Our viral web

We are all Big Brother now. Not in the Orwellian dystopic sense of course. But we all have access to the power of social media, and with appropriate use, and with enough of us involved, we are all watchers - and we can all make a difference. Reading a blog post by Jonathan MacDonald today got me thinking about the vast, untapped potential of the social web to inform, challenge, educate and motivate. MacDonald witnessed a tube train guard threatening and verbally abusing a passenger. He reported it online, sharing his outrage with his social network. The story went viral, spreading rapidly across other networks. YouTube, Twitter and the rest of the social media family were quickly unundated with comments and views. Within 24 hours, the story (and others of a similar nature) had made it into the mainstream on traditional mass media, where it was covered by the likes of BBC TV News and Sky TV News, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Even the Mayor of London joined in with the discussion. The guard was subsequently suspended and is under investigation.

In an interesting episode last year, I personally experienced the power of the viral web through Wikipedia Commons. I took several pictures of Punk Godfather Malcolm McLaren when he spoke at Handheld Learning 2009 in London. The next day I posted his picture onto my Flickr account and licenced it under Creative Commons for free sharing and re-use. Subsequently others loaded it up in several versions to Wikimedia Commons. None of us were aware at the time, but Malcolm's speech was to be one of his last public appearances before his untimely death in 2010. The media went into overdrive, and of course, searched around for images they could freely use to illustrate their stories.

Many journals and newspapers found and used my image of McLaren, with me duly credited as the photographer. My photo even graces his Wikipedia page (in all language versions). My name is now forever linked to that of Malcolm McLaren. A simple search on Google using his name and mine together will deliver you hundreds of hits. Try it. It's an example of a picture going viral on the web. There are many other examples of the viral spreading of images, videos, sound bites and ideas - some are legendary. They become memes as people pass them on quickly across the social web from one to another. There are also many examples of citizen journalism, where those who are actually present at the scene of an incident can upload their images quickly, or can tweet their observations instantly, for sharing to a potentially world wide audience on the web. The truth of what is happening becomes common knowledge, even before the press can get there to report it, or in some cases edit, sanitise and filter it.

I don't believe we have even begun to tap into the true potential of social media yet. As more and more people connect with each other in different ways, across a multitude of platforms, through a bewildering array of devices, I think we are going to see some extraordinary things happening, socially, culturally and politically. Communities are going to be transformed and our society forever changed by the use of these tools. Let's hope it will be for the better.

Image source by Ocean Flynn

Our viral web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

Is Wikipedia dying a slow death? Will the one-stop shop for students soon draw its final breath?

These are the questions posed by the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones in his blog post 'Wikipedia on the wane?' His post was fomented by a recent report from a Spanish academic who claims that editors are leaving the online wiki based encyclopedia faster than new ones are joining. The study estimates that Wikipedia has lost 49,000 editors in just a few months. That's rather careless of them - just where did all those editors go? What are they doing now? And where were they the last time we saw them? They certainly aren't editing Wikipedia's pages anymore says the report. And it seems that the crisis has been caused by heavy handed tactics and beaurocracy which is offputting to those who wish to create new pages or make changes to existing entries. Love or hate Wikipedia, you have to admit it is a real phenomenon, with just about every subject under the sun covered, and high rankings for all pages in search engines. If you want depth of information, go to Encyclopaedia Brittanica. If you want breadth and width of topic coverage, it's Wikipedia you need. They are both fairly accurate, but when an error was detected in the past, Wikipedians moved in quickly to rectify it. But will that continue, or will the website fall into neglect and disrepair?

The report, which also features in the Wall Street Journal, shows that enthusiasm (which let's face it, was the reason for Wikipedia's early success) seems to be falling away. Cellan-Jones suggests that without the 'worker bees' nurturing the pages of Wikipedia, and dedicated armies of enthusiastic and knowledgeable editors maintaining the fine balance between opinion and fact, the online encyclopedia may fall into disrepute. It would be ironic indeed if this was the case, now that Wikipedia seems to be gaining respect with its recently introduced new quality measures.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel - visitors to Wikipedia are on the increase, and it looks as though the rumours of its demise are premature. The solution has to be that more users need to become contributors - which was after all, the original ethos of the wiki, wasn't it?

