come away with (and this will be the subject of another post, later in the week). My keynote speech was entitled 'The Road is Open.' In hindsight I think I should have called it 'The Road is Endless.' Here's why ...

I arrive on time (actually in plenty of time) for my first homeward flight from Hamburg to Brussels. If we leave on time, I have almost one hour to get across the rabbit warren that is Brussels Airport to catch the Brussels Air connection onwards to Bristol, where my faithful car awaits me. We duly board the plane, and we wait. And we wait. And then we wait some more. No clear information is forthcoming about our delay. People are starting to get twitched. We are all getting numb bums. I feel like striking up a chorus of 'why are we waiting', but I'm not sure the Germans and Belgians around me will join in. After more than 40 minutes tied to the apron, and with no word of explanation as to why we are delayed, we eventually taxi, and take off toward Brussels. Apart from being elbowed in the head twice by the larger than average cabin crew, the flight is event free. But we are very late. By the time we arrive, I have less than 10 minutes to get across Brussels airport from Terminal B to Terminal A. Not a snowball's chance in Hell. I can't even get through the crowds and up the escalators in 10 minutes. I have been told that the best thing for me to do is to find the Brussels Airline Transfer desk. But where is it? It's like trying to find a straw in a needle stack. No one has met me to whisk me off to my connection, although they know I'm on the flight, and it's been severely delayed. After running around like a lunatic for another 10 minutes, I admit defeat, and ask some helpful airport personnel where the Brussels Airline ticketing desk it located. I'm pointed towards the ghoul-like security X-Ray people, who look straight through me. It's through there, they tell me.

I gaze at the scene in horror - there is a queue longer than the mausoleum line for photos with Uncle Mao. I throw my hands up in despair - my connection is now well and truly lost. Stuff this for a game of soldiers I think, and breathing silent oaths and trying to navigate around slow moving travellers, soaked in sweat and wheezing like a busted accordian, I finally manage to circumvent the huge security queues, by going back out of the terminal and then working my way in through the front of the terminal again. Are you following me? If you are, you're doing very well, but you're also soaked in sweat, muttering oaths, and desperate for a drink (of any kind). I spot the Brussels Airline ticketing desk, and once I get my breath back I tell them my sorry story. 'Hmm', says the woman behind the counter in a Hercule Poirrot accent, 'You have missed your flight'. Very helpful indeed. Like her Belgian countryman, she obviously has some detective training. Now for the bad news. There are no more flights today to Bristol. Or tomorrow for that matter. Can we get you a flight to anywhere else in England? Er, no, I need to get to Bristol, because that's where my car is parked. Well, all we do is get you on a flight to Paris in the morning, and then onwards to Bristol later in the day. Fine. I'll take that. I've already given up hope of getting back home today, but I don't wish to stay here in this crazy place any longer than I have to.

The desk clerk gives me a voucher to stay for the night in the Sheraton hotel, and an evening meal voucher. OK, things are looking up a little. Jolly decent of them. She also gives me a breakfast voucher but tells me that as the hotel doesn't open for breakfast until 0600 and my flight also goes at 0600, it may not be of any use. She hands it to me anyway. Gee thanks. I wend my weary way across to the hotel, have a shower, go down to get my evening meal and then crash out on the bed. Don't ask me how I slept. I don't know. I am unconscious until my alarm shocks me awake at 0500.

I'm back in the terminal, having made my way yet again through passport control and the dreaded X-Ray security queue and I'm sat waiting at the gate again, on time. I board the Paris flight, which is completely full, mainly with passengers of the Gallic persuasion. There's not a siege free dans le entire plane. Merde. It's deja vu. Once again there is a long delay, and then we taxi out ready to take off. Then ... the pilot speaks over the intercom in French. It sounds serious. His French speaking audience groans out loud. What could have happened to make them groan? My mind races - has Edith Piaf been raised from the dead? Perhaps they forgot to load the moules et frites for the in-flight menu? Maybe Nicolas Sarkozy has banned the mini-skirt? Then the pilot says it all again in English, and it's my turn to groan out loud. I should have known. There is a problem with the instrumentation and we need to return to the stand. 30 minutes later, after a lot of faffing about and yellow jacket engineering types gesticulating in and out of the cockpit, another announcement is given. We are all to disembark because this plane is not going anywhere. Brussels Air regrets ...le blah blah blah... but safety first, etc. OK, good call.

