Matthew Allen

Speaking in a couple of weeks at the Internet Research 12.0 conference ‘Performance and Participation’

My paper, Web 2.0 from the ground up: defining the participatory web in its own terms, is based on an analysis using Leximancer of 750,000+ words used to describe 12,000+ Web 2.0 applications. Some of the fun I am having includes generating dubious yet intriguing infographics….

However, I am still struggling to find the right way to explain how I get from this to what I seek to conclude, concerning the way the discourse of Web 2.0, very much a language of computing, is now reshaping our sense of self.

Listening to Michael Dyson, from Monash talking about portfolios in teacher education: great presentation.

Dyson says:

• Education of educators is first of all premised on turning them into people who practice self-development. gives example of very first unit. [So, care of the self is central, and making students include themselves as subjects in the learning process - nice!]
• Learning is change dramatically – globalisation, computing, and so on. [But, perhaps, there is an important qualification on some of the more optimistic claims for 'new' learning: learning is embedded within society in ways that shape those possibilities in ways that are not entirely concerned with 'better' learning. At the very least, the definition of better is contested: is it cheaper? is it more orderly and commodifiable? is to linked to national norms and needs?]
• The creating mind is the goal. [Interesting - not creative, but more positive and active - creating. Good difference]
• Reflection is essential to achieving the kind of succcesses in self-developmental learning; using Dewey (2003), emphasises “active persistent and careful consideration”; reflection is not taking “things for granted…[leading to] ethical judgment and strategic actions” (Groundwater-Smith, 2003).  [ Further work needed, perhaps, to understand reflection for this new generation, if one takes as given the significant changes in knowledge: is reflection as developed in 20th c the right kind of reflection?]
• ALACT model – action, looking back, awareness of the essential aspects, create alternatives, trial.

[This is really helpful - I like the added 5th step, compared to the normal action research 4-step model]

• “the artefacts placed in their portfolio showcase who they are and their current onling learning”; these artefacts are attached to the standards which define what it is to be an educated teacher according to outcomes required. [So portfolios are a clear negotiation of the student's understanding of those requirements and standards?]
• Exploration of the actual portfolios that students have created, using a paid-for service iwebfolio (was subsidised). Variety of successes and failures, all the material goes into a digital, not paper portfolio. Notes the fact that the metadata on when and how material uploaded is available, unlike other means of generating a portfolio. [I emphasise: the portfolio is a genuine, real requirement for teaching employment. It is authentic learning]
• Use of standards / outcomes as information architecture to drive cognition in inputting information (adding artefacts, commenting etc [So, the portfolio is 'scaffolding' into which a building goes, with a clear design brief. It might be a hghly structured knowledge engine]

I am wondering if the students genuinely are doing this work for themselves or if they imagine an audience of ‘judges’ – their teachers who grade the portfolio or the employers who might use it? Managing multiple audiences is tricky, even with technology that allows it – because if you can shape the portfolio for several audiences…. then does the self audience survive?

Then again, maybe the whole point is that the students are not yet capable of being their own audience.

Some other portfolio software (and look how it is more than just a portfolio…)

http://www.pebblepad.com

On Thursday 2 December, I am presenting at the National Curriculum Innovation and Quality Forum on the subject, “Risks and opportunities in authentic learning via the Internet”.

The basic brief for this keynote presentation is to:

• summarise approaches to authentic learning in the BA (Internet Communications) at Curtin University;
• identify the key benefits in using a public knowledge networking approach to authentic learning; and
• highlight risks and strategies for managing those approaches in the pursuit of authentic learning online.

While I hope to do that, with a particular emphasis on giving some examples from the great work that students in the BA (Internet Communications) have done, I also have found that in preparing my talk I have had to develop a more coherent argument about the nature of authenticity in learning and the relationship between education and learning.

The talk can be found here: https://netcrit.net/content/nciqf2010.pdf

This paper draws also on some specific work I have done on the authentic assessment in our online conference unit, Internet Communities and Social Networks 204 and more generally on social media and authentic assessment (presentation in the UK, May 2010)

Some of the examples I refer to will be listed on my blog within the week.

Disclaimer: live blogging

Will we be smart enough soon enough?
Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Doug Schuler

(Keynote paper, Research for Action Workshop, Making Links 2010 Conference)

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Civic Intelligence defined pragmatically: people to have the ‘smarts’  by which to acquire the things they need to prosper in society.

The world needs ‘our’ help: global problems, local problems – all need attention and those in power, and the operation of the free market will not solve them. Doug frames his work by asking: “How smart need we be to solve these problems? Will we be smart soon enough for the problems to be solved before they overwhelm us?”.

Civic intelligence is a concept to lead us to the answer to these questions. It refers, effectively, to a judgment of how smart a group might be relative to the problems it faces; it is a form of collective intelligence, focusing on shared problems (eg the problems that define the group). Civis intelligence is about being smart, through civic means, to achieve civic goals. A particular modality of this form of collective intelligence is its distribution throughout society. Civic intelligence as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Examples:

Sustainable prisons: question – “Can prisons save money and the environment while changing lives?”

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action to solve significant social problems lies in joining together multiple problems – it is not so much finding innovative answers to a single problem but, rather, actively constructing a new problem set in which the action serves two or more problems at once. In this example, spending money on a sustainability project within prison not only makes prisons better at the ostensive goal (rehabilitation), but also contributes to the problem of educating people about how to live and act sustainably while also, potentially, making prisons more productive and therefore cheaper

Beehive Collective’s work in relation to land degradation and renewal, “The True Cost of Coal” – sophisticated interweaving of skills and action, notion of research through action at the grass roots.

