Finally, Dimdim’s ability to integrate with Moodle, using a plug-in is an important plus point, enabling live sessions to be conducted within a Moodle course.

See the demo below:

Download

Wikis

Wiki discussions unsurprisingly centred upon Wikipedia exclusively, except for in one Web 2.0 innovating school where researchers addressed a teacher’s use of wikis for learning. Learners found the exercise appealing, but it was not clear whether they appreciated the task as a whole, or the Web 2.0 aspects of it, or indeed whether they recognised the task as out of the ordinary; learners expressed that they appreciated learning new PowerPoint skills and the data-manipulation skills within the task, rather than commenting upon the collaborative, participatory or other wiki-characteristic features of the activity.

Podcasts

Despite the widespread access to MP3 players reported earlier, only five learners at two schools indicated that they listened to podcasts. The high use of video-sharing and music-sharing websites indicates this should not be taken to mean that they would not, in principle, appreciate the medium. The limited data suggests that learners’ unawareness of podcasts, especially those made by non-traditional producers, may contribute significantly to their failure to engage with this tool.

Online multi-player games

… many learners played these games against friends, particularly when such games were played across games consoles, and there appeared to be a divide between learners who would only speak to people they knew – sometimes having a strong representation of their friends on these games – and learners who would engage with strangers.

Blogs

Blogging was not a particularly popular activity across the sample, but where it occurred, it often did so within the arena of the social networking site. Bebo is one site that enables its users to post blogs.

Instant messaging

The primary use of these sites was to maintain existing friendships. One of the main advantages of using instant messaging services rather than the telephone was the absence of cost to the user. The ability to talk to more than one individual – sometimes in chat rooms but more often through multiple, simultaneous conversations – was also motivating …

Email

Although this is not strictly a Web 2.0 technology, the project decided to investigate email use, in order to gain fuller understanding of young people’s internet use, examine issues that may arise from using asynchronous communication, and compare this activity with use of Web 2.0 tools …

A small number of schools in the sample had set up email accounts for their learners. In these, an interesting divide between low and high Web 2.0 users manifested, as low Web 2.0 users were more willing to use their school’s email accounts. Low Web 2.0 users at one school noted that the appeal of using the school’s email system lay in knowing that you can only talk to people at school … High Web 2.0 users at one school believed their email system to be poor for communication because “hardly anyone goes on there” … Learners at that school were also wary of using email because “they watch what you say”.

Social networking

As expected from the survey results, focus group data suggested that the most popular social networking site for the learners in these focus groups was Bebo in all schools, then MySpace, Facebook and Piczo depending on school … The most common product being uploaded and published onto social networking sites by learners is photographs: learners report sharing photographs using these sites, and participants reported that uploading and sharing photographs was common practice amongst their friends … Posting one’s own videos onto social networking sites was found to be a very rare activity … Posting music was found to occur with slightly greater frequency. It was not apparent that the music posted was created by the learner.

… the primary motivation for engaging with social networking sites is interacting with one’s existing social network. Learners found these sites useful for keeping in touch with friends, even when these were friends from school.

and the conclusion …

Despite learners’ avid consumption of products using Web 2.0 tools (YouTube, for example), relatively few learners are producers and publishing self-created content for wider consumption. … Results suggest that in order to be motivated to publish content, learners must perceive that publication carries utility for the self or important others. For some learners, utility is satisfied through the creation of a personalised space – this appealed to most learners who had experience of publishing, and particularly to low Web 2.0 users.

