The personal web

With the Southampton PLE Conference #PLE_SOU at full throttle, I thought it would be a good time to reiterate my views on the personal web. Personal Web Tools (PWTs) are thought by some to be synonymous with PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) but the two should not be confused. The authors of the Horizon Report (I cannot recommend the Horizon Report series highly enough) succinctly define the personal web as"a term coined to represent a collection of technologies that confer the ability to reorganize, configure and manage online content rather than just viewing it". The report goes on to define personal webs as self created, and consisting of online tools that suit each individual's unique preferences, styles and needs. Sound like a PLE? Almost, but not quite.

My view is that PWTs sit inside a PLE but they are not the whole story. I believe the PLE extends beyond personal web tools to encompass other tools and resources, such as paper based resources and broadcast media such as television and radio, as well as conversations with other people, realia experiences and so on. Having said that, each and every one of the above could be mediated through web tools, but they are not exclusively so. I attempted to map these components out in a post entitled Anatomy of a PLE.

At its core, the personal web is also very proactive: The Horizon Report gave an excellent, if somewhat idealised conceptualisation of the personal web: "Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create customized, personal web-based environments — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning and other activities via highly personalized windows to the networked world. Online material can be saved, tagged, categorized, and repurposed without difficulty..."

I recognise that there is a problem here, and this has been pointed out by some of those who have responded to my Two fingered salute post and was also touched on during yesterday's session at the PLE conference in Southampton. It is this: Not everyone has the skills to use, or is willing to use personal web tools. For those who don't, the institutional VLE (or sadly, no web based use at all) is an alternative.

This may sound like a climb down from my position on the death of the VLE, but It is not. I have always believed in a hybrid solution and indeed use one in my own professional practice, but for the sake of the polemic momentum, I'm advocating that institutions seriously reappraise their use of the VLE (read 'managed learning environment'). Much of it is dross, creative thinking is stifled, true collaboration is constrained, many students hate it, and many of the staff are not all that keen either (because it creates a lot of hard work with very little pay-off). Where do you go it you want to learn something new? Certainly not the VLE. The institutional VLE cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be perceived as a personal web - it is often too sterile and homogenised - but I concede that it can be a useful, safe and content rich starting point for those who are embarking on learning through the web.

Image source by Freefoto.com


The personal web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital tribal identity

Earlier this year I published an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures' which was a compendium of papers written by leading theorists and practitioners in the field of learning technology. Over the next few days I will present an abridged, bite size series of exerpts from one of my chapters which was entitled: 'Digital Tribes, Virtual Clans'. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to reading your comments.

Tribes use common culture to construct group identity and will employ dialects as a shared but often exclusive form of communication. The dialect of the London East End for example, is peppered with rhyming slang, whereas just a few hundred miles away, the Geordie dialect of the North East of England is heavy with accent and vocabulary that have survived from the incursions of the Norsemen several centuries before. Such linguistic devices, although deriving from different roots, both serve to exclude outsiders who attempt to enter into the circle. Thus the shared symbolism of the slang or dialect tacitly protects the tribal culture and secures its social exclusivity for its members. Communication, including speech, clothing and actions all serve to signal our cultural identities and group membership (Pahl & Rowsell, 2006). Cultural transmission is the communication of ideas. According to Dawkins (1976) key actions and thinking patterns of members of a culture are influenced by a contagious patterns of information known as ‘memes’. Memes carry no specific rules, but in effect are adopted and shared around by the tribe as a means of perpetuating that culture.

The smaller elements with the tribe, which we call clans, also employ shared symbolism. Each clan for example, has its totem, a symbol that represents it and distinguishes it from other, possibly rival clans. In primitive clans, the totem was often a representation of an animal or tree. Durkheim suggests it is easier for clan members to project their feelings of awe toward a totem than toward something that is as complex as the clan itself (Haralambos & Holborn, 1995). For digital tribes and virtual clans, the totem – the traditional rallying point for all tribal activity – is patently the world wide web. Not only are these digital spaces objects of intense interest and rallying points for the clans, they also act as transmitters of units of cultural knowledge. Several authors have argued that digital technologies and electronic networks provide perhaps the best environment for the transmission of memes (Blackmore 1999; Adar, Zhang, Adamic & Lukose, 2004). Such new literary practices of communication (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) rely heavily on shared spaces, shared symbolism and the viral nature of the social web.

