Trends in Social Networking Sites

Fred Stutzman is researching social networking and finding some very interesting things. In Social Networking: Five Sites You Need to Know, he covers some of the less well-known social networking sites with more global reach, and expands on three of the main trends he's seeing:

• "Social networking is becoming content-centric.
  
• Social networking is the vanguard of micropayment.
  
• Social networking for the sake of social networking just doesn't cut it."

Via Michael Habib

Teacher's new "PET"

In this interview from 2000, the late David Squires outlines his vision for Peripatetic Electronic Teachers, freelance instructors who attract students globally. While the idea isn't new (as he points out), he covers all kinds of interesting ideas in the subsequent discussion:

"Higher education is becoming much more market driven with a heavier emphasis on client led delivery. Learners now want bespoke learning experiences that match their needs and interests. This corresponds with the notion of the Internet as a market driven social space. Within this space there will be a role for entrepreneurs - freelance teachers who use the features of new technologies to create and deliver learning experiences."

And this:

"It is essential that the Education Establishment engages in the Information Society issue now so that it can have an influential - hopefully the most influential - voice in the developments of technology-mediated learning and teaching. If not other agents - the mega-publishers, telecom infrastructure providers etc. - will take sole/primary charge of education."

Required High School Portfolios

Helen Barrett's take on Required High School Portfolios rings true for me, partly because she's using my home province's graduation portfolios as an example of how not to do it. It reminded me of some of the feedback I heard from teachers two years ago when the intitiative was announced.

Via Downes

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Why link to this video of Mr. Rogers speaking at a Senate hearing in 1969? Because it's a passionate defense of an earlier educational technology, and of good teaching in general. He talks quite emotionally about offering an "expression of care" to children as the main purpose of his show. The gruff senator warms up throughout and says at one point that he's got goosebumps. Mr. Rogers' response:

"Well, I'm grateful, not only for your goosebumps, but for your interest in our kind of communication."

Fascinating stuff.

MySpace or SchoolSpace?

Dave asked last week: Why worry about Myspace/Facebook?

"The thing is, education is never going to be as attractive for most as sex, music, relationships and so on - so why even bother wasting time thinking about it? Surely the question is; how can we utilise the potential this connective software has given us to enhance formal and informal learning for those who want to use it?"

He summarizes some of the recent discussion about attempts to adopt/integrate/co-opt the success of social-networking sites like MySpace and The Facebook for educational use in schools. Although he's finding it a "little dull" , I think it he's hitting something important here, and we've been continuing the discussion in the comments section of his post.

Learning and Failing

George linked to, and pulled a great quote about the difficulty of real learning out of Lanny Arvan's post:

"'Learning is about failing, repeated failing.' It is uncomfortable being in a state either of complete ignorance or having the awkward feeling of partial knowledge, it is ego deflating when initial stabs produce less than satisfactory results, and to the extent that learning is viewed by students as a competitive sport, it also raises the fear that the others are progressing along so nicely and it is only this particular student who is not getting it, so he is falling behind."

This is what I was trying to articulate about the the choice to pursue learning goals -- although we say we want to learn to surf, the reality is that the learning is likely going to be painful and difficult. We want to be able to surf, preferably without the pain of learning. Lanny also touches on the issue at the core of personal learning environments and self-directed learning:

"What I want to talk about in this post is teaching really bright kids, especially early on in college, and getting them to make intellectual leaps in their thinking and to begin to get them to consider that is their lot in life and how they should spend their time."

Students (me included) have always had the latter decision made for us in school, which means we haven't properly developed our skills in deciding how to spend our "learning time". We might get very good at time management within the parameters set out for us, but we're not good at deciding what is most worth our attention and how it fits into the goals for our lives.

Engagement with Electronic Portfolios

I've had Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective saved for a while. The main strength of the paper is that the researchers focused on how students were receiving e-portfolio implementations in their programs, rather than looking at the usual institutional impact. A quote:

"Therefore, it is important that the e-portfolio is not viewed like other forms of assessment or assignments which students are required to undertake but may feel little sense of ownership in. The e-portfolio is (or should be) part of a student-owned, student-centred approach to learning which makes it possible for students to actively engage in their learning rather than just be the recipients of information."

I agree with these goals, but I'm still having a hard time seeing this happening in the context of our existing education system. There is so little in formal education (characterized by courses, scheduling, curriculum, and traditional instruction) that gives any real power to learners that I think our expectation for their ability or desire to embrace e-portfolios (as currently conceived) in the context of courses and programs is unrealistic.

That said, I also think that the philosophy underpinning good e-portfolios could be a driver for change in that same system. It's not difficult to envision a university degree that was really personal -- letting learners choose topics from any discipline and any school, helping them work in self-assembled networks, directing them to people and resources that will interest them most, letting them work at their own pace, valuing (and offering credit for) experience and learning outside of the institution (PLA), etc, etc... Once you go down that road, the e-portfolio (or personal learning environment, or whatever you call it) becomes essential for the people managing all aspects (topics, applications, networks, projects, timing) of their own learning experiences.