What might this tell us about Web 2.0, learners and learning? Certainly, the rhetoric over use of such tools might not reflect the reality of what is happening out of, let alone in school. However, as the report points out, it perhaps highlights the need to consider how these new technologies might be effectively used for learning, and, “that there is a role for teachers in supporting effective learning using Web 2.0“. Perhaps more worrying finding is the lack of imaginative direction that teacher were giving in use of the internet per se in the focus schools:

21 per cent of learners stated that they did not use the Internet for work. The range of sites used by learners for learning is limited: Wikipedia, BBC sites and Google account for over 60 per cent of all the sites suggested by learners as those they use for work …

Interest from pupils in the potential of using a range of technologies to support their work in school focused mainly on familiar activities (such as formal presentation) or communication. Learners seem cautious about other values associated with the Web 2.0 initiative, such as the shared construction of knowledge in a public format. The tension between the collaborative nature of much Web 2.0 activity and the individual nature of most school assignments should be noted as a contextual factor here. Despite the fact that Web 2.0 technologies offer great opportunities to work collaboratively, few learners reported engaging in collaborative learning using Web 2.0 technologies other than to support “chat” about work. … Apart from the use of the BBC Bitesize website, Wikipedia and search engines like Google, use of specific sites is restricted to individual schools, suggesting that certain sites are either being promoted by teachers or peers.

Image credit: Tobias Eigen

Tags: web2.0, learning, research

Remember hand-written thank you notes?

Then they became xeroxed form letters.

And then mail-merged form letters.

And then Amazon order confirmations by email.

We tend to use new tools to do less. We try to save time and money at the same time, and end up depersonalizing and commodifying what we do.

and asks the simple question, “Why not use the technology to give more?”

Teaching and learning using technology has been something like that. We got pupils to word-process because it takes the hard graft out of writing; we used a calculator to reduce the transaction cost of arithmetic, or an interactive whiteboard to re-use content for another class. In looking for ways in which technology can make our lives easier we’ve commodified what we do and require children to do the same. True, there are significant gains in simply replacing the tools we use to teach and learn with newer ones. Reducing that transaction cost means that there is more time for thinking, analysis and reflection, but what often happens is that time is filled with further content to be consumed and digested. We rarely take new tools and use them to explore teaching and learning in new ways, and by doing so transform education.

Image credit: Ard Hesselink

Tags: tools, learning, tranformation

Will Richardson, interviewed him this evening (or more precisely afternoon his time) on his U-Stream channel, and amid the rather choppy sound, he draws of some of the education examples which he uses in the book. His original thought was to edit a compilation, but decided to write the book himself drawing on the interviews with many educationalists throughout the world.

You can catch the interview below:

Tags: WillRichardson, Curtis Bonk, The World is Open, The World is Flat

Ewan’s question was whether an organisation like Naace, “which prides itself on being influential, having that cachet as a group of innovators … stand up in an age where anyone with ideas that society can grasp can take on an influence of their own?” This is very akin to what Shirky is talking about in his book. He starts chapter two, by stating,

“Groups of people are complex, in ways that make those groups hard to form and hard to sustain; much of the shape of traditional institutions is a response to those difficulties. New social-tools relieve some of these burdens, allowing for new kinds of group-forming, like using simple sharing to anchor the creation of new groups.”

While Naace might pride itself in being influential, this is not actually its purpose for existing. Dennis in a comment on Ben Martin’s post makes a useful observation,

” … many professional associations have is a strong connection with a profession and all the profession’s associated educational, regulatory, historical, and certification-related history, standards, and practices. All these can weigh heavily on an association’s agility and freedom to innovate. That’s why self forming groups might be seen as threats; they aren’t hampered by all the “overhead,” they can be formed at the drop of a hat, and they can just focus on getting people together to collaborate or share without worrying about commitments or history.

The challenge is for the professional association to figure out how to balance its complex history and commitments with the agility available to self forming groups. Some associations are able to do that, others are still trying to figure it out.”

Naace’s approach is to give the ability of members to form their own ’self -forming groups’, through Naace Communities. While online groups outside Naace might readily form, I’m inclined to agree with Ben on his point that,

“Without someone or something to hold them together, groups disintegrate. When it comes to so-called self-forming groups, there is always someone (or many people) who devote time and attention to creating and sustaining them. It sure is convenient to refer to online communities or herds of like minded people who network through the web as self-forming groups, but it isn’t accurate.”