Weber originally suggested that culture should be construed as a ‘web of significance’ that was spun by the individuals who comprised the culture (Weber, 1947). Significantly, the increasing role the World Wide Web plays in the shaping of modern tribal culture causes Weber’s notion to resonate. Until recent technological innovation, people with common tribal identity lived in geographically specific locations, and considered areas of land to be their sole territory. Such territories are now being eroded due to the emergence of new digital tribes who occupy spaces located within cyberspace – a virtual space that transgresses all traditional, social and political boundaries.

Tomorrow: The digital tribe and the network nation

Related posts

When two edu-tribes go to war (Peter Ford)
Hoe verbind jij je met andere mensen op internet? (Wilfred Rubens)

References

Adar, E., Zhang, L., Adamic, L. and Lukose, R. (2004) Implicit Structure and Dynamics of Blogspace. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Blackmore, S. (1999) The Meme Machine. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (1995) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (4th Edition). London: Harper Collins.
Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2006) Literacy and Education: Understanding the new literacy studies in the classroom. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. New York: The Free Press.

It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

My slides for the upcoming PLE/PLN Online Symposium hosted by the University of Manitoba are now available for viewing above. In 'It's Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs', I attempt to compare and contrast a number of learning philosophies, and define some of the (un)boundaries of informal and self organised learning - the fertile ground within which personal learning approaches flourish. Above is the scary baby from the cover slide: I will present this slide show with live commentary on Thursday from the Cork Institute of Technology over the Elluminate platform. I'm looking forward to hearing comments from those who are interested in this fascinating area of learning development.

PLEs join us online

I'm an invited speaker for the online PLE/PLN Symposium that has been organised by George Siemens and Stephen Downes for next week. I will be working in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland, and will be speaking via the Elluminate platform, next Thursday (15th October) at around 1600 BST. I'm looking forward to talking about my own concept of personal learning environments and personal webs in my talk which is entitled: 'It's Personal'. I will post my slides later on slideshare, but in the meantime here's a taste of what's to come taken from the symposium website:

A symposium will be held from October 13th till October 16th 2009 on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). The interest in Personal Learning Environments has grown with the emergence of Web2.0 technologies. Learning technologists can see how PLEs can help learners to organize their own personal learning, rather than that formal education institutions control the technologies that are being used and the way in which they are being used. Speakers will include developers and researchers of PLEs. All events will be hosted in Elluminate and recorded for archives. A discussion forum will be hosted in Moodle for asynchronous interactions.

Other speakers include George and Stephen, along with Josie Fraser, Rita Kop, Mark van Harmelen, Scott Wilson and Graham Attwell. The full list and schedule are available on the symposium website. I hope you are able to join us for all, or at least some of the talks which I am sure will be thought provoking and stimulating.

Dead personal

Since I posted the 'Two fingered salute' earlier this week several people have asked me what I meant by 'personal web'. I was also asked why I didn't use the term PLE (Personal Learning Environment). The two are not to be confused. The authors of the 2009 Horizon Report (I cannot recommend this document highly enough) succinctly define the personal web as "a term coined to represent a collection of technologies that confer the ability to reorganize, configure and manage online content rather than just viewing it". The report goes on to define personal webs as self created and consisting of online tools that suit each individual's unique preferences, styles and needs. Sound like a PLE? Almost, but not quite.

I deliberately avoided using the term PLE because I believe the PLE extends beyond personal web tools to encompass other tools and resources, such as paper based resources and broadcast media such as television and radio, as well as conversations with other people and so on. Having said that, each and every one of the above could be mediated through web tools, but they are not exclusively so.

At its core, the personal web is also very proactive: The Horizon Report gives an excellent, if somewhat idealised conceptualisation of the personal web: "Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create customized, personal web-based environments — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning and other activities via highly personalized windows to the networked world. Online material can be saved, tagged, categorized, and repurposed without difficulty..." I know there is a problem here, and this has been pointed out by some of those who have responded to my Two fingered salute post. It is this: Not everyone has the skills to use, or is willing to use the web tools that are referred to above. For those who don't, the institutional VLE (or perhaps no web based use at all) is an option.

This may sound like a climb down from my position on the death of the VLE, but It is not. I have always believed in a hybrid solution and indeed use one in my own professional practice, but for the sake of the polemic momentum, I'm advocating that institutions seriously reappraise their use of the VLE (read 'managed learning environment'). Much of it is dross, creative thinking is stifled, true collaboration is constrained, many students hate it, and many of the staff are not all that keen either (because it creates a lot of hard work with very little pay-off). The institutional VLE cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be perceived as a personal web - it is often too sterile and homogenised - but it can be a useful, safe and content rich starting point for those who are embarking on learning through the web.