We are told to report to the Brussels Air ticketing desk to rearrange our flights. We all pile off the plane and make our way up the stairs (the escalator also has technical faults) and are back in the Brussels Airport terminal again. I'm about 10th in the queue for the Brussels Air ticketing desk, and with 150 people descending it is chaos of almost biblical proportions. There are exactly two desk clerks. To deal with 150 people. And each query takes around 10 minutes to solve. After 90 minutes, standing about with my legs gradually giving up the ghost and feeling totally dehydrated, it's my turn and I am told that there are no direct flights to Bristol, but would I like to fly to another English airport instead perhaps? Here we go again...

Eventually I am promised a flight to Birmingham airport, and a ground transfer to Bristol aiport where my car awaits... I could go on and on, with this saga, but I won't. Suffice it to say, I got to Birmingham, and the taxi was waiting for me. The driver got me from Birmingham to Bristol airport in just over 2 hours, where my car awaited me. I'm back home now, after just over 20 hours of travel. I could almost have walked the distance in that time. But I tell thee this for nowt. If you think international travel is glamorous, you are out of your tiny mind.

Image source: Fotopedia

The road is endless... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Twitter: it's still about the connections

The current consensus is that Twitter is for oldies, and that younger people (particularly those under 30) don't tend to use it. Whilst we must avoid sweeping statements, and accept that some young people do actually use Twitter on a regular basis, some recent polls such as the Pearson and Babson Survey have suggested that only 2% of teachers have used it to communicate with their students. The survey, which was conducted in the U.S., says that Facebook and Youtube are the tools of choice for college students.

But let's stop one moment and think about this. We need to take care that we don't pigeon hole the use of social media (or any other tool for that matter) within age limits. It's just as rediculous to claim that only old people use wheelchairs. We made this mistake when we swallowed Marc Prensky's digital natives and immigrants theory whole. In hindsight, we now know that age is not a determining factor in whether or not we effectively use digital media. In fact, Dave White's alternative theory - visitors and residents, is a much more appropriate explanatory model in this context. Dave argues that residents are those who habituate themselves within particular media and virtual environments, and therefore have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the nuances and affordances of the tools they are using. On the other hand, visitors tend to know a lot less about the tools they are using if they only use/visit them intermittently. This explains in a more convincing way why some become very skillful in using technologies, whilst others struggle to master them. It may also provide an explanation about how people choose their social media tools - often because of the utility they perceive it can offer them, and in the case of social networking, by whoever else might also be already using the tool.

A recent discussion on Twitter (about the use of Twitter!) resulted in a number of interesting points being made about the way people adopt, exploit and develop their use of social media. There are clearly a number of different reasons why people use social networks, whether socially, professionally and for personal learning development. My suspicion is that people will choose different tools for different purposes, and consider their options based on who else uses the tools in question. There is evidence that several schools are using Twitter and other social media in everyday teaching. Dave Mitchell (Deputy Head Teacher at Heathfield Primary School in Lancashire) uses Twitter with his Year 6 students on a regular basis, and has reported very positive results. Dan Roberts (Deputy Head Teacher at Saltash.Net Secondary School in Cornwall) is also using Twitter and other social media of all types on a regular basis and has reported some very creative and award winning outcomes.

