Thinking in networks

'Build your network and always think in networks. They create a sonor map of intelligence, expertise, information and insight. Your allies, your connections, can help you to navigate the larger number of challenges that can ultimately derail a startup company'. - Reid Hoffman (Founder of LinkedIn)

When he made this statement at Babson College in May 2012, Reid Hoffman was referring to startup companies, but he could very well have been giving advice to any undergraduate student, or indeed any teacher or academic. Let's be honest. We all need help. Education has always been a team sport, whatever side of the classroom you sit on. I know I increasingly rely upon my own colleagues, but that collegial reliance has extended beyond the walls of my institution. In fact it did so several years ago, even before the introduction of social media, through the use of e-mail and bulletin board services (remember them?). Social media has simply provided an increasingly powerful range of tools to extend personal learning networks (PLNs) to virtually any part of the world. I regularly hold conversations with colleagues in multiple time zones, because I can. I am connected, and I am thinking now as Reid Hoffman advised, in networks.

It would be a mistake to think of networks simply as connections (See my previous post entitled 'the importance of being networked'). They are much more complex than that. Networks involve connections, but they also hold the capability to boost the power of those connections exponentially, through multiple nodes of knowledge production and rapid amplification of ideas. In a mimicry of the myriad connections in the human brain, each node has the potential to link with many other nodes, and thus extend the power of the network exponentially. I can send out a Twitter link, which may be retweeted by a dozen of my Twitter followers. Each of those may have thousands of followers who don't follow me. They in turn retweet to their independent followers. Within a few minutes, or even seconds, my link is being shared by potentially hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. If they like my content, they may track back and follow me on Twitter too. This is why I say that retweeting is not repetition of ideas - it is amplifcation.

And Twitter is just one of a multitude of social networking tools available to teachers and academics. Other networks are available. The ability to connect these networks together (e.g. Twitter feed into your blog, or Facebook links mirrored in LinkedIn) means that teachers are never alone. Suddenly the team sport has become a relay that can go in any and all directions simultaneously, and every time the baton is passed on, it reproduces itself, so other teams can join in. As I have already suggested above, all we are really doing with social technology is replicating what we see in nature. Cell division and rapid proliferation of genetic material across an organism. Viral reproduction of genetic material between and across organisms. Rhizomatic spread of connections in a similar manner to brain cells or underground root systems. We are passing on memes instead of genes. It is the meosis and mitosis of ideas. At the moment though, we are merely scraping the surface of immense, almost infinite potential, and Reid Hoffman is right. If we want to exploit the power of this for the benefit of our students, we need to start thinking in networks.

Image source


Thinking in networks by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Separation and connection

The Internet has taken the act of human contact and amplified it exponentially. We are witnessing a time where a mobile world wide web of connections is proliferating, and in which social mores, human relationships and communication conventions have been irrevocably changed. This is not hyperbole. At the time of writing, Facebook boasts over 845 million subscriptions and this statistics grows each month. What is even more remarkable is that these 845 million user accounts have so far generated over 100 billion connections. These connections exist not only in links between 'friends', but also in fan page membership, tags, 'likes' and comments, image uploads (at least 250 million photos each day), hyperlinks and a whole host of other digital artefacts created by people simply linking into content and interacting with it. And that's just Facebook.

In his 2003 book 'Six Degrees', Duncan Watts expounded the idea of being connected in the digital age, drawing upon the theories of psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram had previously postulated that although the world's population is relatively huge, person X could, through a series of links to people who 'know each other' connect with person Y. Milgram wanted to discover how many people would be in an average 'chain' of connections between X and Y. Through his research, he came up with an answer - there are six degrees of separation.

Six Degrees of Separation is a useful book because it illuminates the science behind our daily use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Watts, for example, discusses the nature of biological viruses and uses the concept as a means to develop his ideas and theories around social connections in a digital world. He suggests that social connections mimic biological viruses, because they have one aim - to proliferate as far as possible. He cites a number of instances where content has gone 'viral' through the use of technology, and warns that such global connection potential has the power to influence just about everything .... genetics, 'global synchrony' and political revolutions (the latter was realised during the Arab Spring uprisings, where social media played a central role in the overthrow of despotic regimes). This approach to network theory is still refreshing, almost a decade after it was written. But what does this mean for education? For me, the concept of social connection means that as an educator, I am able to discover any kind of knowledge I wish, and converse with just about anyone I choose, as long as I am locked into the appropriate social network. It also means that for learners, there is absolutely no limit to the extent they can develop their personal learning networks. They have the power in their hand to make as many connections, and create as much content as they wish, regardless of time, space or geographical location. As an observer and commentator, I believe we have not even started to scratch the surface of the massive potential of social media and mobile technology to disrupt and transform learning. That's why it's so exciting to be an educator in the digital age.

But what of the original research? In 1967, in a pre-Internet world, Milgram proposed that there were only an average of six degrees of separation between any two people in the world. The question now, in the light of the rapid penetration of social media and mobile communications, is - is that number being reduced?

Reference
Watts, D. J. (2003) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: William Heinemann.

Image by Richard Giles


Separation and connection by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Lost in the crowd?

In his 2004 book 'Distraction', author Mark Curtis argued that our sense of self - or personal identity - can become confused or challenged when we habitually use digital technology. He made several interesting points about the blurring of boundaries between public and private (think of webcams and Facebook status updates for example) and that technology tends to distract us from 'who we are'. There has been some debate over whether or not people should combine their personal and business social media identities.

Curtis argues from the position that identity is malleable, rather than fixed, and that we learn from a very early age that we can be someone else through role playing, imagination or masquerade. Our immersion in media, he argues, provides us with a myriad of alternative role models we can adopt or adapt. By the same token, social media also give us endless opportunities to engage with others, including sports stars, entertainers, politicians and other celebrities. The Curtis position is that other people's lives are more glamorous than our own, and therefore we wish we could be them to escape from the mundane, if only for a while. All very well, but I'm not convinced that this argument is applicable to everyone. Does wishing to be someone else mean that you actually adopt their identity? I think not.