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action involves very different paradigms of knowledge work where creativity, sharing, working together to represent the world and tell stories about it is more effective in addressing problems (and in doing so building civic intelligence) than traditional models of ‘research’

Liberating Voices project: promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action – pattern language responses. Everyone is an activist. Patterns are not recipes: “tools for thought”; patterns “change the flow of what would have happened in its absence”.

Patterns here could be understood as scaffolding for cognitive developmental action – without them, people don’t know where to start even if they know what the goal might be. Patterns don’t determine the outcome but give sufficient support for people to begin work. Moreover, patterns provide a shared language through which people can identify commonalities and work together. Without them, they remain individuated. So, do patterns create a kind of autonomous foundation for collective engagement?

Interesting diverse list of points to define civic intelligence, interesting because of its diversity of categories:

civic intelligence builds more civic intelligence (it is productive beyond any specific act)
inclusive and participatory
efficient and creative
real problems (e.g. inequality, not just increased wealth for a few)
addresses several problems at once

The last point is especially revealing: “Make activism cool (again)”. Schuler comments – “what is preventing people from doing this stuff? It’s not cool”

I believe this comment taps into the increased knowledge- and engineering-focused state of contemporary society – what is now ‘cool’ is doing knowledge work so demonstrations, ranting, protesting which used to be cool forms of social activism now appears to be insufficiently ‘efficient’ and ‘creative’ for our contemporary society.

Keynotes, Day 2, EDEM10 Conference

The Promise and Contradictions of E-Democracy, Obama Style
Micah L. Sifry (Personal Democracy Forum)
Sifry begins by drawing a distinction between the social media, Internet based mobilisation from Obama during the election campaign and the lack of such activity within the administration, since Obama’s victory. At first (for example the Transparency and Open Government directive), there was a strong sense of Obama moving towards digitally enabled collaborative and participatory government. But, we have ended up, Sifry says, with an administration that is centralised and traditional and dominated by the big institutions.
Sifry demonstrates that the USA is now in an era of mass participation in the electoral process; gives the example of the Vote Different citizen advertisement pro-Obama and against Clinton. Sifry asserts that Clinton campaign was a monologue – not a conversation; scripted and led from the front by Clinton; Clinton was ahead clearly in 2007 and Sifry claims the Internet was the key factor which pushed Obama ahead. Relations between citizens and activists, not just between citizens and the leaders/ politicians are what the Internet enables; that said, the mass mobilisation effects did depend a lot on Obama’s personal qualities and the particular spirit of the times. Fundamentally, though, the mass of the population – even over 60 – are all now getting online. “people are not just going online to access information: they are doing it to participate” (based on Pew ILP data). Data on Obama campaign – 13 million email addresses; 200,000 events; 75,000 related (self-made) webpages; 4 million donors; 2 million people on myOB social site; $750 million raised, 2/3rds online – so clearly this campaign worked.

Simple argument here, based on pretty clear data, that Obama was compellingly successful in mobilising people for his electoral cause – not just giving money, but organising activities, linking between the campaign and the voters. It’s clear that Sifry has identified the key point: social media not only recruits, and funds, it also empowers a cadre of activists, turning followers into micro-leaders.

Starts the next part of the speech with a deeply offensive image of Obama which was made by the Tea Party and is being distributed, via social media, by the rightwing of US politics. The point is: social media is not just ‘the good guys’. It can go in both directions and there is perhaps less grass-roots that Obama might like to claim.
Sifry now starts to unpick the mythology of the ‘small donor’ myth of Obama. The trend in US politics is who raises the money, from big business, in the year before the election wins. This is true for Obama – he got 36%, Clinton only 30%. Obama also has an overall donor pattern that is similar to McCain and others. Howard Dean, in fact, had all the ‘small donor’ ($200 or below). Obama might have tapped into some additional funds, but principally his campaign was funded in the normal way.
Turning to the grass roots campaign – shows video of Obama expressing his hope that the network he has built around his campaign will be sustained “I want to continue that after the election”, he says. “I want to revamp our Whitehouse website…I want people to be able to say, today, this issue is going on…Creating the kind of situation where, if people want to get involved, they have the information they need”. Not just Internet, however, he focuses also on town hall meetings and getting leaders out from Washington to visit the people – “the more we can enlist the American people to get involved, the more we can move forward”. Ties this sort of participatory behaviour to fighting the Washington special interests and institutional structures.
Reviewing this myth, he cites one of Obama’s key campaign managers – at first, the campaign didn’t really appreciate what they were doing, and perhaps even saw some social media use as simply a way of creating a positive spin for the campaign through traditional media. Plouffe is cited saying his view of the campaign’s email havesting was “we had essentially created our own television network, only better”.

Sifry reveals here that the Obama campaign did not, itself, understand or deploy social media so much as discover it, and then harness it, all the time seeking to turn it back into something which is controlled, managed, and top-down and hierarchical. Once again, the Internet blindsides the centres of power because it threatens their identity as the experts of media manipulation

Sifry then turns to analyse the way Obama behaves as President – highly critical of the level of control from the Whitehouse press office (less press conferences than Bush); also critical of the trivialisation of participatory forums online by Obama. Notes, too, the way the special interests (such as the Tea Party) have attempted to hijack some of the open government debate. Looks at the way very few people have actually participated in the open government dialogue, though some valuable information gleaned.

Sifry is trying a difficult trick – to see both positives and negatives in the way the Obama administration has done ‘open’ online digital government. Speaks of the duality of “Obama”. It is clear that the duality is partly to do with the fact that there are many players (various departments and agencies), that some e-government topics / uses are not very contentious or perhaps appeal to the ‘rational’ in the public. A good analysis, if perhaps needs to explicate the way in which e-government has a series of dimensions – political, rational, expressive and so on – which don’t always fit together easily.