Dan Kennedy (an under-30 teacher at the Grange Secondary School in Dorset) pointed out that the main reason he uses Twitter is because his community - those he wishes to connect with - are best contacted using it. This should give us a clue that the use of Twitter, or any other social media tool, is not about age, but more about community. It's not so much about when you were born, but where you place yourself in the terrain of digital connection. Twitter is also about sharing - emotions, experiences, resources and great ideas. In Why Twitter is so Powerful, I made the following point:

Twitter is not so much about the information and useful links you can gain access to. Twitter is powerful because it allows people to share their emotions - you can gain a window on their everyday experiences, and that often helps you in your own daily struggles. I am often encouraged by people who share snapshots of what is happening in their lives right now. It's an important dimension - I have made many friends on Twitter whom I have later met and strengthened my friendships with. Self disclosure is a risky thing, but others often reciprocate. It can all be summed up by a quote from one of my favourite authors: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What!? You too? I thought I was the only one." - C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day goes to Chris Betcher who tweeted this: "Twitter makes me like people I’ve never met and Facebook makes me hate people I know in real life!”

Image source by Fotopedia


Twitter: it's still about the connections by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Educate the world, don't just feed it

Some of my Twitter buddies have reminded me today of the torrid picture that was taken of me jokingly emulating Edupunk Poster Boy Jim Groom. There's an image of me floating around the web with 'PUNK IT UP' on my knuckles. I guess it's timely, because I travel to Hamburg tomorrow to keynote the German Moodlemoot conference (#mootDE11n) on Thursday, and one of the key themes of my speech will be 'do it yourself' education, the ethos of edupunk. My title is 'The Road Ahead is Open', and I will cover a spectrum of open approaches, including open learning, open educational resources, and the open bricollage approach espoused by Levi Strauss. Ultimately, the entire speech will boil down to a plea for people to adopt an open scholarship approach to their learning and teaching.

Open Scholarship, as I have previously suggested, is much more than a term denoting open practices. Open Scholarship is a way of life, based on the belief that to share your ideas is much better than to hoard them. It's also about opening yourself and your ideas up for constructive criticism, so that in receiving feedback from your PLN, you will learn and grow together. Let me ask you this: What possible purpose is there to hide knowledge away from people who need it to survive and make their lives better? Stephen Heppell, in the 2011 Plymouth e-Learning Conference stunned us all by declaring that around half a billion children in the world (like the ones in the picture above) are outside of education, and don't have a hope of even seeing the inside of textbook, let alone a classroom. And yet all it would take to educate the lot of them would be 5 billion US dollars. It got me thinking. There are a few super-rich people in the world who have this kind of money, and more, in their personal fortunes. Certainly, many of the banks or corporations around the world are rich enough to have this kind of cash to spare. But how many of them would be willing to stump some up to educate our world?

Several years ago, we all gave money to a world wide appeal to feed the starving of the world. The 'Feed the World' campaign was a triumph of compassionate fund raising, but it simply solved a problem in the there and then. Poverty and starvation still exist and although we can't cure it, we can educate people who are in poverty if we simply share the wealth and knowledge about.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you show him how to fish you feed him for life. In many cultures, if you educate a man, he is self sufficient. Yet if you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. How are we going to meet the challenge of this century? The challenge to educate people out of poverty? Open scholarship will go a long way to resolving that one, because if everyone shares what they know, and we don't greedily hoard that knowledge away, or capilulate to the invasion of the edubusinesses, the world will be a far more equitable place.

Educate the world, don't just feed it by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Causing ripples

There is a growing swell of movement toward informal learning through social media. It is free, connected, creative and disruptive. It happens across all sectors of education - it's for everyone. Shelly Terrell's well received keynote speech at the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference exemplified this kind of learning. Many who watched her speech, either from within the room, or via the livestreaming elsewhere in the world would have seen that Shelly passionately believes in what she preaches. And she also practices it. The previous evening she had dashed back from the conference dinner to present a live webinar from her hotel room in Plymouth.

Shelly talked about the butterfly effect - a mainstay example of chaos theory - and used it as an analogy to describe the incredible potential of social media. 'Blog or tweet a good idea, and minutes later, teachers may be using it for real, in a classroom somewhere' she said. The ripples caused by some content can extend onto the screens of many thousands or millions of people worldwide, she pointed out. Youtube videos go viral very quickly as the crowd gains awareness of the content and message. How can we harness this phenomenon in learning? she asked.

