Learning In a Flat World

A few years back, the online comic XKCD put out a Map Of Online Communities.  I used it as an icebreaker in more than one presentation or online class.

Now, Ethan Bloch has updated this view of the social media landscape with a new map:

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I love the fact that even the lolcats got their own island!  Looking forward to sharing this with my Fall students!

{Graphic from Ethan Bloch – full size here}

I am currently reading Bill Kist’s new book, The Socially Networked Classroom. While written for all levels of education from elementary through postsecondary, he focuses on the use of social media in classes from middle school and above.  As I continue to work with K-12 teachers in my graduate course, this book addresses many of the concerns that my target audience has regarding the use of social media in schools.  This use of social media is equally relevant in higher education, and ties in nicely with the work we are doing here in the Center for Teaching Excellence.

There are several things I like about this book.  The chapter organization grabbed me right off the bat.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fanboy of coffee in general and Starbucks in particular.  I have been “wired” long before I learned about computers and the internet!  So when I noticed that Bill  had organized his chapters into Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti, I was hooked!  Interestingly, Bill notes that the coffee you get from Starbucks is the same whether you order a short or a venti – the only difference is the amount of coffee you receive.  He suggests that teaching with social media is similar – you can use a little or a lot, but the use of social media makes sense in today’s new media age.  That leads to the second thing I like about this book – he gives real examples of teachers and faculty who are walking the walk – using social media in practical ways to enhance learning in their classes.

As I was starting this book, I received a tweet pointing me to a Youtube video from a young 7th grader.  In this video, she gives a tour of her personal learning environment (PLE). This project was conducted as part of dissertation research implementing the use of networked learning and construction of personal learning environments in a 7th grade life science class, and it is quickly evident that this student has a teacher who walks that walk.  It is short, but worth the watch:

I would suspect that this is far from the typical 7th grader out there…but would you not love to have this student in your college class in five years?  She not only seamlessly uses various social media to research and learn, but she works in a meta way to display how she is learning.  I love that she sought out different scientists to validate her research on her blog and when one did not answer right away, she found another.  Are you ready for this student now?  Will you be ready in five years?  She and her peers are coming.

Of course, who knows what a socially networked classroom will look like in five years.  Some of the processes our young student is using above did not exist five years ago.  It is a rapidly evolving environment.  I liked what Derek Wenmoth suggested in a recent post, “Toward the Networked School…“.  As the use of social media becomes more integrated in daily life, the distinction between what is done face-to-face and what is done online blurs and merges.  Faculty worldwide are exploring the use of a networked class, as this example using wikis, blogs and social networks from Helsinki illustrates.  Howard Rheingold‘s Social Media Classroom as well as George Siemens‘ and Stephen Downes‘ Massively Open Online Course on Connectivism are other relevant examples.  No one model will necessarily emerge, but like Bill’s Starbuck’s analogy, there will be varying amounts of social media in most courses in the future.

Having taught online for over a dozen years, I am used to connecting with my students outside “class” time, as the concept of class time is rather meaningless in an asynchronous environment.  Our higher education students are increasingly arriving in our classes equipped with skills they have developed through high school that involve socially mediated communication 24/7 (albeit for entertainment and socialization, not learning per se).  As faculty, we are increasingly looking to social media to connect with colleagues down the hall and worldwide for our own development.   The concept of a personal learning environment in which we are aware of and transparent in the metacognition of our own learning is as relevant for faculty as it is for the young lady above.

Bill asks towards the end of his book whether social networking will be used to free students or more tightly limit their freedoms.  I would suggest that these skills at connecting enhance rather than diminish the role of teachers and faculty.  The socially networked student above has taken control of her own learning, but it does not appear that this has pushed her away from her teacher.  In many ways, it appears that they have formed a closer bond.  It validates my own view of social media.  I look forward to having more and more of these socially networked students in my classes…and working with teachers and faculty to help them make those same connections.