Sifry now reports that the kind of engagement Obama promised has not really occurred and indeed those things which have been done have not had any impact on the populace. Asserts that there is now a loss of trust; that the administration has not been ready to cope with, to embrace the “loss of control” which social media requires. Uses a slight analysis of health care speech by Obama to show that the “we” and “us” of the campaign has morphed into “I” and “you” now that he is President. And yet, Sifry cleverly identifies that the participants themselves have “walked away” from their responsibility to stay engaged.
So, conclusions. The Internet doesn’t empower anyone; we empower ourselves. One-to-many and many-to-one are easy; many-to-many is hard. Describes the Internet’s technologies for collaboration and networking as “weak tools”. Ends up, really, with a technologically oriented approach – it’s the tools that are the fault.

Sifry’s analysis is very useful here. He doesn’t explicate it, but hints at the reasons for the failure – that opposition and campaigning is not the same as government and administration. The promises were easy to make, and were – through the force of the campaign – easy to build on, but the realities are much more complicated. Furthermore, he astutely undercuts the reality of the ‘social media’ campaign idea – in fact it was only marginally so, or (perhaps) was seen by grass-roots participants as participatory while seen by the campaign management as not at all like that. It is therefore slightly unusual to see him conclude that we need better tools. I am wondering whether, in fact, the point is this: all online tools are weak tools and thus what matters is the intersection between strong ties outside of the Internet, with ‘weak tools’ to sustain and expand those ties across distance. And, in discussion, Sifry to some extent showed the problem: the tools can be made stronger – at least in the USA – in electing candidates, or shaping the candidates to stand, but become less effective when those candidates are serving politicians.

Discussion: media….“the government’s ability to be media is incompletely understood” (that is, how to mediate a conversation) ; discussing the failure of the mass media, the bias, the extremes and immediacy of cable news and the way the mediasphere in US politics is adapting to change by emptying itself out of authority through reporting and demanding authority through opinion (“truthiness” – reference AoIR Conference keynote 2009)

And, interestingly, a lot of Sifry’s discussion of successes with social media were couched in terms of ‘and it made an impact on the mass media’: so, is this too media-focused?

Discussion: “weak tools”…“politicians really do respond to money in the USA” – discusses how tools, especially around money raising and making visible the aggregation of micro-contributions, can show politicians why and how people are giving; yet still, Sifry notes, the problem is this: what happens when the political candidate is elected – do they remember what the participation meant and why they received the voter support?.
Discussion – Obama campaign had massive plans for transition of themselves to administration and no plans for transition of the grass roots to a supportive governmental grass roots campaign. Cites the fact people were calling up their local Dem office and saying ‘what do I do now?’ that Obama has won… there was nothing. Concludes – most Obama people do not believe in and are hostile to grass-roots empowerment: Democrat party is cynical of their own voters – even despite the evidence of Obama’s success.

Keynotes – E-Democracy conference (EDEM10)
4th Conference on E-Democracy, EDEM10, Krems, Austria
Conference blog: http://digitalgovernment.wordpress.com/

Over the next two days I will be attending the 4th E-Democracy Conference, EDEM, in Austria; this is the first of several slightly live blog posts that will report and reflect on the proceedings

Distribution and Empowerment: Embedding Citizens at the Heart of Democracy
Andy Williamson

Williamson avoids the phrases e-government and e-democracy – “nobody knows what democracy is”, adding the ‘e’ probably means it is even more abstruse and excludes the participants. “the conversation is not about technology; it’s about people”. Importance of making a difference: “we are sitting on a technological wave of innovation that allows us to reconstruct our world” but, “our society is not static – we are in a neo-liberal environment”. Notes the shift to consumers, not citizens – this includes attempts to make people consumers of democracy and its services. Links this shift also to the way we are now a society of individuals, not a community.
Key concern for Williamson: “Privileging individuals over the collective reduces opportunities for citizens to be engaged, debate and modify their beliefs”

Am struck by the last point – “modify” – engagement is often thought of as ‘having a say’ but perhaps it is also about creating a space for ‘listening’ to others; and, in a collective, social world, it is listening to others of the same kind – other citizens – which will help to ‘modify’ beliefs

Starts with ideas that most people are not actively engaged in political action. In the UK – 4% are actively engaged; – very small, sure, but Williamson focuses our attention on the 5% who say they are NOT engaged but WANT to be. 25% do not want to be ‘active’ but want to have a say in how their communities are run.

Reminds us that digital engagement in a particular country is linked to the culture and social standing of ‘politics’ as an activity. Focuses on the fact that people want engagement at local levels, outside of the broadly politicised circuits of power. For example, in Britain, politics and politicians are held in contempt by most people; there is a lack of respect for politicians. And, as he states later in his talk, governments hold people in contempt. And a further development – if civil society is a sign of a healthy democracy, then we are in trouble, because civil society is now layered and complexified by the significant number of NGOs between citizens and their governments. NGOs abrograte to themselves the power to speak for fractions of society and yet are deeply unrepresentative and non-consultative. Governments like working with NGOs because they are within the discourse, speak the same language as government. Effectively, Williamson implies, government and non-government organisations collude in the further marginalisation of citizens from actual engagement. Finally Williamson concerned about the potential of the independent public sphere to work for democracy because the public sphere is “colonised” by the media and, indeed, by government.

