Tag Archives: Social Networks

Busy Time Rants

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I have been busy with a number of things these days. Here are a few thoughts on the what is happening.

re: TLT08
I just came back from the TLT 2008 conference in Saskatoon. It was an excellent conference, and much better than last year. Highlights for me include the amazing keynotes by Rick Schwier and George Siemens, and excellent presentations by Brian Lamb and Dean Shareski. Unfortunately, I missed the keynote by Stephen Downes, although I heard it was amazing. Luckily, I was able to catch breakfast with Stephen and Dean the first day of the conference.

I was a part of three presentations at TLT. First, I presented with Kyle, Vi, Tiffany, and Ashley regarding our Digital Internship Project. Second, I co-presented with the Edtech Posse (Rick, Dean, Heather, Rob) on “The Posse Round Up 2.0“. Finally, I presented again with Rob regarding the Graduate course we recently co-taught, EC&I 831. I am currently researching the process and outcomes of this course, and Rob and I presented some of our initial observations. It was great to have met, former students of the course, Cindy, Dan, and Shaun at the conference as well.

I was also very lucky to have finally met some terrific people for the first time face-to-face. Jen, Cindy, Brian, D’Arcy, Kirk and Kelly … you are all amazing people. It was great to finally meet you all in person, and I really hope I get the chance again!

I would also like to congratulate those that won awards related to course design at the conference. We have so many terrific instructional designers, multimedia developers, and instructors in Saskatchewan, and it is great to see many of you recognized for your hard work. Also, congratulations to the organizing committee for putting together a truly excellent conference.

On a less congratulatory note, to the people that continuously asked the question “what about the cyberpredators?” at almost every presentation, take some to read this or this or contact me, and I can help you get over this fear.

I would also love to have a conversation with the gentleman who voiced concerns (and then walked out) regarding teachers using decentralized funding to buy non-standardized equipment (as mentioned in Dean’s session) and the implications for sustaining technical support. I believe your point was that the purchasing should follow the institutional/division priorities. Here are my thoughts on this.

Start with division priorities that are focused on student learning and supporting innovation throughout the system. Let us forget the term “technical support” and focus on “innovation support”. Let us make the first term a misnomer. If a school division cannot (for instance) get Macs to play nice with a Windows network, your technicians are not doing their job, or they need to go back to training. Technology implementation decisions that are based on technicians’ lack of knowledge or vendor biases are not likely sound decisions. Divisions are learning organizations, and continual learning should be the expectation for all members. And if economics is the stated excuse, why not partner with other school divisions to increase cost-savings? Locking in to single vendor agreements to save tiny margins on the bottom line is ripping off your students, and IMHO, is inexcusable whether it is with Apple, IBM or CocaCola.

There is where I usually rant about open source software and free tools … but I will leave that argument for today.

re: ECMP 355
I am very happy to be teaching a May/June course to undergraduate students related to the appropriate integration of technology in the classroom. My students have begun blogging, and are starting to get the feel for it. Feedback and comments on their posts would be greatly appreciated, and you can subscribe to the ECMP 355 megafeed here.

For course interactions, we are using Moodle again. And, I do not believe it has been officially announced by the University of Regina is making a full move to Moodle from WebCT by Fall of 2009. I am happy to be currently testing the latest U of R release. If anyone would like to see the course, let me know and I will get you the guest password.

re: St. Louis
I am very excited to have been asked by Elizabeth Helfant to present at MICDS in St. Louis near the end of May. I will be speaking to English and History teachers (my original areas of study) regarding personal learning networks and technology integration. I can’t wait!

re: ICICTE in Corfu
I also have had my paper accepted for ICICTE in Corfu in July. I try to get back to Greece every couple of years to revisit my roots. This conference has been an excellent in the past and the venue is always on a Greek island. I highly recommend the country, the people, and the conference.

re: Life
Life is busy these days. I am currently in North Battleford, and teaching in La Ronge tomorrow (yes, on the long weekend) with our Community Based Masters of Education program. I am happy to have my family along with me for the rest of the trip and I am hoping to take some nice photos (and a few deep breaths) along the way. Northern Saskatchewan has much beauty to see. Here’s a shot I took near Battleford today.

