Matthew Allen

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Nicholas Proferes, “Oh, the Ethics You’ll Know”

Analysis of research ethics from the Air-list – using nvivo. Ethics is a strong component of the air-list discussion. When is something public? Private? Both? Are author intentions important? What about context in which originally published? Note the link between ethical debates and new platforms/ technologies. Importance of graduate students in stimulating debate. Problem of using analog analogies: nuance of digital realm lost? There is a challenge to make space for new approaches to ethics.

Outstanding – Dr Seuss is honorary member of AoIR from now on

Alex Leavitt, “How I Saved An Internet”

Looking at Encyclopaedia Dramatica – archive of digital subculture. Assumption of net researchers is that the space / place we visit online sort of ‘stays there’. But it is not that way. Leavitt found that ED was completely deleted one day. And Oh Internet was created in its place. (but along the way, all the wiki edits which Leavitt was studying were lost). Nice contrast of ephemera vs visibility. Leavitt restored the wiki from oblivion (not always without complaint). Importance of researchers’ relationship to the objects they study.

Clever, researchers serve and protect the Internet

Janet Salmons, “See Change: the Visual in the Virtual Interview”

Importance of move from text to image in culture because of the Internet. Must questions be posed with words? Or indeed should they be answered in words? Nicely drawing on the depth, complexity and multi-dimensional form of the image which distinguishes it from words. Visual elicitation stimulates interview subjects to respond. Nice – idea of mind-map as stimulus for interviewee responses. In an online interview, a white board can be used to create visuals on the fly.

Excellent: lots to think about here because images say so much, but quickly – overcoming major challenge of interviews

Susanna Haas Lyons, “Flexing Facebook’s Civic Muscles ”

The enormous amount of people on Facebook really matters. What however are the dos and don’ts of mobilising Facebook for public deliberation for civics. Important implication – recruitment of participation is done in part through the extent of reach in Facebook. App used to create the engagement space. Nice, but also limited. “Discuss, Propose, Promote” – excellent empowerment of users by making them also responsible for building support for particular promotion. Participants have lower privacy concerns. While Facebook is not totally representative, a combination of Facebook with other methods can work. Asynchronicity of participation important. “Learn from fails”

Good presentation: liked the focus on taking risks to experiment with what works.

Stuart Shulman, “The bin Laden Post Mortem Tweets”

Focus is on crowds. Notes that political scientists did not see it coming –that there would highly charged political action from the crowd, powered by social media. Can you harness the power of the crowd to do large-scale text analysis in academia? To make the money go further, or do things which cannot be afforded. Crowd-sourced analysis of OBL tweets. There was an especially interesting approach relating to humour in the tweets. 26 people, $750 cost. Simple coding of the humour-value of tweets.

Humour does make a difference: opening our minds to new thinking – great research method.

Brian Hughes, “Super-charging Creative Teams with Negative Feedback”

Importance of negative feedback – but it is not placed on line…except by their friends! Creative teams need to be kicked sometimes. Make it personal – people need to feel disappointed. It has emotional strength – hard to get, but also hard to give. Reasonable. Thoughtful – there has to be thought involved, so it is complex. Easier to give NF to a team. Coaches and mentors are better placed to give negative feedback. Share the vision, criticise the methods. And the feedback might come in a roleplay environment.

Solid, clear and direct: no reason to give negative feedback on this one!

Richard Smith, “Doing It Right: Professional Digital Media Education”

Distinguishes professional education from research-led education. Four universities own this degree. Digital media here means ‘interactive design’. How can students create digital media experiences?  – address a need, serve a problem – real-world focus. Teamwork is central to the degree. Some of the material learned is about teams – e.g. project management. Importance of who this is for – the user, the users’ stories and expectations. Humility matters – as does courage and curiousity. And reflexivity makes a difference. Teams fundamentally depend on trust and individuals need passion. Note professional educational needs – importance of limited residency, compressed program to suit needs of people already working. Professional development is a future goal.

I like the way that the team and the task is central to the pedagogy here.

Ericka Menchen-Trevino, “The Future of Internet Research Methods:  Combining Real-World Observation & Self Reports”

There are challenges in bringing everyday life into the lab – it is too artificial. The data from companies is, while extensive, shallow. So, create some software that will acquire the rich content of individuals’ uses of the web for news consumption. Clever use of proxy server for data collection. But combined data with interviews. An interesting question: recruitment. Cragslist! Would it seem creepy to ask a person about their habits in searching and reading online. Not really. Crucially, the ‘overuse’ of media which is reported is now solved because there is evidence which can be used to prompt people who might have forgotten what they have done online.

A little challenging to consider the recording of use, but perhaps that is a sign of people’s pleasure at being research subjects? Great software idea.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “The Social Life of Scholarship”

Hilarious – a book on the falsehood of the ‘death of the book’ was written, but could not be published! Average sales of humanities books? 400 over lifetime – and most to libraries. So perhaps a book that is dying is this form. It does however conflict deeply with the scholarly futures of people. Importance of other forms of publication such as blogs which are vibrant and reach people more deeply. The problem is, always, credit: blogs are not creditable for jobs and productivity because of a lack of peer-review. Peer review = gate-keeping, to create enforced scarcity. In fact, we need to move to an economy of abundance in scholarly communication.

Brilliant – she nails it, and the problem is truly the move from scarcity to abundance.

 

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Growing Knowledge: what is the future of research?

(details)

A Times Higher Education debate hosted by the British Library, featuring Matthew Gamble, David Gauntlett, Alex Krotoski, Ben Hickey and chaired by Phil Baty.

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Phil Baty starts the debate: it is fundamentally about the way that IT will profoundly change the nature of research. Introduces the speakers.

Hickey

(A-level student)

Has grown up surrounded by network technologies and assumes they will be crucial at his time at university. he ponders however whether the research collaboration between people and computers might lead more traditional people to question the validity of his work because the boundaries between him as researcher and technology are indeterminate. [Cyborg researcher?]. perhaps universities, because of their traditional outlook, may hinder learning and research. On the other hand maybe technology creates too narrow a vision and the voice of experience from earlier times can shed revealing light on a problem. Points to a problem – younger people with whom Hickey spoke are largely uninterested in universities and research, seeing it as irrelevant and distanced from the real-world problems they face.

What is revealing about Hickey’s contribution is the way in which someone who have grown up with technologies of networks, intelligent agents and so on construes the role of technology in research: as something that, in effect, stands OUTSIDE of the normal practices of researchers and potentially enables research and learning directly from / with computing code, without human (academic) intervention

Gamble

(PhD candidate)

Mismatch between the potential that technology provides (connectivity, immediacy and scale) and what is current normal practice in academic research. this potential is, however, what causes the problems as well. The web might become the “invisible college” which promotes the circulation of scholarly literature outside of the norms of academic journal publishing and, indeed, the formal structures of universities.

Provides example of crowd-sourcing data analysis within Galaxy Zoo project where large amounts of data was given to many individuals online for them to do mciro-analysis of data, out of interest in the subject. discovered things which the researchers were not even aware they should be looking for.