Curtis also seems to be implying that people are often unwilling or at least unconscious participants in the digital obfuscation of their identities. Again, this is a far from convincing argument, but even if it were true, would it really so much of a bad thing that we are able to engage in multiple online identity performance? What dangers might there be? Also, do we really find ourselves forced into performing multiple identities against our will?

Those who follow this blog or my Twitter accounts (yes, plural) will know that I am very willing to experiment with multiple identities, because I am fascinated by the possibilities and intrigued by the psychology behind personal use of social media. However, I engage with this through choice, and I feel fully in control of what is broadcast/published.

Immersion in environments such as virtual social worlds (Curtis uses Habbo Hotel as his example) are also argued to be a means where the boundaries of identity can be blurred. He makes a useful point that in such environments you don't necessarily know the people you are interacting with, because they often hide behind pseudonyms and always represent themselves as avatars. This does not necessarily mean though, that your identity is being changed or that you are 'losing control' of who you are. It may mean though that you open yourself up to identity theft or manipulation of your public facing image by others. Curtis also makes a useful point that managing multiple identities can demand a lot of effort and therefore becomes a distraction. I have discovered the effects of this personally, because I maintain six Twitter accounts. I therefore need to be very careful especially when using Tweetdeck that I check carefully which account I'm using before I hit the send button. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Reference
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being Human in the Digital Age. London: Futuretext.

Image source


Lost in the crowd? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality

I recently gave a keynote at the eLearning 2.0 conference held at Brunel University, in West London. The presentation was a reworked version of one I gave earlier in the year in Tallinn, Estonia. In Learning in a Digital Age: The Myth and the Reality, I present a number of widespread beliefs about elearning, and challenge the provenance, reasoning and application of these theories. Learning styles, digital natives and immigrants theory, and the arguments that you cannot personalise learning in large organisations; or that SMS txting is dumbing down language; are all scrutinised and challenged. Brunel University did an excellent job of recording my voice and the slides, and synchonising them, probably using Camtasia or a similar tool. Here it is in full, for those who want to follow the arguments and discussion that ensued.



Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The fame monster

Do we really need measures of online reputation? Can our worth be measured by the amount of Twitter followers we have or by how many +1s we receive on Google+?

Klout, Peerindex and other social reputation measuring sites are constantly bombarding web users with statistics about their 'true reach', 'amplification' and 'influence'. It all sounds very grand. And yet what is the actual value of these metrics? What does it mean that I currently have a Klout score of 60? This number is calculated among other things, on an analysis of my recent web activity on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ over the last 90 days. But just how accurate is it? And what happens to all the other web activities I participate in on sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn, Youtube and Slideshare? On Peerindex my influence score is only 51, so Peerindex must be measuring different activities to Klout, or has a different scale. I have to ask - is a single figure adequate to describe all of the complex interplay and relationships we have on the internet? Some commentators such as Brian Solis don't think so and point out that Klout scores simply measure the capacity to influence, and cannot represent true influence.

My Klout score of 60 is based on my number of retweets (3.4 k), mentions (3 k), followers (12 k) and those I am following (1.5 k), as well as how many comments I have received (220), how many likes I have received (623) and how many wall posts (17) on Facebook. Just how accurate these are is not in question. What I am yet to be convinced about is what the figure actually means. Does it mean that I am an influential individual online, or does it simply mean that I tend to spend a lot of time posting stuff up onto Twitter and Facebook? To be honest with you, I'm not that fussed about Klout scores, and 'reputation' isn't that important to me either. Those who are connected to me tend to stay connected because we have an online affinity, and are interested in the same stuff. I send people links, people send me links, and we all read, and we all learn, together. That's the bottom line for social networks. It's about mutual support and sharing, it's about reciprocating with help when it's needed.

And yet in some corners of the web world, reputation seems to be very important indeed. Wired magazine is running an article (issue 06.12) on the power shift that is currently happening in the world of entertainment. Although most traditional modes of advertising are still hanging on for dear life, it seems that social media endorsement by celebrities is becoming the next big thing. Lady Gaga has a larger digital footprint than any individual on the planet, and the metrics are staggering: She currently has nearly 51 million Facebook fans, 21 million Twitter followers, and her Youtube video channel has to date received over 2.3 billion views. Cashing in on this huge fame monster is not going to simple, but if anyone can turn social media into big bucks, Lady Gaga will. But she won't be the only one.

The BBC News website suggests that gaining a significant score on your reputation may result in you receiving reward from certain manufacturers who wish their products to be endorsed by high profile individuals on the web. You don't have to be a celebrity, but it helps. Actor Charlie Sheen may have a poor reputation in one sense, but because he is famous he has lots of Twitter followers (nearly 7 million and countring). This means some companies are prepared to pay him a small fortune for a few well placed endorsement tweets.  He has so far been paid over 50,000 US dollars for mercenary tweeting, whilst Kim Kardashian has received $10,000 and Snoop Dogg has already earned $8,000. These sums may be small beer if you are already earning millions from a TV or recording contract, but it's not bad for a few seconds of work each week on Twitter. These celebrities are invited to endorse products not only because of the size of their celebrity fan base, but also on the basis of their huge follower numbers on Twitter (the two tend to correlate). The advertising companies recognise that because stars are famous and have lots of followers, many fans are going to read the celebrity tweets, and many will also amplify the messages by retweeting them to their own followers. If you are a celebrity and you want to earn a living from social media, then it appears that social media influence, reach and reputation do count.

If on the other hand, all you want to do is your job, and to help you to do it, you network online with your colleagues around the world, does reputation really matter all that much? I choose to follow people on Twitter on the basis of their biography as well as occasionally checking out who else follows them. I may also visit their website to see whether what they are talking about interests me. But it's not that exact a science. I normally follow people on Twitter purely because they look interesting or are tweeting interesting things. Why do you follow people on Twitter? Is reputation to you?