A Typology of User Experience Pleasures

Great teachers would probably understand immediately how each of these examples of cognitive seduction help people learn things. Kathy Sierra is talking about designing experiences for users of software, but wouldn't it be great if school was set up with these goals in mind? When's the last time you took a course that stimulated or contained even a handful of these feelings or elements? Her checklist could be used for designing learning experiences:

"1. Discovery
User experience as exploration of new territory
2. Challenge
User experience as obstacles to overcome, goals lying just beyond current skill and knowledge levels
3. Narrative
User experience as story arc (user on hero's journey) and character identification
4. Self-expression
User experience as self-discovery and creativity
5. Social framework
User experience as an opportunity for interaction/fellowship with others
6. Cognitive Arousal
User experience as brain teaser
7. Thrill
User experience as risk-taking with a safety net
8. Sensation
User experience as sensory stimulation
9. Triumph
User experience as opportunity to kick ass
10. Flow
User experience as opportunity for complete concentration, extreme focus, lack of self-awareness
11. Accomplishment
User experience as opportunity for productivity and success
12. Fantasy
User experience as alternate reality
13. Learning
User experience as opportunity for growth and improvement"

More on Personal Learning Environments

Although I haven't been posting much lately, I've still been following the ongoing discussion on personal learning environments. Of particular interest were Graham Attwell's in-depth coverage and this PLE wiki page initiated and maintained by Mark van Harmelen.

Let's Face(book) It

Good post on the growing desire for schools to integrate (co-opt?) technologies students are already using on their own: Let's Face(book) It. As I've said before, I think this strategy is doomed. Institutions creating their own social software spaces (blogging apps, e-portfolios, social-networking systems) to try to harness student interest will soon see tumbleweeds rolling through and not much else. Even educators who figure out how to use the tools for meeting curriculum goals will only ever get students to jump through hoops with these apps -- the needs of the institution and the real goals of students are too different. Stephen's comment is spot-on, and he also links to some further discussion.

Interest Level More Important Than Marks

Not really surprising, but still interesting -- high-school students' level of interest in the sciences is a better predictor of their success in the field later in life than their marks in science courses -- Early education key to scientific career choice:

"The findings suggest that mandatory testing policies, such as the No Child Left Behind Law promoted by the Bush administration as a solution to low-performing US schools, might worsen the nation's output of scientists by distracting teachers from field trips and other activities that stimulate student interest in sciences, Tai said."

New Skills For A New Century

Practical and powerful article from Edutopia on project-based learning: New Skills For A New Century. They've also got a whole content section devoted to the topic.

On a related note, Stephen linked to Christopher Sessum's excellent account of visiting a school doing project-based learning. My current interest in this topic stems from my thesis work, which is partly dealing with how people choose interesting projects (through learning goals). What if curriculum wasn't pre-defined and people could choose what (and how) to learn?

Change Happens

A little e-learning industry news: Xap Corporation To Acquire Bridges Transitions (pdf). This is significant for me because Bridges has been my employer here in the Okanagan since 1999, and Xap is a company from California. Should be interesting to see what happens.

Communicating Design Concepts

Just a virtual bookmark for this wise article on communicating design concepts -- these are issues I deal with every week in designing features and sites with prototypes, wireframes, mockups and design documentation...and don't always get it right.

Literature Review in Informal Learning

I still need to dig further into Futurelab's literature review in informal learning with technology outside school:

"This review focuses specifically on children's informal learning with technologies outside school. It brings together the existing research in the field to create a map of this digital ecology of education, discussing what we know about which children have access to these technologies, what they are using them for and the implications of this use for learning. Most significantly, however, it summarises the extent to which the research in this area is beginning to raise fundamental questions about how children learn and, consequently, whether we need to re-examine the design of our formal education system."

Flat Classrooms and New Schools

All kinds of big-thinking goodness about self-directed learning models in education:

• Holistic and Integral Education: Flat Classrooms, bouncing off Warlick's Flat Classrooms
  
• What if everything we think about school is wrong? This one was triggered by the fantastic Fairhaven School video, which seems to have popped up all over the place (more info here).
  
• Karen Remeis responded with: A different approach to school, somewhat skeptical about how many students will be motivated to learn in any kind of self-directed way.
  
• Albert Ip's follow-up post goes deeper.

Mostly via Stephen.

Seb's Open Research

I seem to have missed the return of Seb's Open Research a couple of weeks ago, but I'm glad to see it back. In the first volley of excellent posts, I thought his coverage of a conference session by Intuit's Scott Cook was top-notch, digging into innovation, user-focused design, and smart software development.

Social Software and the Co-Creation of Knowledge

Social Software and the Co-Creation of Knowledge is a quick post with a fairly simple question: "If social software supports the notion of individual choice, how does it best serve formal educational environments?" I know there have been examples of creative teachers finding ways to integrate these tools effectively, but I think they're really having to swim upstream, often having to ignore or stretch their curriculum constraints. And I'm glad they are -- in radical moments, I'd just as soon see most teachers chuck the curriculum in favour of guiding students toward the topics and projects that fascinate them most, regardless of the subject area. For that process, social software could become the primary way to learn. Anyway...great discussion in the comments to Christopher Sessum's post, and his follow-up post is excellent as well.

Designing Interfaces

Designing Interfaces is a book, but the accompanying site is a valuable resource as well. It lists interaction patterns for web sites and applications, describing each one and explaining when, how and why it is used. A nice toolkit if you're looking at designing something new for the web.

Close Down the Schools

Pat Kane's big idea for 2006 channels some Ivan Illich. He visited a group of pre-teens to talk to (and ask them about) digital tools in their lives, and found a total disconnect between the richness of their online worlds and what they're "learning" in class:

"All of them were actively involved in digital creativity in one form or another, from making fan websites with up to 60,000 hits, through coding Flash animations for their friends, to arranging music downloads for underground Glaswegian rap artists. But none of them saw any connection between this intrinsically motivated, rawly enterprising lifestyle -- where trade, hacking, self-skilling and peer-to-peer co-operation was the norm -- and any part of the curriculum they were receiving at school. And this was a computer studies class."