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Education and the social Web: Connective learning and the commercial imperative - 0 views

firstmonday.org/...2718 technology PLENK2010 multiliteracies evomlit resources tools
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 08 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers
  • not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these network
  • business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
  • Web 2.0 and online social networking have been the subject of sustained and lively interest among practitioners and promoters of educational technology
  • what is seen as the radical potential of these services
  • Social networking is so central to these new versions of education that a new “connectivist” theory of learning has come to be closely associated with them
  • a theory in which “knowing” itself is seen to be “defined by connections” making “learning primarily a network forming process”
  • described in terms of the liberation of learners from traditional constraints, as allowing them go beyond the classroom, to network “with peers worldwide,” and ultimately, to “take control of their own learning”
  • These visions are above all associated with the “personal learning environment
  • The personal learning environment is envisioned as a set of applications and services — to a large extent, logos and brands — organized around a single user, according to his or her learning and informational preferences and needs.
  • Through these services, the user is to be connected with teachers, mentors and other learners
  • some advocates of these approaches to learning have been raising concerns about the commercial nature of many of these services.
  • “You are not Facebook’s customer. You are the product that they sell to their real customers — advertisers. Forget this at your peril”
  • “This simple reality underlies almost all considerations having to do with these tools,
  • To use these tools is to reinforce, however indirectly, the ‘advertised life,’
  • The question is whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • the business model of commercial social networks is based on advertising, assisted by the data collection, as well as powerful tracking and analysis capabilities.
  • powerful surveillance functions
  • theories of media ideology and hegemony developed some time ago by Raymond Williams and Todd Gitlin
  • constraints presented by commercialized forms and contents rendered educational television a failure decades ago
  • similar structural issues threaten to sharply limit the potential of much newer social media for education and learning
  • Facebook, Google and other Web 2.0 and social networking services are making enormous sums right now from the users and advertisers they attract, and they are in aggressive competition to do this more efficiently
  • The absence of references to advertising (and also to tracking and analysis) in many discussions of the personal learning environments is surprising given the proliferation of logos and brands of commercial services
  • Because advertising is the raison d’être of services like Google and Facebook, it also provides the basis for the design, organization and maintenance of all of these other services and functions.
  • This way of understanding advertising and Web 2.0 draws on critiques of television (and the role of advertising in it) that were articulated decades ago.
  • the goal of these media organizations, he says, is to sell a product, and the product that “the networks sell is the attention of audiences; their primary market is the advertisers themselves”
  • One thing that is different today is that there is no one monolithic audience that forms a generic product to sell to advertisers.
  • An obvious objection to be raised at this point is that Facebook or Google, unlike television, do not have significant control over the content that is used to assemble audiences for advertisers
  • users have a clear choice regarding the kinds of content that they wish to view and disseminate
  • complex and subtle but very effective ways in which advertisers’ interests shape online social contexts.
  • Raymond Williams’ 1974 critique, Television: Technology and cultural form.
  • Williams’ text requires only minor revision to speak to the situation of commercial Web services today:
  • whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • Williams is making the point that the relationship between content and advertising is subtle and insidious, and that it is slightly different in the case of content “made for TV” than for its non–commercial counterpart.
  • “a dominant cultural form;”
  • what is important for the similarly non–commercial content of the social Web is informational design, architecture, and algorithm.
  • operation in otherwise non–commercial programming is registered in terms of sequence, rhythm and flow
  • Users of Facebook are sure to have been struck by the numerous and varied ways in which it cultivates gregarity and interaction, the way in which it relentlessly structures and supports sociality and connection
  • It is common to observe that the term “friend” itself is emptied of meaning by this incessant use and quantification;
  • Facebook exemplifies a way of generating and circulating information that encourages the expansion of interconnections between users
  • The controversy arises from the possible addition of a corresponding “Dislike” button.
  • lowers the psychological barrier to connecting with commercial entities
  • Gregarious behaviour is rewarded on Facebook
  • approval of a resource will draw ever more attention to it.
  • To provide the option of expressing dislike for a brand like Coca–Cola or to disapprove of a newspaper report or an article like this one is contrary to Facebook’s business interests
  • The dynamics here are rather reminiscent of what television of a bygone era had to offer: In both cases, you can either watch (i.e., “Like”) the products and lifestyles being showcased, or simply walk away.
  • “Like buttons” similar to many other connective features of social networks, “are about connection; Dislike buttons are about division.”
  • Similarly, other services will also systematically exclude possibilities for the expression of dissent and difference.
  • Despite the current prominence of social–psychological and connectivist theories, it is easy to make the case that learning is just as much about division as it is about connection.
  • In fact, the consistent pattern of suppressing division, negativity and interpersonal dissent that is central to the business model of social networking services runs counter to some of the most common models and recommendations for online student interaction and engagement.
  • Opportunities for social selectivity, discretion, privacy and detachment are an important precondition for the acts of disclosure and mutual critique, falsification and validation central to these models
  • selectivity and discretion — the “safe spaces” hoped for by Lamb and Groom — are rendered structurally impossible in convivial, commercially–contoured environments
  • Knowledge is not exclusively embodied in ever growing networks of connection and affiliation, and it does not just occur through building and traversing these proliferating nodes and links
  • Education is clearly a social process, but it is probably much closer to an ongoing discussion or debate than an extended feast or celebration with an ever-expanding network of friends.
  • advertising, tracking and analysis functions of commercial social media present, as Raymond Williams says, “a formula of communication, an intrinsic setting of priorities”
  • It only remains to be seen whether this dynamic renders commercial social networking services as fully unsupportive of educational ends as commercial television has long been.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 08 Dec 10
     
