Digital literacy 9: Broadcasting yourself

In the last in the series on digital literacies, we explore how through the web, each of us can become our own broadcasters and publishers.

The social web has shifted the balance of power away from commercial production companies in favour of the individual. The shift is from push to pull. This is a characteristic of the Web 2.0 and Edupunk movements - the do it yourself culture in which costly proprietary systems and tools are spurned in favour of haphazard, unbranded, informal mashups and loose aggregations of tools. There is a huge array of social web tools to choose from and many of them are free at the point of delivery. But more than that, it's participatory. Web 2.0 tools have made it possible for a massive, unprecedented surge in self-publication and broadcasting. The video sharing service YouTube's usage statistics should convince even the strongest sceptic that people really want to share their content. YouTube now boasts over 2 billion views over each 24 hour period and receives 24 hours of uploaded video each minute. The photosharing service Flickr claims that between 3-5 million images are uploaded every day, and hosts well in excess of 2 billion photographs and other media such as short video clips. The blogging sentinel service Technorati lists 1.2 Billion blogs at the time of writing. These are staggering statistics. People everywhere are using the web to broadcast, publish and share their ideas, opinions and creative works to the rest of the world. It may not all be great content, but here and there, you will find gems if you search for them.

The music industry has had to learn the hard way that it no longer has the monopoly on music production and distribution. It now coexists alongside independent companies and individuals, all of whom are just as intent on selling or in some cases, giving away their music to the public. Many teachers and students are doing the same thing, with educational content. Traditional publishers are having to sit up and take notice - particularly to the open access movement. Public awareness has been raised about the openness and availability of educational content. When students encounter a paywall, they will simply go elsewhere for similar content.

Podcasting, and its visual equivalent, vidcasting, are very quick means of getting your ideas out there for others to listen to or watch. Blogging your ideas over a period of time attracts readers, and if you are lucky, and produce consistent quality and quantity of posts, you will garner a loyal following of readers who will return again and again, and also comment on your posts. For many bloggers, this is all the spur they need to persist. But beware, for the social web can also be the not-so-social-web. Peer review is very informal, and can be anonymous. Either way, it can also be harsh and even abusive, so bloggers, broadcasters and publishers need to be thick skinned. This kind of digital literacy enables learners and teachers to fully engage in the social web culture, and all its rewards. Every time they post or upload new content, authors and producers makes a mark on the web and the influence of their digital footprint increases.

If you are already creating podcasts or videos, writing blogs or uploading images to the web, you will be keenly aware of the benefits and challenges. But I think you will probably agree that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

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

Digital literacy 8: Repurposing content

The ability to repurpose, remix or otherwise reuse existing content is one of the key features of the social web. Continuing my series on digital literacies, today's post is about how we can reuse existing content.

Why reinvent the wheel? If content is already out there on the web, the logical choice would be to see if it can be reused, or even adapted or altered to suit your own needs. Currently there is a trend for scholars, teachers and academics to make their content available for download and many are allowing others to repurpose or alter this content. Most of my recent slide presentations are freely available on this Slideshare site, and I publish them under a Creative Commons license that allows others to download and use them either as complete slideshows, or to select individual slides that can be inserted into their own slideshows. I also allow derivatives - that is, you can take the images or texts, or even the design themes of my slides, and repurpose them for your own use - for free. Some have used my slides for their own presentations or workshops (with full acknowledgement to me of course). Probably one of the most pleasing results for me has been when people have translated my slides into other languages. The only stipulation I make in my CC licence is that others don't make any profit from my content at my expense.

Look at the licence at the foot of this post. It indicates that if you wish to use the content you should a) attribute it to me b) not make any financial gain from it (non commercial) and c) it is share alike - that is, you can only re-use my content under the same kind of licence. All six currently available CC licence types are described here. The ethos of the social web is that we share and share alike - why hoard knowledge or ideas if they can be of benefit to others? Knowledge is like love - you can give it away, but you still get to keep it. The only barrier to sharing and repurposing of content is copyright. The web is changing rapidly, but for many, copyright laws remain archaic and arcane.