{Graphic by socialmantic}

Facebook…it came up last week at UMW’s Faculty Academy, and has kept the blogosphere buzzing.  Most of the posts I have read have been negative about Facebook.  Rob Cottingham in Canada noted (and I love the dog cartoon):

This hasn’t been a good past few weeks for Facebook. Growing concerns over what Facebook’s deliberately doing to your privacy collided with news about what Facebook’s doing accidentally with your data.

There are two upcoming ways you can protest: by not logging in on June 6, or – if you’re ready to finally cut the umbilical cord – quitting altogether on May 31. So far, while they’re getting press attention, neither initiative is showing signs of snowballing yet, with registered followers numbering only in the hundreds.

That’s not to say the discontent is limited to net activists and privacy advocates. “How do I delete my Facebook account” is suddenly a very popular search on Google.

As I noted earlier,  danah boyd “ranted” about Facebook and “radical transparency.” (but I love how scholarly her rants are!).  CogDog barked about it…but provided some th0ughtful (if graphic) commentary on the issues of privacy and sharing.  One of his quotes:

I don’t place any value judgment on quitting versus not quitting Facebook; I think the bigger lesson is what happens when a simple system overlies something quite more complex and unfathomable. I am not naive to the information I give Google, because Google gives me back useful things, tools, information, yet Facebook feels somehow more sinister, more untrustworthy, more a murky fog covered minefield.

This mirrored remarks by Siva Vaidhyanathan last week at UMWFA10 where he stated that Google was vacuuming up all your data, but that Facebook was simply evil (and Google’s biggest competitor – because when you are on Facebook, Google cannot mine your data).

Pretty damning stuff.

Yet two other posts have me thinking about Facebook in a more positive light.  First, danah followed up her rant post with one on “Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated.” She referenced Nancy Baym’s post last Thursday: “Why, despite myself, I am not leaving Facebook. Yet.” Nancy said:

I don’t like supporting Facebook at all. But I do. And here is why: they provide a platform through which I gain real value. I actually like the people I went to school with. I know that even if I write down all their email addresses, we are not going to stay in touch and recapture the recreated community we’ve built on Facebook. I like my colleagues who work elsewhere, and I know that we have mailing lists and Twitter, but I also know that without Facebook I won’t be in touch with their daily lives as I’ve been these last few years. I like the people I’ve met briefly or hope I’ll meet soon, and I know that Facebook remains our best way to keep in touch without the effort we would probably not take of engaging in sustained one-to-one communication.

The other was an announcement from Eduardo Peirano that College 2.0 was moving from it’s Ning platform to a Facebook group.  I have enjoyed membership in College 2.0 for the past three years and immediately joined the Facebook group.  With nearly 700 members, this move just made sense now that Ning is moving to a pay for use system.

I agree with Nancy.  I get real value out of Facebook.  It is where I tend to find pictures of my grandkids, stories of what is happening in the lives of my nieces, nephews and brothers’ families, and connections with my colleagues in Georgia and here in Virginia.  There are a ton of potential social networking sites that could provide these functions, but Facebook is the one ring that binds them all.

I have also tended to see Facebook as different from other social media sites that I use.  My use of Twitter, Slideshare, Flickr, and Ning have all been while wearing my professional hat.  My use of Facebook is as friend and grandfather.  I would not want to lose those connections…and I suspect Facebook is counting on this.  The Youtube video I embedded earlier this week speaks to the size and volume of traffic that is the Facebook “utility” – as danah called it.

So put me down in the column of working my privacy settings but remaining with Facebook…at least as long as this country continues to provide utilities.  Watching the debacle in the Gulf reminds me that this is not guaranteed either!

As always, I would be interested in your thoughts.  What do you intend to do with your Facebook account?

{Graphic mashed up from images by benmarvin and themookie99}

Apparently not me.  When I started blogging two years ago, I was averaging three posts a week.  Now I am down to one a month for the past few months.

Luckily, there are those who do blog, as my Google Reader affirms daily!  I still enjoy reading blogs, but I have fallen out of the habit of routinely commenting and blogging myself.