Yes, there is incredible power in Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and a host of other free tools. The key question and take away points from this keynote were - how do we harness this potential of social media, and how can we apply such tools in authentic learning contexts so that learners are engaged, challenged and inspired? Shelly Terrell's keynote was a fitting finale to this year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference. The theme - digital futures - was well and truly covered, and from many angles, perspectives, arguments.

Next year's PeLC will be different again, with good reason. We are not dropping the 'e' and nor should we. Instead, the 'e' no longer stands for electronic. Now it stands for enhanced. What kind of enhancements can we expect in the next year? What will we witness from the worlds of formal education and informal learning, games based learning, the mobile communities and social media tribes? Whatever emerges in the next few months, you can almost lay a bet on it, that it will be reflected in next year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference.
A number of other people are also blogging about pelc11. Check out their blog posts below:

Catherine Cronin
Matt Lingard
Simon Finch
Jason Truscott
Stephen Farmer
Doug Belshaw (podcast)
Doug Belshaw (blogpost)

Teach less, learn more

I have now had some time to reflect on this week's Plymouth e-Learning Conference. For me, No. 6 has been the best of the series so far. A growing collection of colourful images of the conference can be found at the Flickr Group Pool for sharing and download. Several people came to me after the event and said that they thought the conference had morphed, turned a corner, transformed into something entirely new. And to be honest, there did seem to be a new ambience around the conference this time that I had not previously encountered. Was it that we included children this year, on Day 1, for the student voice technology showcase? Possibly, because they certainly added a new and very welcome dimension to the event. Looking around the room as they spoke, the audience was all smiles, and many people have stated that it was one of the highlights of the conference for them to listen to groups of such articulate and confident young people showing us oldsters how they used technologies to enhance their own learning in the classroom. We will reprise this next year, that's for sure.

Was it perhaps that Day 1 was a free day, to which anyone could come, to pitch in, watch the robot show, take part in the open workshops, and generally share their ideas in a very friendly and open environment? Overall, the ethos of PeLC is that everyone is included, there are no hard and fast rules, and everyone has a voice. People are even allowed to say they don't know and to share their failures as well as their successes. Northern Grid for Learning's Simon Finch identified this as one of PeLC's unique features:

"Where Pelc differs from other conferences is in the behaviour conventions of the audience. There are, at most conferences, unwritten rules that discourage movement of any kind. Many conferences feel more like auction rooms with each delegate scared to move a hand, reach inside their bag or even shuffle in their seat to ease a creeping cramp. At Pelc I constantly took pictures with my Android and then my camera, and then tapping and reading tweets, sat on the floor and uploaded images to Flickr via my laptop, stood on the stairways and left and entered sessions at will. This freedom to take ownership of my learning is a rare experience for me and one that has ensured that I have taken far more away from this conference than any other more ‘analogue’ conferences."

Perhaps it was the presence this year of a Teachmeet, where teachers and trainee teachers were invited at random to talk for just a few minutes about their recent classroom experiences - sharing best practice with each other in an informal, fun and entertaining atmosphere. Or perhaps the presence of the Twitter screens showing #pelc11 tweets live as they happened, or possibly the live streaming of some of the key sessions (219 people were watching Teachmeet from outside the conference at one point) served to create the connections people needed to be able to enjoy the event in a new dimension.

Maybe it was the world class quality and quantity of our invited speakers. PeLC prides itself by inviting exciting, authoritative and engaging speakers each year, but this year we pushed the boat out, with four keynotes and several invited workshops. John Davitt, in his quirky, off-the-wall session: 'From Silo to Orchestra: The staccato progress of eLearning' encouraged us all to perform our teaching in a different way, using different steps, alternative tempos and creative melodies, so that learners were engaged in many new ways.

John Sheffield, a new blogger, and one of our student teachers, was present for Davitt's keynote and noted: "he said 'Teach less so they learn more'. I think this is quite profound, that in effect we as teachers can get in the way of a child's progress. Just look at what the children at Saltash.net achieved without teacher input, or the children of Sugata Mitra's Hole-in-the-Wall project. The final thing he mentioned that resonated with me is that 'It's not about computers, it's about tools, activities and risk'. This was quite inspiring, and linked nicely back to his first quote. We have a wealth of exciting things, but if we don't try them and use them effectively, then they go to waste. There should be no fear of trying something new."

