Social software and learning: An Opening Education report from Futurelab
By Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

For anyone who wants to understand the implications of what is happening on the Web now for education, this report is essential. It is clear, easy-to-read, long, and filled with information and ideas. I cannot recoomend it too highly as a foundational overview.

Here are some quotations from it, (collected by using WebSnippits, part of the Flock browser, which I am more and more impressed with.)

If learning to learn, if collaboration, and if the personalisation of educational experiences are at the core of current educational agendas, we need to find ways of enabling young people to come into contact with, collaborate with and learn from each other and other people. Social software is about bringing minds and ideas into contact with each other and is already, in the world outside schools, creating what was described by McLuhan as the global village.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

New forms of collaboration tools are also emerging, based on collaborative document building rather than individualist blogs. We are also seeing a shift in the ‘modality’ of communication away from text alone: podcasting or audio publishing via the net is a growing movement and it will be relatively a short time before there is also good support for video publication on the net. Locative and geographically mediated activity is also a likely area for growth.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

... there is a shift in the nature of knowledge and how knowledge is created and organised, and secondly there is a cultural shift growing from the use of information and communication technologies, the so-called cyberculture. These two strands mirror the twin concerns of those arguing for a shift in educational processes to align with the perceived demands of a knowledge economy: namely, the concern with developing young people able to act as innovators and creators of knowledge; and the concern with developing young people able to operate effectively within digital and information-rich environments.Identity, space, attention and creativity are all clearly central to the question of how we learn with digital technologies. These are not marginal questions to be relegated to the ‘out of school’ world, but are intimately bound up with the ways in which young people may be coming to expect to learn in a digitally rich environment.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

Digital technology allows easy peer-to-peer exchange and amateur cultural production. Consumers can easily become producers. Mass market and user-generated cultural media is appropriated and critiqued, adapted and remixed allowing users and consumers to change the meanings intended by the original producer. This critical culture of consumption and remix blurs the line between consumption and production.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

The researchers suggest that what these young people are doing is creating and projecting their emerging identities within a group of friends. Blogs, as with mobile phones and other technologies, facilitate a range of social and emotional work for young people (Ito and Okabe 2003, referenced in Carrington 2005).

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

schoolsshould not expect students to leave the 21st century in the cloakroom,for example, many schools do not allow e-mail, instant messaging,mobile phones or blogging. As a corollary there is an imperative toteach appropriate use and appropriate behaviour for ICT. This shouldinclude protection of students’ own identity.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

There is a “substantially more subtle shift” pertaining to forms of reasoning. “Reasoning, classically, has been concerned primarily with deductive, abstract types of reasoning. But what I see happening to today's kids as they work in this new digital medium has much more to do with bricolage than abstract logic. Bricolage, a concept originally studied by Levi Strauss many years ago, relates to the concrete. It has to do with the ability to find something - an object, tool, piece of code, document - and to use it in a new way and in a new context.”2

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

Contemporary creativity may no longer be focused towards creating original content, but is a practice of rip, mix and burn, where content is taken, appropriated, adapted, mixed, and distributed in a way in which consumption of media and information also becomes a productive act. Digital technology can, then, give young people the opportunity to take control of information and media to consume and produce cultures of importance and relevance to their own lives and identities. Social software adds to the ways one can be creative and it has changed and expanded the audience for personal and social creativity. [Emphasis added]

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

Students who pool their research (in a bookmark tool or in a wiki) can clearly help each other do better. Students who peer assess their work can clearly help each other. Students who can work in different media extend the range of their thinking. Students in contact with people outside the school can learn more. Students who have a sense that their work is for a wider audience may be better motivated.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

4.7 Conclusion: e-Learning 2.0?Our discovery of new ways to transform our lives using digital technologies is not slowing down. In recent years we have witnessed the emergence of new tools and services. Some of these have been characterised as Web 2.0, some of them have been characterised as social software. The significant attributes that these new tools and services display are that they are about knowledge creation, knowledge management, knowledge sharing and knowledge dissemination. Keywords have been creation, collaboration and communication. These technologies are changing the way we are able to deal with knowledge. This raises two issues for those engaged in education. Firstly they supply the enterprise of learning with new tools and new and useful ways to go about learning. The second suggests that because of the changing nature of human knowledge management we need to change priorities in what we need to learn.The individual learner has many choices available for their personal learning. The list of social software activity is long and is growing. However, there is also a need for a response in formal education. These technologies do provide a mechanism for transformation in education that appropriates these technologies for educational advantage. This includes a change in our vision of e-learning to a more open approach to the acquisition, organisation, creation and assessment of knowledge: e-Learning 2.0.

Futurelab - Research - Publications - Social software and learning

 

All teachers at all levels should be reading this and responding to this paper, IMHO!

The writer about technology and media I respect the most has done it again, with an article outlining why big (advertising) business should be paying close attention to what's happening on the Web right now. in his article $20 Million in Publicity for $300.00.

