Imagined worlds

Here's my last post reviewing the new publication 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures'.

When we started out writing our chapter on cybercultures, Helen Keegan and I didn't know that it would eventually end up being the final chapter in the book. We first hit on the idea for the chapter while we were talking together at Online Educa - a conference held at the end of every year in Berlin. Because Helen lives in Manchester and I live in Plymouth, the best solution for our collaborative writing turned out to be Google Docs. It worked superbly. We wrote in different colours so we could track who was doing what, and eventually, the chapter was completed. We are very pleased with the result. Entitled 'Imagined Worlds, Emerging Cultures', chapter 17 focuses on the experiences found in technology mediated communication within virtual environments and we attempt to identify and explain some of the emerging practices, behaviours and self-representations. We pay particular attention to the 'imagined' elements of social networking services and multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), and specifically on relationships:

It is often the fantasy component and the freedom to let one's imagination run riot that first attracts adherents. Imagined worlds facilitate a number of experiences that could never be conceived as possible in the real world, but they also mediate familiar experiences. One familiar feature of the human experience - friendship - is increasingly mediated through new technologies and social spaces. For some, even this fundamental human experience may need to be reconceptualized (p 262).

We go on to discuss a number of experiences such as 'virtual promiscuity', weak and strong social ties, the clash of old and new media and the implications on formal learning, and discuss the breaches in cultural boundaries that have been caused through liberalized social media such as YouTube ('Star Wars Kid' for example) and Facebook. We also compare the popular digital clan cultures of Flickrites and Facebookers. We conclude with a discussion on how shifting perceptions of privacy, identity and ownership as well as friendship are being redefined due to the imagined worlds we inhabit for increasing proportions of our time.

Give PLEs a chance

This is my penultimate post in the series reviewing the new book 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures'. This post features Graham Attwell's chapter on the social impact of personal learning environments (PLEs). Graham, as director of the Wales based independent research agency Pontydysgu (Bridge to Learning) is deeply embroiled in the study of emerging learning technologies. In his chapter, he concentrates on learning in the workplace, and predicts that PLEs will have:

a profound effect in systems for teaching and learning, on pedagogic approaches to learning, and on knowledge development and sharing (p 120).

Graham Attwell shows how industrial models of education and training fail to address the needs of contemporary society, and argues that it is the PLE concept, with all its associated content generation and sharing tools, that will provide solutions. He argues that most learning takes place informally outside the boundaries of traditional school environment:

Learning is taking place through engagement in social networking, both by young people of school age and by older people in work. Furthermore, learning takes place in multiple contexts, in work, in the community, and in the home as well as in the school, yet our schooling systems remain wedded to attainment against a narrow curriculum of formal knowledge. Informal learning is hardly acknowledged, less still fostered and facilitated (p 125-6).

Attwell makes some compelling arguments for change in the school system, calling on teachers to revisit the concept of learning. For him, the PLE is the weapon of choice for those who want to survive and thrive in the shifting sands of a challenging and volatile world of work. It's another cracking read for all those who are interested in how learning technologies, education and training will prosper in the coming decade.

(Image source: replacement-software.co.uk)

The end of civilization? Revoicing txt

I borrowed the title for this blog post from an article by an old friend and colleague of mine, Victoria Carrington, who is sadly no longer with us (she returned to Australia, see). Victoria introduced the term 'squeeze text' or 'txt' to describe the respellings that have emerged due to short message services where 160 characters or less prompt abbreviations and other contrivances. Words and phrases such as gr8, cu2moro and l8r, (a short glossary is available) have caused consternation amongst purists of grammar and spelling, hence the 'end of civilisation' imprecation. Such respellings may however be simply evidence of a continuing process of evolution for the English language. In the new volume 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', a chapter written by Tim Shortis explores this notion in greater detail. Tim considers the way texting is challenging the orthodoxy of spelling, and shows that there are...

...textual pressures that act on users' choices. ICT and the Internet have not so much changed spelling as reregulated what counts as spelling, and in doing so, there is a challenge to the official educational discourses of literacy, and particularly as they apply to literacy (p 225).

Tim is very vocal in his belief that text respelling is nothing new, although the technology being used to convey the messages is. The 'vernacular orthographies' - slang and reduced spellings used in txt messages - have influences, he says, which go beyond the limited 160 characters, embracing a number of other influences including trade names and popular culture. This is a well written and challenging chapter, and I suspect the purists amongst us who baulk against the idea of txters creating their own new spellings of words, will probably be in no position to complain in 30-40 years time when 'Generation Y' have become the captains of industry, head teachers and military commanders, and we have all joined the ranks of the retired.

