2010: The year we fake contact

Warning - This one is a bit of a rant. Social networking tools create contacts. That's what they were designed to do. It's in their job descriptions and they do exactly what it says on their can. Problem is, just how many people can I connect with who are actually people I know? Do I need to have any kind of connection with my Facebook 'friends' beyond the fact that we are linked on the site? When does it become a problem that you are sharing your photographs and your innermost thoughts with friends of friends of friends (I mean total strangers). Just where do you draw the line?

It's just possible that the guy who cut you up on the way home yesterday (you know, the one you exchanged angry words with from the safety of your own driving seats) is the same one you are having a poke exchange with tonight on Facebook. The woman you looked daggers at this morning at the superstore when your trolleys clashed could be the same one who sends you a pomegranate tree this evening on Farmville. You just don't know for sure, because a lot of your Facebook friends aren't really friends at all - they are actually strangers. And if you did meet them in the street, they wouldn't have 'Facebook user' stamped on their foreheads that's for sure. Some are just people you have casually clicked 'yes' to on a friend request, without checking out who they are because you didn't have the time ... at the time. They may have requested friendship status with you simply because you have been auto-suggested by Facebook or because they have a causal acquaintance (i.e. a Facebook link) with one of the people you also have a Facebook link with. And you are now eternally linked, because you can't bring yourself to unfriend them, or you simply forget to do so. And then others with even more tenuous links request friendship. And on it goes....

What does it really mean to have 4000 friends on Facebook? Well, fortunately, unlike Jesus, you won't have to feed them all. Most of them won't be invited to your daughter's wedding and they won't be on your Christmas card list either. They might come in handy if you wanted to besiege Carthage or recreate the T-Mobile Flashmob dance provided they were all living in spitting distance. But with 4000 Facebook friends you might have to face a shed load of requests to join the 'Prevent Ferret Strangling in Equador' Campaign or 'I love Robert Pattinson but I think Twilight sucks' Fan Club. It's no joke. I have well over 100 requests waiting for me on Facebook as I write this. It thrills me, it really does, going through each one, and being told accusingly: 'You have ignored a request from Mother Theresa to prevent Baby Seal Culling in Nova Scotia'. I guess it's fine if you want to feel popular, but ultimately, I think it's all just a big fake having so many 'friends' on your social networking site. I closed down my Bebo, Plurk and MySpace accounts in 2009 because I was being overloaded by so many friend requests and spurious linking to things I couldn't be asked to spend time on. Call me an old humbug if you like, but I'm through with poking, vampire battles and food fights. It's for these reasons I may take the plunge and also close down my Facebook account in 2010. Any reason why I shouldn't?

A happy new year to you all!

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Noughties ... but nice

The first decade of the 21st Century was highly significant for personal learning. Such a vast array of new personal devices and web applications was introduced that have become so deeply ingrained in our everyday lives, many of us would probably feel at a loss if we were suddenly transported back to 1999. If we time jumped from then to 2009, the way we now communicate, learn, search for information, share content and consume entertainment would be unrecognisable. The concept of personal learning environments was also introduced, as a counterpoint to the notion of the VLE. Here are just a few of the personal technological innovations (good or bad) that emerged in the noughties:

Mobile ringtones: OK.... perhaps we could do without ringtones. Those irritating little tunes you hear on the train, in the supermarket queue and even interrupting performances in the theatre have actually grossed over £112 million in sales in the UK alone, and they ain't finished yet. As the next generation of mobile users comes of age, they too will demand that their favourite tunes be made into ringtones. The music industry must be rubbing its hands with glee.

iPods and Podcasts: The Touch, the Nano, the Shuffle, the Classic, you name it, versions of the iPod popped up and grabbed our attention in the noughties. First appearing in 2001, the iPod series is now the most successful digital audio player in history with over 220 million worldwide sales at the time of writing.

The Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) appeared in 2004 and was one of the first handheld games consoles with a built in microphone and wireless connectivity. The dual screen technology was not as smart as we first thought, but never the less, it's a great little device to amuse yourself with for a few hours whilst waiting for a train, on the bus, or in the dentist's chair (eew).

The iPhone: Apple strikes again. For most people who have them they are the best thing since sliced bread. But there are those who absolutely hate this smart, touch surface mobile phone. Battery life sucks, the camera on the first series was naff and they are expensive when you are locked into an O2 contract. But they have revolutionised mobile phones with their pinch gesturing and responsive multi-touch screens, and with several copycat devices available, there really is no going back now.

Social networking sites: Facebook (2006), Myspace (2003), Bebo (2005), LinkedIn (2003) and other sites together have changed the face of social networking for ever. For good or bad, millions of users worldwide flock every day to their favourite social networking sites for their daily fix of pokes, foodfights, online games status updates and live chat. Friends and friends of friends - the race is on to see who can collect the most links to people they will never ever meet. Seriously, social networking has blurred the boundaries between public and private, business and leisure, even good and bad taste. The way you manage your on-line identity is more important than ever. Nothing it seems, is 'yours' anymore - once you have posted personal information or photos to Facebook, they are no longer simply 'your property'. They are there forever, and burying the past may prove to be a problem for many...