Geist of the Toronto Star anchors his article to a story about 

• a veritable genre of short videos experimenting with mentos and soft drinks. Online sites such as YouTube and Google Video are home to hundreds of these videos, yet none compare with The Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments, a three-minute video created last month by two Maine residents, Fritz Globe, a professional juggler, and Stephen Voltz, a lawyer (the video is online at eepybird.com). Likened to the waterfall show at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, this video provides an entertaining example of the power of online video distribution.

While most people, in business and elsewhere, are still not quite sure what blogs and wikis are and how they can be used, the brief attention span of Web early users has already shifted to video online. The technology has made it easy and cheap for anybody to create and mount brief, and sometimes longer, videos on the Web. iTunes and its competitors might be bringing TV and music videos to the online World, but peer production of videos, found on YouTube and its competitors, is exploding.

How fast can you say "Marshall McLuhan was a prophet" and "Global Village"!

Educators should be paying close attention, because their students are playing here, and can actively learn by constructing visual essays as well as textual ones. 

 

Rochelle Mazar explores what Inquiry-Based Learning might mean in her blog Random Access Mazar,

As someone who uses a version of Inquiry-Based learning in my teaching, and in my personal learning, I resonate with Rochelle's questioning of what exactly it means. With her, I believe -

Of all the things the extremely well-educated among us can offer society, presenting a unique and surprising path through a dense discipline seems like the very best. There’s lots of freedom within a structured curriculum; it’s still up to the students whether or not they want to be there, and what perspective they want to take on the ideas that arise.

Random Access Mazar » Inquiry-Based Learning

Yet from my personal experience as a learner, I want to bring my questions to my learning. This works well in communication courses, where students can chose their subject/topic while the teacher sets the requirements. In some ways, there are two aspects of learning happening in this kind of a situation. The student explores what fascinates them, and learns, through the teacher, the communication skills to powerfully convey what they are exploring to an audience. They learn rhetoric from the teacher by exploring their topic, a kind of indirect and double learning.

Mazur says -

What’sbecoming a standard definition of an inquiry-based classroom (from the experiences I’ve had with it thus far) is one where the instructor does not lecture and does not impose topics, but instead stops, turns the lights around, and asks students what they want to learn.

Random Access Mazar » Inquiry-Based Learning

 

I used to teach at Sheridan College, and one of my courses was teaching Interior Design students how to write a thesis. They chose the focus of their research, and I coached them on how to form their work into an academic thesis. I learned a very great deal from their research. So, for me, Inquiry-Based Learning is basically a researching and writing/presenting structure that is pleasurable for me because I am learning from my students, and useful for them, because they are learning from my expertise. I am still an important resource for my students.

In an ideal world, the reason students come to universities, the reason they exist in the first place, is because students want to learn from the experiences of established scholars and grow intellectually with their guidance and feedback.

Random Access Mazar » Inquiry-Based Learning

In my own Ph.D. studies, both my own experiences and established scholars were central to my learning. Some of the scholars I encountered through their books. But I was often pointed to these books by my advisors who were watching where my inquiries were taking me, and suggesting possibly helpful avenues. That to me is the way Inquiry-Based learning should work.

A brief comparison may help. In Ontario, a few years ago, something called "Whole Language" approach to teaching reading was introduced into high schools. As I was in a college, I had the privilege of watching as this turned into a controversy similar to what Mazur describes:

What’s becoming a standard definition of an inquiry-based classroom (from the experiences I’ve had with it thus far) is one where the instructor does not lecture and does not impose topics, but instead stops, turns the lights around, and asks students what they want to learn.

Random Access Mazar » Inquiry-Based Learning

From my safe vantage point in a college, I was able to read and experiment with the theories behind the Whole Language approach, and I became convinced that some of the non-practitioner curriculum experts had a poor understanding of what actually happened in classrooms. I thought they prescribed methods that made no sense to teachers who understood the classroom but hadn't been helped to clearly understand the actual premises behind the Whole language approach. When I went back to the research on reading and the underlying theories of Whole language, it made sense and worked when applied in my classroom.

I can't say for sure, but I suspect something similar is happening with Inquiry-Based learning. When a theory becomes a phrase, and that phrase is defined differently by various "experts", watch out! No theory is applicable in all situations in the classroom, and theories that undermine the personal practical knowledge of teachers, are destructive, IMHO.

 

The Lead-Up

Yesterday I read Rochelle Mazar's post on Inquiry Learning and, inspired by her questioning, I wrote up a post for my Elgg blog. I wrote it quickly, and, towards the end, I lost some of the control/reticence that has been rigourously trained into me as a Canadian, middle-class, woman, of a certain age, and blurted out, (that's how it felt to me) my actual opinion. I felt like I'd made a social error; one shouldn't say anything that might offend, etc. I'm also struggling currently with how to approach 2 writing projects, so I was feeling both defiant and inadequate. I left the post up, but was feeling down about it.