Stephen Heppell also gave an inspiring speech on designing physical learning spaces, drawing on what we had already learnt from virtual spaces. He showed examples of a number of 'playful learning spaces' including rooms with no corners, 'fidget seats' that you fall off if you sit still for too long, classrooms where you remove your shoes and go barefoot, and even a classroom where they bake bread in an oven. These kind of sensory experiences, said Stephen are important for us to consider in the wholistic education of young people. "This generation of learners will astonish us", he declared, but only if we astonish them by providing stimulating and relevant learning environments.

PeLC will continue to astonish too I hope, with new ways of engaging delegates each year. Next year, the theme of PeLC12 (April 18-20, 2012) is 'Create, Connect, Collaborate: Learning in New Dimensions'. We aim to create an even more dynamic event for all who participate, and we aim to connect more than ever, thereby fostering new ways to collaborate. We certainly plan to hold more Teachmeet type open forum sessions, and how about this - a Failure Confessional. Instead of talking about our successes as educators and learners, we will encourage presenters to talk about their failures. What will we learn from this? We don't know until we try. Are you with us?

Images courtesy of Jason Truscott

Teach less, learn more by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

It's about the kids

The Plymouth e-Learning Conference (PeLC) is over for another year, but the memories and the reverberations will be there for a long time, methinks. Delegates from Ireland, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Turkey, Bulgaria, USA, Canada, Argentina, Oman, Austria, Lebanon, Italy and Australia, as well as from all over the UK, attended the event this year. I got the impression from all I talked to, that people were thrilled to be at the event, keen to engage with such a passionate and knowledgeable audience, and extremely excited to listen to our world class speakers, Stephen Heppell, John Davitt, Jane Seale and Shelly Terrell. The #pelc11 Twitter stream was alive and kicking long before the event started, with over 300 tweets before the conference started at 1pm.

The weather throughout the conference has been perfect, as we promised - clear blue skies and plenty of sunshine show the seaside city of Plymouth at its glittering finest. PeLC started with a free day, which welcomed children and their teachers from several local schools, and several more schools around the UK via technological means. One of the highlights of Day 1 was the student voice technology showcase, hosted by Dan Roberts, in which children from both the primary and secondary sector regaled the audience with their astounding and inspirational uses of digital tools in the classroom. The session prompted Matt Lingard to blog about how much the children had impressed everyone with their enthusiasm for learning. They were clearly very confident and extremely articulate, and seemed completely undaunted by their surroundings and audience. Children it seemed, were everywhere at PeLC on Day 1, playing with small humanoid machines in the Robot Show, trying their hand at Internet Radio broadcasting with the wonderfully entertaining Russell Prue, and sampling the excellent food in the main atrium of the Levinsky Building.
Another highlight of Day 1 was the evening Teachmeet where several teachers and many more student teachers were chosen at random to stand up for a few minutes to share their ideas and experiences on how to harness the power of learning technology.

Yet Day 1 really belonged to the children, and the conference reverberated with their energy. It was a joy to have them joining us at the conference, and we will certainly be planning more children focused events next year, because let's face it, our kids are not the future - they are the 'now'. (More reports from the conference later)

Images by Jason Truscott (More pictures of #pelc11 here)

 
It's about the kids by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Twitter: Le triple filtree

I've been discussing the merits of Twitter as a professional social network recently in conversation with colleagues. One of the regular objections to using Twitter professionally is that there is too great a noise-to-signal ratio. In other words, people are reluctant to get too deeply involved with Twitter because they think they will be swamped with people talking about what they had for breakfast, how their cat was sick on their auntie Bessie, or other niff naff and trivia. Professionals don't have a lot of spare time, and want to maximise the time they do have. I don't blame them. But they should also realise that Twitter can actually save them time if used in an appropriate manner.

