TechTicker
educational technology, eLearning & emerging technology

[UPDATE: Please be sure to read the comments for a discussion on this matter between existing users of Diigo, Diigo staff, and myself. ]

I deleted my Diigo account tonight after a period of only a fortnight.  I’ve heard many great things about the application as a better version of Del.icio.us with support for group collaboration and was inspired to check it out when it was suggested as a potential tool for the Facilitating Online Communities course I’m presently taking.

Based on the little I saw of the application it did bear promise, however then I began to receive notifications that people had accepted my “invite” to use Diigo, and I got suspicious.  This suspicion was exacerbated and confirmed when I myself began to receive the same invites, which were sent to my various email accounts.  These read as follows:

Mike Bogle…is a member of Diigo and would like to send you an invitation.

To accept this invitation and register for your free account, please click and visit Create Account

If you haven’t already heard about Diigo, you can view a short introductory video here. As you will see, Diigo is both a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community that allows you:

- to add highlights and sticky notes on any web pages, just as you can on books!
- to create and organize your personal digest of the web, and access and search it from anywhere.
- to create groups for collaborative research.
- to keep in touch with friends effortlessly and non-intrusively by sharing contents.
- to connect with others based on shared content and interests.
- to discover quality resources on any subject or get personalized recommendations.

We’re still working every day to improve Diigo. We hope you’ll like Diigo. We do. And, it’s only going to get better!

Thanks

The Diigo Team

I didn’t send these, nor did I request they be sent.

As it turns out the application had spammed my entire contact list without my knowledge or permission, and I was receiving emails from people wondering whether it was legitimate.  “It’s not” I said.

While I’ve heard many great things about the application by way of my edubloggers network, I have no patience nor tolerance for an application that abuses my contact list.  It is simply unacceptable.

The unfortunate thing is several of my fellow students have begun to use it as a collaborative forum for my course.  I may miss out on some of the discussion as a result of my departure from the application, however I have no interest in driving additional usage, nor providing recommendations for, an application that takes advantage of its users.

This post seeks to shed some light on the topics of Pageflakes, “pagecasts”, how they’re created, potential uses, and some of the issues to bear in mind when investigating their use.

Note: The above clip best viewed full size.  Click on the TV icon in the embedded player above to load the full screen view, or view the clip at Blip.TV.

Background

Pageflakes is one of a growing number of websites that enables people to establish a personalised and customised space on the web. Unlike the websites of a number of years ago, where content was static, and text and images had to be changed manually through use of coding languages, Pageflakes pages are created and maintained from the site itself and largely through drag-and-drop processes.

Importantly, the information included on Pageflakes pages is not restricted to the site, but can also include content from across the web - this includes text, images, video, RSS and even ways to interact with other applications like Gmail and Twitter. A large and growing library of “flakes” (content options) is available and can be customised to suit the user’s needs.

While a degree of set-up is required to create a page on Pageflakes, this revolves primarily around aesthetic considerations regarding page layout and colour scheme, as well as what content to include. Technical expertise is not a requirement for use. As the above video clip illustrates, in most cases customisation involves simply nominating tags/terms to narrow the search results, or adding the URL to the site or RSS feed.

Set-up

To set-up your own Pageflakes pagecast just follow these steps:

Create an Account

1. Go to http://www.pageflakes.com and click on Sign-up
2. Enter your details in the form
3. Locate contacts if desired (optional)
4. Click “Sign Up” when complete.

You are now logged in and will see a page displayed with default content. You can keep or remove as much of this as you like, as well as add additional content sources from the main menu.

Create a New Page

To create and customise a new page please do the following:

1. Login to Pageflakes
2. Click “Add Page” from in the row of tabs towards the top of the screen and a blank page is loaded
3. Double-click the new tab to rename it
4. To add new content, click the large yellow menu button in the upper right hand corner of the screen
   • Click on a site or service (e.g. YouTube) to add it to the page, then click edit to customise the display options
   • Click “Add RSS Feed” to include blog/wiki updates. Include the feed location where indicated
   • Click “Browse All Flakes” for additional options
5. To move panels around, simply click on the heading of the panel and drag into the desired position.