Image source


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

Cultural hegemony and disruption

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony. In a Gramscian sense, hegemony describes the power exercised by the ruling class over the population in order to maintain control of the means of production. Cultural hegemony is imposed as political doctrine largely through the state education system, but also via other means including print media and broadcasting. Sometimes referred to as 'brainwashing' hegemony is actually more complex and is an insidious way to indoctrinate the masses into a 'false consciousness' where each person believes they have ultimate control of their own destiny. In doing this, the elite impose a view that 'that's just the way it is', but as musician Bruce Hornsby once exhorted, 'Don't you believe it.'

Whilst Gramsci used hegemony to refer specifically to the inculcation of political doctrine into society, I believe the theory can be applied in a much wider sense, and that we are witnessing a challenge to the dominant societal discourses through disruptive technology. I emphasise here the power of participatory media to promote democracy and to a strengthening of the influence of the voice of the people. The current exponential adoption of social media has huge implications for the system of education, itself a key component of cultural hegemony.

How does social media disrupt cultural hegemony? Across the connected world we are witnessing a tangible subversion of long standing dominance. Social media for example has achieved a remarkable success in eroding the power of previously elite media channels. One example is the encyclopaedia, long cherished as one of society's most important knowledge repositories. For years the multiple volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica have graced the shelves of libraries worldwide. They are expensive, regularly in need of updating and replacing, and take up a great deal of physical space.

Enter Wikipedia - the online social encyclopedia to which everyone has a stake in. In an extraordinarily short period of time, Wikipedia has taken up pole position as the world's knowledge repository. It is now the first port of call for many, supplanting Britannica and other previously popular reference books. And when all factors are analysed, this should be no surprise. Wikipedia is popular because it can be accessed from anywhere using a web enabled mobile phone.

More importantly it is also popular because it is democratic, and breaks the hegemony imposed by commercial publishers. Anyone can start off a new page, or quickly add content to more than 14 million existing pages (and that is just the English language pages). In response, Britannica has recently announced that it will no longer publish in paper format, but will now be exclusively digital. It's probably already too late. Wikipedia has challenged the hegemony and is now the new killer application. Other killer apps are also challenging the hegemony imposed by previously dominant channels.

Other commercial companies are also falling foul of disruptive technology. Previously dominant multi-national corporations such as the photography giant Kodak have discovered that failing to respond quickly enough to societal changes can be very costly. The market position of Kodak was once thought to be unassailable. Not anymore. Kodak failed to adapt quickly enough to the rise in popularity of digital photography, filed for bankruptcy and now finds itself in a very unstable financial position from which it may fail to recover. Mail companies are also discovering that e-mail and the cloud (and the capability to send large documents and images instantaneously for very little cost) have undermined what had previously been a very secure monopoly in the physical delivery of letters and parcels. What was the Royal Mail's response to the drop in physical delivery? They raised their prices. Nicolas Negroponte's prediction of a transition from atoms to bits has been realised, is disruptive in the extreme, and it is only just beginning.

Blogging and open access journals are becoming the first choice of publishing for many academics and scholars. Many are turning away from the closed journals regardless of the status they currently enjoy, because open access journals and blogs gain a larger audience for their writing, and publishing is quicker. How long will it be before these media disrupt the hegemony the large publishing houses such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley currently impose upon the academic world?

Blogging is not yet considered a real threat to the closed publishing world, but this may change as it gains more momentum and as respected academics begin to exploit its power of reach. Blogging is not generally subject to editorial control, so individuals are at liberty to write what they choose. The peer review process occurs when readers comment and enter into dialogue with the author. Then learning happens as ideas are challenged, arguments ensue and synthesis is achieved. Blogging is a new form of educational democracy. 

Newspapers too are struggling to survive as they cope with competition from the online journals and magazines that are gradually usurping their readership. It doesn't stop there. YouTube and other video sharing sites have gained a significant purchase in the broadcasting world, and are in the process of displacing some of the previously prominent media channels. All mainstream TV channels have now adopted Facebook and Twitter to capture views and news from citizen journalists from news hot spots around the world, just to keep ahead of the opposition. The dominant movie and music industries are also threatened by the likes of YouTube and Vimeo, and there have been several recent high profile law suits over breaches of copyright. Copyright law itself is also under scrutiny as a result of the influence social media have gained. The copyleft movement (which includes Creative Commons licencing) is challenging the dominant discourse of copyright and the contentious notion of ownership.

Civil liberty is under threat in any society where there is excessive surveillance. But even here, ordinary people are being empowered through the use of personal technology. The internet meme featuring the cop who in an unprovoked act, casually pepper-sprayed peaceful Occupy protesters is an example of surveillance being used against the dominant class. The police in this sense are a state apparatus. They are traditionally the owners of surveillance technology. Yet on this occasion, the cop - one Lieutenant John Pike (pictured) - was captured forever in an act of brutality by cameras owned by ordinary people, and subsequently suffered the consequence of becoming an infamous and universally parodied figure on the internet. Numerous versions of his act, some very humorous, can be found under the Lt Pike meme. Some would argue that this was the best form of retribution. Once again, democratic use of social media and personal devices exposed what was really happening during the Occupy movement.

Governments can also be disrupted. One of the most remarkable series of events to date this century has been the political activism that has occurred as a result of widespread social media use. Videos and blogs emerging from Tunisia alerted the world to what was happening, whilst the use of social networking mobilised the entire country to rise up against its oppressive government. Ultimately, the government fell and the people regained their lost democracy. Similar events caught on across the Arab world, in Egypt and Libya and elsewhere as ordinary people began to challenge their dictatorial governments. At the time of writing, this struggle against the dominant class continues.

