http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/10/open-thinking-digital-pedagogy.

Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy » LiveScribe - Smart Pen

The Livescribe paper-based computing platform – a smartpen, paper, software applications, and development tools – will be available online beginning in Q1 2008. The smartpen will be less than $200. Additional dot paper will be available at prices comparable to standard paper products. As Alec Couros cites (where I found out about this) a smart pen combined with special (but inexpensive) paper that allows non-linear access to the sounds recorded when the notes were taken.”

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/cormiers-top-ten-ed-stories-200

Dave’s Educational Blog Dave Cormier lists his top ten tech ed stories of 2007 - number 10 is connectivism, number 1 is the action of one hacker to remove filtering software - what permeates all selections is openness and freedom and the need for effective education on the safe and efficient use of that openneness and freedom - kudos to Dave - always insightful

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/when-i-die-who-mourns-my-cyberl

NITROREV: Virtual Wake As I see Eduspaces - a social network I am part of - about to die and untimely death - I was wondering how to mourn the loss of those connections I made through this network. Then I encountered Stephen Taylor's blog entry where he muses about an actual incident of cyber friendship loss. It caused me a moment of thought. When I physically die, my cyber identityt continues on. The data remnants of my cyber activity exists - how will those I never met physically, yet socialized with electronically express condolences and grief? What happens to me cyber properties - do they revert to my heirs who have no interest in maintaining my blog entries and other data? Are they parsed out to my cyber friends? Further to this discussion I have a number of social software sites I maintain for educational institutions. Students post comments, reflections, artefacts and compile eportfolios. If a student does die, what is to be done with their entries? Do we just arbitrarily delete their account or maintain it in a condolences area? The expressions of grief, condolences and maintenance of cyber properties upon one's earthly death - these are issues we are yet to grapple with.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-netowrk-play-and-chat.ht

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/11/wisdom-of-fans.html

From Virtual to Real: online football fans buy up a team and get real

"Found this via our good friend David Cushman's blog Faster Future. There is an online football (soccer) community called My Football Club in the UK. They have collected together some very seriously fanatical football fans and joined together to buy a real football club. For just 35 UK Pounds (50 Euros, 70 US Dollars) any fan can join and become part-owner.The fans then decide how to run the team, ie which players to buy and sell, etc. Its the virtual "fantasy league" football enthusiast idea jumping from virtual to real. And sure enough, now My Football Club has collected enough money and have done negotiations with the English professional football club Ebbsfleet United FC, and are buying the club. This is in the lower tiers of the English system, in the "Conference" and ranked 9th within its peers, but a team that now might get a chance to improve as the new owners bring in new money and will start to use collective wisdom of the fans to run the team. "

Can fans be better owners, make informed decisions? Here's an example of how social software is not truly allowing everyone to be part of the game.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/hosting-communities-and-trust.h

Further to Stephen Downe's discussion on trust and communities. Eduspaces, a free elgg powered community space managed and hosted by two entrepreneurs (Ben and Dave), fostered an active environment of educators discussing the use of and demonstrating the use of educational technologies. Eduspaces is being used by faculty, individuals and institutions for a variety of purposes - learning delivery, research space and respository, personal blogging, community creation, resource sharing, touchstone for learning, community of practice.

Now, seemingly out of the blue, the site is going down in mid January and folks are being advised to port their data elsewhere. Understandably, criticism has followed the surprise of this announcemnt. It is untimely. It is abrupt. It is unexpected. But is it a callous disregard for those who have invested data and time into developing their own spaces in Eduspaces? Have Ben and Dave, as Graham Attwell suggests, broken a bond of trust - a necessary component for community building - and impacted on the future acceptance and adoption of social software environments?

But it is always risky to have your activities housed on an external host. Eduspaces was a free service, hosted and moderated (without compensation) by two individuals interested in the advancement of free, open source software for use by the educational community, we should be a little thankful.