Publish the Page as a Pagecast

When you’re ready to share your page with others - or to make it publicly visible - please do the following:

1. Login to Pageflakes
2. Go to the tab/page you wish to publish
3. Click the big yellow menu button to open the options
4. Click “Make Pagecast” from the options in the left menu and choose an access level. The options are:
   • Keep it Private - only you have access
   • Share it with Friend or Group (Group Pagecast) - only nominated individuals have access
   • Publish Page to the world (Public Pagecast) - everyone has access
5. Select a username (this is included in the pagecast’s URL/weblink)
6. Assign the page a title, include a description, and add tags/descriptors
7. Click “Save” when finished and your pagecast is visible at the specified access level.

Pageflakes as a Blogging Portal

As discussed in a previous post, Pagecasts could be used to establish a portal to aggregate the updates of a wider group or community, such as a classroom blogging exercise:

“In the context of classroom blogging projects, this could easily be used as a portal whereby students and staff could browse through the recent contributions. Given the view options include the ability to restrict access to nominated individuals you could also maintain a level of privacy where only classroom participants have access, or open it up as a showcase for what your class is doing.

I’ve created an example I’ve called the “edubloggers aggregate“…which contains the feeds for 12 of the blogs I follow. Personally I find the Pageflakes format much more conducive to browsing than a blog-as-portal. In some ways it even looks like an online magazine.”

More on that post here: “Pageflakes as a Blogging Portal”

It should be noted too that use of Pageflakes in this way does not preclude the use of other RSS aggregators or Feed Readers to view the same content. RSS pushes site/blog updates to all corners of the web; they are visible anywhere and in multiple locations at the same time.

More on RSS here: “Really Simple Syndication (RSS)”

Issue to Consider: Page Load Time

The primary consideration with Pageflakes and the like (including Netvibes), is the pageload time required to render the page on screen. “Page load time” refers to the amount of time required for all content to be displayed on-screen. The more data that needs to be processed, the more time it will take to be displayed.

In the case of Pageflakes and other content aggregators like it, the underlying technologies that make the site valuable - namely the content aggregation - can also slow it down even further. Each time the page loads, Pageflakes checks for updates on every site thats included in the pagecast - this includes RSS feeds, images, YouTube, etcetera. So the more sites you reference, the longer the page will take to load.

The significance of this lay with accessibility considerations. Users with high-speed internet connections will not notice a huge delay in page load time; however users on dial-up will. Therefore it’s important to bear in mind the target audience of the pages you create. If you’re in a rural area in which dial-up is the only option, or if Internet access is not ubiquitous in your region, Pageflakes may not be for you. As nice at flashy as it is, if you can’t access the content on the site it will offer no value to the end users.

About Me

My name is Mike Bogle, and I am an eLearning Researcher from the University of New South Wales. My primary role in my unit, Learning & Teaching @ UNSW, is to research innovative technologies and evaluate how they can support learning and teaching, pilot new services, and provide consultative support for local academic staff interested in incorporating emerging technology into their curriculum.

Work History

I’ve been at UNSW since 2002, and began at the Educational Development and Technology Centre (EDTeC) on the Learning Resource Catalogue (LRC). This project sought to provide a central storehouse of learning materials, which could be used and reused by the academic community to support their teaching efforts. Encompassing 18 international institutions at its peak, the LRC eventually expanded to include a group area for facilitating community interaction and collaboration.

After the LRC I expanded into research as a member of the Authentic Learning Project, which explored the logistics and possibilities of field-based webconferencing. The project aimed to determine the feasibility of facilitating two-way link-ups between staff in remote locations and students in the classroom. A highly ambitious project, we established a proof of concept by successfully conducting a field geology lesson between a lecturer in Centennial Park in Sydney and colleagues on campus. Ultimately however we determined that the local infrastructure (strength and availability of wireless Internet access) and technical complexities of the setup rendered more widespread usage unrealistic in the short term. Furthermore the virtually complete absence of high speed Internet outside of urban centres make the prospect of remote field-work impossible.

One of the key outcomes to emerge from the Authentic Learning Project was the web conferencing pilot that I helped organise. Based on Macromedia’s Breeze, a web conference room was constructed that enabled groups of up to 12 people to connect with colleagues anywhere in the world to hold meetings, job interviews, and even student exercises. I facilitated the technical aspects of countless meetings, including a highly complex link-up with the UK for the ISSOTL conference in front of several hundred people, as well as a classroom exercise between local students of Japanese studies and their counterparts in Japan.