Clay alludes to this in chapter 11, when he talks about what makes groups more successful than others,

“This kind of organization, where small groups form within the framework of a bigger, more diffuse group, is the norm for large collections of people, … and many large sites are actually designed to help this happen. MySpace, considered as a whole, looks like a tool for a large and long-lived group, but most users don’t consider it as a whole. Instead, starting from a “me first, my friends, then their friends” view of the world, most users see MySpace as a tool for much smaller groups, and this kind of density among groups of friends can make the site a place for much quicker and more tightly organized interactions.”

Image credit: Sharyn Morrow

Tags: ClayShirky, Ewan McIntosh, self forming groups, Ben Martin, Naace, association

The video is in two parts.

Part One:

Part Two:

Will asks him some pertinent questions particularly about how the institution of “school” might survive or not in this new world. Of interest was his view that the digital divide is not about whether you have an internet connection, but whether you feel empowered to participate. It’s true that getting a web connection is not enough, we need to be saying that it’s OK to participate. The problem of course is that the culture we’re establishing is not exactly this, as we all have concerns about e-safety, and that can be a barrier to encouraging contribution.

There’s an interesting question towards the end, ‘what if there was no public education?’ Clay’s answer - if it didn’t exist it would be self-organised, and it would be found on the internet.

It’s certainly worth listening to and coming to your opinion on some of these issues.

Catch Clay’s Book blog at: http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/

Tags: Will Richardson, Clay Shirky, interview, education

Vivaty “Scenes” provides realistic rooms that provide virtual personal environments, a sort of 3D version of your page in Facebook in which you can chat with avatars of friends who enter the room. You can also bring photos from Flickr and Facebook into the environment, or videos from YouTube and display them on the walls of your room. Since it is browser based, each scene is a URL, and objects within a scene can link to other URL. Vivaty only works with Internet Explorer on Windows at the moment, but Firefox support for PCs is coming and Mac support further down the line.

Vivaty is a poor substitute for SL, but no doubt it will get better and shows that the web may become 3D over time.

View the video below:

Another difference between Vivaty and Second Life is that it does not rely on being hosted on the company’s servers. Its architecture is distributed and the scenes are created using Javascript and php enabling it to be hosted on any web server. This coupled with its own Facebook application means it can be integrated into an individual’s social networking page. The first example shows how product placement can be easily achieved.

Vivaty is not the only player in this market though, enter Google with Lively. Lively is again room based, and Worlds can be embedded into web pages. Again only Windows users on IE or Firefox can view them, after an add-on download and installation. At the moment, there are a number of sample rooms that can be copied and altered, or users can start from scratch and build their own world. Furniture and other items can be added and moved around. Avatars can talk to each other, do things like dance and shake hands, and manipulate objects.

Here’s Lively’s video:

All this shows that this way of browsing will be no less fraught that at present. It potentially provides clearer opportunities for educators that perhaps Second Life, but also illustrates the need to teach, and students to gain, information capability.

Enter any text and it’ll create a ‘cloud’ of your words with more prominence given to those that occur more frequently. It gives a useful view of the ‘big picture’ of a piece of writing. I can’t wait to start using this with students.

Here’s Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach, set to Wordle:

Update: Ian has put the Harnessing Technology: Next Generation report into Wordle - it makes interesting “reading“.