Gamble’s critique of traditional science is important: he reveals that lurking within the technologies of network collaboration is, in fact, a deeply ideological project towards openness and altruism. Open science, while often construed as made possible through the Internet and similar tools, is more about a reaction against the institutionalised narrow and profit-oriented sciences which have emerged over the past fifty years

Notes the resistance of scientists who resist open data (the so-called “selfish scientist”) and who are obsessed with publishing, not finding things out. “Altruism is quickly beaten out of young scientists”. So, there are tools for collaboration but are not used significantly.

Concludes by calling for a different mode of publishing: it’s not just open publishing, but also publishing of data, the methods, processes, the discussions about projects and so on.

Krotoski

Discussing Web 2.0 and scholarship. Ponders the reality of such technology in the real world, outside of the world of enthusiasts (such as myself I should admit). Recounts how she spoke with phd students as they commenced their studies – almost none of them had any kind of online presence, definitely not blogging and so on. Students told her that they were discouraged by their supervisors from being online and open. They certainly were not taught about how to do it. this was, from the traditional perspective, ‘wrong’.

So, she continues, what of the future? She emphasises the validity of blogs or similar: ideas can be trialled and discussed with peers, useful self-promotion (on the basis of quality, not spin), writing becomes a habit and reflection possible. Krotoski views scientific / technological research in the USA, where this use of social media and Web 2.0 is more prominent, as being influenced by industry, who are not interested in long-term peer review publishing but rapid and iterative publishing of ideas and their development.

I wonder if there needs to be greater discrimination between types of ‘web 2.0′ use [which I had discussed with Aleks before the event, so no criticism here]. This discrimination is, pretty much, about identifying the unkown, but useful tools of the web which, probably, critics of ‘web 2.0′ use but don’t realise these tools could, from another perspective, be seen as web 2.0

K. comes back to key point: how do we trust what is online; is it valid and reliable; how can we assess that? Normal position emphasised — it’s about training people to have that capacity to assess. Baty contributes a point: traditional publishing filters the content to give it more reliability.

Gauntlett

Online publishing and distribution of information is very useful, even required, for academics. Open publishing helps the world and is ethically required; it is great, too, for academics because it makes them self-reliant. moreover, the web and similar tools makes academics public intellectuals again, rather than closeted.

scholarly publishing — from a time when distribution was very limited, and filters needed because of low bandwidth. G. has a great view on the failures of the peer-review system because it assumes reviewers are entirely uninvested in the outcome except from a rational scientific perspective. Perhaps academics can do the filtering themselves by using what is good, from their view.

Gauntlett noted he first built a website in 1997; some of the most keen advocates for web 2.0 and knowledge networking are often longer-term Internet users who, perhaps, have understood the web more from a self-creative perspective?

debate now ensues

Something of a confusion emerges from the discussion between the academics about peer review – there’s a slight problem with comparing and contrasting peer review with complete ‘openness’ (eg Twitter). In fact, the discussion might more usefully concern the reshaping of peer review so that it is more productive, in improving and expanding work in a supportive manner. One example is the peer review process of Critical Studies in Peer Production.

Question from audience regarding new kinds of research methods which the Internet might produce. — too much data produces new methods; online behaviour produces new methods; nice contradiction between Gamble enthusing about the Semantic Web vs Krotoski worried about the missing human condition.

Gauntlett makes an interesting comment — it appears that crowd-sourcing can elevate people to being partners in science (as in the Galaxy Zoo), “citizen scientists”; this is like citizen journalists and so on. I read this as another example of the meme/trope of participation and democracy which is ideally or occasionally true but, in fact, is a general mythos within which hierarchies and elites persist.

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Will we be smart enough soon enough?
Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Doug Schuler

(Keynote paper, Research for Action Workshop, Making Links 2010 Conference)

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Civic Intelligence defined pragmatically: people to have the ‘smarts’  by which to acquire the things they need to prosper in society.

The world needs ‘our’ help: global problems, local problems – all need attention and those in power, and the operation of the free market will not solve them. Doug frames his work by asking: “How smart need we be to solve these problems? Will we be smart soon enough for the problems to be solved before they overwhelm us?”.

Civic intelligence is a concept to lead us to the answer to these questions. It refers, effectively, to a judgment of how smart a group might be relative to the problems it faces; it is a form of collective intelligence, focusing on shared problems (eg the problems that define the group). Civis intelligence is about being smart, through civic means, to achieve civic goals. A particular modality of this form of collective intelligence is its distribution throughout society. Civic intelligence as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Examples:

Sustainable prisons: question – “Can prisons save money and the environment while changing lives?”

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action to solve significant social problems lies in joining together multiple problems – it is not so much finding innovative answers to a single problem but, rather, actively constructing a new problem set in which the action serves two or more problems at once. In this example, spending money on a sustainability project within prison not only makes prisons better at the ostensive goal (rehabilitation), but also contributes to the problem of educating people about how to live and act sustainably while also, potentially, making prisons more productive and therefore cheaper

Beehive Collective’s work in relation to land degradation and renewal, “The True Cost of Coal” – sophisticated interweaving of skills and action, notion of research through action at the grass roots.

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action involves very different paradigms of knowledge work where creativity, sharing, working together to represent the world and tell stories about it is more effective in addressing problems (and in doing so building civic intelligence) than traditional models of ‘research’

Liberating Voices project: promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action – pattern language responses. Everyone is an activist. Patterns are not recipes: “tools for thought”; patterns “change the flow of what would have happened in its absence”.

Patterns here could be understood as scaffolding for cognitive developmental action – without them, people don’t know where to start even if they know what the goal might be. Patterns don’t determine the outcome but give sufficient support for people to begin work. Moreover, patterns provide a shared language through which people can identify commonalities and work together. Without them, they remain individuated. So, do patterns create a kind of autonomous foundation for collective engagement?

Interesting diverse list of points to define civic intelligence, interesting because of its diversity of categories:

civic intelligence builds more civic intelligence (it is productive beyond any specific act)
inclusive and participatory
efficient and creative
real problems (e.g. inequality, not just increased wealth for a few)
addresses several problems at once

The last point is especially revealing: “Make activism cool (again)”. Schuler comments – “what is preventing people from doing this stuff? It’s not cool”

I believe this comment taps into the increased knowledge- and engineering-focused state of contemporary society – what is now ‘cool’ is doing knowledge work so demonstrations, ranting, protesting which used to be cool forms of social activism now appears to be insufficiently ‘efficient’ and ‘creative’ for our contemporary society.

The Internet Turns 40: Midlife Crisis or Grand Challenge for Computer-Mediated Communication?, Lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor Steve Jones

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Steve begins by reminding us of his first experience with computing – PDP 8e – 64K memory, $100,000 to buy another 64K; also reminisces on PLATO (programmed logic for autoatic teaching operations) – PLATO, Steve says, contained the kind of affordances that we use now – chat, group and personal notes and “a lot of talk about music”. PLATO is 50 years old. Why did PLATO have chat? Because people used it in a large room and users didn’t want to walk across the room to say something to each other. It had games!

Personal memory: I first used computers aged 17 at Grace Bros – a department store – in their massive mainframe installation (lots of IBMs); I recall playing adventure, Star Trek, and just being utterly fascinated with what these ‘thinking’ machines did

One of the main drivers of research into CMC in the 1980s was commercial – businesses looking to see what the use of computers for email, messaging, groupware might do for organisational and business improvement – eg Sproull and Kiesler (. “It was taken for granted that computers were being used for interpersonal communication”. By the mid 1980s, there was more awareness of social uses – e.g. did it replace ‘around the watercooler talk’. Business were, still, interested in productivity increases. CMC / f2f communication comparisons were essential. A critical question related to the inherent properties of CMC influencing the choice of this medium over others.