    In recent years, new socially‏oriented Web technologies have been portrayed as placing the learner at the centre of networks of knowledge and expertise, potentially leading to new forms of learning and education. In this paper, I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users ("eyeballs") with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks. Looking first at Facebook, Twitter, Digg and similar services, I argue their business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use. I also argue more generally that the predominant "culture" and corresponding types of content on services like those provided Google similarly privileges advertising interests at the expense of users. Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
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All too much | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/15557421 learning analytics #lak11 analytics learning education database data chaos management chaos
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 16 Jan 11 - Cached
  • QUANTIFYING the amount of information that exists in the world is hard. What is clear is that there is an awful lot of it, and it is growing at a terrific rate (a compound annual 60%) that is speeding up all the time.
  • data from sensors, computers, research labs, cameras, phones and the like surpassed the capacity of storage technologies in 2007. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, generate 40 terabytes every second—orders of magnitude more than can be stored or analysed.
  • scientists collect what they can and let the rest dissipate into the ether.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • What about the information that is actually consumed?
  • households were bombarded with 3.6 zettabytes of information (or 34 gigabytes per person per day)
  • In terms of bytes, written words are insignificant
  • half of all bytes are received interactively
  • “information created by machines and used by other machines will probably grow faster than anything else,”
  • ‘database to database’ information
  • “It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information,” quipped Oscar Wilde in 1894.
  • Only 5% of the information that is created is “structured”, meaning it comes in a standard format of words or numbers that can be read by computers.
  • changing as content on the web is increasingly “tagged”, and facial-recognition and voice-recognition software can identify people and words in digital files.
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Reflections on the Knowledge Society » Gravity rules the MOOC LAK11 - 0 views