Many schools and faculty are making use of proprietary web services - like Facebook. If it should shut down I doubt there would be much chance of retrieving data. Were Dave and Ben great communicators? That's debatable. Were they funded and supported by those who benefitied from the use of Elgg and eduspaces? Hmm? No. And Elgg isn't suffering as an environment simply because Eduspaces is shutting down. Heck, even if Elgg shuts down we will continue to use the elgg installations we have on our server, and we will continue to add functions as required. Dave and Ben have established a platform, and made it available for personal customization. They have also left a legacy by contributing to the demise of proprietary learning and content mgmt systems and adding social components to authentic, reflective learning, and the creation and development of learning communities that thrive within and without and beyond the confines of program length and institutional membership. Lifelong, lifewide learning and the integration of formal and informal learning is now a true possibility thanks to advances like Elgg.

I agree that their actions are rushed, and they didn't 'discuss" with the community. And the optics aren't good - especially since eduspaces was a demonstration site of Elgg - Elgg may suffer as a result.

But the real question, as Graham rightly points out is that there was no organization to the comunity. We talk about organic development of free and open learning space like elgg, (eg. eduspaces) yet we often don't put an organizational framework around it (not management framework). What are the roles and responsibilities of site managment, moderation and of community members?

What the actions of Dave and Ben have demonstrated is that organic growth should not mean a hands off laissez-faire approach to community development. Organic Communities need cultivation. Trust must be earned , but it cannot be assumed. We trusted that Eduspaces would always be there for us, even if we as part of that community never contributed to its management. perhaps dave and Ben never saw eduspaces as their community - it was ours. maybe we are the ones who never established trust. Inevitably, all things come to an end. Even free, open, organic spaces.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/old-world-copyright-does-not-co

Fair Use Vs. Free Speech in the Internet Age: The Lane Hartwell Problem

Item: non-profit music group Richter Scales create mash up video to present with their new song "The Bubble" - a parody on making it in the next big net bubble

Problem: after a million views on YouTube, video taken down because photographer Lane Hartwell objected to the unauthorized use of one of her photos in the video, then put up again with the offending photo replaced and a list of credits at the end for all the images used.

Real problem: the norms of the offline world and the emerging norms of the Internet are in conflict. People communicate on the web by sharing - reshaping images, audio - if you make it available expect it to be used. If you want to be part of a community - expect to share.

Solution - Payback: think of other forms than buying rights - maybe licensing - maybe trackbacks, leading to paid work

P.S. I just mashed techcrunch text - even stole straight lines. Copyright issue?

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/teens-top-online-creators.html

Just another set of facts to indicate higher education better get it's shared space, social networking act together -

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that the next generation is switched on and producing content.
59% of all (U.S.) teenagers engage in at least one form of online content creation. Of those 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys however like their video, with 19% of boys posting video online vs. 10% of girls.
39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos
33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments
28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
27% maintain their own personal webpage
26% remix content they find online into their own creations

Students will want to be active learners, dealing with authentic, relevant content, and dynamically collaborating in the development of new content. And they will want personalizable learning spaces where they have access control.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-ma-program-in-online-commun

New MA program in Online Communities at USCUSC's pioneering Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities (APOC) is the first master’s program in the world to recognize that online communities are the future of our economic, political, and social lives. They are the most successful application of “Web 2.0” concepts, and are increasingly popular as well as critical to the success of a wide array of industries. APOC students learn, gain firsthand experience, and then create an online community, attaining a master’s degree in just a single year.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/facebook-v-myspace-class-divide

Facebook v MySpace - a class divide?

The media has latched onto Danah Boyd's preliminary conjectures about a possible class divide between Facebook and MySpace users...
" Ms Boyd said typical Facebook users "tend to come from families who emphasise education and going to college. They are primarily white, but not exclusively". MySpace, meanwhile, "is still home for Latino and Hispanic teens, immigrant teens" as well as "other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm".
Ms Boyd also conjectures that the US military's recent decision to ban personnel from using sites including MySpace is evidence of social fissures in the armed forces. "A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This was a very interesting move because there's a division, even in the military. Soldiers are on MySpace; officers are on Facebook." (Now that is interesting - is this to say the military fears that less educated soldiers are more subversive than more educated officers? that officers can be controlled?).

MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has enjoyed massive success - particularly among young music fans - and recently became the most visited site on the web. But Facebook, started by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has been gaining ground. Until last year membership was limited to university students and individuals with an email address from an academic institution. This, said Ms Boyd, has given the site higher value among aspirational teens. ( network envy is a short lived experience)

There is always movement between different social networking tools, and certain groups using one tool and a different group using the other. is this a reflection og the toolset, how people use the tool, or a flash mob phenomena (me too!) And there always has been and always will be age divides, generational divides, social divides, social groupings, which change and grow, are inclusive to some, and exclusive to others. (I'm waiting for the upper crust version of Second Life - I know there will be some virtual island that just won't let me set foot in it!)

While a holistic approach to online communities and communication is something I would like to see, there will be those who want the "us and them" divide. It'll be interesting to see if legal action is taken against a social network that makes it a policy (or creates an environment designed for exclusion - can that happen?* ) to exclude certain types of people. * maybe demoinstrated by the fact that I can't buy the "best" virtual clothes for my avatar in Second Life and thereby exclude myself from communication with other, better dressed avatars?

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/plumber-90-child-care-worker-10

Plumber $90, child care worker $10. Wha?!!

Why Do We Pay Our Plumbers More Than Our Caregivers?

Surely leaky pipes aren't more important than our children? Author Riane Eisler shows how our economic system, rooted in gender inequality, is failing us.

"Professions that don't involve caring, like plumbing or engineering, are uniformly higher paid in the market than professions that do involve caring, like child care or elementary school teaching -- both highly skilled, highly important professions. We have this bizarre situation where people pay $50 to $90 to the plumber, to whom we entrust our pipes. But according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the child care worker, to whom we entrust our children, averages $10 an hour, no benefits.

And, of course, we insist the plumber be trained. How could we entrust our pipes to somebody who isn't? But we don't insist all child care workers be trained. This is not logical, it's pathological. And we have to look at why we have such a distorted system of values driving our economic system?"

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/06/pot-2.html

POT 2.0. fear,and long arms of schools

Taken from story by Marsha Rosenbaum Alternet - The long-awaited sequel to the notorious 1936 film, Reefer Madness has arrived. It's called The Purple Brain, and just like its unintentionally campy predecessor, its purpose is to frighten. And we, the millions of parents who may have, without incident, experimented with marijuana in the 1970s, are the target.

The plot is as follows: Sure, the pot you and your 40-something peers once enjoyed may have been innocuous, but that's only because it bears no resemblance to the super-potent weed of today -- strains with such foreboding names as "Train wreck," "AK-47," and "The Purple." As proclaimed by Drug Czar John Walters recently, "[W]e are no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s -- this is [in computer parlance] Pot 2.0."

To top off this frightening message, unsubstantiated claims of "brain damage" resulting from the use of this super-pot are new buzzwords in today's Prevention circles. Yes, marijuana is an intoxicant that should be avoided until and unless an individual has reached an age of mental and physical maturity, and this might be well into his or her twenties.

But exaggerated campaigns like "The Purple Brain" do little more than create skepticism about anything adults say about drugs, not to mention fueling their natural curiosity.

And let's add to this fearmongering our puritanical, political attack on student rights - Supreme Court Rules Against Student in Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case -
In the first major Supreme Court decision on student free speech in almost a generation, the Court ruled against a student who was suspended for displaying a banner with drug-related messaging just off the school campus. What does the ruling mean for students punished for online activities that take place off-campus? Andy Carvin analyzes the verdict, observing that:
"a 'school sanctioned' website might in the future be ruled to be like 'being in school' and thus subject to school rules. Can student online activities from home be deemed “school-sanctioned”? The irony is that the answer might be yes - for those schools that decide to use social networking sites in the classroom. Many schools, of course, filter out social networks, deeming them uneducational and inappropriate for classroom access. For those students attending schools where social networks are filtered, they could probably argue in an ensuing legal case that their online activities, even if drug-related, can’t be considered school sanctioned, since the school refuses to condone social network access on campus. On the other hand, if a school allows access to certain social networks and a student hypothetically posted drug-related content on his or her personal online profile, the school might argue that using the social network is indeed school-sanctioned and thus open to disciplinary action, even if the content is posted off-campus."