Now turns to Pew survey from 1995: only 32% of users (a small number) in this year as surveyed said thet would miss the net ‘a lot’ if it was not there; “few see online activities as essential”. Steve says that 15 years later, online activities are “inescapable” – not just essential. The Pew Internet Life Project commence some years later – 1999. This research actually missed the adoption curve through the late 1990s. Data – 2000 – 46% adults used; now 75% adults use. Critical change? – MOBILE.

I like Steve’s comment re ‘inescapable’ – this really demonstrates the social adoption and diffusion of the Internet because it is no longer a choice, for many people, whether they engage online. Rather, society creates the expectation for them and therefore produces a socio-technological imperative for access

Steve now moves on: what is Internet research? Based on submissions to New Media and Society and what is seen elsewhere, it is primarily sociology and psychology in its basis, with desire to quantify and use empirics to explore who is online, what do they say, what do they do. Asserts that this is an effect, in part, of tenure system, grant system, ethics systems and how the media likes to report on simple ‘what is happening’ data. Yet it is also an effect of the technology – Internet developments drive our research focus “who is studying IRC? who is studying Twitter?”.

In Australia, curiously, there is probably a lot more theoretical work in Internet Studies because there is so little money available for research, there is less emphasis on sociology as a discipline – and more on cultural studies, media and communications is based in pragmatics or cultural studies and not psychology. I would argue that Australia lacks the research which Steve says dominates in the USA. However, I completely agree that Internet scholars often move too quickly to adopt a perspective on the latest development, rather than to continue on with the still-legitimate and important older forms. Web 2.0 is a good example; and, for me, the shift to Web 2.0 is driven by the same imperatives for institutional success and, for us at Curtin, the need to link our research into updating our teaching program.

Steve Jones wants to move beyond text and word: discusses Electronic Visualisation Laboratory, which has run since 1973. What happenes if we think further into the future around the question of visualisations? He discusses CAVE and 3-D interactive dimensionality. One critical outcome: these EV environments give users control over perspective – unlike the art gallery, magazine etc. First major change in our visuality of perspective since Renaissance.

Steve is doing an interesting thing: he’s reminding us that the crunchy heart of early Internet research was all that great stuff on CMC and CSCW from the 1980s-e1990s. Then, as I read it, he is implying that the differential world of communication and media now is about rich, immersive visualisation (and least it is coming and can be glimpsed – rather like CMC in the 1980s) and perhaps we need to be thinking about the communicative modalities of these environments

So what are the challenges for Internet research (these are the challenges emerging from advanced speed/data/display/visualisation technologies)

they are about the extraordinary challenges of differently augmented reality – eg very large displays; immersive displays and so on. How to interface with (say) a 12 foot long video wall? Think about changes in the rest of society – a decade ago, universities were seen as exciting for giving ethernet-based broadband in the dorms; now that is nothing new. if we are now going to teach in interactive environments, in these conditions: interaction is different; time difference cannot be overcome like space; sound works oddly through these interactions

So, in Internet studies: we need to look ahead using qualitative approaches focusing on our research objects using a notion of product, place and commentary; Steve skips over some interesting stuff to emphasise, again, the importance of ‘human’ kinds of immersive enviornments – e.g. interacting with avatars online where the avatars are informational beings. Also shows Photosynch application to show how photos can be computationally stitched together to create ‘overall’ images. (See the Ted Talk)

In conclusion:

Visualisation, Interaction, Collaboration, Immersion (from Costigan,2000) – Steve Jones says it is about us being immersed in the data landscape as much as being immersed in VR – eg, like we become part of the net.

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Discussion

Question about videoconferencing. Steve replies that younger users, by anecdote, are happy or unselfconscious about being on camera; yet he also notes that older users (the grandparents on skype) are equally disinhibited once motivated by the desire to connect with grandchildren. Notes too – the students he refers to – game design students using technology across UIC and Moscow State U – are motivated to ‘show’ because of the very visual nature of their collaboration.

Question about social use / research vs commercial. Difficult for the base researchers at EVL to ‘get’ the applications which this work might lead to – it’s like we can imagine the future, but not quite how to ‘productise’ it?

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Networked learning, the Net Generation and Digital Natives
Symposium Organisers: Chris Jones, The Open University, United Kingdom
7th International Networked Learning Conference

5 papers (abstracts)

• Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth A van den Beemt, S Akkerman, P. Simons
• Learning and Living Technologies: A Longitudinal Study … Ruslan Ramanau, Anesa Hosein, Chris Jones
• Learning nests and local habitations: Locations for networked learning Chris Jones and Graham Healing
• Digital natives: Everyday life versus academic study Linda Corrin, Sue Bennett, Lori Lockyer
• Supporting the “Digital Natives”: what is the role of schools? Rebecca Eynon
• Born into the Digital Age in the South of Africa: the reconfiguration… Laura Czerniewicz, Cheryl Brown

Introduction (Jones) – key points – moral panics around young people; young people are agents of change, this is not happening ‘to’ them; there is no generational change – yes, there are changes, but not tied to a specific generation. Emphasises that all the papers to come will show there is no evidence for a ‘net generation’.

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Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth

Refers to impact of Oblinger and Prensky on Dutch educational thinking, focusing on interactive multimedia; calls for research to see if there is any actual change; is sceptical.
Emphasises that learning is social, works within social spaces. Distinguishes social (people driven) from cultural (content driven) uses of interactive media. Research presented here is on out of school use (informal learning) – key point is that students can switch and change what they do and find their own preferred technology.
Four activities – interacting (previously browsing); performing; interchanging; authoring. Linked to four categories – traditionalists; gamers; networkers; producers. Producers are seen as ‘authors’ and they might look most like the digital natives we might be seeking. Data shows this group perform all activities.

Very useful point in the discussion – that some people are very heavy users of just one or two applications; that they are not diverse users across technologies.

The emphasis on informal learning and the Internet is an important one; particularly like the way that the activities discovered / analysed are focused on more general tasks than specific software uses. That said, the words are still tied to quite specific expectations of meaning – e.g. performing = gaming; interacting = social software. It also implies that one can categorise and distinguish activities into separate boxes. For example – isn’t gaming a form of social software? Does browsing involve some aspects of content production? The approach here, while interesting, is a little reductive – does it reflect the attempt to form a clear quantitative answer from a very muddy field of research?

 

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Learning and Living Technologies
Looking at how 1st year university students use ICTS; across several kinds of universities, subjects etc; metehods involved surveys, interviews and cultural probes (“Day experience”). 2008-2010 timeline. Frequency of use of devices, ICTS , skills and attitude etc. Longitudinal surveying after initial descriptive survey.

Survey focuses on two items – use of ICTs for social / leisure vs use of ICTs for study. For some reason they limited the question to ‘on an average week day’. Students expected to use them about equally for these purposes. Reported higher than expected use; place-based universities and courses reported higher than expected as well, and using them higher than distance students. Men used them more highly than women. Critically, place-based students who were ‘not net gen’ were much closer to net get in terms of use (just slightly less); distance-based students not net gen were lower in their usage when compared to distance education net gen students.