The Internet might help, through both changes to the mediasphere but also in managing better communications between and from and to citizens, but Willimson remins us of the problems of technology adoption: he points to the ‘gap’ between early adoptors and early majority – this is the gap that, if not bridged, will lead to the failure of a technology dispersion and adoption process. This gap is clear at the moment in relation to e-government. This gap can be understood as access problems – lists several: mental; material; skills; usage; civil; democratic. This is a very rich picture of the potential and actual digital divide around e-democracy. It is not just technical skill, nor physical access. “The Internet doesn’t change my motivation to do something…what motivates me is an issue that I feel passionate about…what the Internet does is lower the threshold at which engagement occurs.”

Utilising addiction theory as a guide, points out how helping people past addiction requires a focus on disruption of the preparatory stages which lead to the addictive action and that this disruption has to be persistent, not a one-off intervetion: claims that e-government initiatives are often failing because they are not sustained, do not lead to systemic changes in mindset, both among citizens and government.

To make egovernment (what Williamson wants to call digital democracy) work, “digital media [needs to be ] positioned as an integral part of the democratic process, giving equal recognition to the folksonomies of civil society as is currently given to the taxonomies of experts”; it’s about translating the questions and processes of gaining opinion into the language, needs and expectations of citizens, not requiring them to become part of the discourse of government.
Discussion: – nice question – essentially mobilising a ‘will citizen participation lead to fascism?’ argument – Williamson’s response – voters know there is a problem, but don’t understand the issues. So, digital democracy can work, implicitly, to prevent totalitarianism in two ways – first, by helping people to become educated; second, by extremists getting elected and then they will be observed to be doing nothing. The vote for extremism is a vote for action: it produces no change.

I am not convinced that citizen participation necessarily means that we can avoid the spectre of fascism or totalitarianism; but it would seem that this threat is everpresent in democracy and therefore we should not fear the people’s voice. Indeed, the fear of ‘too much’ democracy is indeed totalitarian, but expressed from the smug position of the entrenched and comfortable elites

Discussion: question regarding bridging gap from issues-based movements to persistent citizen motivation to engage. Part of Williamson’s answer? Government to go into the spaces of citizen debate and discussion and place themselves within that discourse, rather than requiring citizens to move into governance.

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Goverati: E-Aristocrats or the Delusion of E-Democracy
Ismael Peña-López
Opens with a brief discussion of the production process in an industrial society: resources feed into the production process leading to outputs; the production process is formed at the intersection of capital and labour. The process can be understood as the sum of scarcity, transaction costs and intermediation (eg the coordination of suppliers and consumers)

Then looks at the democractic processs – five components: information (getting informed); accountability; deliberation / argumentation; negotiation and opinion formation; voting / explication of preference.
Information – the internet changes things – information is now more available, it is not scarce and, more importantly, the transaction costs (time and money) are significantly reduced.
Deliberation – how do people work out together what they should do – calls out to the historical model of ‘gathering together’ to discuss and debate: claims this cannot be done by a large number of people (high transaction costs) which now perhaps can be done via the Internet
Negotiation – refining the proposal so that it can gain a consensus. Again, made easier via the Internet
Voting – the final moment of decision, where people commit to one proposal or another. Voting is very expensive and complex unless it is done electronically (again focus on transaction costs).

The way Pena-Lopez is describing democracy doesn’t account for the fact that democracy has emerged, over time, as a non-participatory system not just because of external, economic reasons – eg transaction costs – but because it has been thought to be better if there is less direct involvement by citizens in government

So, for Pena-Lopez – who accepts he is an economist and is taking that approach – the key issue to discuss is cost optimisation of democracy – optimise the fit between the outcomes and the costs.
Now, looking at a model of the information economy – Inputs and outputs are both information; labour is now ‘knowledge’ and capital is ‘ICTS’. This is a new productive process. This reduces scarcity and transaction costs and the intermediation process has changed dramatically. Looks at how this might provide a new model for democracy.

While Pena-Lopez’s model is seductively simple and, therefore, a useful approximation of reality for the purposes of debate, I find it overly focused on the dramatic changes which technologies of IC normatively make, but which are not made so clearly or effectively in reality. It certainly reduces users / voters / citizens to objective elements in an informatic machine, modelling the notion of perfect information action that can be presumed of computers. Not only does this approach fail to grasp the complexity of ‘the human’ in the system, but it also presumes computers themselves are neutral simple actors. They are not. Further, by using comments like “All the information you want”; “there’s no lack of information”; “no barriers to access” – there is a serious problem here with the discourse of technology-centred hyperbole around e-government.

P-L looks to be on safer ground when he looks at the way information can be transformed and manipulated into new versions and narratives online – uses the example of nuclear power stations mapped in the USA from public, but otherwise difficult-to-access information. He argues that information can then become more useful, in forms more suited to citizens’ needs. He gives another example of citizens ‘voting’ for particular directions and possibilities in the development of a city’s infrastructure: not clear if the relatively small sampling would be representative. He also provides better examples from the more politicised aspect of e-democracy – the use of the media for many voices to emerge critiquing or supporting existing political positions (eg examples from US presidential campaign).
Overall, P-L presents a broad picture, very positive, about the way the internet, especially in its Web 2.0 form, has improved the way democracy functions due to the rapid and different interactions of people with information. It’s not without merit, but makes some big assumptions about the scale, effectiveness and value of e-government. He then does start to present some of the challenges – questions of digital divide, especially in terms of skills, knowledge.
A useful point – Digital Presence is formed at the intersection of informational literacy and media literacy, founded on technological literacy and then leading to, or enabling people to have e-awareness.
P-L’s creation of a ‘gap’ between the idealised and the muddy reality is a useful reminder of the significant journey ahead of us to implement effective e-democratic activities and institutions. His data show that, at least for Spain (and probably elsewhere), the lack of knowledge of what to do online and how to do it (both explicit and implicit knowledge) impedes most people and therefore means the Internet has become a place where elites colonise and lead debate, political activity and so on, just as they do in the offline world.
So, while P-L is probably overly optimistic in his analysis of the normative state of edemocracy, he is right on the mark with his analysis of the kinds of literacies needed and how they fit together.