145.20.173.188/...wordpress #evomlit self-paced learning learning #CCK11 #LAK11 mooc social-networking tools education online conference technology multiliteracies web2.0 #evomlit11
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 19 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Discussions spread in ever-which way. Participants migrate between discussions and platforms (or shall we say “bounce”?).
  • ‘open space’ conference
  • A MOOC follows the same principles but is entirely virtual.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • impossible to follow every discussion
  • gravitational fields that people follow, and where they group together
  • Centres of gravity are: platforms (Facebook, Netvibes, Moodle, Twitter, Diigo, and many more), topics, and people (certain people attract a greater following simply by being there).
  • fluidity of people between nodes
  • fixed points of stimulating weekly keynote presentations
  • strategy to manage my approach of accessing the knowledge spread across the course.
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Half an Hour: What Connectivism Is - 0 views

halfanhour.blogspot.com/...what-connectivism-is.html connectivism #evomlit multiliteracies mooc social-networking #CCK11 #evomlit11 web2.0 technology education
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 11 - Cached
  • in connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge.
  • a pedagogy that (a) seeks to describe 'successful' networks (as identified by their properties, which I have characterized as diversity, autonomy, openness, and connectivity) and (b) seeks to describe the practices that lead to such networks,
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What is the unique idea in Connectivism? « Connectivism - 0 views

www.connectivism.ca/?p=116 connectivism Siemens #evomlit #evomlit11 #CCK11 multiliteracies mooc web2.0 education technology
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 11 - Cached
  • what is the unique idea in connectivism?
  • a new idea is often an old idea in today’s context.
  • what is the new idea in constructivism? That people construct their own knowledge? Or the social, situated nature of learning? Or that knowledge is not something that exists outside of a knower? (i.e. there is no “there” out there)
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • What is new with constructivism today is that these principles are being (have been) coupled with existing calls for educational reform
  • calls for increased learner control
  • From whence does connectivism originate?
  • 1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act.
  • “carriers of patterns of previous reasoning”
  • all technology carries an ideology.
  • 2. Contextual/situated nature of learning.
  • 3. Social learning theory
  • 4. Epistemological views: all learning theory is rooted in epistemology
  • concept of rhizomatic knowledge and community as curriculum
  • Stephen Downes’ work on connective knowledge valuable.
  • Dave Cormier has been advancing the
  • 5. Concept of mind.
  • 6. We also find a compatible view of connectivism in the work of new media theorists such as McLuhan
  • 7. We also find support for connectivism in the more nebulous theories of complextiy and systems-based thinking
  • 8. Network theory
  • The Unique Ideas in Connectivism
  • Concepts like small worlds, power laws, hubs, structural holes, and weak/strong ties
  • Networks are prominent in all aspects of society, not just education. This prominence is partly due to the recognizable metaphor of the internet…but networks have always existed. As Barabasi states, networks are everywhere. We just need an eye for them.
  • 1. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.
  • 2. Connectivism addresses the principles of learning at numerous levels – biological/neural, conceptual, and social/external
  • 3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge.
  • 1) cognitive grunt work in creating and displaying patterns
  • 2) extending and enhancing our cognitive ability
  • 3) holding information in ready access form
  • 4. Context. While other theories pay partial attention to context, connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context
  • 5. Understanding. Coherence. Sensemaking. Meaning.
  • These elements are prominent in constructivism, to a lessor extent cognitivism, and not at all in behaviourism.
  • But in connectivism, we argue that the rapid flow and abundance of information raises these elements to critical importance.
  • Connectivism finds its roots in the climate of abundance, rapid change, diverse information sources and perspectives, and the critical need to find a way to filter and make sense of the chaos.
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10 Websites For Free Audio Books - 0 views

www.makeuseof.com/...ites-free-audio-book-downloads reading listening tools resources mobile teachers adult_learners VSL
shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 17 Oct 10 - Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 17 Oct 10
     
    Audio and some video titl at these sites are free. I think you might be able to use a desktop recorder like Audacity to record a book to a set of files to take with you, or put on an iPhone. (Avoid the ads at the top of this page--the article is below.)
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MOOC newbie Voice - Week 2 Big Data… must be important… it's big! » Dave's Ed... - 0 views