Not surprisingly, a key outcome is that ‘net gen’ students see ICTs as both leisure and study tool – older see it as study primarily. Another outcome – students do not come expecting as much ICT use as they end up with (eg computing / Internet not seen as important at university as we might be led to believe?)

The survey is difficult to interpret because, I think, there is a significant simplification of the field of research so as to get a usable / doable survey. Yes, there seems to be some kind of a trend (and some interesting further questions to be explored, such as the way place (being on campus) might assist less skilled / interested ICT learners to become ‘net gen’ – type people). But, in the end, it doesn’t seem to me to get past simple ideas of ‘how much do you use it’, whereas net gen is more to do with the cultures of use, the particularity of skills and knowledge of ICTs as an object in themselves

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Sth African context – there is scepticism about the terminology, the discourse of net generation, especially when it is termed ‘digital native’. Background is also a very significant restructure and expansion of higher education since 1994; lack of resources.
Reports on a Sth African survey in 2009, very detailed at first, then refined for broader use. Results:
Experience with ICT use, not age was a key determinant. Children born into the net generation cannot be assumed to be a particular ‘way’. No homogeneity. The Digital native was an ‘elite’ user – 11% only of the cohort; they have 10+ years experience, learning from others and themselves about how to use. Also identifies the ‘digital stranger’ – lack of experience, lack of opportunity.
Distinguishes between computer use and mobile phone use – the latter is ubiquitous and, for poorer users, mobile = Internet access. Relatively cheap access that way, also lack of infrastructure. So research heavily focused on mobile devices. And in this context, poorer students tended to prioritise mobile phone use for study.
Now moves to theory to explore: Bourdieu
Fields (aims, goals, attempting to achieve); capitals (resources – economic, social, symbolic – eg what matters), cultural Social Capital – embodied, objectified, institutional (eg what you can do, what tools you have, and how your skills are recognised); Habitus – “being in the world” – shifting constructs of relationships between field and capital
Describes two cases – very interesting about the relationship of computing to mobile phones, but also the manner in which expectations, desires and plans for the future create openness to ‘being digital’.

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Digital Natives: Everyday Life v Academic Study
Starts with Douglas Adams on technologies: “things in world when born are ordinary”; “things invented between 15-35 are new and exciting”; “anything invented after you are 35 is against the order of things”.
Is critical of the underlying assumption that young people naturally adopt and use technology and can apply it to learning; an assumption stemming from Tapscott, Prenksy et al from late 1990s. Initial research was very localised, and focused on the characteristics of students’ internet use. From it came radical calls for change in higher education and thus the emergence of a moral panic around educational change. Around 2005, people started to focus more on skills and less on age as the marker of the ‘digital natives’; similarly, we started to get large-scale surveys.
Reports on a survey of 7 of 9 faculties at University of Wollongong, n=547. Focused on domestic, 1st year on-campus surveys. Focused only on 1980+ students. (n=470). Used term of access, not ownership. PDAs and GPS – very limited or no access. Survey looked at use of tech in ‘everyday life’ vs ‘academic study’. Fairly obvious findings – eg high frequency of mobiles and email for everyday life; high finding information / LMS use – all the ‘web 2.0’ stuff is very low level for academic life. Academic use is always lower than everyday life for things like blogging, video production. For chat and social networking, almost inverse relationship – high social, low academic.
Conclusion – variety of uses and approaches from students. There are no groupings: technologies are highly individuated. Surveys do not tell us the ‘story’ behind the data – eg mobile phone as replacement watch. Surveys are not accurate and reliable. Correlation co-efficient analysis shows very little reliability. Technology use varies widely from week to week.
Further research is looking at difference between self-directed academic study and directed academic study use of technologies.

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Learning Nests and Local Habitations
Where is networked learning located? It is not anywhere, anyplace, anytime: it is simply relocated and retermporalised. Uses notion of ‘edgeless’ university and classroom, drawn from Bradwell (2009) “edgeless city” – function remains; form alters. Local habitation from Nardi and O’Day – technologies adated to, changed within a local area; linked to Crook (1990s) – the learning nest of the college dorm room – merging of study and personal life. “institutional requirements” matter (so tech work links to assessment, lecture, classes etc).
Research used ‘day experience method’ (Riddle, 2007) – students had cams and had to film themselves based on prompts sent via SMS during the day. Followed up with focus groups at which some videos were shown to all. Shows videos – excellent method.
Clear evidence that students didn’t know that they were using technology as much as they were.

“There was no difference between the location of work and play” (eg student Facebooking in class)

“Applications open at once” – Life on screen Which tab is open = whether you are studying or working

Importance of connections to others – alone, alone but online connection, shared space with others in physical space.

Crook (1990s) claimed that on-screen would be distaction; this research at least identifies how people manage their distractions. So students are quite astute at controlling their technology uses when they need to avopid distraction – critically this shows agency

Extremely interesting results here – what it shows is that rich ethnographic or qualitative approaches are far more useful in understanding the diversity of experience, rather than generic surveys. The ideas about location are beautifully interwoven between where they are using computing, and how they are controlling and creating ‘virtual’ locations within the screen interface

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Supporting the digital natives

3-year project focusing on schools, more than universities – what is happening before uni. Critical of the populist net gen rhetoric. So ask, how do young people use it, and how can we give equal access and opportunity, especially supporting them in the gaining of skills.

Basic data – note a small dip in Internet use at ages 17-19 (from 95% to 90% or so); very high Internet access for children at home; and even in bedroom. Children negotiate with parents to get access to Internet – perhaps to claim it helps them study – and parents accept this.

Very close links between NON-Internet users (called “lapsed internet users” – nice!) and either getting access at school (and thus first doing it in school context) and then stopping because they don’t have access away from school (which explains, to some extent, the dip in 17-19 year olds).

having now heard so many excellent speakers tell us that net gen is not true, except as a cultural construct, I am wondering whether we are arguing with the past, about an idea which has been and one, or whether we are just failing to make headway against it? Have we any evidence as to the depth and breadth of the purchase that the net gen myth has gained in business? politics? etc? I have heard marketing people talking about “millenials” but these are understood primarily in terms of consumer habits,and tech use is more a premise around which consumer conclusions are drawn within thid discourse. So are we attacking a dead straw argument?

Eynon goes on to discuss the outcomes – how do ppl use the Internet? 8 behaviours, 5 informal learning; 3 formal learning. Eynon asks useful question “what does this use MEAN?” – but as yet no easy answer. The qualitiatve information demonstrates complexity of the motivations and specific meanings of use.

The only kind of informal learning use that school programs helped students to do something different was ‘creativity’ – all other uses could be explained around age, gender, friends, access at home. The formal uses for learning were, however, all correlated with school use / demands.

Normative conclusion – schools should be a more important place at which development of facility with, and motivation to use, technologies for ‘learning’ can occur. Importance of freedom and flexibility within school, because it feels more important and there is support for learning how to do something

Excellent paper which suggests that digital literacy needs to encompass all sorts of affective and motivational factors, as well as actual skills. Perhaps also we should be learning from this for unviersities to play their role in fostering creativity and expression using innovative online technologies

Discussion to come; will probably try and compose some kind of response / provocation / development around net generation in coming days.