Concurrently to the Authentic Learning I began to explore the emerging realm of new media (aka Web 2.0, or social software) and joined a very short lived project known as the Land and Water Australia Knowledgebase as the technical consultant. The LWA-KB as it was called was part of the larger Healthy Soils Project, which sought to link together subject-matter experts from a wide cross-section of society - ranging from government and other public sector representatives, to private sector consultants and consultancy firms, to farmers and rural experts. Unfortunately this project was not meant to be and was terminated before it got off the ground.

The next phase of my professional development was on the front lines of eLearning support as the eLearning Delivery Coordinator and Research Officer. I worked across the eLearning portfolio in a support and testing capacity, liaised with ITS Help Desk and software vendors, provided consultative eLearning support to local staff, and concurrently ran the unofficial web conferencing service. In hindsight it was a huge undertaking, but I learned a lot from it.

Eventually I became fully devoted to eLearning Research and am now responsible for following trends in emerging technology, evaluating new tools and services, piloting new projects, and continuing to provide consultative support to local staff to help them realise their ideas. One of my personal missions is to help local staff realise the untapped potential in new media, and importantly to ensure sufficient attention to learning is maintained in the process.

Personal Learning Objectives

As discussed above, my background is primarily technical in nature. In recent years I have begun to explore the educational side of educational technology, with a particular emphasis upon the fundamentals - learning theory, learning styles, and holistic ways to facilitate the learning experience of others - but there is still much I would like to learn.

My objectives for exploring these areas - above and beyond personal interest - rests on my ultimate goal of enhancing and supporting the learning experiences and opportunities of others. I believe it’s important to understand how people learn, before you can effectively support them. Understanding how technology works is by itself insufficient. Tools by themselves are static, it’s the way they’re used and implemented, the interactivity that’s established, and the communities that evolve that make the most difference in a learner’s journey.

Specifically with regards to the course, there are several areas of interest. First and foremost is the opportunity to explore new areas and topics, and to stretch what I know into unfamiliar areas. Having looked through the introductions of the other students I’m also looking forward to interacting with a diverse group of people - many of whom are experts in their own right. There are tremendous opportunities in the wealth of knowledge this network carries with it, and I relish the opportunity to read through the blogs of the other students.

Additionally there is the chance to return to learning from a student’s perspective. It’s been 10 years since I graduated from uni, and while a great deal of personal and professional growth have occurred I think it’s important to return to the role of the student on a regular basis to remind myself what exists on the other side of the academic fence. To be an effective eLearning consultant, you must understand the needs of the learner; and the best way to do that is by becoming them.

On a slightly different note, I’m also really looking forward to the chance to see how the course is organised and facilitated. I’ve spent years researching new media as an individual, and have discussed, read and written of the learning opportunities inherent in emerging technology; however I’ve not yet experienced a course firsthand that wholly incorporates it.

Questions and Concerns

At this stage I have neither questions, nor concerns. I’m just looking to what lay ahead.

This is yet another brainstorm, and I must admit I’m not sure I completely agree with myself in certain areas.  I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper and then reflect once I had something to read.  If you have thoughts I’m all ears.

Following on the topic of Planning Online Communities that I explored the other day I’d like to brainstorm on another thought, and that is the crucial premise that “technology doesn’t drive communities, people do.”

It might seem paradoxical, but it does seem to be true; in order to best nurture and inspire online communities, you must first start by focusing on the offline elements.

To provide a bit of perspective here, I come from the stand point of a central academic unit seeking to draw together disparate communities of practice from across the institution to increase interaction with one another and facilitate discussion. The end goal being the enhancement of learning and teaching through a mutually beneficial, community-driven approach.

In this example it’s important to bear in mind that nowhere in the above paragraph did I specifically mention technology. Of course a technical component is likely to be involved; but the key objectives surround the activities of community, and the ultimate aim of enhancing learning and teaching. For many people - with the exception of early technological adopters - one does not naturally turn to technology first, nor is it something that is considered of inherent value in and of itself. Therefore to adequately realise the value systems of a prospective community you have to look towards the unique circumstances and motivators that characterise each group or individual.