Image source (edited)

Turning the screws on Twitter

Twitter has taken on a life of its own, in more ways than one. In January I wrote an innocuous looking post called Teaching with Twitter. It lay dormant for a few weeks before going viral. There were intermittent surges of interest, when a few other blogs and websites commented on it. Then the BBC News Website picked it up last week during the breaking news about the proposed new Primary curriculum here in the UK. They picked up the same link again this morning - this time because MPs are talking about 'a simpler curriculum' which features greater use of social media - and now my blog traffic is going through the roof. Whilst it is gratifying to see that people are taking a keen interest in the idea of microblogging, social networks and general use of the Web for teaching and learning, I can't help but feel a little uneasy.

Several posts I saw yesterday deserve another airing here to illustrate the point I wish to make. Neil Witt, one of my colleagues here at the University of Plymouth warned yesterday in his blog that Twitter is in danger of being overhyped. Neil argues that tools such as Twitter do not replace good teaching, but should be used to enhance it: "Surely it’s about giving students the skills to make judgements on information, to realise what they can trust and to make best use of resources". Another useful post which added to the debate comes courtesy of Sarah Horrigan who writes about what she terms 'Twetiquette'. She lists 7 key 'rules' she would like to see adopted for better practice Twitter use. Sarah complains about the potential misuse of Twitter. Two of her pet hates are people protecting their profiles so you can't see who is following you, and being followed by a service or company when it has not been requested. She makes some interesting points, but Sarah - the genie is now out of the bottle - and you have just coined a new term whether you like it or not!

Finally, a post from TechCrunch caught my eye yesterday. In a post entitled 'Is Twitter becoming the new Myspace?' the author lists some similarities between uses of the two services:

• There is a competition for followers similar to collecting “friends” on MySpace


• Anonymity is normal on both Twitter and Myspace, unlike Facebook


• Fake profiles are proliferating


• Real celebrity profiles are also proliferating, but they are often maintained by someone else for marketing, leading to spam


• Finally, the one most evident visually—services like Twitback, Twitterbacks and Twitterimage help you customize your profiles. You can compare Britney Spear’s profiles on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook respectively

Any teacher worth their salt will see some of the potential difficulties Twitter is running into, and the implications for child protection are clear. Twitter for example will block anyone under 13 (although this doesn't stop most young users from faking their Date of Birth). Teachers and parents are rightly concerned about how children use the Internet to gain access to content and people. Leaving aside the privacy and safety issues for one moment, if used appropriately in the classroom, I think tools like Twitter can provide a great deal of added value. Here are just three things I see Twitter bringing to the classroom:

1) Episodic Backchannelling: During any event, whether it is a lesson, a school concert or a sports day, children of all ages can create and send 140 character tweets on what is happening right there and then, their opinions on it, and its implications. Doing so will not only engage them more deeply in the event, but may cause them to think more critically about what they are witnessing.

2) Critical Writing: Because Twitter only allows 140 characters, children will need to think very carefully about what they will tweet. They will need to be concise, and possibly creative in the way they compose and present their tweet.

3) Social Filtering: Twitter can be used in a closed manner, with protection of updates and blocking of users. This can provide a secure bubble of activity where children are protected from being followed by outsiders, and where the teacher can maintain a reasonable level of control over discussions. The use of #tags and DMs (Direct messages) can also provide a useful filtered environment for specific themes.

I'm currently engaged in research with some colleagues here investigating how we can use Twitter in higher education. I would of course, be very interested to hear from teachers in the primary and secondary sectors who would like to study the uses of Twitter in their own professional contexts. The jury is still out on Twitter. Want to be one of the members of the panel?

Image Source

FreeSat

The new free satellite service being offered across the UK probably won't cause any dramatic changes in pay-to-view TV in the coming months. But we could certainly see the demise of FreeView, which the new service could make completely redundant. According to the BBC News service article, FreeSat is going to be made available in 98 per cent of UK homes, and will carry 80 TV and radio channels even in areas where FreeView is unavailable.

With television viewing on the decline anyway (youth in particular are reported to spend more hours per week using the Internet than they are sat in front of the box) this means the old fogies will have even more channels available to watch on which there is nothing but sit-com repeats, make-over programmes and other assorted superficial drivel, all neatly laced with the increasingly regular, irritating adverts.

So, no change there then.