davecormier.com/...data-must-be-important-its-big mooc lak11 week2 #evomlit11 #evomlit
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 20 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • we are increasingly at the mercy of the data that is out there
  • Week 1 skimming
  • The Telegraph article on the 10 ways data is changing how we live
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Notes on some of the other resources
  • This one... a gonzo style interview with a dude who’s been in the industry
  • “more is different” it’s a classic. it says that… uh… more is different. Is short and approachable.
  • http://www.dataists.com/2010/09/the-data-science-venn-diagram/ A beginners guide to figuring out what the charts might mean
  • This week’s presentation – Ryan S.J.d Baker
  • a sense of what they actually do with the testing
  • This week’s activity SNAPP is uh… kind of a snap.
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Learning with 'e's: Physiology of a PLE - 0 views

steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/...physiology-of-ple.html #PLENK2010 evomlit multiliteracies pln ple socialnetworking tools education technology eportfolios
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 28 Sep 10 - Cached
  • functionality of PLEs - the physiology if you will - what is it that learners need from their PLEs?
  • the three main functionalities
  • functionality is exclusive to the personal web tools (PWTs)
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • creation, organisation and sharing of content to a wider range of practices including analogue content, such as newspapers and magazines, realia (visits, real experiences, encounters, conversations) and other non-digital materials.
  • A fourth component, communication - which includes sharing, discussion and dialogue in both synchronous and asynchronous modes, can be represented as an overarching circle within the Venn diagram.
  • key functions of the PLE (Personal Web Tools component) can be managed through a number of tools, and learners each have their individual preferences, all of which ensures that each PLE will be unique to that individual learner.
  • many are interchangable for different tasks and purposes.
  • Note that the e-portfolio sits across all functionalities, and is the most likely tool to be provided by the institution
  • Vanessa Vaile on 28 Sep 10
     
    or what it does for users / learners (who probably won't be a uniform bunch) ... no doubt I expect different things from mine than the average TESOL workshopper or even generic educator. 
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Reflections on Open Courses: Curation, Ombuds, and Concierges | Learning and Knowledge ... - 0 views

www.learninganalytics.net/?p=89 #evomlit #evomlit11 analytics siemens learning mooc #LAK11
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 13 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Part of the focus in LAK11 is to explore how we can better use data to make sense of complex topics such as:
  • How students interact
  • patterns of activity
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • How knowledge is “grown” as individuals interact with others
  • How individual learners develop their conceptual understanding of a topic
  • How teams solve complex problems
  • tools and activities that are most effective
  • How individual learners “eliminate” unneeded or irrelevant ideas and concepts
  • explore various methods for analyzing data
  • tools that aid that analysis.
  • limitations of an algorithmically-defined world of education
  • Google’s search algorithm has been ruined
  • Reflections on Open Courses: Curation, Ombuds, and Concierges
  • focus in LAK11 is to explore how we can better use data
  • methods for analyzing data produced by learners and numerous tools that aid that analysis
  • Google’s search algorithm has been ruined argues
  • What’s the solution? Well, a return to curation, of course.
  • What does this have to do with LAK11?
  • over the last five years, social networks and social media have taken over the web
  • Google is driven by the mission to organize the world’s information. Facebook is driven by the mission to “help you connect and share with the people in your life”. The two companies are on a collision course: is the future informationally or socially based? Eventually, social bleeds into informational. And vice versa.
  • We trust people we like, people with whom we feel a connection
  • All social interactions are information. Many information interactions are social.
  • urators – they present their views and spin existing stories within the framework of their beliefs
  • “temporary centres”.
  • problem of how to create temporary centres
  • ome commentary or facilitator posts
  • LAK11, we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve retained similar course design elements to previous open online courses (OOCs – I’m starting to think that M=Massive part of MOOCs is misleading or even off-putting
  • What we gain in our decision to run this course on various sites, using more or less accessible tools, is the demonstration that anyone with an interesting topic/idea and a willingness to experiment can open up a course for a broader audience.
  • What we lose – and I’m still uneasy about this trade off – is the integrated archive of activity in the course.
  • Complexity cannot be understood solely through algorithms
  • Curation is an important component in the process
  • data mining, visualization
  • wayfinding and sensemaking in social systems
  • human aspect of data, sensemaking, curation, and trust
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Teaching & Technology - 0 views

www.suite101.com/teachingtechnology adult_learners teachers pedagogy tools VSL
shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 08 Nov 10 - Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 08 Nov 10
     