So schools beware of over extending your boundaries - students be aware of your rights and prepare to respond to those who would attack free speech - and educators, respect students, teach them their rights, advise them when they step out of bounds and make sure everyone learns from these experiences rather than suffers from them.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/faculty-use-of-social-networks-

Faculty Use of Social Networks

Thomson Releases Survey on Faculty and Use of Social Networks

A preliminary look at a survey found nearly 50 percent of faculty respondents familiar with social networking technologies, including blogs, MySpace, and Facebook, say such technologies "have or will change the way students learn." Curiously, however, about two-thirds of faculty respondents also said they do not feel social networking will have an effect on how they teach—or are at least uncertain if it will. The survey, conducted for Academic publisher Thomson Learning, reflects "a lack of awareness and understanding" of these emerging technologies, suggest administrators.

The Thomson Learning survey, was conducted over a five-week period and included 677 professors, most of whom have been "teaching for more than ten years at four- or two-year colleges and universities on the subjects of humanities/social sciences or business/economics." ...survey also found, however, that that there is significant room for growth in faculty members' use of technology: 59 percent do not have their own web sites; 82 percent have yet to make a podcast, and only ten percent have their own blogs. ...key findings indicate "a large opportunity for faculty introduction, education, and integration of social networking and media tools, for both professional and personal use."

A large opportunity indeed. Faculty has not yet opened their eyes to a big wake up call - social networking technologies will change the way students learn and the way teachers teach. The whole dynamic of pedagogy will change - the chart I posted after this entry shows that those aged 18-21 are the Creators - those who publish web pages, write blogs, upload videos - these are individuals used to working without boundaries, connecting with whom they please, mashing and creating anew - independently - and they will want their input recognized, appreciated and used. Active, constructivist learning apporoaches will be demanded. Students will want more freedom, more control of resources, learning strategies - and this will impact on our structured approach to educational programming - we will have to refine our idea of teaching "episodes" (course, program) we need to "fragment" learning into connected learning scenarios, within modifiable and open learning environments that persist and stay within the control of the learner after they leave our relationship. Ownership and control of learning will shift to the student. We have to change. Wakey, wakey - there's a tsunami of change approaching...

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-are-people-making-use-of-we

How are people making use of the web?

Look at the strength of the creators - ages 12-26. This is the group that academic institutions aim at - are we ready to accomodate their idea of learning, their independence and their individualized creating and connecting? And look at the size of the inactives ages 41-60+. These folks are prime for social media - having them connect online and being part of a continuous learning strategy can open more markets for academic institutions.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/artichoke-edubloggers-as-prison

Artichoke: Edubloggers as “Prisoners of the nation state.”

Some phrase just resonate - for example this one from Artichoke at edubloggers - "We have been seduced by our inability to imagine ourselves as superfluous to student learning."
We talk about the freedom and autonomy afforded by social software and web 2.0, the democratization of the learning experience - and we have been talking for years about student centered learning and constructivism - but ultimately we have been doing no more than peering outside the box we are in because "We have been seduced by our inability to imagine ourselves as superfluous to student learning."

As Stephen Downes has stated before we are still talking about learning as if it is just a retrofit of what came before "to promote a view of learning that is traditionalist, rather than oriented to the future, one that seeks to preserve the existing trappings of education, most notably, schools. But with the advent of web 2.0 we should be looking at changing the definition of learning - to get rid of our mindset and "to use technologies to leverage our ability to personalize learning, facilitate students' learning while taking part as full citizens in the wider community.

Artichoke reaches into the past to quote Ivan Illich and show us how our thinking has fossilized -

"A good education system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.” - Ivan Illich 1971

Does this description require a classroom? A school? A teacher? An instructional designer? A subject matter expert? A single web site? A learning management system? Does it require a set of controls? Prescribed subjects and established content? Ulitmately the only constant should be the learner.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/met-school-connections-and-frie

The MET School: Connections and Friendships
Ewan McKintosh introduces an example of the school walls expanding - the MET School - innovative, small-school environment, where non more than 120-150 kids are led in groups of 12-17 students by advisors. No 'teachers' in sight. You msut visit his site and view Leala's video - an ex drop out high school student who thanks to this MET is now univerity bound and working as an intern in an area of her interest (not what the shool decided was her interest) - I love the comment she makes that through this she became a learner and a teacher!