Social media, the participatory web, and mobile communications have already radically changed the face of the connected world. Cultural hegemony has been disrupted as a result of the democratic use of technology, but we must be careful not to assume that the hegemony imposed by the dominant classes will disappear. It will not. New killer applications merely disrupt older previously dominant applications. The elite class then move in and gain control of the new tools, ultimately exploiting them, and imposing their power through these new channels of influence. In this sense Marx was correct. This is an ongoing cycle - a class struggle between the ruling elite and the rest of society to gain control of the tools that will ultimately influence our entire culture. Cultural hegemony and the killer application are locked together forever in a dance of death. To survive we will need to avoid complacency.

Hyperhabitat image source
Britannica image by Fotopedia
Lt Pike image by Louise Macabitus


Cultural hegemony and disruption by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Classroom without walls

I've written before about the idea of the classroom without walls. Today, with the sun shining down on the UK's warmest March in recorded history, my students and I sat in a classroom without walls - literally. We went outside and held our final teaching session of the term in the warm sun. The students enjoyed it, and frankly, so did I. It has been a very long time since I last conducted a lesson outside in the open air. I know this is not what I normally mean when I talk about classrooms without walls. Normally I'm alluding to the idea that with technology to mediate our communication, we can extend our traditional classroom boundaries to encompass learners across the globe. Through the use of webinars, videoconferencing, podcasting and even blogging, we can become global educators, and the tyranny of distance is overcome.

But today was the real deal. It was refreshing to just step away from all the artificial lighting, technology and classroom furniture and simply sit out on the grass, in the open air, learning from each other. It got me wondering what we actually do when we sit in a classroom, enclosed by four walls and with the door firmly closed. It tends to shut down learning, so that the world outside cannot witness what is happening in the room. Why do we shut the doors when we teach? Possibly to eliminate distractions, but there are so many distractions still in the room.

Today, in the warm sunshine, with nothing but blue sky above us, and with no power sockets, interactive whiteboards or computers in sight, the group listened intently, engaged completely, and spent two full hours focused on the task of putting together a research report. Often they are hunched over their computers, tapping away trying to make notes, or passing messages to each other on Facebook or Twitter. Today, all they had was a pad and pen to scribble their notes. Makes me wonder how learning could be transformed if we had warmer weather, and the outdoor learning movement had more influence than it currently enjoys.



Classrooms without walls by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Me or the community?

I started off a discussion this morning on Twitter which had been fermenting for several days since I spoke at Brighton University earlier this week. We were discussing the differences and similarities between Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, we were interested in discussing what each was best for, and whether people found one better than the other for teaching, learning, discussion or socialising. I was wondering whether Twitter was actually more community oriented and outward looking than Facebook, which to me often seems to be more closed down and inward looking. To start, I asked: Facebook is all about 'me'. Twitter is all about community. Discuss.

Will Dayamport made a profound statement right at the start of the discussion when he tweeted: no social platform is a community. they are only vehicles for building a community. This is of course true, in the sense that platforms are tools that facilitate, but are they as neutral as we think? What about affordances of each tool? What do they suggest to us and how do we respond? Next, Frances Bell suggested that all social media have channels and services that host multiple behaviours, so simple dichotomies don't work. While these contributions were helpful, they reach the core of what I was interested in. I was trying to get to the root of the issue, which is whether people see Facebook as a more closed down and private space than Twitter, which I consider to be much more open. Jeffrey Keefer made another valuable comment when he pointed out that although social media platforms facilitate and support, they don't do the work for us. Social media are great tools for building online communities, but how do we use them, and is one tool better than another for a particular purpose?

Because Twitter is open, and you are not required to be 'friends' or have membership of a group to interact with others, I was really asking whether Twitter has the capacity to be more open and community oriented than Facebook. To me, Facebook seems very closed and compartmentalised, and is therefore potentially useful for protected discussions (for example where young people or vulnerable groups need to chat in a walled garden environment) but Twitter opens up chat for all, regardless of their status or relationship with others. Yes, I know that Facebook can be used as an open forum too, as can most social media platforms, but our expectations may militate against this. Is Twitter therefore the best social media tool for open, democratic discourse? Others contributed to this discussion, especially around the notion of digital identity, including Anita Devi who asked whether the 'me' can really exist in a Facebook vacuum. Anne Olsen argued that Twitter is more focused on learning and sharing with a likeminded community. In Facebook, she said, 'friends' don't always share the same interests, so it is more likely to be about 'me' than it is the community. Susan Bannister saw little difference between the two platforms in her own use, revealing that for her (and probably for many other users) although Facebook used to be about family and friends, and Twitter was more focused on work, now the boundaries have become blurred. Nic Laycock agreed, pointing out how complex relationships have become since the inception of social media. Others have managed to maintain their boundaries between the two platforms. Linda Kirkman for example, finds Facebook good to keep in touch with people she knows in real life, and used Twitter mainly for ongoing professional development and support for her post-graduate studies.

What do other people use the tools for? One of my own students Hannah Shelton said that for her Twitter is for sharing thoughts that interest others and help them to build their PLN, whilst Facebook is still about socialising. Malcolm Clarke sees Twitter as an open place of catharsis - somewhere to go where 'you can get it off your chest', whilst Lenandlar Singh suspects that we have come to expect Facebook to be a more private, closed environment. Another of my students, Megan Douglas made an interesting distinction based on what people see the two platforms doing for them personally. She tweeted: Facebook is personal 'what's on your mind?' yet Twitter 'what's happening?' and argued that Twitter brings people with similar interests together. This is after all, what a community is about. People who have shared interests, common purposes and the ability to share their ideas in conversation become the community. I'm still convinced that Facebook is more inward looking, and is more about personal connections, while Twitter is more focused on community, and wider connections, sharing and learning. My colleague Peter Yeomans has some marked views about Twitter and Facebook. Twitter he says, is a bear pit - a speaker's corner where you talk to the world and hope someone listens, whilst Facebook is where you seek approbation from those who like you. Facebook is self-indulgent, he says, but Twitter is altruistic. What do you think?

This is an interesting, wide ranging discussion I hope will continue. Please join in by adding your comments below if you have any.