Family @ Battleford Bridge

Yes, I am extremely busy with teaching, research, presentations, and family. However, life is good and as I reflected in my last post, I am a lucky, lucky man.

WELL Party, 1989

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The WELL is one of the oldest online virtual communities. This video from 1989 features interviews from WELL members. It is an interesting look back at the experiences of pioneering virtual network participants. One could replace “the WELL” from the audio with Twitter (or another popular social network tool) and it would hardly be noticeable.

Connections – ECI831 Presentations

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I gave a short presentation in EC&I 831 tonight titled “connections”.

Slides are available below:

Ustream also available:

Audio is available here.

connections Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sue Waters on Al Upton/Mini Legends Closure

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We were very fortunate to have Sue Waters as a guest for EC&I 831 last Wednesday (March 19/08). Sue had previously written a post related to the order for closure for Al Upton’s MiniLegends classroom blog. EC&I 831 was very interested in hearing more.

We used Skype to mediate the conversation, and the result was streamed via Ustream. I noticed over 30 participants at one point, and it is clear from many related blog posts that the issue has generated much interest over several continents.

Sue did an amazing job recording the details and summarizing this conversation, including many of the the major points brought up by course participants and other Ustream guests. Check out her post here.

Also, the mp3 version of the conversation is available here. There may be a couple of anomalies with the audio due to the way it had to be lifted from Ustream. Sorry, it was mostly unavoidable.

I would also like to take this opportunity to comment on a few ‘aha’ moments I had regarding this experience, not directly related to the issues discussed, but related to the networked affordances made available through this course. This a short list of things I really like about this particular experience in terms of pedagogy.

1) The idea of the session came from Cindy, one of the course participants. After it was suggested, there were several other classmates that were excited about the idea. It is great to have students bring direction to the course, and I wish I had made this more of a common thread throughout.

2) Through Twitter and the edublogosphere, I was able to quickly contact Sue. Sue and I had already been connected through various tools, but had never had the chance to collaborate. This goes to show the importance of the network, and highlights yet another example of the generosity apparent in so many people I have connected to. This is not only apparent in Sue’s participation on the conversation, but additionally in her thorough, voluntary summary of the session.

3) This issue, although global, has great relevance to the course content and to the practice of many of the participants in their roles as teachers and administrators.

4) The issue was timely. We were able to have this conversation within a week of its occurrence.

5) The conversation was global. The Ustream conversation included participants from 4 countries, and 3 continents.

These previous points are attributes shared with many online educational experiences. Al Upton’s Mini Legends initiative demonstrated some of these and other valuable characteristics. Thus, I believe it is important for all of us to share the positive attributes of online interactions and collaborations that cannot be duplicated using more traditional approaches to teaching and learning. The contrast of great advantages over limited risks is likely the best justification we have for emerging, digital pedagogies.

EC&I 831 Conversation with Sue Waters Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lamb & Norman on Open Repositories

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It was our great pleasure to have had D’Arcy Norman & Brian Lamb speak to EC&I 831 last night on the topic of open educational repositories. As expected, our presenters shared important insights and engaged students to thinker deeper about concepts which have a continually shifting focus. The presentation helped me to gain a better understanding of the issues around open repositories and open educational resources, and I am very pleased with the depth of conversation that arose.

The recorded Elluminate session is available here. D’Arcy and Brian have shared the session resources on the EC&I 831 wiki. Finally, Rob Wall has produced a podcast (audio only) version available for download.

Thanks again Brian and D’Arcy. I cannot wait to meet you both in person at TLT.

Update: Wow, after reviewing the audio I don’t remember ever sounding so incoherent when introducing presenters. That was just a very poor introduction!