A few weeks back, I finished reading a fascinating book by Scott Rosenberg called Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.  Having spent the past decade growing up with the internet, I found this book timely and full of interesting background around a subject that I thought I already knew!  It also is inspiring me to give my blog new energy!

In the opening eight chapters, Scott details how blogging began and grew by focusing on a person or two per chapter that highlighted his conceptual points.  He starts with Justin Hall, a nineteen-year-old in 1994 who began sharing everything about himself on his website, but more importantly, added links to other sites as part of his sharing.  Dave Winer began posting his own soapbox and invited others to do the same.  The early bloggers had to know HTML, but they helped each other figure out that it was not that hard to do.  Jorge Barger coined the term “weblog” (though he wanted it to be called Web Log because he thought “blog” was a hideous term!).  These early bloggers saw their role as a service – filtering the mass of information for their readers.

The chapter on Evan Williams, Meg Hourihan, and the development of Blogger was particularly interesting.  I found it fascinating that the same person who made blogging easy by developing Blogger also created Twitter, which in some ways is the reason I blog less.  If I were to name my personal learning aids, Twitter would be first and blogs/RSS reader second.

Sometime in the past week, I sent my 5,000th tweet – and that fact did not even register!  In the past two years, I have posted 157 times to this blog, so that would suggest that my choice for social dialogue is Twitter.  Yet, Twitter – while great for connecting and communicating – remains less a reflective medium than a reactive one.  And I still benefit from reflection.

Thus this blog continues to serve a useful purpose for me.

As tools such as Blogger made it easier to blog, the number of blogs continued to rise.  Some rose for political purposes, such as Josh Marshall‘s Talking Points Memo.  Others tried to make money off blogging, such as Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame.  I have been a Boing Boing fan for several years, yet did not realize the rich history behind this website until Scott laid out its story.

Scott also detailed some of the darker sides of blogging, detailing the story of Heather Armstrong and how her blogging led to her being fired from a job.

The final three chapters review the rise of citizen journalism and its impact on mainstream journalism, as well as the evolution of blogging itself as more and more blogs develop (including of course my own blog).  As Scott noted, in the late 1990′s, the word “blog” did not even exist, and a decade later, 184 million people worldwide had started a blog.  Not all keep it up, but the impact on connections and communication remains staggering!  More importantly, just as there now seems to be “an app for that”, so too blogs cover such amazing diversities of fields that any area of interest probably already has a blog covering it.  It is simultaneously globally ubiquitous and razor sharp in its focus.

Blogging continue to evolve.  Scott noted that some of the energy that previously poured into blogs now pours into social media like Facebook or Twitter, yet people continue to look for ways to find their voice, and blogs serve that purpose well.

At our Center for Teaching Excellence, my colleague Bud Deihl has launched a new initiative around digital storytelling.  While his focus is the use of digital images to tell a story, in many ways blogging has always been about telling a story.  Scott ends by noting that bloggers are:

“…writers who sit down to type character after character, word upon word, day by day, steadily constructing, out of their fragments, little edifices of memory and public record…Individually they are stewards of their won experience; together they are curators of our collective history…”

Who blogs anymore?  I hope I continue to…and I hope others continue to not only reflect on my thoughts but offer me their wisdom in return.

We had a fruitful faculty brown bag lunch conversation today.  The topic was Building Connections and Communities through the Web.  Ten folks present locally, and since Jeff Nugent was using UStream, another crowd actively joined via the internet.

I used these slides to guide the conversation:

My framing questions revolved around (1) “What is a community?”, (2) “Does building community enhance student learning?’, and (3) “What web tools can now be used to build connections and community?”.  I used three vignettes to illustrate my thoughts on social media and connections.  First, my many connections with Gabriela Grosseck through College 2.0, delicious, Google Reader, our blogs, Slideshare, and Facebook, all of which have informed my own teaching and learning.  Second, the viral reach of Slideshare for one of my presentations from last year.  And finally, a Twitter shoutout by Will Richardson earlier this week and the resultant comments tweeted by others.  These all illustrated connections, but I asked the participants to reflect on how one gets from connections to community (and the image below evolved out of a sketch Jeff made on the back of a notepad):

One participant said that social media to her was like visiting the SPCA.  She could not go in and choose one dog.  All dogs were lovable, all dogs needed to be adopted, and she would leave crying and unfulfilled.  When I suggested that maybe she needed to just rent a dog this week and a different dog next week, she said, that would be like timesharing dogs – an unworkable solution!