Image source


Me or the community? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Just a minute

The sheer volume of content being created and posted to the web is overwhelming. In a post  brought to my attention today, Kelly Hodgkins claims that if we paused the web for 60 seconds we would miss the birth of more than 1500 new blog posts, almost 100,000 new tweets, 20,000 posts on Tumblr, 600 new videos (more than 24 hours) uploaded to YouTube and at least 12,000 new ads on Craigslist. Such a claim must also take into account that much of this content will be quite worthless to anyone but the person uploading it, of which more later. These statistics also fail to take into account all the other content that is being generated on, for example Flickr (more than 3000 images each minute), Wikipedia, Facebook (3 billion photos and 20 million videos uploaded every month), Myspace, Wiktionary, Vimeo, Picasa and innumerable other user generated content repositories. Many similar web user statistics can be found on the Royal Pingdom website. Be warned though that all web statistics, particularly those related to social media, go quickly out of date because what we are talking about here is exponential. We are overwhelmed by a tsunami of content on the web, and just trying to find what we need, even with the most intelligent search engines, can be compared to trying to take a drink from the nozzle of a pressure hose.

Volume of content is not the only issue. We are (and should be) increasingly concerned about the quality of content we find on the web. No teacher worth their salt would play young children a video they hadn't previously screened and vetted for suitability. That would be courting disaster. One wag at the foot of Hodgkins's web stats blogpost left a comment that in 60 seconds there would also be 800 hours of porn downloaded and at least 35,000 Twitter and Facebook posts about Justin Bieber. There is however, no indication if he was speaking as one of the main contributors to these statistics. Yes, we are all aware of the large amount of dross that sits on the web, but the most insidious and potentially the most dangerous, is content that is almost accurate, or blatantly wrong but believable. How do we filter out content that is good from content that is bad? More importantly, how do we educate students into being prudent about what sites they obtain their content from? How can we know that content is safe, appropriate, accurate and up to date?

Those and associated questions will be the focus for the Concede User Generated Conference that takes place on 14th September in Oiera, Portugal as a part of the EFQUEL Innovation  Forum (September 14-16). The Concede Project, which has concerned itself with investigating the quality of user generated content in higher education over the last 2 years, will host the event, and is giving away a number of all expenses paid delegate places to those who wish to present a paper at the event. For full details on how to apply for free all expense paid place, visit the Concede Website and follow application instructions.

Image source



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

Back stage front stage

Today I enjoyed an interesting chat with Dr. Robert Nagy over lunch in Liberec, in the North of the Czech Republic. Robert is a lecturer both at the Technical University of Liberec and also at Charles University in Prague. He's a fellow psychologist, and we had a lot to chat about subsequent to him sitting in on one of my sessions this morning.

I was discussing one of my favourite theories with the group - Erving Goffman's Drama model of social interaction. Goffman suggests that each of us attempts to 'manage our impression' before our 'audience' as if we were performing on a stage. Front stage representation draws upon scripts, costumes, roles and props, as each person tries to present themselves in their most favourable manner. Back stage is different - this is the region where we are at our most informal, and where we let our guard down. I was applying Goffman's theory to online spaces such as social networks. I asked the group how many of them had a Facebook account. Of course, as I expected, everyone did. Next we discussed how people represent themselves on Facebook through their profiles, pictures, games they play, groups they join, and people they 'friend' online. Part of the downside of Facebook, I reminded them, is when you (or someone else) posts images of yourself onto the site. It's difficult to remove them once they are posted, and if they are tagged, it is easy to find them. Most people don't mind this, we agreed, but if an image is inappropriate (falling out of a pub at 3 am, the worse for wear), this may work against you when you apply for a job and your prospective employer decides to check you out on Facebook.

The problem, I theorised, is that many Facebook users perceive the social network as a 'back stage' area where they can let their hair down a little, remove their mask, relax and banter with their friends, and generally say what they want to. The mistake of course, is that Facebook is quite public (depending on how you manage your privacy controls) and open to many people to view. In reality it is a front stage region, yet with your guard down, you are likely to make a public fool of yourself if you are not careful and think you are bacjstage. The rules of social interaction, I suggested, are changing.

Afterwards, over lunch, Robert expressed doubt that the rules are actually changing. His argument is that most social conventions are usually quite rigid and that bad or good behaviour is the same, whatever platform, real or virtual, it is acted out upon. To an extent I agreed, but I pointed out that some conventions are in fact changing because of new affordances being introduced by technology. What is considered rude or aggressive by one person may not be seen as such by another. An innocent text message sent by one person may be construed by its recipient to be offensive or threatening. This may be due to a reduction in social cues, or simply not enough supplementary information being embedded within the text. Failure to include emoticons, or other 'non-textual' communication may render the message void of emotion, and then readers are left up to their own devices to decide whether the message is in fact ironic, or sent with some malice. Lack of experience in an online environment may lead the recipient to take the least form of resistance and miscontrue the message.

For me, the rules of engagement are changing to adapt to the technology that is increasingly mediating our conversations. The reduced or 'squeezed' text that is redolent of short message services such as mobile texting has spawned a new style of communication. If you are on the inside you will ROFL when you read the message. If you are on the outside, and not used to this style of communication, you may very well take offense or miss the point. So are the rules of social interaction changing, or are they the same as they ever were, just dressed up in a different form?

Image source by Slimmer_Jimmer


Back stage front stage by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Free thinking

A lot of stuff never gets done because it's 'against the rules'. Rules and regulations are the bane of creativity, and can stop innovation dead in its tracks. Every organisation has an IPD - an Innovation Prevention Department which is there to ensure that the rules are abided by, and that nothing happens without a rubber stamp of approval.

My reading of 'The Facebook Effect' recently has led me to believe that mavericks and anarchists - those who tend to bend the rules, or simply ignore them - are at the centre of many creative projects, and in some cases actually become the gamechangers. Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard student friends have radically changed the way we communicate with each other, and they have changed it on a global level. Regardless of your opinion of Facebook, you would probably agree that it was a game changer. Zuckerberg was not, and is not someone who 'tows the line'. He got into trouble while at Harvard and ever since, he has led an edgy existence at the vanguard of a movement which has fractured many of the social conventions that existed prior to the advent of online social networking.