Disclaimer: Live blogging

Networked learning, the Net Generation and Digital Natives
Symposium Organisers: Chris Jones, The Open University, United Kingdom
7th International Networked Learning Conference

5 papers (abstracts)

• Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth A van den Beemt, S Akkerman, P. Simons
• Learning and Living Technologies: A Longitudinal Study … Ruslan Ramanau, Anesa Hosein, Chris Jones
• Learning nests and local habitations: Locations for networked learning Chris Jones and Graham Healing
• Digital natives: Everyday life versus academic study Linda Corrin, Sue Bennett, Lori Lockyer
• Supporting the “Digital Natives”: what is the role of schools? Rebecca Eynon
• Born into the Digital Age in the South of Africa: the reconfiguration… Laura Czerniewicz, Cheryl Brown

Introduction (Jones) – key points – moral panics around young people; young people are agents of change, this is not happening ‘to’ them; there is no generational change – yes, there are changes, but not tied to a specific generation. Emphasises that all the papers to come will show there is no evidence for a ‘net generation’.

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Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth

Refers to impact of Oblinger and Prensky on Dutch educational thinking, focusing on interactive multimedia; calls for research to see if there is any actual change; is sceptical.
Emphasises that learning is social, works within social spaces. Distinguishes social (people driven) from cultural (content driven) uses of interactive media. Research presented here is on out of school use (informal learning) – key point is that students can switch and change what they do and find their own preferred technology.
Four activities – interacting (previously browsing); performing; interchanging; authoring. Linked to four categories – traditionalists; gamers; networkers; producers. Producers are seen as ‘authors’ and they might look most like the digital natives we might be seeking. Data shows this group perform all activities.

Very useful point in the discussion – that some people are very heavy users of just one or two applications; that they are not diverse users across technologies.

The emphasis on informal learning and the Internet is an important one; particularly like the way that the activities discovered / analysed are focused on more general tasks than specific software uses. That said, the words are still tied to quite specific expectations of meaning – e.g. performing = gaming; interacting = social software. It also implies that one can categorise and distinguish activities into separate boxes. For example – isn’t gaming a form of social software? Does browsing involve some aspects of content production? The approach here, while interesting, is a little reductive – does it reflect the attempt to form a clear quantitative answer from a very muddy field of research?

 

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Learning and Living Technologies
Looking at how 1st year university students use ICTS; across several kinds of universities, subjects etc; metehods involved surveys, interviews and cultural probes (“Day experience”). 2008-2010 timeline. Frequency of use of devices, ICTS , skills and attitude etc. Longitudinal surveying after initial descriptive survey.

Survey focuses on two items – use of ICTs for social / leisure vs use of ICTs for study. For some reason they limited the question to ‘on an average week day’. Students expected to use them about equally for these purposes. Reported higher than expected use; place-based universities and courses reported higher than expected as well, and using them higher than distance students. Men used them more highly than women. Critically, place-based students who were ‘not net gen’ were much closer to net get in terms of use (just slightly less); distance-based students not net gen were lower in their usage when compared to distance education net gen students.

Not surprisingly, a key outcome is that ‘net gen’ students see ICTs as both leisure and study tool – older see it as study primarily. Another outcome – students do not come expecting as much ICT use as they end up with (eg computing / Internet not seen as important at university as we might be led to believe?)

The survey is difficult to interpret because, I think, there is a significant simplification of the field of research so as to get a usable / doable survey. Yes, there seems to be some kind of a trend (and some interesting further questions to be explored, such as the way place (being on campus) might assist less skilled / interested ICT learners to become ‘net gen’ – type people). But, in the end, it doesn’t seem to me to get past simple ideas of ‘how much do you use it’, whereas net gen is more to do with the cultures of use, the particularity of skills and knowledge of ICTs as an object in themselves

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Sth African context – there is scepticism about the terminology, the discourse of net generation, especially when it is termed ‘digital native’. Background is also a very significant restructure and expansion of higher education since 1994; lack of resources.
Reports on a Sth African survey in 2009, very detailed at first, then refined for broader use. Results:
Experience with ICT use, not age was a key determinant. Children born into the net generation cannot be assumed to be a particular ‘way’. No homogeneity. The Digital native was an ‘elite’ user – 11% only of the cohort; they have 10+ years experience, learning from others and themselves about how to use. Also identifies the ‘digital stranger’ – lack of experience, lack of opportunity.
Distinguishes between computer use and mobile phone use – the latter is ubiquitous and, for poorer users, mobile = Internet access. Relatively cheap access that way, also lack of infrastructure. So research heavily focused on mobile devices. And in this context, poorer students tended to prioritise mobile phone use for study.
Now moves to theory to explore: Bourdieu
Fields (aims, goals, attempting to achieve); capitals (resources – economic, social, symbolic – eg what matters), cultural Social Capital – embodied, objectified, institutional (eg what you can do, what tools you have, and how your skills are recognised); Habitus – “being in the world” – shifting constructs of relationships between field and capital
Describes two cases – very interesting about the relationship of computing to mobile phones, but also the manner in which expectations, desires and plans for the future create openness to ‘being digital’.