The conversation that resulted was rich and nuanced.  It flowed from professional versus personal digital identities, issues of privacy, student misunderstandings on their own digital identity, and time management regarding the tools.  Jeff made an excellent point of differentiating users of social media between broadcasters and instructional.  Broadcasters have to be present in multiple applications and visibly engaged in multiple applications.  Instructional uses suggest more nuanced approaches with clear boundaries.  Bud Deihl illustrated how “conversations” could start in one application and spill over into other applications, such as his networking with his fellow graduate students through LinkedIn.

There was some concern about how we as educators advise our younger students when we are just trying to figure out the – as Michael Wesch calls it – mediascape ourselves.  Conversations like we had today are one way – and commenting via blogs is another.  I would be interested in the thoughts of my readers on how you visualize using the Read/Write web to build connections and community, both professionally for yourself and instructionally for your students.

Of course, one benefit from today’s session was that I did pick up several new “friends” in Facebook! 

ps – One unrelated and yet relevant event today.  I posted the above powerpoint in Slideshare last night so that I could embed it in our wiki and here in this blog.  Overnight, I got an email from Slideshare noting that the editorial team had selected it to be showcased on their Education page.  I also got tweeted by Gabriela saying that she had seen it there,  Another example of connections and community.

There was an interesting point raised by one of my VIF students in our online class taught by Jon Becker and myself this weekend.  Half of our online class are Visiting International Faculty studying for their Masters in Education here at VCU, and half are Virginia teachers studying in our Ed Leadership graduate program.

When I first arrived from Mexico to teach here, it was very noticeable for me to see that students here are more used to that kind of fast, graphic and entertaining way of displaying information or teaching and it took me some time to adapt to those “new students’ needs”. Here I have been in the process of becoming a digital resident.

I think that in developing countries, this change is happening but at a much slower pace because of the differences in access to the internet, just by looking at your ‘ClustrMap’ (in your Blog) and the red dots representing the access numbers from different countries, I could realize the way many countries are so far behind in terms of Web 2.0 tools usage.

I have been looking at the ClustrMap and seeing the connections spanning the continents.  He looked at the same map and saw the missing opportunities being illustrated by the sparseness of some of the dots.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy working with international faculty.  They help ground me in some fundamental truths.  Friedman, Shirky, and Weinberger have all pointed to the democratization afforded by the web.  All true, but evolving slowly and not there yet.

A week from tomorrow, I am scheduled to lead a Brown Bag lunch session on “Building Community and Connections Through the Web.”

Bud Deihl and I were brainstorming this session (and he earlier also blogged about it).  As we talked, we realized that “community” is very nuanced.  The following slide emerged from our white board doodling:

So that got me wondering.  I belong to many communities.  Some of those communities overlap and others do not.  I use different tools with different communities.  In discussing the tools and their use to build connections, I thought I would tap into my blogging community to see how you would list tools matrixed with communities?  Does one tool suffice?  Do conversations in one tool spill over into other tools?  Are certain tools optimized for certain communities?

Some obvious tools that could be discussed as part of building community and connections include:

• Twitter
• Yammer
• Blogs
• Delicious / Diigo
• LinkedIn
• Google Apps (Reader / Docs / Sites)
• Ning
• Wikis
• Netvibes
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Slideshare
• Jott

What am I overlooking?  Be interested in your thoughts.

Photo Credit: Dietmar Offenhuber, Judith Donath, MIT Sociable Media Group

It is the last day of 2008, and as with many others, it is a time for reflection.