Zuckerberg isn't the only one who has kicked against the rules and bent them to get where he needs to go. Richard Branson, in his recent book 'Screw it, let's do it,' also admits to being a maverick (but we all knew that anyway). He says 'Though I have never followed the rules at every step, I have learned many lessons along the way. I am still learning and I hope I never stop.' Branson has carved out, time and time again, business opportunities that have broken the conventional mould with outrageous success. Beside their vast fortunes, what do Zuckerberg and Branson have in common? They are both free thinkers. They disregard the structure and restrictions of their surroundings, and dream up new ways to circumvent the constraints imposed upon them by 'the rules.' For them, the way forward is to 'just do it.'

There are many other free thinkers I could talk about - in the field of art (Picasso, Monet, Pollock), music (Mozart, Stockhausen, the Beatles), and science (Einstein, Darwin, Edison) - who were renowned for bending the rules and sometimes ignoring them. Creativity in this sense, is not so much about building on old models (although this is sometimes the case), nor is it about extemporisation around a known theme. No, it is more to do with what Margaret Boden called 'transformational creativity' where scant regard for what is acceptable or achievable, is replaced by the will to make something happen regardless of the constraints, the rules, the expected.

Is this the kind of ethos we see in our schools, colleges, universities? As teachers are we fostering a sense of the impossible in our learners, and are we nurturing dreamers and entrepreneurs? Or are we instead continuing to impose rules and constraints which are no longer necessary or simply outmoded, because 'it has always been done that way?' Carl Rogers, a free thinker in his own right, once made it clear that the educational situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which 1) threat to the self of the learner is reduced to a minimum, and 2) differentiated perception of the field of experience is facilitated (Smith, 2004)

In clear language, this means that people learn best when they feel that they are under no constraints to express themselves and when they are given licence to change things and make them personal. How could this be applied to our own classrooms, and how many of us as teachers facilitate free thinking within our practice? Next time, don't ask for permission. Just do it.

'It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission'

Image source by Jack Lyons


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

More disruption

My recent post on disruptive activism and Edupunk provoked some good discussion, not only on this blog, but also elsewhere on Twitter and on my own Facebook account, where I had shared the link.

In particular, there was an interesting exchange between two highly experienced educators Walter McKenzie and Graham Davies, which (with their permission) I am sharing below.

Walter and Graham raise a number of pertinent issues in relation to the nature of technology, disruptive change and learning, and I welcome further debate on this blog.

Walter McKenzie: I understand disruptive activism....disruptive technologies not so much. It's how we use the technologies. Technology in and of itself cannot be disruptive...
Sunday at 22:50 ·

Graham Davies: Disruptive technology as defined by Christensen is not necessarily a negative term. It usually takes the form of an innovation that we may initially resist but finally accept when it becomes clear that it works better than it's predecessors. Many new technologies are poor performers in their early stages and take a while to become stable and reliable. Some never make it, e.g. CDI which was pipped at the post by DVD.
Monday at 00:34 ·

Walter McKenzie: My discomfort isn't with the concept of being disruptive, but the personification of technology as being able to be disruptive simply by its existence. It can only be disruptive if it is applied in such a way by people...
Monday at 00:44 ·

Graham Davies: No, technology can just be disruptive. Back the wrong horse in a period of change and then you are in trouble. I'm a watch-and-wait person.
Monday at 00:52 ·

Walter McKenzie: Please explain further? I'm probably just slow....I need more context to understand what you are saying....
Monday at 00:55 ·

Graham Davies: What I am saying is that it is essential to wait until it is clear that a new technology really works better than its predecessors rather than seizing a new technology before it has settled down.
Monday at 01:02 ·

Walter McKenzie: OK I agree with that. No need to be jumping on bandwagons without thoughtful evaluation of them first. But ultimately it is how we use them and assess their use, yes?
Monday at 01:10 ·

Graham Davies: I agree.
Monday at 01:12 ·

Walter McKenzie: Thanks for your patience in talking this through with me.
Monday at 01:22 ·

Graham Davies: No problem. I am rarely an early adopter, but once I am convinced about the advantages of a new technology I am keen to promote it. I adopted CD audio quite early on, but held off going completely digital with iTunes until a couple of years ago. Now I am just pissed off with having to convert my huge collection of 33rpm LPs to digital format. That IS disruption :-) Maybe I'll just hang on to my 16-year-old Kenwood deck...
Monday at 01:33 ·

Image source


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

Multiple identities

Who am I? What is my online persona? Do I present myself as the same in every situation? What do I change about me when I find myself in an unfamiliar context? How do I act differently when I'm in a reduced social cue context such as text based communication? These and many other questions are currently being addressed by researchers who are interested in the study of digital identity. It's a growth area of research for at least one very good reason. Digital identity affects us all, no matter what our age or social-economic background we come from. Technology mediated communication and pervasive computing affect everyone in the Western industrialised world. Without it we couldn't pay our bills, access information or travel distances. We rely on digital media for learning, business, entertainment and a host of other daily activities. Without knowing it, when we interact with these technologies, our behaviour changes. But there are many questions: Is my behaviour dictated by my identity? Or does my identity change because my behaviour does? Does my identity change when I am on Facebook? Do I modify my speech or the way I present myself when I'm speaking on the telephone, or on Instant Messaging, or Skype, or a webcam link? When I post up a blog, how different is that style of writing to the style I would use in say, an e-mail? Or a collaborative environment such as a wiki? And does my Second Life avatar bear any resemblance to my real life persona at all?

Dave Birch thinks there is huge scope for individuals to maintain multiple identities in cyberspace. In an interesting piece called Put your game face on, Birch points out that anonymity can enable people to reveal as much or as little of their true identity as they wish, and that this kind of false identity maintenance can lead to questionable or even dangerous behaviour. This has obvious implications for child safety.