Ultimately the online presence is a facilitating mechanism; it a means to an end rather than the end itself.

This aspect is really important in the scheme of things I think, because if an application takes centre stage over the activities and community that surround it - both online and offline - the wider mission is undermined and a project/network starts to lose sight of its primary purpose. So we must always focus on the human element, not the technology.

In deciding this there are immediately several questions that need to be explored. The first set concern the target audience:

• What communities exist?
• What is their nature? Formal, informal; organic, structured; heirarchical, equalising; fragile, robust; seeking anonymity or publicity; self-aware or otherwise?
• What are their needs?
• And above, what are their value systems; what do they consider relevant and important?

Here I would recommend referring to Etienne Wenger’s “Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System“, because it provides some invaluable insight into the nature of communities of practice, how they’re formed, how they grow and evolve, and how best to interact with them.

On thing is clear in Wenger’s article, each community of practice carries with it its own unique circumstances - including value system, heirarchy (or lackthereof), opinions, and other considerations. When dealing with large groups of people it’s critical to understand the subtle relationships and subcommunities that exist.

Bearing the fragile nature of these communities in mind, once you’ve tackled the fundamental questions you can start to narrow the focus to something more project-oriented:

• Which of the communities need to be consulted during the initial the planning processes?
• Which would benefit from being brought in later once the project was farther along?
• What activities can be organised to draw the communities together?
• How do you gain internal legitimacy within the communities?
• Where is there a need, but no community (e.g. a gap)?

All of these point to the importance of knowing the user community before even starting on the tech framework. As important as the questions covered previously are in resolving (a) The role of the individual, and b) Centralised versus Decentralised), the nature of the potential user community is as significant - if not more so. It can also be a major influence on the most appropriate course of action to take when planning the technical elements.

It would seem that, so far as the wider community is concerned, preservation and access to the community itself is of the utmost importance.  In fact as some applications have shown, the technical framework can have no affect on the longevity or vibrancy of the surrounding community.

The first example that comes to mind here is Twitter.  It’s of course not relevant for educational discussions, but the fact is the platform itself is crap - it’s unreliable, it has outages constantly, tools break and are left broken for ages - and yet there is still an exceptionally loyal user community that refuses to leave the application.  This is despite the fact there are several other alternatives that offer far better functionality and features, and are basically technically superior.

When I’ve asked people why don’t they leave Twitter, the answer is almost always the same.  “This is where my network is.  If I leave Twitter I’ll loose my community contacts.”  I’ve done some research into this and have found this to be the case too.  The alternatives just lack the community presence that Twitter has, which makes them more unusable that Twitter is. Effectively they’re just social software applications without the social part.

The implications seem to be, users are tolerant of a sub-standard technical environment so long as there is a community surrounding it.  They’re not nearly as tolerant of a superior technical environment with no community.  You can always improve the technical aspects; the community part is much more difficult.

[NOTE: I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this; I just need to work something through mentally and this is as good a place as any to do it.]

Plan to throw one away. You will anyhow.

There’s a saying in the FOSS world that is something to the effect of “plan to throw one away. you will anyhow”. I believe this concept was originally proposed in Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and The Bazaar”, which discussed the devolved nature of open source development and has since became a hallmark piece of work within the movement. (Someone please correct my source if I’m wrong)

The idea suggests that the first version of a project won’t hit the target square on, because you don’t know what the real target is. Indeed, subsequent versions may be entirely different from the original objective in both form and function.

So effectively you don’t know what you’re trying to resolve or what need you’re trying to address until after you make the first attempt. Having done that you can evaluate, discover, uncover, discard and then refocus on the true need.

If this notion is true it requires a great deal of flexibility and an exploratory willingness to experiment with trial and error to get a software environment right.

However…

This is a relatively straight forward concept for standalone software development, but what are the implications when the software is slated to support a wider project, such as an online/offline community that is being developed in tandem?

I would argue there are a couple of fundamental choices that have to be made and hardwired into the planning and developmental processes, but after that the development process is relatively similar to the exploratory model outlined above.

The role of the individual

The first choice relates to the role of the individual in the usage landscape, particularly with regards to networks – and even more so with groups. Different models view the individual in different lights – and distinguishing them from the whole to varying degrees - and this affects all subsequent downstream activities in the online space.