    A whole bunch of educational links that speak to reasons why students should use blogs, tips for using iPods in the classroom, PowerPoint for collaborations, etc. Many sites worth exploring.
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Free email newsletter service | TinyLetter - 0 views

tinyletter.com web2.0 tools adult_learners teachers writing VSL
shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 15 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Write an email newsletter. Start your own newsletter instantly with TinyLetter. Then tell people to subscribe to it. Then write whatever you want, whenever you want, and we'll send it to them. Also, it's free.
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 15 Dec 10
     
    This looks like a fun way to keep in touch with sstudents, or have them subscribe to each other's work. You write a newsletter, then select "friends" to mail to, or send them a subscription link.
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Created by Russell Stannard for Teacher Training videos.com - 0 views

www.teachertrainingvideos.com/...index.html brainstorming mind-mapping adult_learners young_learners tools VSL
shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 29 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 29 Dec 10
     
    Describes LinoIt and how to use it--a nice brainstorming and student collaboration tool, but it's great to see examples and how it can be used with students. Free.
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#PLENK2010 PLEs and learner autonomy « Jenny Connected - 0 views

jennymackness.wordpress.com/...2010-ples-and-learner-autonomy evomlit multiliteracies #PLENK2010 technology learning networks ple pln learning self organized learning self paced study
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 23 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • PLE is a counter concept arising from discontent with centralised course management.
  • they have always been around, it’s just that the wide range of open source tools available at the moment, means that learners now have greater opportunity to learn independently and autonomously than ever before.
  • Sebastian was concerned that we focus only on the personal learner model for adults – which he suggested was one where adults are self-functioning, self-co-ordinating, self-controlling (self monitoring), self-developing and self-projecting.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • personal learner model for adults can apply just as well to young children, who can be taught to be self-functioning, self-co-ordinating, self-controlling (self monitoring), self-developing and self-projecting and in small ways can achieve all of these.
  • High Scope approach
  • In this approach children planned their own daily curriculum. Their choices were of course monitored. If they were choosing to play in the sand every day without doing any other types of activities, then they would be gently steered to make more balanced choices, but they were beginning to work as autonomous learners.
  • Which brings us to the question of what we mean by autonomy.  
  • further work is needed to define what we mean by learner autonomy in relation to PLEs.
  • Vanessa Vaile on 23 Nov 10
     
    PLE is a counter concept arising from discontent with centralised course management
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Created by Russell Stannard for Teacher Training videos.com - 0 views

www.teachertrainingvideos.com/...index.html adult_learners project-based tutorials teacher-training teachers content-based tools VSL blingual
shared by TESOL CALL-IS on 29 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • TESOL CALL-IS on 29 Dec 10
     
    TimeToast is a way to create historical timelines. Could be used for project- or content-based learning, or for personal autobiographies. Also has several good content examples, such as Moon Landings, The Great Gatsby, and Western Civilization. You place points on the timeline and then add text and pictures to go along with the dates.
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News: Harnessing Social Media - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...sloan3 evomlit multiliteracies socialnetworking insidehighered #PLENK2010 technology twitter Facebook socialbookmarking social media web2.0 information management information overload
shared by Vanessa Vaile on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • There was always more potentially relevant information out in the world than people could ever hope to know. But Twitter, Facebook, social bookmarking sites, and countless other content streams and conversation threads — constantly available in the era of wireless networks and mobile computing — have thrust many in academe into an endless, unwinnable race to keep up.
  • At a session on Friday here at the Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning, called “Managing the Flow of Information,” a roomful of higher ed technologists commiserated about the information assault and discussed how to figure out what information to ignore without abnegating their obligation to stay current.
  • While some instructors might take the sight of students typing on keyboards and smartphones as a sign of chronic inattention, the authors of this study take it as the opposite.
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