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Digital Natives: Everyday Life v Academic Study
Starts with Douglas Adams on technologies: “things in world when born are ordinary”; “things invented between 15-35 are new and exciting”; “anything invented after you are 35 is against the order of things”.
Is critical of the underlying assumption that young people naturally adopt and use technology and can apply it to learning; an assumption stemming from Tapscott, Prenksy et al from late 1990s. Initial research was very localised, and focused on the characteristics of students’ internet use. From it came radical calls for change in higher education and thus the emergence of a moral panic around educational change. Around 2005, people started to focus more on skills and less on age as the marker of the ‘digital natives’; similarly, we started to get large-scale surveys.
Reports on a survey of 7 of 9 faculties at University of Wollongong, n=547. Focused on domestic, 1st year on-campus surveys. Focused only on 1980+ students. (n=470). Used term of access, not ownership. PDAs and GPS – very limited or no access. Survey looked at use of tech in ‘everyday life’ vs ‘academic study’. Fairly obvious findings – eg high frequency of mobiles and email for everyday life; high finding information / LMS use – all the ‘web 2.0’ stuff is very low level for academic life. Academic use is always lower than everyday life for things like blogging, video production. For chat and social networking, almost inverse relationship – high social, low academic.
Conclusion – variety of uses and approaches from students. There are no groupings: technologies are highly individuated. Surveys do not tell us the ‘story’ behind the data – eg mobile phone as replacement watch. Surveys are not accurate and reliable. Correlation co-efficient analysis shows very little reliability. Technology use varies widely from week to week.
Further research is looking at difference between self-directed academic study and directed academic study use of technologies.

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Learning Nests and Local Habitations
Where is networked learning located? It is not anywhere, anyplace, anytime: it is simply relocated and retermporalised. Uses notion of ‘edgeless’ university and classroom, drawn from Bradwell (2009) “edgeless city” – function remains; form alters. Local habitation from Nardi and O’Day – technologies adated to, changed within a local area; linked to Crook (1990s) – the learning nest of the college dorm room – merging of study and personal life. “institutional requirements” matter (so tech work links to assessment, lecture, classes etc).
Research used ‘day experience method’ (Riddle, 2007) – students had cams and had to film themselves based on prompts sent via SMS during the day. Followed up with focus groups at which some videos were shown to all. Shows videos – excellent method.
Clear evidence that students didn’t know that they were using technology as much as they were.

“There was no difference between the location of work and play” (eg student Facebooking in class)

“Applications open at once” – Life on screen Which tab is open = whether you are studying or working

Importance of connections to others – alone, alone but online connection, shared space with others in physical space.

Crook (1990s) claimed that on-screen would be distaction; this research at least identifies how people manage their distractions. So students are quite astute at controlling their technology uses when they need to avopid distraction – critically this shows agency

Extremely interesting results here – what it shows is that rich ethnographic or qualitative approaches are far more useful in understanding the diversity of experience, rather than generic surveys. The ideas about location are beautifully interwoven between where they are using computing, and how they are controlling and creating ‘virtual’ locations within the screen interface

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Supporting the digital natives

3-year project focusing on schools, more than universities – what is happening before uni. Critical of the populist net gen rhetoric. So ask, how do young people use it, and how can we give equal access and opportunity, especially supporting them in the gaining of skills.

Basic data – note a small dip in Internet use at ages 17-19 (from 95% to 90% or so); very high Internet access for children at home; and even in bedroom. Children negotiate with parents to get access to Internet – perhaps to claim it helps them study – and parents accept this.

Very close links between NON-Internet users (called “lapsed internet users” – nice!) and either getting access at school (and thus first doing it in school context) and then stopping because they don’t have access away from school (which explains, to some extent, the dip in 17-19 year olds).

having now heard so many excellent speakers tell us that net gen is not true, except as a cultural construct, I am wondering whether we are arguing with the past, about an idea which has been and one, or whether we are just failing to make headway against it? Have we any evidence as to the depth and breadth of the purchase that the net gen myth has gained in business? politics? etc? I have heard marketing people talking about “millenials” but these are understood primarily in terms of consumer habits,and tech use is more a premise around which consumer conclusions are drawn within thid discourse. So are we attacking a dead straw argument?

Eynon goes on to discuss the outcomes – how do ppl use the Internet? 8 behaviours, 5 informal learning; 3 formal learning. Eynon asks useful question “what does this use MEAN?” – but as yet no easy answer. The qualitiatve information demonstrates complexity of the motivations and specific meanings of use.

The only kind of informal learning use that school programs helped students to do something different was ‘creativity’ – all other uses could be explained around age, gender, friends, access at home. The formal uses for learning were, however, all correlated with school use / demands.

Normative conclusion – schools should be a more important place at which development of facility with, and motivation to use, technologies for ‘learning’ can occur. Importance of freedom and flexibility within school, because it feels more important and there is support for learning how to do something

Excellent paper which suggests that digital literacy needs to encompass all sorts of affective and motivational factors, as well as actual skills. Perhaps also we should be learning from this for unviersities to play their role in fostering creativity and expression using innovative online technologies

Discussion to come; will probably try and compose some kind of response / provocation / development around net generation in coming days.

Disclaimer: live blogging

Exploring sociotechnical theories of learning technology
7th International Networked Learning Conference
Symposium Organisers: Linda Creanor & Steve Walker Glasgow Caledonian University, The Open University, United Kingdom

4 papers (abstracts)

• Interpreting Complexity: a case for the sociotechnical interaction framework as an analytical lens for learning technology research Linda Creanor & Steve Walker
• Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change: Connectivism and Actor Network theory
  Frances Bell
• The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software Chris Bissell
• Social presence in online learning communities Karen Kear

Initial reaction: the very existence of this symposium, and its framing, suggests that people in learning technologies research and development may not, in their community of practice, have an explicit and reflexive discourse which understands technologies in society.