Perhaps the best contrasting examples of this in the contemporary snapshot of the Internet are the notions of connectivism and collectivism. Very loosely stated, the differences in these ideas can be characterised by the difference between blogs and wikis respectively.

Blogs are highly individual spaces that clearly delineate the blogger/individual from those who visit the space. Commenting and discussion certainly take place in these spaces, however the place of the individual is ultimately at the top of the heirarchy, and their persona is clearly represented.

Wikis by contrast, are by nature a multi-user space in which content is aggregated together to form a unified, cohesive whole. Here the user is a means to an end; where the end is the gathering and sharing of a body of knowledge created by a group-mind. Many wiki engines support user profiles, however in the scheme of things they are a secondary or tertiary consideration.

This notion was highlighted in a different way by Stephen Downes in his video “Groups and Networks”. Downes argues that groups are inherently heirarchical, closed and rigid; networks are more equalised, open, and flexible. In terms of this discussion, groups place more consideration and emphasis on the priorities of the whole; networks on the those of the individual.

I would argue that Downes’ network model is more beneficial to the individual, as it provides them with space to come to their own conclusions, and to voice their own opinions and thoughts. It is also arguably more representative of the diversity in the community.

In the network model you hear a cacophony or chorus of different voices; in the group it’s more of a single voice characterising the overall consensus.

In terms of this discussion, the significance during planning is to establish who or what is at the centre of the model. A user-focused community will place the individual at the centre, and relate all activities in the environment back to the individual, via a unique user space such as a profile in a social network in the case of a centralised model; or perhaps a personal blog in a decentralised one. Alternatively, a group-focused community will place the group at the centre and relate all activities back to the group.

Centralised versus Distributed

The next key consideration is the nature of the community space. The idea of a “community space” can take many forms, not all of which involve a single online location - such as a wiki, social networking tool, or discussion forum. Increasingly a single community can span multiple environments and include several activity-specific sites such as those for image sharing (e.g. Flickr), rapid asynchronous discussion (e.g. Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca), blogs, discussion forums or all of the above.

The ultimate decision here can impact on several different topics, not the least of which include centralised versus devolved control, administrative considerations, activities, the nature of community interaction, and indeed what opportunities exist for the community members themselves.

[More to come as I continue to think this through...]

The rumours over the last couple of days have proven true it would seem, as Automattic has just released a WordPress blogging application for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

According to the iTunes store:

“Robust but simple to use, the WordPress for iPhone Open Source application allows you to create and edit content on your WordPress blog(s) with support for offline use.”

ReadWriteWeb notes (”WordPress Comes To iPhone“):

The new WordPress App for iPhone supports both WordPress.com installations as well as self-hosted Wordpress.org blogs that are version 2.5.1 and above.

The app includes the following features:

- Embedded Safari previews of posts
- Full support for tags & categories
- Photo support for both camera phone pics and library photos
- Support for multiple blogs
- Ability to password protect a post, save as draft, or mark for later review
- Auto-recovery feature recovers posts interrupted by phone calls

The application can be downloaded from the iTunes store here.

The following video overview has also been made available:

I’ve only just downloaded the free application and have yet to try it out. Personally speaking I find the tiny keys on my iPod Touch quite tedious to use and would much prefer to use my laptop for mobile blogging than hunt-and-peck on an iPhone/iPod Touch. That said, hopefully Automattic will have thought of that and made the keyboard nice and chunky for fat-fingered people like me.

Regardless, this news would seem to offer some significant new abilities in the realm of mobile blogging.

Update: I’ve had more of a play with the application since my initial post and unfortunately it would seem that the keypad hasn’t been changed from the native iPhone/iPod Touch version. This is a shame, since applications such as Twitteriffic have shown that it is possible to enlarge the keypad, thereby making it easier to use.

The ability to include images is a nice touch; as is the option to preview before posting. You also seem to be able to sync a nominated number of your most recent posts for offline viewing. However personally speaking I can’t see myself using this with any regularity - especially for any posts that require elaboration. Using the current keypad configuration will just take too long to prepare anything of expository value.

People live-blogging an event or launch of some sort will almost certainly have an advantage with this application; however for the rest of us we’re arguably just as well off using a text editor and waiting until we can use a standard computer.