And what of the image above? Well, yes, the pictures above are of me on my Flickr site (with a little image manipulation too, for this blogpost), and some are of me with famous British entertainers such as Matthew Kelly and Johnny Ball and well known American authors and educators such as Steven Berlin Johnson and Marc Prensky. You're probably thinking now that I spend my time seeking out celebrities to have my pictures taken with them. But the truth is, I was at the same events, got talking, and it was nice to have a picture taken to mark the occasion. All except Matthew Kelly that is. We spent time at university together and we are old friends. Together, we once did a psychology field experiment where we walked Matthew (he was already famous then) into several shops unannounced, to ask for change for a £20 note, and then observed the behaviour of the shop assistants. They changed considerably, even to the point where they broke shop rules by handing over change for a £20 note when no purchase had been made. If they couldn't get the cash register open, they were opening their own purses and wallets to hand over the change. Most interestingly, when asked a question by the unknown person, the shop assistants were all observed to answer Matthew Kelly instead. Their behaviour definitely changed. We did a control experiment with two unknown people and were almost thrown out of shops or largely ignored. My explanation for this behaviour was based on Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory in that we forced them from front stage (professional rule bound role) to back stage (relaxed and informal role) so that they broke their own rules because they had been pleasantly surprised. This celebrity effect is just one way we see changes in behaviour. If someone famous walks into the room, we stare. Or we purposefully don't stare. Either way, our behaviour is being modified. Whether or not this causes us to adopt different identities has yet to be established. But this we do know - everyone is capable of acting out multiple identities - to suit the changing environments and shifting contexts modern life presents.


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

Digital literacy 4: Watch your back!

I'm always asking myself the question - what do my students need to know to be able to use the web effectively? One of the important skills I identified in a previous post on digital literacies is how people manage and protect their privacy. This is aligned to e-safety, which is about protecting people online. Indeed, each of us is vulnerable because there is a huge potential for our privacy to be breached in any online environment. You would certainly be very angry if someone came snooping around your house and rifled through your personal belongings, wouldn't you? And yet many of us can be careless about the way we handle our personal data when we go online. And the extent to which many of us are now electronically connected to others is astounding.

This begs the question - can any of us protect our privacy on the web? Social media seem increasingly pervasive, and many millions of people put up details of their private lives every day - contact details, personal photographs, dates of birth etc - details they would never dream of giving to a stranger. Oh look, there's someone I haven't met before. Hellooo. I'm going to go up to them and give them my phone number and address, some photos of me on holiday in my swimwear, a list of my best friends and my date of birth! Oh, and they can have my credit card details too while I'm at it! Would anyone do that, even if they were very extremely attracted? It would be bizarre behaviour. And yet people do exactly that every day online. I'm amazed at the photos some students put up on social network sites. It's not just pictures of them falling out of a pub at 3 o'clock in the morning, it may also be pics of their friends too. With their permission or not? I wonder if they will still be happy about those photos in a few year's time when they apply for a job, and their potential employer Googles them to see who they are.

For me it's all a matter of choice. How many of your personal details you make available on the web is really up to you. Your privacy settings may help you to protect stuff. but even if you know how to choose the correct settings (and many students don't) how can you be really certain that your content is fully protected from prying eyes? Posting up your home address and telephone number, and then posting in your timeline that you are going on holiday next week, might be asking for trouble. How do you know who has access to your timeline? How do you know how many people read your Twitter feed or your updates?

You also leave a trail behind you wherever you go on the Internet. Google and other search engines maintain a record of all the sites you visit during your time online. Many sites send cookies to your pc when you enter them. Some of these can be malicious, allowing other people to gain access to your pc memory, and if spyware has been used, to also record your keystrokes when you pay for something on Amazon using your credit card. Although it's still quite rare for this to happen, this kind of criminal activity is on the increase, and without appropriate Internet Security software, you run the risk of being one of the victims. Have you thought about the amount of personal detail you hold about yourself and your friends on your mobile phone? If you use public wifi networks or open your mobile to bluetooth connectivity, you may also be opening up the entire content of your mobile for intruders to capture and use. This useful report from the BBC Click team reveals that although malware for mobile phones is on the increase, it is still simple user naivety that is responsible for the majority of problems of this kind.

For me, raising the awareness of students and other web users to the dangers of the Internet will always include the problem of maintaining privacy. The golden rules are: Be careful what sites you visit (your security software should alert you to any unsafe sites), be careful what you post up online that may have personal information in it (this is just common sense) and watch your back - protect your identity, because you never know who may be looking over your shoulder. On Monday: Managing digital identities.

Watch your back by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 3: Crossing the divide

Transliteracy can be defined as being literate across a number of platforms. In essence, it is the ability to be able to create content, organise, share and communicate across, and through, a variety of social media, discussion groups, mobile tools and other services that are commonly available. This assumes that we communicate differently depending on the tool we use. When I give a co-present presentation (face to face), it is qualitatively different for me and my audience to a remote presentation I give through Elluminate or Adobe Connect. It's not just the experience - I also behave differently, and manage my impression in a different way. I have argued in previous blogposts that the way we represent ourselves (using avatars, user names etc) varies for many depending on what medium we are using. I represent myself differently in Second Life to the way I represent myself on Facebook, because each environment prompts a different response from me. In LinkedIn, I manage a professional version of my online persona, which evaporates when I'm on Facebook. On Twitter I am a bit of a mixture. Sometimes I like to have a bit of fun, and at other times, I'm deadly serious. I have also discussed the idea that each tool has its own particular set of affordances which enable or constrain particular ways of using it. In many ways, however, although these tools are different, they all have a common purpose. Thomas et al (2007) put it very well:

"From early signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV and film to networked digital media, the concept of transliteracy calls for a change of perspective away from the battles over print versus digital, and a move instead towards a unifying ecology not just of media, but of all literacies relevant to reading, writing, interaction and culture, both past and present. It is, we hope, an opportunity to cross some very obstructive divides."

