The changing Web

This is number 4 in the series of blog posts entitled 'Shaping Education for the Future.' Yesterday's post can be found at this link.

The web is constantly changing. Social media - often referred to as Web 2.0, or the participatory Web - is shaping up to be one of the most important tool sets available to support the promotion of change in education. Almost everyone, it seems, is using some element of social media in the planning, development, delivery, management or evaluation of teaching and learning. One of the greatest changes (and challenges) for education over the last few years has been the proliferation of user generated content. My own students create a lot of their own content during their study, usually in the form of podcasts, videos, wiki and blog content, and are encouraged to share these publicly online to gain additional feedback. Doing this, they tend to engage more deeply with learning, and find themselves collaborating more and learning from each other, as a result of using Web 2.0 tools. Essentially, Web 2.0 enables them to take more responsibility for their own learning. They like to share their ideas, and they enjoy playing their part in the production of knowledge. Learning is changing, and their experience is being shaped by the participatory Web. The Web is constantly changing, but it is also a change agent.

We need to acknowledge that 'Web 2.0' remains a contested label for new and emergent properties that are found on the Web. It is a complex network of dynamic resources that we all acknowledge is constantly changing to adapt to the growing demand for entertainment, communication and access to knowledge. Debate focuses on whether the emerging social applications constitute a sea change or revolution in the Web (cf. Van Dijk, 2002) or simply another phase in its relentless progress. Personally, I find myself in agreement with Brian Winston (2003) who views the Web as a facet of gradual evolution rather than symptoms of sudden revolution. Essentially, the Web has become more social. As with most other technology innovations, Web 2.0 applications have grown out of the need for people to connect together, share experiences and knowledge, enhance their experiences and open up new possibilities in learning. Social software is software that enables people to both read from, and write onto web spaces. It truly is the ‘architecture of participation’ (Barsky and Purdon, 2006) and demands active engagement as a natural part of its character (Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007).

Web 2.0 tools include popular applications such as blogs, wikis and podcasting; social networking sites such as FaceBook and LinkedIn; photo and videosharing services such as Flickr and YouTube; familiar utilities such as RSS feeds, social tagging (e.g. Delicious, Diigo), microblogs such as Twitter, mashups (e.g. geotagging). Web 2.0 has spawned concepts such as folksonomy, ‘Darwikianism’ and the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (Kamel Boulos et al, 2006). Also, we need to pay attention to the growing power, ubiquity and utility of the mobile phone and the central role it is already playing in enabling ‘anytime anyplace’ learning for students.

More is becoming known about the effects the changing Web is exerting upon teaching and learning. We know of some of the benefits and the limitations it brings to education and training. But there are still many questions to be answered. How for example, does this architecture of participation help to scaffold remote learners and how can it promote quality learning outcomes? What is the extent of the capability of social software to encourage a culture of sharing and collaboration? How much will Web 2.0 applications help to shape the education provision of the future? What roles will online games and mobile, personal technologies play in developing the skills young people need to study independently? These are questions we are beginning to address in some of our current research. More on this in future posts on this blog.

References
Barsky, E. and Purdon, M. (2006) Introducing Web 2.0: Social networking and social bookmarking for health librarians. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 27, 65-67.
Kamel Boulos, M. N., Maramba, I. and Wheeler, S. (2006) Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Education, 6, 41. Retrieved 14 April, 2008 from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41
Kamel Boulos, M. N. and Wheeler, S (2007) The emerging Web 2.0 social software: An enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and healthcare education. Health Informatics and Libraries Journal, 24(1), 2-23.
Van Dijk, J. (2002) The Network Society. London: Sage.
Winston, B. (2003) Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. London: Routledge.

Image source


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

Tools of the trade

I was quite impressed by Joyce Seitzinger's Professional Learning Environment (PLN) model that she presented at Deakin University in Melbourne this week. The first slide on the left shows a quadrant model in which she has used a work/office metaphor to define four discrete functions of a PLN. The first, the Staffroom is quite public, calling on high levels of communication and high profile, and involves the use of microblogging tools such as Twitter. This will work provided the user subscribes to a requisite number of other relevant user accounts, and can share their ideas and converse freely. It will fail if the user does not follow or is not followed by enough other subscribers to enable the benefits of the network effect.

Joyce calls the second quadrant the Filing Cabinet, because essentially, it is low profile and low in terms of the efforts put into communicating with others, and it provides a repository for the user (and their PLN) to store, categorise and possibly share content they think is important to them. Social tagging sites such as Diigo and Delicious can offer this kind of filing cabinet organisation, but so too can wikis and other collaborative tools, which would I imagine, raise the level of engagement and profiling of individuals who organised and shared their content in this manner.

The third quadrant is the Newspaper, which again Joyce sees as low profile and low in terms of communication. I assume that this is because most of the tools she identifies as falling into this category of PLN deployment is push technology (RSS feeds, Google Reader etc). I would imagine that if Joyce placed blogs into this category, (and in the model's present form I see no reason why they shouldn't be there), then a higher profile and higher level of engagement between user and PLN would ensue.

Yet she leaves blogs and other authoring tools to insert into the final quadrant, the Portfolio. This is the quadrant in which a lot of high profile activity is conducted, but I would argue that it is also high in engagement. The question still open to me is whether this model would change from it's current form to represent Personal Learning Networks. Or is there any real difference between these and Professional Learning Networks?

It is worth noting that only the first quadrant of this PLN model is actually performed synchronously, that is, in real time. That may give some a clue as to the latent potential of tools such as Twitter to connect people powerfully and instantly across the globe and to give all of us access to a worldwide network of experts and enthusiasts in any subject for which we have an interest. Everyone should have a PLN, because in today's connected world, without it you are not fully equipped as a professional.

Images courtesy of Joyce Seitzinger


Tools of the trade by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Getting the bloggers to write

I'm currently gathering and analysing data on two different blogging studies.

The first involved a group of students who are in their third year of teacher training. They had to do a personal research project on ICT in education as a part of their studies, and I set up a group blog for them (which they themselves called 'Idiot's guide to research'). They reported (those who have responded so far) that they really appreciated the extra 'safety net' and that they also benefited from commenting on and reading other people's posts. The limitations were cited as 'not knowing whether someone else had posted a reply' (can be remedied by an RSS alert) and waiting for a response from someone else that is a long time coming (a cattle prod can be applied to remedy this problem).

The second blog study was called MentorBlog and was funded as a small scale project through the Peninsula CETT (Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training). Here we set up two groups of students, those who would blog with their mentors (and possibly not come into contact with them at all) and those who would maintain a conventional face to face mentorial relationship. It's too early to summarise findings as we are only half way through the interviews, but there are some interesing emerging themes. These include affordances of e-mail and blogging as 'immediacy', the ability to reflect, and 'bringing some distance to the relationship' when it gets a little too intense and 'overbearing'.

So, I shall press on and find out more about this wonderful thing we call blogging....