Amplified

Below is an interview I did for the EU funded Links-Up Expert Testimonial video series on Web 2.0 and e-Learning, in the bright sunshine of Dublin, during the EDEN Conference. Halfway through, watch out for my Roy Orbison impersonation. I talk about amplified content, sharing and collaborating online, and personal learning networks. I also discuss disruptive technologies, risk taking, learner control and the changing landscape of learning.




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

Web 3.0 and onwards

Web 3.0: The way forward?

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Continuing my retrospective of the year, one of the surprising highlights for me was the aftermath of a presentation I gave at a school in Exeter, South West England, in July. I was invited by Vitalmeet to present my latest views on the future of the web in education, so I chose to talk about 'Web 3.0 - the way forward?' When I arrived, the room wasn't that ideal, and the projector was on its last legs. Only 15 people turned up, and that included the organisers. Not particularly auspicous. I gave my presentation, and no-one wished to asked any questions afterwards. I made for the door... then someone asked me if they could have my slides. I promised I would post them up on my Slideshare site so they could gain access.

To say I was amazed at the response is an understatement. My Web 3.0 slideshow received 8,000 views during its first week. Within the month, the count had risen to over 15,000 views - my original audience had multiplied a thousand times. Even more valuable for me, many people commented and shared their ideas to me, which led to to write further blog posts, and publish a second, related post entitled Web x.0 and beyond. It seemed that these ideas had resonated in the blogosphere. Tracking back I could see that many people had discovered the presentation and had deemed it worthy enough to embed within their own websites and blogs, and that many more had commented on Twitter and elsewhere. It had gone viral. This for me was just more proof that the social web is extremely powerful and tools such as Twitter, blogs and resource sharing sites are very effective event amplification tools. Here it is above, one more time, for anyone who missed it.

Web 3.0 and onwards 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.

Image source


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

Web feats 2: Slideshare

Yesterday I published the first of my Web feats - the social bookmarking tool Delicious. Today, I want to talk about another of my favourite Web 2.0 tools: Slideshare.

Sharing wasn't just something we were all taught to do as kids. It also has a place in professional life and in the spirit of the social webm, has become something I do naturally each time I create a new slideshow. I have even shared my slides before I present them (but usually only on the same day - I don't want to give too much of the game away!) I first discovered Slideshare about 2 years ago when I was looking for somewhere to store all my content. I quickly discovered that once my slide shows were posted on Slideshare, people came in to view them, and sometimes even commented on them. I found this to be a rich source of feedback from people who are equally as passionate about my subject as I am. The great thing about Slideshare is that if people are interested in your slideshow, they can show it in a number of useful ways. They can 'like' or 'favourite' your slideshow, download it for easier reading, or even embed it into their own blog or website using the coding the site provides for each individual slideset. Recently other widgets and tools have started appearing on the Slideshare site, including the tool that allows users to share a link on Facebook and Twitter, or embed it into a blog post if it's powered by Blogger or Wordpress.

As with all social web tools, Slideshare has a rich social dimension - you can create your own network using its tools by following people back who are following you or who leave comments. You can also find people who have similar interests to you and subscribe to their feeds so that when they post up a new slideshow, you will be the first to know. Slideshare is a very useful tool to guage the mood of the community - some of my slideshows have attracted 3000 views in a single day. When that happens you know you have hit a nerve. It's good to share.

Image source

Web feats 2: Slideshare by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Multi-me

You can never have too many social networking connections, I reckon. So besides all my Flickring (4 accounts), Twittering, Plurking and Facebooking, and my occasional Slidesharing, Wikiing, Ninging and Elgging, I have also joined the International Edublogger Directory (check out their blog). It won't improve the dubious quality of my blog posts, nor will it make me smarter or better looking. But it might just provide me with some extra connections out there in the blogosphere, and as Cormier and others have made abundantly clear - it's not about nodes, it's the connections that are important.

So I am member 425 on the International Edublogger community now. That's my number and there are 424 others who joined before me and whom I can connect with now, however tenuously.

Got me thinking about personal identity though.... I'm known as Timbuckteeth on most of my virtual spaces (no, not telling), and Loudli Singh (the gangly and strangely silent Asian) in Second Life who just like me, steadfastly refuses to dance. But my personal identity remains largely unchanged, I think. I'm still rooted to the here and now, and still embodied for as long as this human frame I inhabit continues to pulse and breathe away. Yet my digital footprint continues to grow on the web, as do the personal footprints of many others. And with this gradual incursion comes a certain expectation - to continue to inform (and entertain) one's growing audience of casual observers and more interested 'followers' who drop in to see what I am doing and what I am saying about my life, my work, my research, my triumphs .... even my disasters. I am more than a number you see - I am also a series of digital artefacts, a set of tagged photographs, a random collection of videos others have put together and posted up onto Youtube. I am also a series of comments and tags in other people's spaces and a hierarchical sequence of search engine responses on Google. And of course most importantly, I am me - a father, son, husband, brother, friend.

There is a picture of me on my professional website - it was taken at the ALT-C Gala dinner in Leeds this year. I call it 'Multi-me' because the picture shows digital images on cameras held up against my real-world image. That's how I feel sometimes - spread between all the digital environments I visit and the real world I inhabit consistently, even when I don't feel I am totally here. This is member No. 425, going off to get some lunch....