The Background

I have been receiving Stephen Downes's Newletters every day for a long time, and regard him as a kind of teacher and/or guide to learning about the Web and how to teach using it. He has linked to something I've written a few times, and it has always been a thrill, because being linked to or commented on makes me feel visible and recognized. Writing on the Web can sometimes feel like writing in a diary; no one knows who you are or reads it.

The Moment

My Mail noise bonged, and I checked and saw it was Stephen's Newsletter, the OLDaily. I paused and thought about the kind of offhandedness and blurting quality of my recent posts, and decided, consciously, that being linked to wasn't that important; I wasn't going to worry about it. I clicked on the Mail, and saw this -

My name twice, 3 times if you count the address line. The opposite of what I'd just decided I didn't care about. And I'd lied to myself; I do care. But more than my ego salve, something else is important. When I lose at least some of my control and blurt a little, I say something worth repeating, at least in Stephen's opinion. Something similar happened with another post he linked to - The Purpose of Pedagogy - where I'd felt I'd gotten carried away. And when I read what he's quoted from my post, I felt kind of like you do when you see yourself on TV, more real because I'd appeared in the media! Perhaps neurotic, but, hey, I'm trying to letting my blurting side out a little more ;->

What's Really Significant

What is central, the point of this post, is what Stephen said near the end of his commentary:

Millions of people, working with no instruction at all, have managed to learn and master complex simulations and game-based online environments, and to transfer this knowledge to the real world. Thousands - maybe millions - of people working with nothing but an online community and a compiler have taught themselves how to program computers. It is therefore not rational to conclude that people cannot learn without an instructor.

Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~

This is what makes the Web so exciting. It frees learners! And humans are innately learners. That is the ultimate learning theory.

Christopher Sessums says, in a comment on one of my posts -

My own belief is that teaching is a social act, a political act, and very much a situated act. I often subscribe to what I will call the Kenny Roger's "Gambler" approach to teaching/learning: You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. (Ugh!)I worry when I feel I am being too prescriptive with students. On the other hand, when I sense that what students need to get over a proverbial hump is a good old fashioned lecture, then that's what I give them. Of course, I then catch myself thinking "was that the right thing to do?" Should I let them struggle some more? When do I intervene? When do I step back? It feels a lot like parenting or coaching, no?

Joan Vinall-Cox :: Weblog :: Surprised by Stephen's Web

I agree. Totally. The students, the subject, and the environment all come into play, plus the weather and the morale of the teacher and of the class. Neither learning nor teaching by rote has much power.

I remember returning to teaching college students how to write after spending much of a summer reading James Britton, Peter Elbow, Nancy Martin and others who had studied how people actually learn how to write, and experiencing my own writing in the context of a writing group. This was my first PD that went deeper than here's the correct format; now use red ink to show them what they did wrong. The books, lectures, and experiences had been a revelation to me, and answered many of my questions about why many students didn't improve no matter how many hours I spent marking them. I was determined to change my teaching style.

By October, I was in despair. The comfortable assurance that I was doing the right thing that I had had when I used my former style of teaching was gone. My showing students only one or two of their 'mistakes' and trying to get them to give useful feedback to each other rather than simply judgemental, one-up comments felt messy and unsuccesful. My then boss, who had set up the summer PD that had led to my current confusion, saw me in the hall, and I guess my level of distress showed. He asked me how things were going, and I told him, in detail, and accusingly.

He responded with uncharacteristic wisdom. He told me that both teachers and students were more comfortable with what they were familiar with, even if it didn't work. He recommended that I persist in my new approach, and make it clear to the students that there would be no changing back to the old familiar style. I did, and the students adjusted, and some of the ones that had the most writing difficulties actually made substantial progress. My boss had told me to "hold'em" and not to "fold'em" and I did, and it worked, because of his political backing, and because I really believed in the pedagogical approach I was trying out.

It's hard to introduce a new style or approach into your teaching. I was lucky to have that boss at that time. That was in the mid Eighties, before blogs. Now teachers without a supportive boss and/or peers can find supportive peers online, and have help sorting out how to use what they know about teaching and learning.

Personally, I find some courses have more "teachable moments" when a mini-lecture is the most efficient and effective way of teaching, and some need an inquiry approach with peer and 'expert' coaching. And sometimes I discover, as the class goes on, what works with this particular group, at this particular class time, with this particular technology, in this particular season, in this particular institution.

Yup! The Kenny Rodgers approach to teaching is the one that works, IMHO.

the show with zefrank - 07-14-06

The video linked to the page linked above (did you get that?) Anyway, the video with the image shown below is amusing and insightful. zefrank, as this blogger calls himself, gives the big picture of what is currently happening with design, and tells us why. It the accessibility of the tools! When design tools were rare, expensive, and demanded a high level of skill, a small group could define what good design was. With the democracizing of the tools, the small group no longer rules. A new definition of good design will emerge as more and more people play with the new tools.

 

Or that's what I thought he was saying/showing.

Link to his blog post, play his video, and see what you think!

Is this the democratising of learning and/or education? It's not scholarly but it is insightful and it does pass knowledge along.