1. Over-reliance on government regulation and subsidy by users and providers

At the dawn of educational computing back in the early 1980s, computer systems were proprietary, and the UK led the way in education systems - two companies dominated through government regulation (schools could only buy UK hardware from an approved list), and this led to the birth of a UK education software industry and the production of software through government grant. This niché lasted until the demise of Acorn in the late 1990s, and the lost of a specific hardware platform whose market was geared to education. It was at this point that a number of educational software companies failed to make the transition, others consolidated, and some adapted. This smaller group of companies tripped into the noughties and were given the lifeline of further subsidy in Curriculum Online (COL) which come to an end this August. COL was all about providing ‘curriculum content’ rather than tools, although some strange interpretations of this rule crept in due to user pressure. With a National Curriculum, it became obvious that competition was defined by ‘content’, particularly content that was statutory. Content was indeed ‘king’. Many older software houses used COL to sell their back-catalogue rather than necessarily develop new material. The result was overload and stagnation. After all, only so many titles on a Science topic can be sold before schools end up with un-used titles on shelves. The situation today is that schools probably have all the electronic content they need, and a lot more besides.

2. Not changing distribution method

You would think that the term, “Curriculum Online” would suggest that content was indeed online. However, this is far from the truth. Most content bought with e-learning credits is distributed on CD ROM, or perhaps DVD ROM, and either runs from that media or is installed on the local machine or school server. While the world was going Web 2.0, there were a few UK educational companies doing the same with applications. The exception being companies like J2E and rather belatedly Softease and 2Simple. One can understand why educational software houses have failed to react quickly enough to a different route to market, when the traditional route was reinforced by COL.

3. Following, not innovating

The UK educational software industry used to be a place of innovation, where innovation drove the competition. Once content began to drive competition, then innovation took a back seat. The COL market became the UK market, and there was little incentive to innovate. At the same time, innovation using Web 2.0 technologies began to flourish globally. Good educational software, as I’ve said before, “does one thing well, and excels at that purpose”, and the “long tail” products with educational merit that began to appear on the web are not produced by UK educational companies. The Web 2.0 type products that have been produced are either online versions of traditional applications, with sharing added, or are versions of concepts that already exist, such as blogging or podcasting. I don’t see the equivalent of Voicethread produced in the UK for educational purposes.

4. Allowing early adopters to go elsewhere

Today, early adopter-educators are using web 2.0 tools, usually for free, in their classrooms. The cutting edge is not with UK educational software suppliers anymore. Your early adopters are your trend setters. If they move elsewhere, so does your long term market. As Web 2.0 tools develop that provide teachers with the ability to mash-up what they need to deliver the curriculum, then even supplying content will dry up.

5. Not creating a new business model

Alongside changing the distribution method, comes the way in which your business model works. The traditional educational software market in the UK has always been cushioned from global market forces. There’s was the traditional route to market using traditional media, government subsidy, and a national content focused curriculum. Things have now changed, the internet and ubiquitous access has meant that both the route to market and the distribution media has changed, COL ends with no likelihood of further subsidy to maintain a closed system, and changes to the National Curriculum will slowly erode its content focus. The biggest thread of all comes with a Web 2.0 business model which at its base is free at the point of delivery. The last, but in my view vain, hope is the e-safety issue. Blocking of online services in the name of e-safety, and the production of ‘walled-garden’, mimics of online services, seems to create a possible market, but are built on the negative rather than positive view of Web 2.0. At best this is a temporary solution, as e-safety is not an education but a society issue, which will eventually must be solved by society not educationalists.

Image credit: Chuck Schneider

Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet… If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video… For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good …

One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of audience.

The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create for the Internet.

Gates recognised that greater availability meant you could publish at low cost, but did not necessarily see that a business model that relied on scarcity would also perish along with it. This is becoming starker and starker for educational software companies, who have seen the rise of global online, and usually free, tools and resources eat away at their reason to produce. The end of e-learning credits in August, mostly served with back-catalogue software and curriculum content will see the demise of many. Some are making valiant attempts to adapt, but in most cases they are unable to switch their business model to fit in with the globalisation of resource. Suddenly to compete you need to think “world market, long tail”, where track record is much diluted and scarcity is replaced by abundance.

In the web 2.0 world, conversation is king, content is just something to talk about, and in the classroom 2.0 world, learning is king, curriculum content is, well, “just something to talk about”, although it does tend to dominate the conversation.

Image credit: Martin Stabe