Although these outmoded, unwanted and ultimately despised copyright laws apply to internet content just like they do to books or music CDs, there are also some welcome signs of change in the digital domain. Copyleft and Creative Commons are just two of the initiatives that have emerged in recent years. Go to the Creative Commons site and check out all of the possible options that will enable you to share your own content whilst protecting your own intellectual rights, and also how you can use, repurpose and remix other people's content too. The 'mashup' - using sounds, videos, images, text or any combination of these - to make entirely new creative content, appeals to many. It can be time consuming, but also very rewarding. So, the next time you find some really useful content on the web, look out for a licence agreement somewhere on the page to see if you are allowed to re-use it.

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

Peak practice

I have made it up over the Alps by train into the sleepy Austrian town of Villach, where we hold the annual Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference (ICL). The train had the old style compartments, and I managed to blag an entire compartment to myself. We are in the Karenthia part of southern Austria, on the Italian/Slovenian border, and it's all very pretty, with the grandeur of the mountain peaks all around us, and the ponderous river Drau meandering slowly by.

Every year the ICL conference seems to be veering more toward e-learning and away from computer science, which I think is a good thing. We need to concentrate more on the learning and less on the technology - more on the pedagogy and less on 'this is the technology and this is what it does'. There are some excellent special tracks at the conference this year. At this conference, thanks to the good offices of Martin Ebner and Sandra Schaeffert, we have a complete stream of papers on mashups in e-learning, and I'm looking forward to hearing some of them. There is also a section dedicated to e-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments this year, which is a welcome addition to the conference programme. Serge Ravet is heading up that special track. I will try to get to some of the sessions and report back on what is being talked about. The full conference schedule is up on line.

My own session today is a 3 hour marathon on microblogging, and in particular, Twitter and its use in teaching and learning. I have 52 delegates signed up for it, and although it's supposed to be a pre-conference workshop, it's in the mainstream programme - the first time this has happened I think. As usual, I will try to report as much as I can from this event, and keep you posted on all the important issues being discussed.

Learning space mashups

The open access article I mentioned in yesterday's blogpost Access all areas has been published online, exactly 12 days from the date I submitted it. The review process was exceptionally fast. Apparently it was blind reviewed by up to 5 reviewers, so it would seem that the review process is more rigorous than many other journals I have published with. My paper appears in the first edition of an exciting new journal entitled 'Future Internet'. The journal is so new it looks as if my article is the first to be published in it. More will undoubtedly follow. Here's the link to the pdf of the article and below is the abstract:

In this paper, Web 2.0 open content mashups or combinations are explored. Two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes are reviewed where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces. In two separate studies, students offer their views about using these tools, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. There is also discussion about aggregation of content and a theorization of how community and personal spaces can create tension and conflict. A new ‘learning spaces’ model will be presented which aids visualization of the processes, domains and territories that are brought into play when content and Web 2.0 tools are mashed up within the same space.

Keywords: mashup; wiki; blog; Web 2.0; collaboration; reflection; learning

Wheeler, S. (2009) Learning Space Mashups: Combining Web 2.0 Tools to Create Collaborative and Reflective Learning Spaces. Future Internet. 1 (1), 3-13.

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Mashing it up

Earlier today I was invited by my good friend Maged Kamel Boulos to write a paper on educational mashups for inclusion in a special issue of Future Internet - an online open access journal, which he is guest editing. So I have put together a title and an abstract which I hope fits the bill.

The paper is based upon some talks I gave recently at Online Educa Berlin, the Plymouth E-Learning Conference, and the JISC Regional South West Conference. I also had a paper planned for the EDEN Conference in Gdansk, Poland last week, but health issues intervened and I never got to give it. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, so the paper has been repurposed. Here it is, awaiting your comments.

Wiki Blog Space Mashups: Combining Web 2.0 tools to create collaborative and reflective learning spaces

Recently teachers have used wikis, blogs and other open architecture Web tools to encourage student interaction (Richardson, 2006). Wikis can promote collaborative learning, and serve as repositories for user generated content (Wheeler et al, 2008). Blogs can encourage greater reflection on learning and enable students to enter into dialogue on specific topics (Kop, 2007). Wikis form a part of a community space, whilst blogs are situated within an individual’s personal space. Interest is growing about how social software tools can provide added value to the learning process, and this is reflected in the growing literature on the topic. Less is known about how wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools might be combined and mashed up to create dynamic new learning environments. In this paper, Web 2.0 tool combination is explored, with reference to two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces. Students offer their views about using these tools, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. There is also discussion about aggregation of content and a theorisation of how community and personal spaces can create tension and conflict. A new ‘learning spaces’ model will be presented which aids visualisation of the processes, domains and territories that are brought into play when content and Web 2.0 tools are mashed up within the same space.