I must admit I’ve been a very slow adopter of the realm of SecondLife. Perhaps because I’m more of an auditory learner than visual or kinesthetic, it was quite some time before I had the slightest interest in creating an account and logging in, and even longer before I was willing to open my mind to the possibilities of it being used to somehow support learning. To be brutally honest, a certain degree of scepticism still remains as to the logistics of using SecondLife in education - not the least of which arise from the massive learning curve required to acclimate to life “in-world” - but I’m quite happy to have reached the stage where I’m at least open to the possibilities.

In no small part due to the edublogging activities of many people around the web, a great deal of discussion, some very helpful and insightful SecondLife advocates, and my own curiosity I have begun to spend time in earnest exploring the activities and educational uses of this emersive environment. As luck would have it I’ll also be meeting in SecondLife for the upcoming Facilitating Online Communities course I’m taking beginning the 28th of this month.

In yet another amazing coincidence it would seem that there is an unconference on the horizon as well. From the Island of Jokaydia Community Wikispace:

“The Islands of jokaydia Community of Practice is planning an In-World Unconference which will will occur on the Islands of jokaydia from 27-28th September 2008.”

The unconference is expected to cover a variety of topics relevant to education and eLearning, with the three main themes being: Virtual Worlds for Education, Innovation in eLearning and Arts and Culture in Second Life.

Continuing the apparent theme of openness and community-driven learning that I seem to be in the midst of lately, the conference content will be largely directed by the participants:

“According to wikipedia, an unconference is a: conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants. Generally, unconference style events are community organised, informal and social events where participants provide the content and facilitation for the event.”

There’s a great deal of additional information on the unconference page of the Island of Jokaydia Community Wikispace, so if you’re interested I would encourage you to check it out. From what’s been discussed in the wiki the event is being exceptionally well planned and organised, so it should be something you don’t want to miss.

Personally speaking the portion of the unconference that has piqued my interest the most concerns a case study on titled “Ramapo Islands: A New Dimension in Learning”:

Focusing on the process of developing constructivist learning in the virtual world, Sheehy will present the steps her teachers have taken this second year of teaching in Ramapo Islands on Teen Second life to translate their content into the virtual landscape. She will outline the best practices that have evolved as a result and the student responses to this 21st century pedagogical shift.

The hour long presentation will include anecdotal evidence from teachers, administrators and students, video clips of the work being done and both the anticipated and actual outcomes.”

If you’re planning on attending any or all of this unconference please let me know. Perhaps we can go together.

My colleagues and I have begun to conduct fairly open-ended experiments with various social networking platforms.  Personally speaking it’s been a very rewarding experience, because among other things the research dynamic has been much different when approaching emerging technology as a group as opposed to an individual (which I have largely done in the past).  It’s that much easier to evaluate the social elements and discursive potential that way.

Not surprisingly, as a result several of us have also begun to engage in more in depth discussions on the relevance and/or place of new media (a.k.a. social software, web 2.0, etcetera) to education.  With each of us coming from a slightly different perspective on the topic, we’ve had some very lively and insightful conversations.

The thread I’ve gotten the most out of began as a series of questions my colleague posed regarding how to approach emerging technology from our standpoint as a central unit, as well as what place it serves.  Ultimately I think all who participated came out feeling energised about the possibilities.

Personally I have a tremendous interest in exploring the discussion further, and would like to expand the topic to include other participants.  It seems to me this is a very relevant and contemporary topic in education that deserves adequate attention.

As such I’d like to quote my response in its entirety, along with the questions to which I’m responding (listed in bold).  If you have thoughts or opinions on this please post a comment.

First off I think this Educause paper would be quite relevant here:

“Web 2.0, Personal Learning Environments, and the Future of Learning Management Systems”

Please note: you need an account to download it.

Now on to the response.

The question is do we or don’t we promote, support, use web 2? How can we not?

To be sacriligeous for a moment, I don’t think the issue of support should come into the conversation for quite some time. We’re dealing with a brand new realm of onine learning in many regards, and to a large degree this will require a formulating a brand new approach not to just support, but the whole notion of instruction, teaching, and the fundamental role of the educator.