(picture source: georgevanantwerp.com)

The embodied self

Continuing with my post-publication commentary on my new book, the edited volume entitled: 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', today I feature Chapter 5 by Hugh Miller and Jill Arnold: 'Identity in Cyberspace'. I remember when I read the first draft of this chapter, thinking, wow - this has a real incisiveness about it. Hugh and Jill have done a very thorough job exploring the multiple virtual worlds we find ourselves drawn into, such as Facebook (for the 'flat' representations of self) or Second Life (where our avatars are 3D and mobile). They are very much concerned with the psychology behind the way we re-create ourselves when we venture into these imagined worlds. They write:

Our own research has shown that the psychology of identity and self presentation on the Web is best understood in terms of how people draw on those same signifiers of who and what we are as are used elsewhere: use of photos, claims made of achievements, hobbies, geographical origins, etc. We argue that when people enter into cyberspace they bring with them expectations, challenges, and vulnerabilities from every day life experience and the experience of managing an identity in various circumstances, and here was just another mode (or exciting new theatre) to explore and to play out being oneself (p 58).

Miller and Arnold are here arguing that the self we project into cyberspace has all the components of our real life self, but that there is the potential for fantastic or even outlandish new representations of that self, within the affordances of the virtual environment. This of course, implies that all of the outworkings of people's avatars (the gender bending, species swapping, age reassignment, fantasy representations and so on) lay inert within the person's psyche, and are enlivened (or made possible) within say, Second Life as the environment gives them licence and utility. I would be interested to hear people's views on this interesting perspective (do you agree with it?), and how such ideas might be applied to learning, whether formal or informal....

A little bit of culture

I am really pleased that I was able to finish off the final editing and proof reading for the new book 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures' which has now gone to press. A whole host of people have contributed toward the 17 chapters in the volume. The publishers, Information Age, who are based in the USA, Greenwich, Connecticut, are already publicising it on their website, and I have seen some of the cover artwork, so publication is imminent. Here's the blurb (wot I wrote meself):

As the title indicates, this book highlights the shifting and emergent features that represent life online, specifically in and around the territory of e-learning. Cybercultures in themselves are complex conglomerations of ideas, philosophies, concepts, and theories, some of which are fiercely contradictory. As a construct, "cyberculture" is a result of sustained attempts by diverse groups of people to make sense of multifarious activities, linguistic codes, and practices in complicated and ever-changing settings. It is an impossibly convoluted field. Any valid understanding of cyberculture can only be gained from living within it, and as Bell suggests, it is "made up of people, machines and stories in everyday life." Although this book contains a mix of perspectives, as the chapters progress, readers should detect some common threads. Technology-mediated activities are featured throughout, each evoking its particular cultural nuances and, as Derrick de Kerckhove (1997) has eloquently argued, technology acts as the skin of culture. All the authors are passionate about their subjects, every one engages critically with his or her topics, and each is fully committed to the belief that e-learning is a vitally important component in the future of education. All of the authors believe that digital learning environments will contribute massively to the success of the information society we now inhabit. Each is intent on exploration of the touchstone of "any time, any place" learning where temporal and spatial contexts cease to become barriers to learning, and where the boundaries are blurring between the formal and informal.

And here's a taste of the contents:

Foreword, Howard Rheingold. Introduction, Steve Wheeler. PART I: DIGITAL SUBCULTURES. Learning in Collaborative Spaces: Encouraging a Culture of Sharing, Steve Wheeler. Mobile Subcultures, John Traxler. Podcasting: A Listening Culture, Palitha Edirisingha. The Emergence of Ubiquitous and Pervasive Learning Cultures, Mark A. M. Kramer. PART II: ROLES AND IDENTITIES. Identity in Cyberspace, Hugh Miller and Jill Arnold. Digital Tribes, Virtual Clans, Steve Wheeler. Gaming and the Network Generation, Nicola Whitton. Creating an Online Course Generational Community, Leon James. The Social Impact of Personal Learning Environments, Graham Attwell. PART III: CYBER PERSPECTIVES. Emerging Online Practices: An Endo-Aesthetic Approach to E-tutoring and E-learning, Viv Tucker. Cyberculture and Poststructural Approaches, Ken Gale. Cyborg Theory and Learning, Vasi van Deventer. Transfer Through Learning Flexibility and Hypertextuality, Gorg Mallia. PART IV: NARRATIVES AND CASE STUDIES. Cybercrime in Society, Steven Furnell. Language Evolution in Txting Environments, Tim Shortis. The Cultural Impact of E-learning and Intranets on Corporate Employees, David Guralnick and Deb Larson. Imagined Worlds, Emerging Cultures, Steve Wheeler and Helen Keegan. Author Biographies. Index.