2008 was certainly a very different year from my 57 previous ones.  Even though I had worked with computers for years and had engaged in online learning for the past dozen years, in many ways I was a creature of the Web 1.0 era.  I did not grow up with interactivity – I grew up with Basic computer language and dial-up modems.  The computer was a tool that I used primarily offline, but I did go online to go places (my online class in Blackboard, Google, Mapquest, even Wikipedia).  In my developmental years, my web interactions were mostly one-way and teacher-oriented.  I remained in control of my journey and knew where I was headed.

With my colleagues at the Center for Teaching Excellence, Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl, I had begun dabbling in Web 2.0 apps like Ning sites (Classroom 2.0 and College 2.0) and delicious in 2007, but I was still primarily a voyeur.  My colleague Jeff would prod me to try out different sites or check out different blogs, but I did so rather passively.  My “network” for the most part consisted of people I worked with and a couple of others.  At the start of the year, I was subscribing to about ten blogs and a variety of journal and news sites. It was not until January 13, 2008, that a blog post by Michele Martin grabbed me.

Over the course of a couple of days last January, Michele discussed her own growth online and illustrated this with her social media spiral shown above.  I saw myself in that spiral, and recognized that to grow, I needed to move higher up the spiral.  I had moved from isolated consumption to aggregation in 2007, but I was still of the mindset that few would be interested in anything I might have to say.  I really cannot say why, but Michele’s spiral was the tipping point for me that moved me to start my own blog.

Michele cheered me on during that first month, as did Sue Waters, a new “friend” whose advice and guidance helped be grow as a blogger.  My network began to grow as I entered the spiral of commenting and blogging.  By May 2008, I felt confident enough to join the 31-Day Blog Comment Challenge.  It was exhausting but illuminating, and it added new friends like Ken Allen to my network.  Along the way, I learned that my “personal” learning network was really a social one and not an individual one.  I was learning from the likes of Will Richardson, Michele Martin, Wes Fryer, Vicki Davis, Jeff Utecht and many, many more – and that learning was social.  These superstars were interacting and commenting on my comments and blog posts!

As I taught this fall, my frequency of blogging slowed.  Part of that is due to the time spent microblogging in Twitter with many of the same people I follow through their blogs.  Part of it was due to redesigning my online course – Instructional Uses of the Internet.  The redesign was driven in large part by my experience in the spiral.  2008 was the year I made the leap to social networking, and it was transformational.  I now view my life and my job through a different lens than I did a year ago, shaped by the global friendships I have made and continue to make.

Learning in a Flat World.  The name still fits.  This will be my 125th post this year.  There have been 310 comments, comments that helped me learn – and comments from all over the globe.  I am still humbled by the ClustrMap above.  My readership is worldwide with nearly 4,600 hits since I started tracking it last February.  More importantly, I have gotten to know some of the gifted people behind those red dots marking the globe.  I see them as mentors, colleagues, collaborators, and friends.  I see the world as a different place from the way I viewed it pre-2008.

Tom Friedman remarked that the world had gotten flat and closer due to the internet.  While I loved his book and had done several seminars on THE WORLD IS FLAT, I do not think that I really understood that until 2008.

To those who have journeyed with me this past year, my deepest thanks!  You have made me a better educator!

Just think what 2009 might bring!

Yesterday, Jeff Nugent and I had the opportunity to present at the 2008 Virginia School Board Association annual convention.  We had around 40 people attend our session entitled “Email Is For Old People.”  Two were school administrators and the rest were all school board members from around the state.

These were our presentations slides:

The final slide had embedded this video:

As one can see from the presentation, we asked a series of questions around communication:

1.  Who had sent a hand written letter recently?

Around 20% had done so in the past week – two-thirds had in the last year.

2.  Emails?

Everyone used email.

3.  Instant messages?

About 60% did not IM – we did have a couple of power users.

4.  Text messages on cellphones?

Again, about 60% did not text, a couple of heavy text users.  (…and some misunderstanding of the differences between IM and SMS)

5.  Updates to Facebook or MySpace?

Around 80% did not have social network accounts.