So for Thomas et al, the argument over whether media are different - for example whether digital will replace paper - is spurious. It's more important for us to recognise the significance of each tool, and how they can be used effectively in all their variations, and also in combinations. Ultimately, transliteracy should be about using whatever media and communication tools that are at our disposal, and also being able to discern which tools will be the most effective and appropiate in any given context. Do we learn better watching a Youtube video or reading a text? Are we better at presenting our ideas in pictures or as a podcast? I know my answer to that, and it may be different to your answer - we all learn differently.

Students today use a variety of tools to create and share content, and it's vital that they are able to do so in a seamless manner. It's important that students spend more time thinking about what they are learning and less time thinking about how to navigate around a website, or how to save a file. This is one reason why many students are more at ease using an external wiki than they are using an institutional Learning Management System. It's also the reason they choose to use Facebook rather than the institutional e-mail system when they want to send each other messages. But students do use all of these tools, and the trick is to ensure that they are comfortable with each, and have the requisite skills to exploit each tool to its optimum value. This is why transliteracy is becoming increasingly important as a digital literacy. It will assume even more significance, as more of us become our own broadcasters, publishers and directors.

Reference: Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Lacetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S. and Pullinger, K. (2007) Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, 12 (12), 3 December 2007.

Image source


Crossing the divide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 2: Reach out and connect

One of the digital literacies I identified in yesterday's blogpost was effective social networking. So what's the big deal about this? We all do it these days don't we? Most of us have a Facebook account, and maybe a LinkedIn account too. Lots of us use Twitter, and some of those out on the periphery may still be using Myspace or Bebo. What else do we need to learn about social networking that can help us or our students to learn better? In this series I'm going to examine digital literacies. I use the term not to describe skills, but more as an alignment to the argument that as we engage with our own specific culture we acquire and develop more than skills. If I am illiterate (in the sense of reading and writing), I cannot read the signs or engage with text - I am not able to fully participate within my culture. And if I miss the meaning of something because of that illiteracy, I won't know what I don't know. Literacy allows us to develop a self awareness of not only the symbolic nature of our world but also the processes of personal learning - or meta-cognition - and in so doing we build what Bourdieu has termed 'cultural capital'. Wendy Earle's 2005 discussion on the nature of literacies is a useful starting point.

So what are the essential components of social networking as a digital literacy? Firstly, I believe we need to network more smartly, particularly in a manner that helps us to learn more effectively in both formal and informal contexts. Jonathan Rose has some interesting things to say about how social networking helps his off-line (for this read 'real life') world. In his blogpost What's so social about social media? he outlines three functions: supplementing, sifting and sustaining, all of which have a social dimension. Sifting for example, in Jonathan's view, helps to combat the media atomisation that has occurred due to the availability of hundreds of TV channels. Once we could all sit down for coffee and talk about what we had watched on TV last night. It's rare we are able to do this now, with so many choices. Watching TV is no longer a distributed communal activity. What we can do though, with the aid of social media, is to find out what our commonalities and communities are through the filtering tools (such as hashtags) on Twitter and other timeline tools.

Social networking also helps us to find content we need, when we need it. In some of my previous slide presentations and blog posts I have quoted Karen Stephenson, who believes we now 'store our knowledge in our friends'. By this she means a distributed intelligence is emerging which allows that it doesn't matter how much we can store and retrieve from our own personal memories. Today, it's not what we know, but who we know that is most important. We now live in an increasingly connected world where we have 24/7 access to our friends and colleagues. Selecting the right tools that will enable each of us to connect into and plunder the collective intelligence of the most relevant communities of practice is one of the new digital literacies professionals and students will need to draw upon.

Finally, social networking skills will require each user to also be adept at connecting with new friends and fellow community members. But how will we know who to connect with and who to ignore? It's not as if we are in a large room at a party, deciding who looks or sounds like the most interesting person to make a bee-line for. No, it's actually more complex and information rich than that. We now have the ability to tap into all sorts of information about the bewildering number of people we encounter on social media every day. We can see by their avatar and username (sometimes) what kind of person they might be, and whether it would be interesting to connect with them or not. Profiles and follow/follower information are also useful sources of detail about a person's interests and background. What they tweet or post gives us advance information about whether we would find connecting with someone useful or not.

So social networking, and the ability to use it effectively is a key skill for the scholar to acquire right now. If used properly, social media can provide rich social and intellectual rewards. Those who fail to network effectively may struggle to succeed in a pressurised education world.

Image source

Reach out and connect by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A shift in time

History suggests that Lord Kelvin, the famous physicist, once boldly proclaimed there was nothing left that was to be discovered in physics. The only thing we could do he stated, was to measure more effectively. Famous last words. Just five years later, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which challenged the 'rules' of force and motion that had been used for over 200 years. It was time for a change, and time for a paradigm shift - something which would make the entire scientific community sit up, take notice, and then reluctantly change their collective mind on what the universe was really all about.



If you look up the word paradigm you will probably discover a definition that is something like: mould, standard, idea, model. In other words, a paradigm is something we use as a set of rules. The world of education is full of rules. And it's been a long time since anyone broke the mould. Schools are very conservative organisations, where those in charge have been around for a while, and 'know what works'. They don't tend to change very much. Some schools are changing, but many will stay just the way they are. According to Sir Ken Robinson, we need a paradigm shift (I would even say we need a paradigm break) to change the way education is conducted across the entire sector. We need a shift he says, because education is broken. It doesn't work the way it is, because it is based on an old model which is no longer relevant to the needs of today's society. Education is failing society, and failing children, by preparing them for the past instead of for the future. In a very powerful animated video to accompany his 'breaking paradigms' speech, we are taken on a grand tour of his ideas about why the education system needs to change. I shared a link to the video on Twitter and Facebook and had a huge positive response. The video speaks to everyone. So, if you have any interest at all in education, watch the video, and see why the current education paradigm needs to be broken.


A shift in time by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.