The MET school is an initiative of The Big Picture Company - a nonprofit company that believes that schools must be personalized, educating every student equally, ONE STUDENT AT A TIME. Each student’s learning plan should grow out of his or her unique needs, interests, and passions...students and families are active participants in the design and authentic assessment of each child’s learning. Schools must be small enough to encourage the development of a community of learners, and to allow for each child to be known well by at least one adult. School staff and leaders must be visionaries and life-long learners. Schools must connect students, and the school, to the community - both by sending students out to learn from mentors in the real world, and by allowing the school itself to serve as an asset to the local community and its needs. Finally, schools must allow for admission to, and success in, college to be a reality for every student, and work closely with students, families, and colleges throughout – and beyond - the application process.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/control-and-autonomy-control-an

Control and Autonomy

Control and autonomy seems to be the issue all around - both for those of us who would like to implement change and use "unsanctioned" technologies and for the student who wants to be in a position to make their own decisions -
How we can support use of social software to allow community cohesion without our presence creating the Hawthorne Effect? My use of Elgg is winning more acceptance within our Masters in Communications technology program - but I'm struggling to identify the degree of required intervention that is necessary to position students to connect and share, and having to constrain myself from being too involved in both the design and the delivery of the learning experience.While a self organizing environment is not necessarily an effective learning environment, the opposite can also be stated.
I grapple with the unknowns- can an independent, commited community of learners evolve from an instructor controlled learning experience? does learning continue without the direct intervention or even guiding hand of the instructor? can an instructor be just one of the learners at any point in the learning continuum? can we impose our technology on a users experience?
I think social software has great potential to not only allow us to advance a degree of cosntructivism but to allow the evolution of learning from an instructor led institutional experience into a learner directed journey. Too much of what we do now is built around confinement - I want to see what learning can be like when it is truly a freebase journey, where students dip into and out of formal learning experiences, meld it with their own informal and nonformal experiences, worklife and social life and maintain a record of reflections, connections and artefact development over the time of their lifelong continuous learning. But then having taught high school I know we don't create independent learners -we stifle them - and then I foolishly think they want freedom in higher education. In a society predicated on credentialism, most students just want what they need to know to get success and money. But those are just the environmental challenges we face.
As a learning designer I often speak about how I represent the interests of the learner in the face of institutional and professorial expectations. But until the advent of social software, and the unbundling of learning management systems I've never been able to actually act on my ideals. Now I can - to a degree - and it is daunting and challenging at the same time.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/noone-came-to-community-elgg.ht

Noone came to the Community

The Elgg environment that I have been making extensive use of is essentailly a buffet of technology - with personal profiling, blogs, wikis, group creation, access restrictions, folksonomy tagging, notification, eportfolio and soon openID - I'm trying to model it as a course tool that morphs into a community as required and dips into formal and informal situations like a spaceship docking at a space station, taking on connections and resources and readying for the learning flight to the next waystation but carrying its own connections and resourcese throught the connectosphere.

I have three projects going on now - as a collaborative/group work course tool for a distance course, which hopefully will evolve into a cohort community, then a community of practice as the students graduate and continue/go back/begin worklife and can then dip back into formal or informal learning; as a community of practice for career teachers working grades 9-12; and a lifelong learning community for 3rd age learners taking educational vacations.

But you know of course that if you build it, they may not come, or they may go elsewhere. My Elgg install was slow, so of coure my students flocked over to facebook - a social netwrok thay are already on and are familiar with. Of course privacy issues, content ownership and who's watching your entries (CIA, etc)didn't deter them. For the career teachers I've held workshops at their conference, even had a list of teachers supplied by the faculty of Education and had workshops and pizza ready to go - total show of 4 people over all 3 workshops. And this is just to get the people familiar enough with the toolset to join in and become a seed group.

Bent but not broken I continue on. Issues still keep plaguing me beyond actual membership (even if no one shows up I need a plan). I'm still grappling with a number of pedagogical issues - control vs. autonomy, organic growth or planned growth?, user experience vs. user autonomy, stewardship vs facilitation/moderationx, am I creating communities of practice or "communities for practice" as Christopher Sessums describes. More questions - when time allows I'll expound on these.