I think there are tremendous opportunities in the distributed and highly personalised technologies that characterise new media, but we need to figure out what these opportunities are first. I think that’s got to be the first port of call; to start asking questions like:

• How can we capitalise on these technologies?
• What can they enable learners to do that they couldn’t do before?
• How can we facilitate their learning experiences while ensuring our mandates are accounted for?
• What opportunities for educators exist that didn’t exist before?

Basically to look at the potential and the opportunities, and really think blue sky at first; and only then start coming back to earth to consider what the requirements would/will be to make this happen.

If we didn’t what would happen?

I think to a fair degree the usage we’re seeing of Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. A quick search for the UNSW network indicates there are 14,000 people in the network. Given Facebook requires an @unsw email address to join uni-specific networks, it would seem that these account holders are all from UNSW.

To me this is a sure sign that students (and staff as well) have begun to engage with one another on distributed sites. Importantly much of this activity is happening unbeknownst to us - as if there is a shadow learning system developing just under our noses that we’re not a part of. So you might argue that learners have begun to embrace this new paradigm and are marching ahead without the rest of us.

If this is the case, and we don’t start to incorporate new media in the classrooms this trend is likely to continue and the divide betwee old and new paradigms will continue - if not worsen.

If we’re going to engage with new students, surely we need to start approaching the notion of learning and engagement in a way that’s familiar to them.

if we did what would happen?

I think it goes without saying that if we did start to promote, use and support web 2.0 it would be met with fierce resistance from certain segments of the academic populus - particularly the traditionalists.

Almost certainly there will be instructors/educators who flat out refuse to use these technologies and continue to do things the way they always have. There’s nothing we can do about that - but having said that I think there is a place for that sort of instruction. After all, surely not all students will prefer to learn in the new paradigm, and will like the traditionalistic lecture formats?

Should we promote them as part of a students PLE (personal learning environment). Is PLE even a valid concept? If not as part of a PLE then are they simply social tools? Do they have valid relevance to educational outcomes? What will the average academic make out of all of this? Are they ready? Maybe they are already using them?

I think broaching the whole notion of the PLE is going to require substantial cultural change, because as I said it requires a fundamental shift in perception on the role of the learner, the instructor, and the institution. Realistically I don’t think the dust has settled on the whole idea of the PLE yet, but I personally see tremendous value in it for certain segments of the population. Namely learners that prefer self-directed learning and exploration.

Having said that I don’t think that all students fit into this category though, which is where the challenge lay - both logistically and culturally.

Even if academics are open to the idea of the PLE, the opportunities will need to continue to exist for those learners who prefer more traditional instruction. So how do you find the common ground? That, I think, is why so much cultural change and discussion will be required.

RE: Educational outcomes. This is a universal issue I think, and not isolated to new media. Ultimately the technical frameworks are just programs without adequate consideration to how they’ll be implemented. We’ve seen this with Vista too. If instructors don’t place any consideration on how the tech can facilitate learning it won’t amount to much and you won’t see much of any learning taking place, nor educational outcomes achieved.

As to the question of whether they’re just tools, at the end of the day blogs, wikis (etc) will empower educators and learners far more than previous technologies did because control of the environments is in their hands. So even if no cultural change occurred I think there would - to a degree - still be value in increasing awareness on the technical side of things.

What would a course look like that relied solely on such tools?

Certainly courses like this exist, and I’m constantly on the lookout for how they “organise” (I use the term loosely) and address distributed systems. George Siemens and Stephen Downes’ connectivism course will be a valuable example of this I think, because that’s exactly what they’ll be doing.

Can they be integrated with the central LMS or used in conjunction with it or is the LMS simply dated?

Speaking frankly for a moment, I’m really not fond of the LMS and have an intense aversion to the idea of the “management of learning.” Then again I’m on the bleeding edge of all this stuff and consider personal freedom to explore, discover, and set my own learning goals to be of the utmost importance.

That said, I think the LMS still has a place in education - because it almost certainly still appeals to certain learners. Not everybody is as educationally anarchic and fiercly independant as I am, and it would be just as unfair to force a PLE on them as it would be to force the LMS on a self-directed learner.

To a large degree I think the role of the LMS is destined to change in the new paradigm. As the educause article suggests, the notion of a fully distributed system can be a bit dangerous - particularly when it’s based on environments that are outside the uni network and don’t have the same vested interests in preservation of student data as we do.