Interpreting Complexity
Claims that technological determinism is starting to dominate discussions of education and technology, especially under the guise of Web 2.0 and evangelism for the uses of these new technologies. Intrested in the new contexts of co-created content and knowledge, but have some questions about the emerging trendy theories (such as connectivism). Asks us to “make a problem of what technology is” – outlines the standard four – ANT, SCOT, SST, and social informatics and discusses some similar features (eg they are all relatively negative towards determism; they are attentive to context)

Is it the case that ANT is sometimes too narrowly defined as a theory of technology? While grounded in investigations of technologies, ANT does rather seem to be a broader theory of social structure; the ‘network’ and ‘node’ approach perhaps fits too easily into people’s desires to apply it to technology

The focus for this first paper is on social informatics: Sociotechnological interaction network (STIN) – uses Rob Kling (see the Rob Kling Center for SI). (claims STIN is a simple alternative to the ‘baggage’ of ANT – [hm! see my point above). Gives examples of how users (better termed social actors) interact with and shape the technology; how structures within which technology operates has similar influence. Conclusion? technology is not a thing but a network between people, rules, data, and so on.

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Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change

Paper is a story of Bell's attempts to critique Siemens' work) on connectivism; (see also Downes. Starts with context - growth in internet usage; informal v formal learning; social v individual learning; scheduled v responsive. Connectivism, to Bell, looks like ANT, somewhat. Siemens is not the same as Downes, but they are 'connected'.

One of the interesting things about connectivism is that it has become popular, and gained mindshare, principally because of its publication and development through the Internet; one wonders had it been located in more traditional print publishing (or even online, but scholarly journals) whether it would have activated its catchiness? And, synergy! - Bell just presents excellent evidence of how connectivism exists in the blogosphere, not scholarverse

Identifies a key weakness of Connectivism - it is normative, prescribing what is good - (networks) and what is bad (groups) - see Bell's animated visualisation of this normativity. Asks, interestingly - is connectivism itself a knowledge network (will it learn and develop?), perhaps it is more of a personal statement of theory (theory as aspect of practice), not a research agenda. Does point to the fact that connectivism might er-socialise theories of learning technologies.

Excellent critique and analysis; perhaps suggests that, while we need explicit theorisation of technologies as social processes, we cannot cleave to them too strongly or closely: remain agile or sceptical of any determining theory

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The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software

Begins by listing the many varieties of academic theoretical engagement with technologies and society (scientific knowledge, science, etc). Emphasises the deprecation in these theories of determinism; importance of co-creation of systems between humans and technology, though variations within that. Notes that some of these investigations tended to be too concerned with innovation, and not enough with use.

Gives examples of uses of technology in teaching - first, is a simple example of using spreadsheet to get students exploring digital telecommunications - spreadsheet "becomes a graphic device" -used in a way spreadsheet was not meant to be. Gives other examples of software used in T&L for 'odd' outcomes. Students turn these applications into something from which they can learn. "don't get ed tech people to write software - let students invent their own uses". Now switches to clever web 2.0 uses - e.g. Google translate. Emphasis too on students learning that technology is malleable and they must become 'tinkerers'.

Very cleverly demonstrates the fluid, malleable nature of digital artefacts and how they can be turned against their original purpose, or reused on other ways. Digital media is much more open to reinvention against the cultural expectations of its purpose: like a double game - culture+technology = 1 dominant approach which then, read through culture for alternative technology gives a different approach

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Social presence in online learning communities
Describes social presence as a concept - basic definition "the degree to which a person is perceived as 'real' in mediated communication" (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997) - history back into the 1970s (eg telephone research). Claims that online communication can be problematic when people don't seem to act and speak as if they are dealing with real people; it is negative, cold, potentially full of dangers unless there is 'social presence'. Cites Garrison and Anderson (2003) on social presence - social presence as 'supportive and encouraging' of students to communicate genuinely.

immediate concern - sure, this is a good working definition and has definitely dominated our thinking in educational technology for many years - at least since the 1990s - but it first of all assumes there is unmediated conversation (always tricky - language and presence are themselves mediators) and second that 'real' is a definable quality 'absent' from networked communications. The definition is more useful as a marker of where we started thinking about presence in the 1990s and perhaps where we have come from. It probably works well for students outside of the net, coming into online learning channels and spaces without little other online contact or activity.

Cites some of her own research into students' lack of knowledge or sensibility of 'being with other people' when doing online discussion. Also emphasises the value of real-time interaction. (this is research from students using First Class - [dated?]).

Asks is social presence a technical or a social phenomenon. Looks at technical features – follows the fairly simplistic media richness theory to claim that (eg) discussion boards are not rich enough to generate social presence. Suggests profiles, IM, etc might be ‘better’ for social presence – these technologies might ‘help’. [Paper doesn't say when, what cohort, what was the cultural relationship with face to face learning - were they imagining online learning as a 'deficit'?']

The paper does present some challenges for me: I wonder if it misses the fact that the lack of social presence in online learning might have a lot more to do with the fact that learning is not something in which it is easy to have social presence, even in a classroom! In other words, the question of ‘presence’ has been assumed; in fact, presence might be something which is found more easily in some social settings than in others. ‘Education’ might not be a very easy place for presence? But, also got a key point from this paper – real-time interaction is more significant than we might think for the affective and sense-making elements of presence. Very useful.

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Discussion
Discussion came and went; battery died. Brief summary? Lots of positive feedback to panellists – comments re institutionalisation of technologies; value of social thinking for educational designers.

