SocialTech

Young People and Social Networking Services

I'm delighted to announce that the Young People and Social Networking Services report that I have been working on for Childnet International, with the generous support of Becta, is now available from Childnet's digital literacy and citizenship site, Digizen.

It's a pretty comprehensive report, with the whole shebang available for download under a Creative Commons License on site, or from here:

Download fullReport.pdf

and weighing in at 37 pages. The online version breaks the sections up for your viewing pleasure - so you can just dip in to the sections which are of interest or use to you. The report was written from a UK schools and Further Education perspective, although much of the information will be useful to people working outside of these two contexts.

It isn't a completely introductory level document, but should be useful and informative for people who have a responsibility care towards children and young people - including governors, principals and senior management teams, Safeguarding boards and local authorities - people who are making decisions concerning  educational provision and resourcing.  It will also be very handy for anyone working within the sector and wanting to use internet based services with young people.

What's in the pack?

What are Social Networking Services? looks at where we are in terms of definitions, and  splits services up into six main categories: Profile-based services (eg Bebo, Facebook, MySpace); Content-focused services (eg Flickr, YouTube); White-label networks (although I could have written a book about these); Multi-User Virtual Environments (although some of these aren't necessarily social networks - particularly those designed for younger children); Mobile services; and Microblogging/Presence update services (Social Search engines & Lifestream aps also get a mention as adjunct services). The version that's on the site is the short one. you can download the 9 page PDF on site or from here:

Download social-networking-overview.pdf

Evaluating Social Networking Services comes in two parts: an evaluation chart which has an online version and an easier-for-me-to-read downloadable version:

Download Sns.pdf

That's designed to be printed off big (well, A3). The services which were kind enough to take part are used as examples to help people make their own evaluations of services. Big thanks to everyone at Bebo, Facebook, Yahoo!, MySpace, Ning, Taking It Global and Google who pitched in and gave permissions. There is also a checklist guide that accompanies the chart, designed to walk you through what to look out for when evaluating services for use with young people. This covers a lot of things, including profile privacy, moderation, customisation, security and access issues, data management tools, and interoperability.

Benefits & Opportunities is a section looking at the potential positives for young people  and organisations of using social networking services.

Barriers & Risks looks some of the issues preventing educators from exploring social networking services and some of the e-safety issues involved.

The Ideas and Examples returns to the different kinds of social networking services outlined in the first section and looks at what educators in the UK and around the world are doing. I'd like to continue to develop and expand this section so all  suggestions are welcome - and of course you can always enter your fantastic project for this years International Edublog Awards :)

So that's it! Except to again thank the fantastic advisory board who worked on the project, keeping an eye on how the research was developing and what the final report looked like.

   

 

Signal vs Noise

Picture taken from Thomas Vander Wal's presentation, Granular Social Networks.

Thomas Vander Wal recently posted a great short presentation, Granular Social Networks. In it he tracks the complexity of relationships within and across networks, making interesting and important points about the overlapping of interests and following behaviours between connections. The only thing that I'd be keen to stress a little more would be the relatively haphazard relationship most followers necessarily have within social networking service relationships. While most of us have very few connections that we engage with across the entire range of their interests, activity and expertise (stalkers, the love lorn and private detectives aside). Similarly, even amongst those connections that we have an identifiable interest in - for example, I'm interested in your music consumption and recommendations - it's not usual to keep track of every single recommendation or playlist. There are just too many other things going on. So to a certain extent I don't believe that greater control - i.e. finer granularity within network channels - is the answer ( & you can check out my post on in service granularity here for further elaboration). While intellegent and sensitive service design, along with user digital literacy are important, a philosophical acceptance of serendipity and a kindly understanding of the human limitations for data absorption are also useful.  In the words of a Jaiku conversation I had with Terry Madley earlier today: "or maybe, only learn not to mind so much about the inevitable periods of disconnection. It's kind of good to not think about the info streams as if they were linear, let alone might constitute any kind of linear narrative. Maybe this is one of the reasons why lifestreaming is popular - the illusion that if you could somehow keep track of everything, there'd be a coherent story at the end of the rss rainbow."