YouTube: Freaking out, spoofing, parodies, pirated music videos and plenty of dross - that's YouTube for you. Before Youtube it was very difficult to upload your video clips to the Internet. Youtube made it easy for millions. If you want to know a fact you Google it, but if you want to see a clip, you YouTube it.

Nintendo Wii: This small object of desire appeared in November 2006. If we were cynical, we could surmise that Nintendo worked out if all their games playing customers continued to sit on their backsides, they would get fat and die of heart attacks. So they invented an active sports style handset to get games players up and moving about, thus keeping them alive longer so they could earn more money and spend it on Nintendo games and Wii technology. Clever.

Wikipedia: Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly to become one of the largest reference web sites, attracting approximately 65 million visitors each month. It's the first stop students make when they need to know something, and also the most vilified reference source for many scholars and academics. Where else would most of us go though, for quick information.

Google apps: Streetview, Scholar, Google Earth, Docs, etc - all of these applications appeared in the last decade, and have revolutionised the way we learn, work together, look up information and generally play out our online lives. Augmented reality was introduced as a result of the combination of a number of smart device apps including mashups, global positioning and touch screen technologies. The coming decade will see smart devices, augmented reality and haptic semantic applications coming of age. We will then see how these can be applied to enhance and extend the personal learning environment.

...and of course.... there was Twitter: Forget all the celebrity rubbish and media hype. Twitter is one of the best stripped down social networking tools available to humankind. Don't be deceived by it's simplistic appearance though. It's a powerful tool with plenty of filtering capability and its amplification and connection potential is yet to be fully tapped. Twitter and its third party bolt-on tools will be one to watch in the next few years.

So what are we to make of this truly technological ten years? We have seen radical shifts in our views of identity, relationships, copyright, communication and learning. These are deep changes that will not be recinded, and as we move into an ever more connected society, the changes will increase in their pace and intensity. Personalised learning has never been so easy to establish, and never more contentious. No-one can quite agree on what a personal learning environment is, but that is predictable, because for each of us, it is something different. And what of the future? We don't know what the next decade will hold, but we do know this - it will be increasingly connected. It will also be different - probably more different than we can begin to imagine.

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Top 10 TV ads of the decade

I watch my fair share of television, and often find myself watching the commercials in the breaks. Normally it's the time to go and make a cup of tea, or flick channels, because many adverts are nothing but dross. But on occasions, an advert catches my eye.

Some TV commercials are amazing, and others thought provoking. Many rely on the application of state of the art technology to achieve their impact.

Some adverts cause me to ask - now how did they do that? It was very entertaining then to see a TV programme this week which showcased some of the greatest ads of the decade. Here are the top ten TV commercials (voted by viewers) that have graced our screens over the last 10 years. They are inventive, creative, funny and entertaining. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did.

10: PG Tips: 'It's the Taste' (2008)

9: Sony Bravia: 'Paint' (2006)

8: John West Salmon Advert (2001)

7: T-Mobile Dance (2009)

6: Guinness: 'The Tipping Point' (2007)

5: Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate 'Coming in the Air' (2007)

4: Honda Accord: 'Honda Cogs' (2003)

3: Compare the Market: Alexander the Meerkat (2008)

2: Skoda Fabia: 'Original Cake Car' (2007)

1: Hovis Bread: 'Go on Lad' (2008)

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Networked noughties 2006-2009

This is a continuation from yesterday's post and the last in my series on the technological innovations of the last decade.

March 2006 was the year I first began to take an interest in Web 2.0 and social networks as potentially useful educational tools. With my colleagues Boulos and Maramba I published my first Web 2.0 article: Wikis, blogs and podcasts. 2006 saw the launch of Twitter - now one of the most popular live status update tools worldwide. Twitter is perhaps best known in the media for its many celebrity users, and their ability to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of 'followers', but it is increasingly used as a conference backchannel, and is now finding its footing in education.

Another major player in the world of social networking was birthed the same year. In September 2006, Facebook came late to the party, but within a short time (March 2008) it overhauled Myspace as the world's favourite social networking tool. Facebook now attracts more thrid party apps than you can shake a stick at, including popular games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille.

March 2006 was the month we bade farewell to the standard video tape as major retailers stopped selling VHS on the high street. The same month saw the Blu-Ray format being launched in the UK. Google purchased YouTube in November for an estimated 1.65 billion US Dollars, and just in time for Christmas, Nintendo launched the Wii handset.

2007 was a momentous year for touch screen technologies - in June the Apple iPhone became available and changed the way people used their mobile phones. In August of the same year, it was announced that Google had become the most used search engine on the web.

2008 saw the launch of Spotify - a peer to peer music streaming service, the purchase of Bebo by AOL for 850 million US dollars, and the start of the UK digital switchover (in the Border TV region).

The year just gone has been a relatively quiet one in terms of social networking, but behind the scenes, it is highly likely that the digirati are working away at the next generation of apps, widgets and services. In June 2009, the UK Government published its Digital Britain Report, committing the UK to a universal broadband provision by 2012.