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Exploring sociotechnical theories of learning technology
7th International Networked Learning Conference
Symposium Organisers: Linda Creanor & Steve Walker Glasgow Caledonian University, The Open University, United Kingdom

4 papers (abstracts)

• Interpreting Complexity: a case for the sociotechnical interaction framework as an analytical lens for learning technology research Linda Creanor & Steve Walker
• Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change: Connectivism and Actor Network theory
  Frances Bell
• The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software Chris Bissell
• Social presence in online learning communities Karen Kear

Initial reaction: the very existence of this symposium, and its framing, suggests that people in learning technologies research and development may not, in their community of practice, have an explicit and reflexive discourse which understands technologies in society.

Interpreting Complexity
Claims that technological determinism is starting to dominate discussions of education and technology, especially under the guise of Web 2.0 and evangelism for the uses of these new technologies. Intrested in the new contexts of co-created content and knowledge, but have some questions about the emerging trendy theories (such as connectivism). Asks us to “make a problem of what technology is” – outlines the standard four – ANT, SCOT, SST, and social informatics and discusses some similar features (eg they are all relatively negative towards determism; they are attentive to context)

Is it the case that ANT is sometimes too narrowly defined as a theory of technology? While grounded in investigations of technologies, ANT does rather seem to be a broader theory of social structure; the ‘network’ and ‘node’ approach perhaps fits too easily into people’s desires to apply it to technology

The focus for this first paper is on social informatics: Sociotechnological interaction network (STIN) – uses Rob Kling (see the Rob Kling Center for SI). (claims STIN is a simple alternative to the ‘baggage’ of ANT – [hm! see my point above). Gives examples of how users (better termed social actors) interact with and shape the technology; how structures within which technology operates has similar influence. Conclusion? technology is not a thing but a network between people, rules, data, and so on.

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Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change

Paper is a story of Bell's attempts to critique Siemens' work) on connectivism; (see also Downes. Starts with context - growth in internet usage; informal v formal learning; social v individual learning; scheduled v responsive. Connectivism, to Bell, looks like ANT, somewhat. Siemens is not the same as Downes, but they are 'connected'.

One of the interesting things about connectivism is that it has become popular, and gained mindshare, principally because of its publication and development through the Internet; one wonders had it been located in more traditional print publishing (or even online, but scholarly journals) whether it would have activated its catchiness? And, synergy! - Bell just presents excellent evidence of how connectivism exists in the blogosphere, not scholarverse

Identifies a key weakness of Connectivism - it is normative, prescribing what is good - (networks) and what is bad (groups) - see Bell's animated visualisation of this normativity. Asks, interestingly - is connectivism itself a knowledge network (will it learn and develop?), perhaps it is more of a personal statement of theory (theory as aspect of practice), not a research agenda. Does point to the fact that connectivism might er-socialise theories of learning technologies.

Excellent critique and analysis; perhaps suggests that, while we need explicit theorisation of technologies as social processes, we cannot cleave to them too strongly or closely: remain agile or sceptical of any determining theory

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The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software

Begins by listing the many varieties of academic theoretical engagement with technologies and society (scientific knowledge, science, etc). Emphasises the deprecation in these theories of determinism; importance of co-creation of systems between humans and technology, though variations within that. Notes that some of these investigations tended to be too concerned with innovation, and not enough with use.

Gives examples of uses of technology in teaching - first, is a simple example of using spreadsheet to get students exploring digital telecommunications - spreadsheet "becomes a graphic device" -used in a way spreadsheet was not meant to be. Gives other examples of software used in T&L for 'odd' outcomes. Students turn these applications into something from which they can learn. "don't get ed tech people to write software - let students invent their own uses". Now switches to clever web 2.0 uses - e.g. Google translate. Emphasis too on students learning that technology is malleable and they must become 'tinkerers'.

Very cleverly demonstrates the fluid, malleable nature of digital artefacts and how they can be turned against their original purpose, or reused on other ways. Digital media is much more open to reinvention against the cultural expectations of its purpose: like a double game - culture+technology = 1 dominant approach which then, read through culture for alternative technology gives a different approach

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Social presence in online learning communities
Describes social presence as a concept - basic definition "the degree to which a person is perceived as 'real' in mediated communication" (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997) - history back into the 1970s (eg telephone research). Claims that online communication can be problematic when people don't seem to act and speak as if they are dealing with real people; it is negative, cold, potentially full of dangers unless there is 'social presence'. Cites Garrison and Anderson (2003) on social presence - social presence as 'supportive and encouraging' of students to communicate genuinely.

immediate concern - sure, this is a good working definition and has definitely dominated our thinking in educational technology for many years - at least since the 1990s - but it first of all assumes there is unmediated conversation (always tricky - language and presence are themselves mediators) and second that 'real' is a definable quality 'absent' from networked communications. The definition is more useful as a marker of where we started thinking about presence in the 1990s and perhaps where we have come from. It probably works well for students outside of the net, coming into online learning channels and spaces without little other online contact or activity.

Cites some of her own research into students' lack of knowledge or sensibility of 'being with other people' when doing online discussion. Also emphasises the value of real-time interaction. (this is research from students using First Class - [dated?]).

Asks is social presence a technical or a social phenomenon. Looks at technical features – follows the fairly simplistic media richness theory to claim that (eg) discussion boards are not rich enough to generate social presence. Suggests profiles, IM, etc might be ‘better’ for social presence – these technologies might ‘help’. [Paper doesn't say when, what cohort, what was the cultural relationship with face to face learning - were they imagining online learning as a 'deficit'?']

The paper does present some challenges for me: I wonder if it misses the fact that the lack of social presence in online learning might have a lot more to do with the fact that learning is not something in which it is easy to have social presence, even in a classroom! In other words, the question of ‘presence’ has been assumed; in fact, presence might be something which is found more easily in some social settings than in others. ‘Education’ might not be a very easy place for presence? But, also got a key point from this paper – real-time interaction is more significant than we might think for the affective and sense-making elements of presence. Very useful.

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Discussion
Discussion came and went; battery died. Brief summary? Lots of positive feedback to panellists – comments re institutionalisation of technologies; value of social thinking for educational designers.

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Second session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Vint Cerf and David King (Google), Samantha Hannah-Rankin (Auspost), Nick Gruen (Gov 2.0).

Mundie, Microsoft

Broadband access is not simply about infrastructure but also inspiring social and economic innovations. Discusses the way devices are going to change and become embedded in our everyday life, through user interfaces involving gestures, facial signals and so on – “entirely new relationship between computers and people… pervasive and intuitive system that works on your behalf”. [A relatively underwhelming piece of gee-whizzery]

Vint Cerf, Google and Father of Internet

Investment in NBN needs to be carefully managed – not just edge connectivity, but more impact at core and the backhaul. Cerf emphasises the importance of end-to-end principle and the requirement to avoid constraints within the system once a person gets access. Cerf calls it “permissionless innovation”. Also bear in mind that we need to help people to see why they should use the new ideas which might flow, potentially, from the new infrastructure. Cerf comments on the lack of competition within the USA – Australia’s approach is “quite stunning” in separating the network from the services. “new kinds of competitive applications” can emerge without constraints. Cerf notes that high-speed widespread networks enable Australia to connect economically much more easily with the rest of the world, not just within Australia. Ponders that there might be multiple and different fibres passing or near premises. Cerf sees this as a benefit, not a problem.

