Going geographical

I remember a quote from Ed Horowitz: 'if you are not on the Internet, you are history'. I had an answer: 'If you are on the Internet, you are geography.' I was playing with words, but a message emerged from it - we can connect with others from all over the world using social media, and if you build it, they will come. The number of visits to this blog has risen dramatically over the last year or so. The month of July saw more than 10,000 visits. See what I mean? I've gone geographical.

Now it all comes home to roost. On September 2, I will be keynoting the Innovative Learning Spaces session track for the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference in London. I'm very pleased to have been invited, because although I am not a geographer, geography was always one of my favourite topics in school, and is a social science to which I have great affinity. I keep dozens of back copies of the National Geographic journal at home and I'm an avid viewer of the National Geographic channel. I used to love reading about intrepid explorers of the likes of David Livingstone, Mungo Park and Robert Falcon Scott. I'm grateful then to Professor Derek France (Chester University) for inviting me to speak at such a prestigious event and excited to be able to attend. Here are the title and abstract of my presentation:

New Spaces, New Pedagogies: Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Education

A rapid emergence of social media – the so called ‘Web 2.0’ – has opened up new opportunities for participatory learning in all sectors of education. Students now have the capability to create and share their own content through blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr. They can easily connect into and maintain contact with multiple communities of interest, gaining access to experts using social networking tools such as Myspace and Facebook. They can organise their own resources through free and easy to use tagging and social filtering tools. In this presentation I will argue that this rapid rise of user generated content is blurring boundaries between novice and expert, and challenging the traditional notions of knowledge, ownership, privacy and identity. In tandem with this, the proliferation of personal devices such as iPods and smart mobile phones is enabling students to move beyond the boundaries of the classroom into ‘any time, any place’ learning. In the light of these developments I shall explore new teacher roles, examine new learner expectations and explore some of the new learning territories that are emerging beyond the walls of the institution. I will offer some examples of how Web 2.0 tools have already been harnessed to support professional mentoring and to promote deeper engagement in learning through collaboration and reflection. I will discuss the concept of the personal learning environment and its potential to enrich student experiences. I shall speculate on the potential impact of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and touch screens and their potential in shaping the future of education.

Image source

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

Networked noughties 2003-2005

Yesterday I mapped the significant technological events of the years 2000-2002. Today I continue the retrospective with a review of the years 2003-2005.

The launch of one of the first social networking services Friends Reunited in 2000 paved the ways for a welter of new social networking tools which would revolutionise the way people connected, communicated and shared. The first of the 'giants' was launched in August of 2003. Myspace was to become the trend setter - within 3 years it had signed up an astounding 100 million users.

Just a couple of months later in October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg launched a small scale service for his friends and colleagues called Facemash at Harvard University. It was later to be renamed Facebook. However, we wouldn't see Facebook officially launched until September 2006. The history of both Myspace and Facebook are very well documented on their respective Wikipedia entries. In June 2003 we also saw the inception of a little known 3D multi-user virtual environment called Second Life.

2004 started off with the launch in February of the photosharing site Flickr. Flickr was yet another new concept in social networking, where conversations and connections were based upon the sharing of digital images. Currently it is estimated that Flickr hosts in excess of 4 billion images.

Music fans were delighted in June 2004 to witness the commercial launch of iTunes. Interfacing with the iPod, it allowed users to download just about any music track they wished to listen to... for a small fee. The music industry quickly capitalised, and by December of the same year, online downloads (including iTunes) surpassed physical sales of music for the first time.

2005 was an eventful year for the digirati. In January of that year Bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often) was launched and has steadily grown in popularity, particularly with younger age groups of users. Following close on its heels in February was a video sharing service we now know as YouTube. Launched officially in November 2005, YouTube became one of the greatest success stories of social networking, because B.Y. (Before YouTube) it was not an easy proposition to upload videos to the web. YouTube made it easy, and it is estimated that there are 15 hours of video uploaded each minute, and that Youtube attract 100 million viewers each month. Videos hosted by the site include cult classics amateur clips such as 'Star Wars Kid' and 'Charlie Bit My Finger'.

2005 was a great year for games enthusiasts too, with the introduction of the Nintendo DS (March), The Sony PSP (September) and Microsoft's XBox 360 (December). Each of these games consoles contributed in advancing digital gameplaying to a new level. 2003-2005 were three eventful years for the networked nation. What would 2006 bring? This series concludes tomorrow with a review of the years 2006-2009.

Image source

Rotten Apple!

I have had no problems with my Apple iPod at all. Well, none you want to listen to anyway. I used it a lot to listen to my personal music playlists. Flaming hell, I flogged it to death. That was before my iPhone came along. Now my iPod languishes unused on my bedside table, in a manner reminiscent of that thoroughly stupid cartoon advert about turning your discarded mobile phones into cash. I do have several problems with my iPhone, including capricious battery life, complete failure of edge technology and some initially extortionate monthly charges from O2 which I have now eradicated by taking out a pay-as-you-go contract. Now O2 won’t be able to prise so much cash out of my wallet, but even with all the problems, I’m hanging onto my iPhone because I love its touch screen.