The debate on the future of personal webs, VLEs and PLEs will continue online no doubt, but we also intend to conduct a face-to-face dust-up at ALT-C in Manchester this September. There should also be plenty of opportunity during the Fringe (F-ALT) sessions - see the F-ALT website for more details on these informal discussions.

Image source

Two fingered salute

They stood facing each other across a muddy ploughed field. It had rained heavily the night before. On the one side, flying their colourful banners, the pride of French medieval nobility: at least 30,000 men in shining armour, armed to the teeth and ready for an overwhelming victory. On the other side, the army of Henry V - less than 8,000 English and Welsh soldiers, weakened and bedraggled from weeks of forced marching, dysentery and hunger. The French looked like they had just stepped out of a Louis Vuitton boutique, and their opponents looked like crap. Yet over the course of a few hours, Henry's small dishevelled army systematically took their enemies to pieces with the result that the French dead were piled up in walls, and their noble families, sometimes three complete generations, were slaughtered like cattle. The French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, losing over 5000 dead, while Henry's army sustained around 200 dead. The year was 1415, and the battle took place just outside the tiny French village of Azincourt. The Battle of Agincourt radically altered the course of European history, and Henry V regained the crown of France through his determination, will to succeed and the sheer pugnacity of his ‘happy few’, his ‘band of brothers’.

The French should never have met the English and Welsh in open battle. From previous heavy defeats at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), they had reason to fear the longbow of the English and Welsh archers, who each could accurately fire a dozen or more armour piercing bodkin arrows a minute. In the reloading stakes the French cross-bows were no match. Legend has it the French feared the archers so much that they threatened to cut off the two fingers on the drawing hands of every one of them if they were captured. At the end of the battle when the hundreds of Frenchmen (those who were fortunate enough to be spared because they were rich enough to attract a ransom) were paraded through the ranks of archers, the archers showed them their two fingers – the V sign that has since become the British gesture of defiance.

The reasons why Henry V won against overwhelming odds?

1) The French had no effective leadership, but the English and Welsh had a strong and determined leader in King Henry V.
2) The English and Welsh were more flexible and manoeuvrable than the French, who came at them in a way that bunched them together and tripped them over so that many simply drowned in the mud.
3) The English and Welsh archers did not wear the heavy plate armour that encumbered the French men-of-war. The French got bogged down in the muddy field and once they were down in the mud, the archers moved in swiftly to dispatch them with their poleaxes and knives.
4) The awesome fire power of the English and Welsh long bows was a significant factor. It did for the first and only French cavalry charge that was meant to destroy the archers.
5) The English and Welsh had very little left to lose and nowhere to go but forward.

Anyone with a modicum of insight will see that there are several parallels here with the battle between the institutional VLE and Edupunk style ‘do-it-yourselves’ personal web tools. The shiny, expensive and cumbersome VLE dominates the battlefield that is education, and is supposedly the killer application that all colleges and universities have bought into. The colour of the banner doesn’t matter, because whatever the brand, the VLE has essentially a common architecture and purpose: it is there to restrict access, deliver homogenous content and control the activities of its users. It lumbers ever forward into confined spaces, tripping itself over as it goes, and is slow to adapt to new requirements. Whilst its champions think it is invincible, they don’t seem to realise that it is becoming bogged down in a morass of apathy, resistance to use and lack of response to change.

The personal web by contrast, moves along lightly at the pace of its users, being directed as changes and personal needs dictate. It has an awesome array of choices, and is responsive to the needs of communities of practice as well as the individual. It is cheap, and not very attractive (at least in corporate terms) when compared to the institutional VLE, but it is a damned sight more effective when it comes to supporting learning. The institutional VLE is led by the entire institution and is therefore slow to respond to change, whilst the personal web is led by one user. The personal web has one more key advantage – it is owned by the individual who created it.

All things considered, it is inevitable that the personal web will win in a straight fight against the institutional VLE. The VLE has had its day and will meet its demise, even though its supporters cannot see it coming. The personal web is on the rise. For me and many, many others, we’re showing our two fingers to the institutional VLE.

Responses to this post and related posts:

VL-istically speaking (Matt Lingard)
It's not dead ...yet (James Clay)
Not dead yet (Mark Notess)
The VLE/PLE debate (Lyndsay Jordan)
Dead personal (Steve Wheeler)
USpace (University of Sheffield)
Virtual Learning Environments (Dan Kennedy)
Is your VLE really a Virtual Learning Environment? (Paul Vaughan)
Social media is killing the LMS star (Bryan Alexander)
The VLE debate (Dan Stucke)
Move to a more agile VLE (Jez Cope)

Image source (From the movie Kes)


Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.