References

Kop, R. (2007) Blogs and wikis as disruptive technologies: Is it time for a new pedagogy? In M. Osborne, M. Houston and N. Toman (Eds.) The Pedagogy of Lifelong Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.

Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P. and Wheeler, D. (2008) The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating Student Generated Content as a Collaborative Learning Tool. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-995.

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Self organised - Me?

Here I am in the idyllic surroundings of the Rookery Manor Hotel deep in the Somerset countryside. The sun is streaming in through the windows and everyone is happy. It really is cider country round here, and to prove it I sank a pint of the golden stuff last night in the company of @jamesclay and @dsugden. Today is the start of the 2 day JISC South West Regional Support Centre Summer Conference, and we will soon be listening to a keynote from Professor Derek Law entitled: Building on Excellence. It's also my birthday today, and tonight I will celebrate in style when we have our conference Bar-B-Q in the grounds of this excellent hotel.

Later today (after lunch) I will be speaking on the subject of 'Self Organisation and the Management of Virtual Student Learning'. It's a bit of an oxymoron because I don't think you can, or should manage something that is self organised, unless you are the person who is self organising. It was a title given to me to work with, so there you have it, and I have posted the PowerPoint slideshow for anyone interested in reading more. I will explore PLEs and VLEs and will look at mashups of tools and spaces too. In the afternoon I'm also member of an expert panel with James Clay, Derek Law and John McKenzie.

Right. That's it for now. I'm off to hear the keynote.

Mountains, microblogging and mashups

One of the papers I will be presenting in September is entitled: "Learning Space Mash-up: Toward a Collaborative Personal Learning Environment". It will be presented in the special track on Mashups and Education at this year's Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference, which as usual, is held in the beautiful Alpine town of Villach, in Austria. Nestled in the mountains in the silubrious Holiday Inn Congress Centre, the conference is a stimulating and enjoyable event which attracts around 600 delegates attending each year. Last year, our post conference social event was an unforgettable day trip to Venice.

There are many ideas I will be trying to convey in my paper. Firstly, I will be arguing that Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) will be the way forward for future distributed/blended learning. Secondly, I will want to reinforce the idea that PLEs, which are developed by individuals rather than through institutes, can be optimised through mashups - combinations and aggregations of tools and services that suit the individuals approach to learning. Thirdly, I will revisit the idea that mashup PLEs will rival and perhaps ultimately supplant the institutional Learning Management System (LMS) or VLE. I will outline and expand upon my reasons for this belief based on some of my recent blog posts. These include Monkey Business, Changing the Architecture (about the future of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services) and The Emperor's New Clothes? I also want to emphasise the power of collaborative working and interpersonal communication within PLEs - something that has been largely ignored in the quest for personalised learning spaces.

I will also be co-presenting a 90 minute workshop on Microblogging at the conference with my good friend and colleague Dr Tara Alexander and I'm also chairing the posters and demonstrations streams, so it will be a busy event for me. If you're there in Villach for ICL 2009, say hello!

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My e-learning philosophy

My professional career has been somewhat checkered. I first started work as a technician in media and technology back in 1976 when things were a lot less sophisticated than they are now. I entered into the world of academia when my interests in learning technologies grew beyond how they worked and I became interested in how they could be harnessed to support and enhance learning and teaching. Being a student at the Open University gave me some insight into what people go through when they are studying at a distance from their parent institution. It has helped me to create new experiences and activities which exploit new social media and give students interactive opportunities.

In a recent Skype interview with Gary McCafferty we talk about how my career has developed and I discuss my philosophy on e-learning. We talk about how social media is being used to support distance learners and create dynamic collaborative environments. The entire interview covers a range of other topics including backchannels and Twitter, digital natives and immigrants, the semantic web, social tools and academic rigour, learning technology affordances and constraints, a critique of institutional VLEs, e-portfolios, online submission systems, blogs and wikis, Web 3.0, One Laptop Per Child, mobile phone technology and Second Life. I also discuss issues surrounding usability, accessibility, social presence, peer networking and the future of learning technology.