Not a fan of spam

All you ever needed to know about spam, but were afraid to ask is on the BBC news site today. It's 15 years since Joel Furr first applied the old Monty Python sketch term to unsolicited e-mails. It's one of those things we all seem to put up with, and no one seems to complain about anymore. Anti-spam software doesn't seem to work. If you reply, they know they have a 'live one'.

When I used to receive junk mail from insurance or credit card companies, my response was to simply bundle up the contents, stuff them all into the pre-paid return envelope and send it back. The junk mailer then had to pay twice for the privilege of discovering that I wasn't interested. The junk mail soon stopped coming.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could do the same thing to spammers as I do when I received junk mail? Send it staright back to them with interest (say 1000 copies) and clog up their freakin' mailbox??? Patricia Wallace - in her book 'The Psychology of the Internet' says that getting rid of spam is the psychological equivalent of 'weeding the garden'. Well, I have to 'weed my garden' every day. If anyone has a solution I think we should all be told....

FaceBooking our future...

Social networks will change the way we look at world issues claims a new article. The independent journalist Bill Thompson (Bill Board) has just posted a very challenging piece on the BBC technology news site. In a nutshell, Thompson describes a world in which the (so far) unconnected citizens of our planet suddenly discover how to FaceBook or Flickr using mobile phones. Says Thompson: "What happens when the photos on Facebook and Flickr show devastated crops and starving families - and these people are not just faces on the television but old friends, people whose likes and dislikes and reading habits and favourite films we know and share?"

Thompson puts it a lot more eloquently than I can, so read his article entitled: 'Social net offers new perspective'.

Only here for the fear

An item today on the BBC news web reports that British Telecom is commisioning the men in white coats (read psychologists) to study why some people avoid using the Internet. A quote from the report states: 'Early research done for the project suggests that, for some, using the net is as stressful as a bungee jump'. Well fancy that - how do they know? Let's push this experiment to the limit shall we? Let's get the 'subjects' to use the Internet (on wireless laptops or handheld) whilst doing a bungee jump, and let's get them to gargle with TCP for good measure. Then we can measure real technophobia. To heck with the ethics. (Only joking .... I wouldn't use the TCP).

It will be interesting to see what the men in white coats come up with in their findings, as to whether BT will be pleased about the outcome. I think we already know the answer to that don't we? After all, BT are paying.

Putting our minds at rest

Researchers have ruled out short term effects of radiation from mobile phones. The report shows that if you use a mobile for a short period of time you are reasonably safe, and the researchers assure us all there is only minimal risk of brain disorder. That's very nice of them. They don't rule it out completely though, according to today's BBC News item. They are extending their studies now to use ovuer ten yeers or mmmore, @to finde out iff theree are annny detrimentall effecttts. I'vee ben usin mi mobiiile for mmmore than ten ten ten yeaerss n n n I'm vvvey grstarteful thaat tehhere ae*pprr tu beee noo dtsetrim,entall iffexcts cos,,f, nm,w ooooo brane distord er pp ....phtttttttttt.......fhhu - pop hmmmmmzzxmmmm..... woooooo woooooo wooooooo

Viva la difference

Yesterday I blogged that there was little or no difference between FaceBook and MySpace, principally because I thought there was no difference between the social class profiles of users. Now it seems that there may be a difference between the two social networking services after all.... A new report (see BBC News online) reveals that MySpace is fast losing ground to both FaceBook and Bebo, and that in the UK in particular, these two are much more popular.

Says the report, by Rory Cellan-Jones: 'There was also evidence that there is plenty of promiscuity amongst the social networkers - at least when it comes to visiting the various sites. Around half a million British users visited all three services in May'. Promiscuity? What does Mr Cellan-Jones mean by this?? Lack of loyalty I hope, otherwise they must all be bonkers ....

Told you so...

Won't say I told you so, but.... In my blog on 3rd January 'Living in a post-modem world', I predicted that due to better broadband connections in the UK, and the subsequent increase in music downloads, highstreet shops such as HMV Records would be hard pressed to sell CDs.

Well lo and behold, yesterday HMV announced they will no longer be stocking CD singles, as 'it is no longer relevant to the way it sells music.' (BBC News Online) Didn't take them long, did it?

To be fair, it's not just about broadband and the web but these are influential factors. As a result, last week there were changes in the way the singles charts in the UK will be compiled. The charts will now take into consideration all the web downloads as well as high street sales. So HMV are the first... will Virgin and the others follow?