David King, Google (You Tube)
Why talk about YouTube in this kind of forum? Great case study of what more bandwidth can do. YT is good for culture and politics, media and moneymaking. Note the importance of link to other technologies – cameras are cheaper now, easier.

YT is growing steadily. Example of business link: marketing of music via videos. But, more than that, YT creates new business – people want to put music into their OWN videos and the originator of the music shares in the revenue when this happens, as well as adverts to sell. Example: home film maker puts short demo up on YT, ends up getting major studio contract to turn demo into real film.

Reach: – global audience like no other platform (eg Sarah Boyle 300 million views = #1 on album charts)
Rights: – scalable, automated, choice-laden system for video management (inlcluding archive of video!)
Research: – people can understand who and when and where people watch videos. (e.g. Mr Bean popular in Saudi Arabia, discovered this via YT)
Revenue: – 38% of media consumed online, 9% of ad revenue

Hannah-Rankin, Australia Post
AusPost view – NBN establishes capacity for digital services the same as traditional postal analog services (security, confidence, etc of communication). Need to establish familiarity among consumers and services so they know why and how to use NBN. Auspost is about equality of access.. everyone can use it; trying to bring a similar apporoach into the future via the NBN.

H-R claims we move from massification from customisation, classic link of postmodernity and IT as the sequel to modernity.

[H-R utilises standard language re interoperability, unlocking potential value, confidence, synergy and so on: this is part of the problem. The language of 'IT implementation' is not the language of politics, culture or real business, even though we depend ON that language]

“Compelling consumer-centric solutions”

Gruen

Simple definition of Web 1.0 – email and website (point to point) – vs Web 2.0 – multi-channel and networks. Emphasises that Web 2.0 is NOT fancy technology. What broadband brings is “higher speeds and ubiquity”. What is Web 2.0? “I’s about culture change” (Draws on O’Reilly).

See The Government 2.0 Taskforce reports at : http://gov2.net.au/

• Collaborate
• Improvise
• Share
• Play
• users build value
• be modular
• Build for value, monetise later

- this stuff makes government VERY nervous.

Before 2000, Gruen says as an economist, that he thought governments built public goods. But, in Web 2.0, the private sector builds public goods [well, you might say THAT about the internet!]. So government needs to catch up to this approach.

“Organisation without organisations”

“low-cost social formations”

“low-cost experimentation and startup”

“turbocharge the market for reputation”

Key point – identity needs to be STABLE. We don’t need to know WHO you are, we need to know you are the same person you were before and will be in future. And, once we start to get identity stable, online, then reputation can be built, attached to identity

A final key point from Gruen re Government 2.0 work: it’s about data, of which we have masses, visualised in new ways, leading to understanding, acceptance and so on. I would add that the visualisation and management of data involves the need for lots of bandwidth – which further provides an reason for NBN not previously or commonly discussed.

Brad Wearn, CIO BHP
Presents case study on BHP Billiton’s use of broadband comms within their massive Pilbara operation. Straightforward discussion of infrastructure re railroad control system. Like a mini version of NBN since it includes fixed and mobile.

Commentary

An array of presentations, all of which appear to be part-advertisement for the the business behind them, part advertisement for the possibilities of broadband, and show a diversity of ways of addressing the possible audience. Microsoft: a smoke and mirros performance that owes more to science fiction than the realities of social change; YouTube: a presentation that embodies why YT is successful – clear and precise and in the language of the audience; Australia Post: presentation laden with biz-speak from the IT sector which, fundamentally, is a plea for relevance from a threatened organisation…or is that too harsh?

Gruen is such a literate and capable analyst of and proponent of Web 2.0 and its relationship with governance. His linking of the economics of public goods to the development of Web 2.0 style architectures and systems (the private is the public, reversing the way that the public tried to become private) is critical to grasping the entry of the internet into mainstream. Many internet commentators have been saying for years that the internet is explicable as privately created and owned public goods; now this idea enters the mainstream. He also is fearless to utilise the government’s own failings (eg in copyright of goivernment documentation) to demonstrate the change needed.

It is often difficult to extract from the presentations the precise reason why they speak to the need for NBN, except insofar as the NBN achieves some other aspects of Internet accessibility rather than the obvious one of speed. In fact, they are starting to suggest to me that the emphasis on speed is irrelevant – it’s about access, first of all; it’s about reliability and soiphistication in the infrastructure; it’s about competition to drive services, not supply of access; it’s about the transition to the ‘ubiquitous utility’ model. Sure, speed matters in relation to some aspects, but there are deeper cultural matters here.

Should we also be considering the diversity of uses as including fundamentally different things? There is a strong move at the moment to try and aggregate many kinds of use (games, business services, ehealth etc) into a single whole – similar to the claim of the entirety of “social computing” in recent EU report – to claim the need for NBN. But, realistically, we know the Internet is now like a road system with 100s of lanes, moving in concert but sometimes not interconnected – it’s not a single superhighway but a dense twisted set of layers and tunnels and so on. From a technical perspective, no problem with aggregated; from a selling / managing perspective – we need multiple messages to different kinds of users. (Comment sparked by Wearn’s comment re latency).

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Opening session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Kevin Rudd, Mike Quigly (NBN) and Jeffrey Cole (Annenburg, USC).

Paul Twomey, ICANN, opens the forum: “we are using Web 2.0 tools throughout the forum” to encourage particiation both at the event and elsewhere. Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE welcomes delegates: plenty of hype around the critical importance of NBN

Kevin Rudd, PM
(Full text of speech)
Economic strategy is a key point: for today and the future. The NBN is linked to that strategy. Rudd frames the summit by reminding us of the global financial crisis. Describes the NBN as “core infrastructure” for the new century like rail (19th) and roads (20th). Links the NBN to sustainability, but also emphasises health and education and the advantage for all Australians.

“The reality is that our current broadband…is not up to scratch”; “slow broadband is holding us back” “Australians want fast broadband”. Uses the rhetoric of international competition “we are even behind the Slovak Republic”. Notes 18 failed plans for broadband in 12 years before the Rudd Government elected. “This is like building the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the national road network” – it’s about confidence in the future. “It is a massive task”. It is the work of government, because of this fact.

Potential to “transform our economy”, “transform many aspects of our lives”. Fast broadband is the answer to global communication, to regional disadvantage, to 24/7 businesses, to enabling advantages throughout Australia. “Plug our nation fully into the global economy”. It’s about addressing challenges in the future – climate change, ageing, city congestion. “Our national broadband policy is not just about communications policy…It is about the whole way government meets the needs of people”. Emphasises in particular greenhouse gas reduction, principally through telepresence technology to reduce travel; also smart metering of the electricity grid.

“What excites me about broadband is the applications that none of us have thought of yet”. It’s about new trade opportunities (access to global markets), smart business practices; it will create jobs now and into the future. NBN underpins innovation to create jobs across “every part of our economy”. Cost savings – eg paper, time, etc – and new growth at less cost.