I am looking to incubate a web-based community of practice where educators share a common identity, shared and reflected ideas, feedback, models, and concepts that leads to a "becoming" - of enhanced individual and collective learning.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-have-my-own-tools-thanks-i-ha

I Have My Own Tools Thanks

I had an interesting dichotomy erupt during a conference presentation -attended by faculty and sessionals (grad students). When speaking about the use of social technology (OK people are social not technology but still labels are useful), anyway, a student stood up and asked "Why don't we use the tools we already use? Why not Facebook and IM or SMS chat or Ipodcasts?' To which an instructor responded (first year instructor) and said "Why should we have to use their tools - why don't they have to use ours (eg. Blackboard, Elluminate) if they attend our schools?" The discussion that ensued covered a lot of ground - from privacy to control issues, to autonomy, to freedom, to opportunity, to technology burdening to copyright issues and learning ownership.

I also had a slight mutiny in a course I TA'ed. (I spoke of this before) I established an internal installation of Elgg for the students to use as for personal reflection, project planing, collaboration and resource maintenance. Howeverthe day I demostrated and registered them to the Elgg environment our server sucked big time and it was slow and painful. By the next day all students had exited to the tools they know - Facebook, SMS and IM. Of course I blustered and countered with a posting about Facebook security and copyright issues, and of the CIA involvement - but it fell on deaf ears.

So another question to ponder. Do we build and support a series of loosely connected tools (eg. Elgg environment? Are we just creating another LMS? Should students use their own tools and networks? Why shouldn't their space be a learning space? Mind you I'm not sure the students really want their private world (Facebook) merged with their academic world.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/07/sample-apps-of-elgg-platform-pr

Knocking down the LMS Walls

Institutionalized education has erected a series of walls around what was supposed to be an exercise in flexible and open learning accesss - that is the use of web based interactive communications technology to deliver distance learning. The predominant tool used to date has been the Learning Management System which primarily just recreates the controlled, enclosed learning environment called the lecture hall. Consider the terminology -LMS is a learning management tool designed for the institution not the learner. It is a confined space where learning events occur, assessments are submitted and grades assigned.
The learning events have no "life" beyond the box of the LMS. It serves a closed audience - students interact with a few other students, and a teacher and a few TAs and a limited amount of prescribed content. There is no linking to the world wide web, no connections to the world beyond the instruction in question. There is no continuation of learning. You register for a course, you get access to the LMS, you exit the course. No artefacts leave with you, no connections made are maintained, no history of learning is preserved, no eportfolio. Informal and nonformal learning, workplace experience, internships, cooperatives are not accommodated.
We are at the juncture where the promise of continuous learning, learner directed learning can be met. But not with an LMS, nor any other closed environment designed to aid the university in confining and controlling learning.

The virtual learning environment or personal learning environment is the next phase. How that environment is configured and presented is open to question. There will be greater autonomy. less instructor control, less institutional control. There will be continuity and persistence in learning. One example of this approach is the Elgg tool (see elgg.org or eduspaces.net).

Elgg is a persistent user controlled personal learning environment that can be linked into WebCT or Moodle but can also exists by itself, beyond the course, beyond the program, beyond the institution. It's an environment with a set of tools and a a file repository designed to meet a students' needs as they move from course to course, to instituion to institution, to workplace to workplace, to community to community, etc.

I'm researching a number of applications of this tool - as a course delivery system that will morph into a community of learners; as a community of practice for in service teachers; as a community of reseachers for reserach activity; as a virtual home for 3rd age learners to share, connect and communicate. I see a lot of promise here that requires us to really reevaluate how we teach and how students learn - and this time we have to recognize that we are not in the business of confining learners, nor are we the owners of their learning experiences - it is our dutyto be stewards of the process and to free them up to explore the world with us and without us.

Sample apps of Elgg platform:

the primary educational application of Elgg platform; feel free to join and experience!

Emerge is the support project for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee

Rucku is Rugby's first dedicated Social Networking platform.