Realising our Broadband Future
Disclaimer: live-blogging

Smarr, Conroy, Thomas, Tucker and McDonald

Larry Smarr, CITIT
NBN best example of inventing in the future of the country; uses the standard rhetoric: “level playing field”, “global environment”, “citizens competing”; like one of the speakers yesterday (Cole) compares Australia and USA with Australia better. “Have early working prototypes” of the applications; it will take “a lot of working through” to get to the next level. “We are at the end of a long era, the era of copper”. This future-proofs the network. Points to the role AARNET might play, because AARNET is working at 100 x the speed of the NBN.

Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE
Conroy starts with the selling job. Characterises the critics as those who think we already have broadband, or that the market should just sort it out. Compares them to people who criticised the introduction and expansion electricity networks by government in the 19th and 20th century. Public role of government is to build a platform, onto which the market then builds applications. Refers back to the conference: what day 1 shows is that the future of high-speed broadband is not just downloading movies faster. It’s about education, health and so on. Picks up on the economic benefits; the community benefits etc.

Key message: investing in broadband is about investing in health, education, regional centres, energy efficiency and so on. It will be “Australia’s first national open-access wholesale only..network”. “we remain confident it will work on a commercial basis”. Critics are wrong for just not seeing the vast array of flow-on social and economic benefits. The return on the wholesale network will be more like a utility return, NOT like that of a vertically integrated market. Case is “compelling” and “encompassing” -[new word! encompassing!]. It is very strongly linked to globalisation and international competition, according to Conroy. (Which then is referenced to the 16th location, and 3rd most expensive data from OECD).

“Despite the myth, high-speed broadband is not accessible to all Australians”. Cites telstra exec – 50%+ cannot get 12 Mbs in Australia. Also emphasises the fact that the Internet generates major advantages for regional areas – and yet that is precisely the area of Australia least well-served by current infrastructure (backs up this argument by discussing how Tasmania is poorly served).

Abigail Thomas, ABC
“What difference will the NBN make in our everyday lives?” she asks. “What will ordinary people be doing? How will they get their information? How will they entertain themselves?”. New media bring something new, but build on past media. Uses the analogy of filmmaking – started out as ‘film a performance on a stage’ (new+old); then became something different (new+new). Explores these ‘new things’ via some examples and innovations in new media, showing how media will be very important for the NBN but not media as we know it. Essentially, the presentation makes clear that media will drive NBN takeup but not just movie and TV watching / downloading – more interactive experiences such as multi-story line TV (‘cubic’ TV), multimedia-style presentations of historical documentary (for school research) AND, more importantly, has democratising upload possibilities far in advance of what we see just emerging now. The emphasis here is on user control – eg non-linear, or self-created, or game-style choice oriented, or collaborative online.

Tucker and McDonald
Marketing of homeloans discussion.

Interesting history of Aussie Homeloans interaction with new media for marketing – showing from 1995 through to now. 2002 – company had bad brochureware website (and didn’t even own domain name!) “but it didn’t matter”. 2007 – “awakening” at Aussie to realise how significant the networked digital environment might be. They realised 28% of business coming from online; but only 18% actually completed the website process. So had to have a digital strategy.

Commentary

There’s now a link between the NBN and new (different) ways of working. earlier rhetoric around broadband was similar, but I think there has been a shift now to emphasising that we can’t know what happens next, but that we must change. Climate change is probably the main difference now between this rhetoric and early 2000s

Conroy’s speech is a very finely tuned pitch, not to the audience (one imagines they are already convinced), but to ‘the people’, via the media who will no doubt report it. It identified the criticisms which are most likely to be launched and then answers them. It also makes two significant interventions. First, it emphasises that the return on investment for NBN is utility / wholesale business, and NOT comparable to a retail / vertically inttegrated company (such as telstra). This move implies that there will be cost savings in the lower profits to be made, in the long run. The second intervention, which is apparent yesterday also, is to de-couple the NBN from specific applications and services. Just as the NBN will be a layer-2, non-service foundation, on which the market builds competing and specific applications, so too, the argument FOR the NBN relies now on the claim that the specific applications (health, business, education etc) will come from the market, because of the level-playing field of the wholesale network. This logic is astute, if a little vague, because it completely undercuts the ‘but exactly what is it for?’ counter-arguments. These arguments are still interesting, but they are ruled out of the specific debate about the NBN; the arguments are now emphasising the broader, infrastructural issues.

Thomas, from ABC, presents a sophisticated argument through simple narratives – stories of imaginary characters. Is this what is missing? There has been insufficient imagining of the future from the perspective of the everyday user – too much ‘gee whizzery’ and talk of economics and nation building. Does the argument for NBN need to fill the gap between the political spinspeak and the everyday desires of the audience? How can we create the ‘audience’ for the NBN – that is, the people who invest in it desires and dreams and seek pleasure through their sense of ‘being’ this audience regardless of what they actually?

Contrasting NBN arguments from technologists vs those of Thomas’ media oriented presentation: people are already very familiar with the idea of remote, electronic entertainment and will readily accept and explore new versions and indeed contribute to their creation. however, there is still a strong ‘sense of presence’ around things like health and education (especially children’s education) which makes it a lot harder to convince individuals of the benefits of telepresence in these spheres, even though people happily involve themselves in online transactions like banking. I would argue that media will be the uptake driver for broadband – but, as Thomas says – just not media as we know it

Big reality check: Aussie Home Loans example shows that business (a large business, with a lot of online business – 28%) didn’t realise until 2007 (!!) that online marketing and selling was critical to its business and that old-style websites didn’t work and that the whole strategy needed to change. Even in a business that is entrepreneurial, digital marketing took a while to take off.