I was intrigued but not particularly surprised then to read that one poor 11 year old British girl called Ellie Stanborough reportedly suffered the terrifying incident of having her iPod explode on her. Experts point to the lithium ion batteries Apple use as the source of the problem. So there in the picture in the Daily Mail is Ellie looking suitably forlorn but uninjured, holding up the wreckage of her once shiny iPod. But here’s the most horrendous part of the story... As you would, Ellie’s parents contacted Apple to report the incident and ask for a refund. Apple responded by offering to refund the money, but only if the Stanboroughs kept quiet about the incident. If the Stanboroughs talked to the press, said Apple, there might be legal action taken out against them. Cor, what a rotten Apple!

This kind of gagging tactic, it has emerged, has also been attempted in the U.S. on a number of other occasions when Apple iPods have apparently exploded. One allegedly blew up inside a young lad’s trousers and badly burnt his leg. The boy’s mother is taking Apple to court in Ohio, and we eagerly await the verdict. In fact the first time this kind of thing happened was in Japan, in March last year! So I would imagine that Apple have really got the pip now that the news has also emerged in the national press on both sides of the Atlantic that not only do they appear to have a serious safety issue with the lithium ion batteries inside their famed iPod devices, they also want a complete news blackout when things go drastically wrong. Chew on that for a while...

Image source

Buzz words for 2007

Running under the title of Schott's Alamanac, the Times newspaper today carries an article about all of the new buzz words that have supposedly been introduced in 2007 and suggests that these are the words that will define the year. Many of them are technology words already familar to Edubloggers and some are irritatingly unfamilar.... shall we?

• Podslurping: Illicit copying of data to a portable storage device (e.g. iPod)
• e-Thugs: Online cyber bullies
• Lifecasting: Webcasting all your life's activities 24/7
• iSlavery: Apple's attempts to lock iPhone users into one network provider
• Macolyte: Someone who worships at the altar of all things Apple
• Network promiscuity: Tendency by social networkers to spread their membership across FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo, etc... (See also FaceHooked, an addiction to FaceBook; Face vs Space, war for supremacy between FaceBook and MySpace; FaceBlocking, where companies ban employees from accessing social sites at work)
• GoogTube: Offspring of the marriage between Google and YouTube
• Flog: A fake blog run by a company or marketing agency posing as a real-life consumer
• Upgrage: Upgrade rage experienced by all those installing Windows Vista
• Exergaming: Unlkely combination of exercise and gaming (Wii all need it)
• Cyber-vetting: Use of the web to assess the (inter)NET REP(utation) of potential employees
• UGC: User generated content
• Blogola: Fees (or bribes) paid to bloggers for favourable comments (Never had any offered...)
• Digerati: Elite members of online communities and computer industry
• Meganiche: The theory that because of the vastness of the Internet, even obscure items or content can receive massive exposure and publicity

Well fancy that. Any of the above resonate with you? Some of it sure does with me. But some of them go back a few years, so although they may now define 2007, some may actually also define the first few years of this century, I think.

Splendid isolation

You know I’m mad keen on visiting places of antiquity, because I have written about it before. Well, here’s another one for you – this is me visiting a medieval site called the 'Hermitage', just down the river from Warkworth Castle, in Northumberland (picture left courtesy of my 13 year old niece Sarah) during what we laughingly call our British 'summer'. The Castle was great and well worth a visit, and as you would expect, the ‘Hermitage’ is quite isolated and can only be reached by a ferry over the river. Apparently, it was the home for many years of a hermit who lived in austere conditions, isolated from the community. It certainly is a bleak and unwelcoming place. I hope he had some kind of heating, ‘cos I reckon in the middle of a Northumberland winter it would be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Inside there are three small rooms carved out of the living rock -there is a chapel, a long thin (bed)room, and a ledge (open to the elements) that looks out over the woods. There is no fireplace, no electricity, no running water (apart from the river), and certainly no broadband internet connection. There wasn’t even a Welcome doormat. Modern city dwellers would find it very uncomfortable – it felt very lonely and isolated there so I didn’t stick around for long, and I’m sure I wouldn’t want to still be there come nightfall….

Got me thinking about how much we rely on modern technology to make ourselves comfortable. Where would we be without gas cookers, electric light bulbs, flush toilets, washing machines and all the other basic stuff we take for granted? What about the more luxurious stuff like televisions, iPods, mobile telephones, microwaves and home computers? Now we have the uber-luxury technologies – multi-viewer digital cable television, flat screen plasma TVs, global positioning satellite systems, etc etc ad nauseum … you get the idea. Here’s the question – how long before we get so hooked on these new technologies that they become essential for our psychological well-being and comfort? I don’t think I could be a technological hermit – using such items is too deeply ingrained into my personal culture and it would feel like an amputation to give them up. How sad is that? In tomorrow’s next blog I'm continuing this train of thought....