Rudd then announces several innovative projects relating to health, emergency management, education all of which tend to focus on rural and regional disadvantage. Summarises the current progress on NBN – planning, testing in Tasmania, the new regional backbone development recently announced. Legislation for structural reform – more competition, innovation and protection for

Moves to the Goverment 2.0 agenda. “While the internet is the citizen’s most important point of contact with government, it is largely a passive engagement”; Gov 2.0 is to be about ‘listening’ to those using public services to improve them (eg “it’s buggered mate”); also about accountability. Calls on government to accept and embrace. Rudd website now includes comments and webchat, for example. “Accessible, transparent, accountable”. “Digital inclusion” for remote and regional – uniquely needed in Australia with its dispersd population and large area.

“Wider Australian Digital Community” called upon to participate: conference now opened.

Quigly, NBN co CEO
(great slides for this talk, with graphics of key points – pdf file).
3 objectives for NBN High speed; competitive level playing field; do this cost effectively. Achieve them transparently and accountable. Technical design, financial plan (with McKinsey) and project plan Supports the dual stream approach – NBN more focused on technologies; McKinsey-KPMG financials.

Two key questions:

• Why 100 MBits/sec? Cisco predicts, by 2013, 500% increase in the traffic over global networks based on the increased resolution of screens and power of computers to support massive data traffic. Nice graph showing, if we don’t go to 100, then we assume downstream traffic speed will level off from historical growth from 1990s.

• Why not all wireless?Cisco research = fixed line traffic will dwarf mobile. Laws of physics cannot be broken – limits in spectrum, will run out of tweaks of the wireless technology, but mostly, it’s about the increased number of cells available for mobile transmission. And, how does data get OUT of the cells? Fibre. Moreover, if we have to build many more cells, then this is likely to be just as expensive. Also notes the very low AVERAGE speeds of wireless because of sharing. Note too the problems of being at the edge of the cell – which can reduce single-user speeds by a factor of 10-20. Wireless still important, but it is not the only solution.

Critical importance of equivalent access across system to ensure competition. How? Fibre-based wholesale service…connects premises to points of interconnect via Layer-2 ethernet (layer 1 = passive optical), nothing above layer 2 which is for ISPs and others – BOTH wholesalers and retailers – covering services and application. Logical separation of streams to enable endusers to choose multiple providers of services; technology for maximum efficiency of bitstream. Note – layer 2 = access QoS, but not service QoS.

Quigly explains NBN relationship with ISPs backhaul etc. – Critical point – NBN is NOT going above layer 2, and will mainly focus on fibre from premises to Points of Interconnect. only where there is a single backhaul provider to a PoI will NBN then aggregate traffic from that PoI and haul it to another one where there is competitive backhaul provision. Essentially, the NBN will be putting in backhaul mainly in regional areas (as indeed NextGen is already starting to do); in well served areas, it will be focusing on fibre to the home/premises. Small footprint in the overall value chain. “Plumbers” of the network – everything else by other people.

Key is the suite and pricing of products; to cover both legacy and future applications and services.

Future proofing for further technology improvements.

One major building issue: the civil works involved in placing cables and equipment that supports cable. CLaims that the data needed to absolutely settle on a business plan (eg pricing) is not available – it’s such a complex business and many variables.

91% of premises served by roadside teclo pillars; (8% of land area). Remaining 9% = rural and served by radio or direct copper from exchange.

Cole, USC Annenberg

There is a bigger gap between dialup and broadband than between no access and dialup. BB changes the world “like nothing we have ever seen except the printing press and electricity”. What are some of the early changes from dialup

Dialup – households – 2-3 times a day, 20-30 minutes at a time. logging on was a big deal, we aggregated our tasks and did them en masse at one time. Time was focused ON the internet and its use, not on as many local interactions (eg with family). People wanted to be undisturbed. But, broadband – from 2002-3 – people were on 30-50 times a day, but for 2-3 minutes at a time. There was no aggregation of tasks, no scheduling. The internet is not in the background now, but integrated into our lives, where we were in life. Broadband moves the internet into the centre stage [what evidence? see http://www.digitalcenter.org/]. This has also got something to do with wireless, however. The changes broadband enacts are changes in how and when we do things involving online activity.

Broadband is not a threat to TV in the same way dialup is. “It’s the best friend TV ever had”. But… newspapers? No. teenagers are interested in the news – more so than any time in last 70 years. But just not from newspapers. When net penetration hits 30%, newspaper sales decline. (Annenberg research). So news has to be online, constantly updated – broadband is the only way for news institutions to survive since they are so much more readable and immediate. [Not sure these assertions are sustainable given the changes in the nature of the media - feels like a re-run of 'put the newspaper online in 1980s-1990s].

Cole moves onto more sustainable ground when he moves into discussion of interaction and user-generated content – especially saying don’t forget upload speed and limits, particularly in the era of video creation.

Key points – uploading is vital “democractic part of broadband”; younger people have grown up with internet and, increasingly, growing up with broadband; collaboration is the absolute essential component of broadband; cites some research showing people who went back to dialup from broadband were shattered to discover that whole parts of the net they were used to using had become unusable.

We know that we have the right kind of broadband when we stop talking about speed etc, and the system just does what you want and only noticeable when it is not there (like electricity). Always on, always there is the goal.

Commentary

Note the change in rhetoric around NBN to include current issues such as climate change which were far less significant earlier; similarly, the emphasis on short-term jobs which did not matter prior to the GFC. I also believe there is a deeper emphasis now on the economic dimensions of the NBN, even though Rudd also says that NBN is not ‘communications’ policy, but policy across all areas of government. The political aspects are also clear: note the reference to Howard government failures on broadband; look at the appeal to rural and, especially, regional voters utilising the NBN as a mechanism to articulate the ‘whole of Australia’ position by the government. Note also the linking of other digital initiatives (Government 2.0) which, largely, are independent of broadband development, to the NBN – creating an all-encompassing ‘we are the digital government’ image.

Reflect on the notion of ‘revolution’ and change of state. Why is NBN not understood as incremental change? How does it fit with the actual history of incrementalism over past 15 years? Is the promising of NBN’s radical potential ever going to be realised because, fundamentally, it will not be experienced as a radical phase shift?

Cole’s presentation is an important statement about the radical changes involved in internet use, especially as experienced by younger users who are the future (note link to Rudd’s future rhetoric). What is interesting is that he discussed what people are doing now online and have been for 4-5 years as part of promoting a network for the future. The real fact to take away from this presentation is that we can’t easily predict what people will do online in 10 years given that noone was really expecting the whole social media craze in the 1990s.

Is E-Learning True to the Principles of Technology?
(John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning)
Keynote Paper at E-Learn conference, 2009, Vancouver

Disclaimer: Live blogging; see end for reflections, side notes.

Begins by emphasising the wide variety of capacities of nations to engage successfully in elearning

Declares the “absolute importance of technology in the educational development of the world”; attempting to link purposes and technology together. Fears that we are missing out on the benefit technology might bring. Will present argument that explores the relationship between the purpose and use of “Technology”, and what technologies for learning might bring).

Breaks into a short description of the Commonwealth of Learning (note its emphasis on technology and development, especially role of distance learning / technology, especially at secondary school AND teacher education; examples of bringing education TO the traditional farming communities).

For higher education he indicates the central challenge: wider access; higher quality; lower cost. With traditional methods, you can’t achieve increases in access at lower cost with quality; you get ONE or TWO of the three (but not all three). Discusses the ‘iron triangle’ which links exclusivity and quality. Educational technology CAN give you all three.