Additionally, not everyone is fully across the tech as much as we are - so having a portal through which learners can natigate to the various environments and which locally stores their content would be incredibly valuable. I think the LMS (or something like eLIMS) could offer that sort of functionality.

Back to school
Originally uploaded by Avolore

I haven’t been in school in ten years (almost to the day in fact - I graduated from uni in June 1998), and a whole lot has happened since then - personally, professionally, and indeed to learning and education as we know it.

In 1998 I was in a completely different space, both figuratively, educationally, and geographically. I studied economics at California State University, Fullerton, and lived in in a tiny studio apartment in Long Beach across the street from the VA Hospital. At my uni in those days online learning was not something I ever ran across. In fact I recall my amazement the one and only time an instructor announced they had made their lecture materials available online. “What a gimmick” I thought - and promptly never visited the site. (Perhaps not coincidentally I don’t recall doing very well in the course.)

Now I live in another country 10,000 kilometres away, in a village surrounded by a national park; I research educational and emerging technology at the University of New South Wales and spend virtually every waking moment interacting with technology. A whole lot of change, growth, personal and professional development have taken place since then; however one thing has remained unchanged, and that’s my thirst for learning - and if anything, this has intensified, not diminished.

I’ve definitely grown to thrive in a world of self-directed learning (much of what I do today is in fact a direct result of inquisitive exploration and self-directed investigation); however I’ve also looked for the opportunity to sink my teeth into something (slightly) more formalised. Recently I’ve run across two very unique and fascinating courses - Connectivism and Connective Knowledge out of the Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba, and Facilitating Online Communities out of Otago Polytechnic.

From their respective sites:

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

“Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes – the two leading figures on connectivism and connective knowledge - will co-facilitate this innovative and timely course.”

Facilitating Online Communities

“This course has been developed by staff in the Educational Development Centre of Otago Polytechnic and is designed to help both formal and informal learners access and interpret models, research and professional dialog in the facilitation of online communities. After completing this course people should be confident in facilitating online and/or be able to critique and offer advice to other people in the facilitation of online communities.”

In keeping with the theme of cultural or generational change, both courses are fully online, open for informal participants and cover the use of emerging technologies. Interestingly, their perspectives on the use of emerging technology to support learning and teaching are quite different (one highly theoretical, one much more practical), so I’m anticipating some very valuable contrasts and equally thought-provoking conversations. From personal, academic, and career perspectives, I’m really looking forward to what lay ahead.

As far as what this means here, both courses contain writing elements and I will be using this blog to present my thoughts/assignments. It will be fascinating to participate in an online course as a learner for a change - not just from the standpoint of the main learning experience, but also in the opportunity to observe how the course is facilitated (or perhaps unfacilitated as the case may be), how the technologies are actually used, and what the results are (both positive and otherwise). Overall I’m expecting to walk away with some very valuable insight. So you can expect a much different vein of discussion here up through December - and hopefully after that as well.

As is occassionally the case, I’ve received two inquiries in the last two days into the prospect of renting of advertising space on this blog. After a very healthy discussion on Twitter as to the pro’s and con’s of it all I’ve reaffirmed the conclusion that this blog shall remain ad-free.

My logic on this boils down to a matter of ethics and clarity of purpose.

In terms of ethics I refer to the notion that a certain percentage of my blogging occurs at work, covering what I consider to be work-related subject-matter. In light of this it would not be ethical to acrue advertising revenue for an activity that I’ve already been paid for once before. This is also one (but by no means all) of the motivators behind why I release all content here under a Creative Commons license.

Secondly and perhaps more significant is the clarity of purpose. Despite the fact this is at most an unofficial uni blog I still feel compelled to uphold the idealism behind my uni’s policies on several topics - not the least of which relate to neutrality in endorsement of products or services.

I work in higher education, and in my work place the importance is on learning and not financial gain. The environment, activity or tool that is the most appropriate for the learning experience is what is used - and this is to remain independant of market factors as much as possible. Additionally as I work in a support and consultative capacity, it’s critical that the motives that drive a recommendation remain focussed on the primary purpose - which is to support learning and teaching.

Anything that could potentially disrupt or distract from the primary purpose needs to be avoided, and this includes advertising. As such the choice in reminaing not-for-profit is clear.