I admit that whilst some people do natter on about irrelevant or self indulgent stuff, I tell them that there is also a lot of good content being tweeted daily on Twitter and also an occasional nugget of gold - a link for example to a must-see resource. The answer to effective Twitter use, I point out to them, is the manner in which you use it. The potential is there for it to be used as a very powerful Personal Learning Network (PLN) if it is employed appropriately. PLNs can help professionals by providing solutions to all kinds of problems. Follow the right people, and you will always have food for thought. Ask the right questions of the right people, and you will get very useful answers, pretty damn quick. The answer to finding your own powerful PLN in Twitter is simple: It's all about filtering, and Twitter can be filtered on three levels at least.

Firstly, see Twitter as a fast moving stream. You can choose when to dip your toes in the water and when to let the stream flow past. You don't have to be online all the time, and you don't have to have Twitter on all the time. Use it when you need to, to learn, discover, share, connect and communicate.

Secondly, filter by choosing to follow the right people. There are at least three ways to choose the people you should most likely follow. 1) Go on the recommendations of people you trust. If they have been on Twitter for a while, they will know the ropes and they will know the dopes. Ask for their advice, or simply trust them and follow the people they recommend in their Twitter lists. 2) Choose to follow people on the basis of their content - look at their profiles and the Tweets they post, and you'll soon see whether or not it will be worth your while following them. 3) Don't forget that you can also discover people to follow on Twitter through serendipity. This may be because someone else you follow has retweeted them or simply because you spot them online. If they look interesting, follow them - you have nothing to lose - and you can always unfollow later if it all gets a little too tedious.

Thirdly, you can filter your Twitter stream by using keywords to search for specific content. You can also be very specific by following hastags for say, events such as conferences, or breaking news stories. Keeping an eye on trending topics can also be useful occasionally, especially if you want to lock into something that is breaking news. These three levels of filtering should enable you to enjoy Twitter as a useful PLN, without you being swamped with spurious content. Third party tools such as Tweetdeck can also compartmentalise content and make it manageable. You can choose what each of your columns contains, including your own mentions or DMs (Direct, private messages to you from friends). Happy Twittering!

Image source by Sarah Gallagher

Twitter: Le triple filtree by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Robot invasion!

The 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference will kick off with a free first day on Wednesday 6th April, where we will see an invasion of humanoid robots and artifical beings. The Faculty of Science and Technology in Plymouth is well known for its Robot football team and its work into intelligent systems, and delegates will get the chance next week to see them roaming the exhibition floor, and will even get the chance to interact with them! One of the cutest robots ever - iCub - is pictured here.

There will also be an evening Teachmeet, a student voice technology showcase, a panel discussion on e-safety and a keynote speech from Professor Jane Seale (on technology and inclusion). You can reserve your place for the Day 1 free events here, but hurry, because tickets are going fast. In previous years we have seen the popularity of PeLC growing, with interest from international delegates. This year delegates are attending from as far afield as Argentina, USA, Turkey and Australia, with plenty from across Europe and from all over the UK.

This year, for the first time, PeLC will be a 3 day international event. There will also be keynote speeches from John Davitt, Professor Stephen Heppell and Shelly Terrell, as well as invited workshops from Simon Finch, Andy Black, James Clay, Mark Power, Zak Mensah and Doug Belshaw. The conference will be officially opened by University of Plymouth Deputy Vice-Chancellor and former UK Minister of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, Bill Rammell. Together, over 50 individual events await delegates from Wednesday 6th through to Friday 8th April, all within the prestigious and futuristic Levinsky building. For those hardy souls who are immune to inertia sickness, there will be free showings of the university's stunning 3D Vision Immersion Theatre on Day 3.

And of course, there will be prizes and free gifts after the plenary on Day 3 for those keen enough to stay to the very end, including a 3G Kindle, Nintendo 3DS and numerous other gadgets and gizmos designed to please our tech savvy audience. As usual, our conference dinner will be held in the historic and picturesque area of Plymouth's Barbican quayside (pictured), and there will be a Devon cream tea. Don't say we don't spoil you. See you there, or follow on the #pelc11 hashtag and via live streaming (of selected events) on the conference website.

Image sources: University of Plymouth and Jose Luis Garcia

Robot invasion! by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.