Technology = “application of scientific and other organised knowledge to practical tasks by organisations (including both people and machines)”; notes Smith – four principles of technology (division of labour; specialisation; economies of scale; machines/ICTS). Uses the OpenU as the example – eg division of labour between content / process / delivery experts; massification – 1M students worldwide; use of ICTs essential).

Daniel emphasises that it’s not just or mainly ‘online’ – eg Indian national open schooling – 1.6 million students, mostly print based.

But question: is elearning true to the principles of technology? (meaning: scale, etc). Asserts that academics like elearning because it enables them to maintain the ‘cottage industry’; is very sceptical about ‘elearning’ as a major force for economic change. Asserts that, overall, there are no differences (or, worse, are increased expenses) from introducing ‘elearning’. This doesn’t matter in 1st world, especially; but really is a major problem in developing nations. So, technology (elearning) must change the system, not just layer on top of it.

Returns us to an emphasis on producing, sharing content: the Open Educational Resource Commons – information freely available, and usable in print form as much as online, will make a major difference in countries that are developing. Another example, Wikieducator: commitment to creating, sharing and using open content.

Discussion of VUSSC; major project of CoL, to coordinate and network the small states of the commonwealth’s university activities. It’s as much about QA, management, assistance as ‘virtuality’ – again, emphasising how organisation is critical, not just ‘using’ elearning.

Fear is: Elearning is “provoking a throwback to pre-industrial times” which would vitiate its major cost and other savings and benefits.

Good comment in Q&A – universities which invest heavily in space might get caught by the number of students who are studying ‘sort-of’ on campus – actually spending quite a lot of time offcampus. [This strikes me as an effect of the network society - people, even younger and naive social subjects are not investing very much significance in buildings and places - investing in networks and forms.]

Side Notes
There is a consistent emphasis of technology as a force in society.There is also a degree of blindness to the changing nature of the economic-technological system of the Internet. However, it’s interesting to consider the background – the very strong emphasis in CoL on developing nations, with limited infrastructure. Something as simple as having free, good-quality, pdf files of information can have a major difference / impact in developing nations; it’s not about sophisticated elearning.

On reflection, the challenge is to distinguish between ‘elearning’ as a kind of global force for change and as a way of doing what is already done and thought, but in an era of networked ICTS. Systematisation, massification and so on, are not the only productive and quality-enhancing approaches to the use of technology. Some of the answers to questions also indicate a degree of naivete or, at least, out-datedness from Daniel about the way in which elearning is now being done. Curiously, Daniel is on stronger ground when he argues that people good at teaching should focus on it, and do it in teams (the real lesson of OpenU); the idea that ‘elearning’ should – only – be done in this way is incorrect

The death and rebirth of journalism (A panel on future of journalism and the news)
[disclaimer: liveblogging]

Brian Solis (Moderator), Don Lemon, Hugh Hewitt, Jay Rosen, Joanna Drake Earl (google them)
(can’t assign comments to people since can’t see from the back row )

Start with some data: “how is new media comparing to traditional media”

monthly – 400 million tweets; weekly – facebook – 2 billion pieces of content shared; 2008 – 16,000 job cuts in US news. twitter.com outperforms CNN. Then again, NYT is growing too.

Comment – twitter big, yes, but a lot of it is links to big media or spreading of the word.

Evolution of new media – Jay Rosen (NYU) – blogworld in 2003 to now “we have built around that system (RSS blogs, etc) the live web – everyone is connected to the news system as a whole – old media and new media wired into the same ecosystem – more complex, more aggregators, more fights for attention” “we didn’t anticipate the live web, which is represented by twitter” “lot more competitive for attention” – 2003 – people who blogged were like those with own magazines; now it has transformed into something much broader”.

Lemon (CNN)- the key to blogosphere/twitter now is immediacy – old media can’t keep up with people’s thirst for information.

Hewitt. – the real change now is the massive amplification of the desire to be noticed and to gain attention.

Question from Hewiit to audience – how many aspire to be journalists? – There will be too many of ‘you’ to be employed as journalists -[ this is completely the wrong question and the wrong answer. Journalists are not employed only; they are the citizens who do it; bloggers and pro-bloggers are not wanting to be journalists! More old media hubris?]

Jay Rosen and Don Lemon arguing about fact checking – Rosen asserts old media doesn’t report ‘factual news’ in the way that they claim – sure, it’s accurate to some extent, but it’s not objective – this is not argument between facts and opinion, but different views. Rosen emphasises that participants now can directly report their experiences, without relying on journalists; but his key point is that this kind of reporting connects with (doesn’t replace) the journalistic reporting, adds new layers. Rosen demands that bloggers pick up the ethics of journalism; but also says, journalism, news ALSO needs to recommit to news ethics.

Lemon, in answer to another question, returns back to the profession of journalism – we need resources, fact checking, trained people to “look into” things. But “social media has upped my game” – because if he doesn’t get it right, he’s going to be hammered in tweet-world. Strong emphasis on the interrelationship between big and social media – big media

Rosen – cites the scene from the film Network – Beale shout out the windows “mad as hell” – audience is isolated from one another, ppl couldn’t share horizontally; today, Rosen says, it’s different – people are still watching Tv, reading papers, but through the Internet they are connected across as well as vertically in society. They can share news with each other as easily as they can get it from the mainstream. More people shared Obama’s race speech than who watched it. Over the Internet, people can find each other if they disagree with what they see; the Internet is a powershift, it has already happened – people can inform themselves. [Lemon responds - clear dynamic here between him and Rosen - polite agonistics of the media].

Hewitt – excellent comment – the people who are trusted in social media world will become the key sources for the traditional media. [It is an accurate representation from within media of how they see the social media world]. Social media ‘increases’ the opportunity for media to find those in society who know what they are talking about; social media is a test of credibility.

Rosen – calling for a mutual relationship between information professionals and their audiences / networks which is based more on human connection than expertise and skill. Value of more and more people gaining a sense of ownership of news; if we collectively believe we own the news, then there’s a bigger stake in taking care of it, caring about it, and using it.

Lemon – there is not the accountability in social media and cannot be; journalists feel exposed, bloggers are not (eg to legal action). Asserts in such a manner that it is a definining difference between trad and social media.

Do we still need Journalism Schools?

Hewitt – students are getting “completely irrelevant skill sets”

Rosen – used to teach journalism around platforms; now that doesn’t work. Now use ‘studio’ approach (eg model from design, art etc) – how will you build a new news system embedded in the program – build intellectual capital, hook students into the news business as innovators. News can’t innovate.

Side notes
Claim that people thirst for immediate information: is this a media industry construction? – does connectivity create a VOID which can only be filled by immediate, endless streaming of information. Do we hold to a notion of humans as infovores? or is the thirst for information actually a thirst for meaning in connectivity – without meaning connections through twitter, blogging etc feels empty? Perhaps it is also a dominant theme of the moment that one ought to be information hungry – a kind of postmodern version of the ‘improve oneself through knowledge’ of modernity (think Workingmen’s Educational Association in 19thC GB)? Ultimately, there is an affective as well as intellectual relationship between humans and information; we need to ask what the search for, acquisition of, information signifies in and of itself, regardless of that; then ask how modalities of information change meaning.

There’s no mention here of Google – new media/old media divide works well around things like twitter and blogging, but there is limited understanding of the informatic basis for news and so on – no mention of mining twitter for example.