Time will tell how many of these innovations will survive, mutate or crash and burn, but this much is clear: The way we communicate, share and access information, and consume entertainment has changed forever. The decade just passed is a significant decade in terms of technology, but it is also significant in the ways it has altered our perceptions of privacy, property, identity, copyright, commerce, relationships and society. Some shifts have been subtle, others more radical. We don't know what the next decade will bring, but we do know that change will accelerate to meet the demands of a volatile economy, uncertain future and an entirely new generation of technology users that will pass through our education institutions.

I wish you and those close to you a peaceful holiday season and a successful new year.

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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.

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Networked noughties 2000-2002

The last 10 years will be known as the networked decade. At the risk of sounding Churchillian : "Never before have people been able to communicate so quickly, and never before has so much information been available to so many people". Sure, previous years saw the telephone, CB radio, television, the Web and e-mail, but this decade was the one when social networking came of age, and where unprecendented access to vast storehouses of knowledge became common place for millions across the globe.

The speed at which these technologies have become a part of our every day experience is quite astonishing and it is exemplified in the noughties. In this short series of blogposts, I want to look back over the years 2000-2009, to map the key moments when the digital decade changed our lives.

Once the frenzy of the Millennium celebrations had died down (Millennium - is this now a derelict term?) we began to see signs of what the future would hold. We didn't need to wait too long. July 2000 saw the launch of one of the first social networking sites: Friends Reunited. The basic premise of the site was to reconnect people who for some reason had lost contact with each other. The promise of 'reunion of old friends' became the basis for much of what was to follow. Within a year Friends Reunited had grown to over a million users, establishing that connecting and sharing online were going to become a very popular pastime.

The 'hive minds' concept was realised with the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001. Just about everything that can be said has already been said about Wikipedia. But for better or worse, Wikipedia is here to stay, has broken a lot of new ground about what is meant by 'knowledge' and has opened up the doors for a sea-change in open, collaborative knowledge building.

Other significant events in 2001 included the launch in July of Sky+, prompting a shift in our perceptions of what digital television could bring, and Interactive TV became a reality for many when it was made widely available in November of the same year. The ability to stop, start and replay live action, and to interact from a handset with TV was an exciting concept. Apple gave birth to the iPod in the US, bringing handheld technologies to the masses, and 3G mobile phone services were available for the first time in the UK in time for Christmas, opening up an entire new vista of telephony.

In 2002 there was failure and success for digital TV. May saw the closure of the fledgling ITV digital service, which had only been established (as a rebirth of ON Digital) in July 2001. But UK TV viewers rubbed their hands in anticipation when Freeview became available in October.

Our viewing habits were changing, and information communication technologies were beginning to take a more prominent place within the home, office and classroom. The first 3 years of the new decade were only a prelude though - these developments merely laid the foundation for the digital maelstrom that was to follow. This series continues tomorrow with a review of the years 2003-2005.

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Spanish inquisition

Do you agree that it's important to be acknowledged for the work you have done? I find it particularly rewarding when someone else finds my work useful enough to retweet it on Twitter, or better still write a blog post about it. Linking back to my blog or giving me a name check is all the reward I need. I'm a simple soul. I give my stuff away free, papers, slideshows, images, because I believe in the value of 'share and share alike'. I fully support the ethos of open scholarship and think the world would be a better place if all academic ideas were free and didn't need to be paid for. But that is too idealist for some perhaps. I don't mind other people using my ideas and work as long as they acknowledge where it came from. I'm also open to constructive criticism too, so I can improve things if I need to.

I am particularly proud of some of the "teaching with Twitter" uses I have developed - 'Lingua Tweeta', 'Twitterstalking' and 'Micro-Write' (See Teaching with Twitter from earlier this year). They give description to language tandems and other learner centred activities which can be supported by Twitter. It's easy to use the terms to track other blog posts about these and allied Twitter teaching uses I described in that blog post. One Spanish blog called Clarión recently carried some commentary about my ideas (which were translated into Spanish) and cited the link back to my original post. Clarión's post was subsequently reported by several other blogs in the Spanish speaking world and elsewhere. Unfortunately though, none of them acknowledged the original source. I guess this is the point I start getting a little aeriated. I have also seen slideshows listing my 10 Twitter Teaching ideas without citing the original source. Perhaps I'm wrong, but doesn't this constitute some kind of plagiarism? If my students used a whole list of ideas without citing the source it would be deemed as such. On a blog shouldn't it be the same?

I don't know whether to feel flattered that others have found my ideas so useful they have decided to list them on their blogs and slideshows, or annoyed because they overlooked the original source. You see, as others copy the list across onto their blogs, so my original efforts gain visibility, but my intellectual property rights are increasingly buried. This might sound petty, but I have gone as far as to post comments on some of these blogs thanking the blog owner for finding my ideas useful, and then suggesting politely that they might wish to acknowledge the source. But.... am I being too precious about this? Or do I have a point? Maybe once I have posted an idea to my blog I lose the right to ownership of that idea? And what about intellectual property? Have others had a similar issue with other bloggers using their ideas without acknowledging them? Maybe others could discuss this in more detail. Perhaps I'm too close to the issue to be fully objective.... and after all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

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