We then had them all stand up and slowly revealed a slide with 18 different web application logos on it.  We asked them to remain standing if they recognized and used at least 3 – and all remained standing.  We then asked about five, and half the room sat down.  As we progressed through 7, 9, and 12, we still had two people standing.  Jeff then revealed the dates at which each of these applications went live, and noted that – given the short lifespan of these applications – the notion that K-12 students are digital natives and we are immigrants is a bit of a leap.  We are all trying to figure out the uses at the same time.  What is different is that the kids are less fearful of attempting apps – and they tend to look to them for socialization and entertainment, not learning.  Jeff suggested that it is the role of skilled teachers to lead them through this web world, just as skilled teachers have always led.

I then gave a quick tour through six families of applications – emphasizing not the tool but the practices associated with the tools (communication, connections, shared knowledge creation, etc.).  Our handout wiki has more details on each:

-  Blogs

- Wikis

- Social Bookmarking

- SlideShare

- Social Networks like MySpace, Facebook and Ning

- Picture and Video Sharing websites

The attendees were interested in our message and acknowledged their lack of background in this area.  One went so far as to basically say – Tell me how I should vote when questions about the use of the internet come up in school board meetings! It was evident to me that K-12 student use of the internet remains an area of fear, and I am not sure we successfully demystified it for them.  They recognized that Jeff and I were advocates and they wanted more info on the downsides.  One member noted a case at his school where a student had emailed in a Columbine warning hoax which shut the school down.  I countered that kids had been doing that for generations – in my day it was notes in the bathrooms instead of electronic notes.  We tried to suggest that the tool (the web) was not the issue – the issue was the practice…as it has always been.

We closed our presentation with the above video A Vision of K-12 Student Today by B. J. Nesbitt, IT Coordinator for Pickens County, South Carolina.  His younger take of the Michael Wesch video certainly sent a powerful message to these school board members.

Now one wonders, will the seeds we planted yesterday have any impact?  Time will tell.

I was slated to run a session today on “Blogging in the Academy” but ended up going a different direction instead.  Our workshop description stated:

Blogs have begun to move beyond personal journaling to emerge as a possible form of academic publishing.  Blogs today provide a reflective medium for publication of teaching and research, and provide a point of connection for community building within one’s discipline.  How do blogs fit in with other academic duties?  How can blogs help scholarship and is it possible for blogs to harm scholarship? Should students blog as part of their learning journey, and can students effectively blog if faculty do not?  This workshop will explore the use of blogs in both classroom and academic disciplines.

The last time we ran this session in September, we spent the entire time discussing blogging as scholarship.  As it turned out today, in polling the participants up front, no one was interested in blogging as scholarship, but each either wanted to have students begin blogging as a way of fostering student connections and communication, or they wanted to blog themselves, or both.  I found this fascinating, because several have discussed in the past week the concept that blogging is dead.  Paul Boutin in Wired magazine wrote Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.   The CogDog barked that “Maybe Blogging is Dead After All (Or Our Conceptualization Is).” Yet it seems that when early adopters move on to something else, the majority backfill the void and pick up the practice. As Jon Becker noted in “Greatly Exaggerated,” he was not buying that blogging is dead…and the interest I saw today demonstrated to me the same idea.

So I moved rapidly past the discussion on blogging as a public intellectual, and instead focused on instructional blogging.

One example that I could rapidly showcase is the work Jeff Nugent is doing with his Mass Comm Learning with Digital Media class.  Jeff has his students blog as part of their weekly assignments, and has collected their blogs in a Netvibes site.  As Jeff noted over coffee earlier this week, he has been gratified that some of his students are now making connections with the global blogging community, and are no longer writing for a grade, but rather for a readership that they value.

What drives that value are comments.  Blogs are a great personal reflective journal, but when others begin commenting, and one returns the favor by commenting on the blogs of others, connections get made – exactly what several professors today wish to have occur in their classes.

Blogs are not mainstream…yet.  The ECAR 2008 Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology reports that about one-third of students contribute content to blogs.  I would hazard a guess that blogging by faculty is much less percentage-wise.  Yet, a small group of faculty registered for our workshop today so that they can begin.  I find solace and hope in that!

{Photo Credits: CogDog, Salendron}