Myrichmondva - the concept behind the system is to develop a fully customizable community landscape.

emeraldinsight is a personal web space and hosting service that supports learning, networking and collaboration.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/10/trust-test-blogs-or-websites.ht

I have repetitive stress injury, and need to investigate a new mouse and keyboard that can help with my condition. I went to Google, searched on ergonomic keyboards and received a number of hits - websites, mostly corporate or trade journals with reviews (paid for? promotions?) - extremely limited and not very helpful. So, I decide to search on blogs - and my first hit is a real Hit - Amy Hengst who maintains a blog devoted to home treatment for RSI . And lo and behold she has a comprehensive, informative list (and up to date) on ergonomic keyboards.

So here is my opinion drawn from this search experience. Websites are primarily corporate, designed to deliver a message leading to a sale, and often dated. The weblog - personal ones - can be corporate and sales driven but then there are also gems like Amy's where the message is up to date and more important than the sale. She as a blogger wants to share information and experience, not generate a sale. So for this trust test I side with the weblog.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/10/social-network-aggregation-now-

Social network aggregation - Now where you are on the web isn’t as important as what you are doing.

http://friendfeed.com/

Sign up for FriendFeed, list the social networks/peer sites you belong to, and it tracks what you are doing on those networks, aggregates it all and provides you and your friends with a personalized feed of the data. That feed can be accessed on the FriendFeed site, or embedded via a widget into another website. (like Elgg)

While FriendFeed will probably become a social network itself, this is a great tool for those niche social networks - like elgg - so Facebook and the other giants don’t have to be everything to everyone!
This is great news - we have been having students arguing with us to "come to their network (facebook)" and not implement Elgg (they having to come to ours). Now they can be everywhere wherever they are - and we can create our elgg social network for continued learning - they can be here, or there and still be apprised of what is going on.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/10/adventures-in-educational-blogg

View blogging photos as they are posted - Susan Sedder at Adventures in Educational Blogging introduces Blogger Play - an application that displays the photos being posted to Blogger accounts in real time, in a slide show format. It is a little voyeuristic - you're observing personal, professional, intimate and odd photos that bloggers are posting to share. there is no orer, no categorization - just random displays of photos as they are being posted to various blogs that have been developed for a myriad of reasons. It's like being given license to enter other people's living space and observe their everyday activities.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/09/nsba-survey-touts-social-networ

NSBA survey touts social networking for students. The National School Board Association and Grunwald Associates have released a report Connecting and Creating: Research andGuidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking.

The study was comprised of three surveys: an online survey of1,277 nine- to 17-year-old students, an online survey of 1,039 parents and telephone interviews with 250 school district leaders who make decisions on Internet policy."

The report recommends that school districts may want to 'explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes' — and reconsider some of their fears. "Many schools initially banned or restricted Internet use, only to ease up when the educational value of the Internet became clear. The same is likely to be the case with social networking."

Social networking technologies have significant educational potential. However social/commercial social networking sites - eg. Friendster, MySpace should not be the focus. It is the functionalities of these sites that are important, not the commercialization - and other non-commercial tools are available - see elgg for example.

Young people must safely gain the ability to use these social networking technologies just as they must learn how to effectiveley "network" in real life - getting together with friends, physical activities and athletics, arts and music, social service.

Educators and educational insitututions must learn to do their own honest risk assessments - and refrain from demonizing all social internet activities and trying to block students from social networking technology. If we model and teach the safe, effective use of these technologies, we wouldn't resort to knee jerk censorship.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/09/noso-no-social.html

NoSo - No social.
Tired of networking? Don’t want to be linked to possible friends? Don’t want to share and contact? Want to disconnect, in silence? Now, there is a void for you on the web and off line. Artists Christina Ray and Kurt Bigenho, and web developer Gilbert Guerrero, have created NoSo (short for No Social Networking)

No So is an anti-flash mob - a non-experience. A network that is there but also is not there at the same time… “a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from your social networking environment. The NoSo experience allows you to create No connections, by scheduling No events, with No friends. When you're not podcasting, you're Skyping, texting, IM-ing, dating, trading, sharing, subscribing, downloading, updating, linking, approving, adding, checking, sending... Sometimes, you need a break. Sometimes, you need NoSo.”

When you attend a NoSo event, you are treated to a group of people sharing a cone of silence. Much like standing in an elevator with strangers - yet people have chosen to come to the NoSo event to sit together, in silence, in respect of each others desire not to socialize.

Next will be NoSho – the anti-social networking phenomenon for those who don’t want to gather together.