Open Educational Repositories Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Is Anonymity a Right?

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Last week, I noticed the somewhat comical, but very scary story of Kentucky lawmaker, Tim Couch, who filed a bill this week to make anonymous postings to the Internet illegal. The bill would target website providers who allowed anonymous postings, not those that submit anonymous postings.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Today, I noticed a post from Fresh Creation highlighting a panel discussion on “Sexual Privacy Online”. The key question, “do you have a right to be anonymous”, is one I have posed to my students in the past. It is a tricky question, and even with a discussion of real problems posed by anonymity, I have yet to be convinced that the right to be anonymous is something we should easily give up. Watch the video and see what you think.

So after watching this, what are your thoughts about anonymity as a right? Are there places that you feel that this should not apply? And if so, how do you decide? Who decides? Watch out for the slippery slope.

What Does the Network Mean to You?

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I’m presenting to my colleagues at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina this coming Wednesday on the potential for networked learning in teacher education, K-12 and higher education. Inspired by a very recent initiative by Robin Ellis, I’ve decided to put up a Voicethread slide and ask for feedback from people on their experiences with networked/social learning.

I would very much appreciate your feedback and would love to have faculty members hear your thoughts throughout the presentation. Thanks much in advance!

Click here for the full size view of this Voicethread.

Wisdom of the Chaperones

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A recent Slate article describes the reality behind user-generated content champions such as Wikipedia and Digg.

Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.

Why is the view presented in this article important to you? If you are touting sites like Wikipedia as proof of a social media utopia and someone (say, a Luddite-type administrator) confronts you with data like this, it is important that you have done your homework. Seek better examples for your arguments. They do exist.

Attention Economy: The Game

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Ulises Mejias has developed a pen-and-paper game to help students better understand the Attention Economy. The game is developed as part of the course, “Friend Request Denied: Social Networks and the Web”.

How do new bloggers gain recognition? Why are some people in MySpace or Facebook more popular than others? Why does one YouTube video get seen by thousands of people, and another by just a few? What does it mean that “on the internet, everyone is famous to 15 people”? Can the subject matter of the content we post to an online network make us more or less popular?

This game is an accelerated simulation of the process of gaining attention online (acquiring more readers, friends, hits, etc.). The goal of the game is to collect the most attention. The game tries to condense a process that can take weeks or months into about an hour. It is intended for people who are new to the study of online social networks, but anyone can play. The game can also be used to teach some basic characteristics of networks, such as the role of hubs or connectors in scale-free networks. Players are asked at the end to critically reflect on the values that drive this Attention Economy.

This looks like a great idea, and I wish I were as creative. While I feel many of these concepts are best actualized/experienced online, a game like this could help students gain a deeper understanding of their own online relationships within the greater networked context.

See also The Attention Economy by Goldhaber (1997). It is a bit older but still a very relevant read.

Danah Boyd on Social Networks

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Discover Magazine recently interviewed Danah Boyd, a well known PhD candidate who has been studying social networks. The interview is described as “a look at how kids use technology, where mobile phones are going, and the Facebook vs. Myspace smackdown.” Click the photo to watch the interview.

Danah Boyd on Social Networks

For many, there will not be much new information on social networks here. However, for those who have missed the piece on the beginnings of formalized social network services and how kids are connecting online, there are some interesting points made here.

Connected Learning (George Siemens)

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George Siemens delivered an excellent, information-packed presentation to the students of EC & I 831 this past Tuesday.

I also streamed a portion of my screen through uStream to a backchannel audience. Many tweeters came out to participate in the session.

Beyond the quality of the presentation, this was a neat experiment in video/presentation delivery/facilitation. Around 20 participants engaged in the conversation in Elluminate. More than 20 watched our class participate and engage in the material as George presented. A few of the more adventurous students (and their numbers are increasing) participated in both the Elluminate session, the ustream chat while posting thoughts to Twitter.

George spoke about connected knowledge. My students actively engaged in its creation.