The other issue that Thomas touches on is another of my current bug bears - signal v noise. I wanted to post here primarily to put on the (blog) record that both signal and noise are entirely subjective concepts. They aren't even stable.  What's noise to me on Tuesday morning might be be signal from heaven on Wednesday evening - when I might desperately be in need of an inspirational line of poetry, or the reassurance that all is well in someone's household, or a link to a resource or an idea that helps me think through a presentation I'm writing. The signal vs noise distinction often implies a judgement call. The reference Thomas makes is entirely free from this implication -in fact his presentation couches the distinction as personal definitions. I'm just keen to draw attention to the fact that what is signal and what is noise doesn't consist of objective content that we can necessarily pre-determine.

Facebook: Neo-con social experiment?

The Guardian ran Tom Hodgkinson blistering critique of Facebook a couple of days ago. While I'm not in the business of defending any particular social networking site – I’m a platform neutral kind of gal - I do however see the value in social networking sites and I am interested in exploring their potential for social participation and for formal and informal education.

I’m going to ignore my lack of surprise that old media fosters and promotes attacks on new media, since what I’m interested in here isn’t the ongoing bun fight between sections of both, but in addressing some of the digital literacy and social participation issues that Hodgkinson's rant raises.

Some of the arguments are Facebook specific, many spill over to address social networking services and those who use them in general. Since the figures are pretty staggering - and aren't showing signs of slowing down, it may be more useful to look at how we can move the arguments and services forward rather than just advising people to opt out, or even worse, start banning stuff.

1. Facebook as a neo-con libetarian social experiment.

One of the main arguments is about association: because Facebook is bankrolled and directed by the Machiavellian neo-con Pay-Pal guy Peter Thiel, and others who can be regarded as ideologically dubious, Facebook membership supports a particular ideology and puts money in to the pocket of those who believe in it. Ownership and profit is a dilemma that most people have to face daily and isn't unfortunately restricted to a single social networking site. If I watch the Simpsons (which I do), however hilariously subversive it might be, I've got to accept I'm supporting the Fox Network and helping the people who make money out of the network make some more money.

Technology is not neutral. Services and products rarely get to be  big simply because they are really loveable/offer the best tool set. Tech development is funded for political/ideological ends and motives. Tech is generally designed to serve some non-neutral purpose. Technologies have social and political impacts. And in general, people who are funding stuff are not doing it just for a love of humanity. This doesn't mean that tech can't be used in subversive or in positive ways, just that non of us are operating in an ideologically vacuum. 

 

2. Technology alienates rather than connects.

Hodgekinson argues that Social Networking Services provide the spectacle of community, connection and collaboration whilst actually robbing humans of meaningful, real interactions. Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of people I know who have fallen in love on line, many of whom have gone on to have relationships where they do meet up and get married. Is their online interaction with each other somehow fake? No, of course it isn’t. Hooking up with and getting to know someone online isn’t a shoddy substitute for picking someone up in a bar on a Friday night. It’s just a different type of interaction. Relying on some notion of the real that involves only three dimensional interaction not only dismisses the history and role of information communication technologies (do love letters not count? Does finding our about a war not really mean anything if it’s from the television?), it ignores the fact that the internet and being online isn’t a separate space from 'real world interactions' – its just a different one. My son often meets up with his friends in virtual worlds and on gaming sites. Not only is he continuing and developing his existing friendships, he’s using and developing his social and literacy skills. Maybe not in ways that Hodgkinson appreciates, but certainly in ways which will help him get a job and manage the disperate groups that are typical of friend and family networks within industrial societies.

A part of this argument includes Hodgekinson’s problem with people constructing overly flattering artificial representations of themselves. Again, he hasn’t looked at as many profiles as I have because a lot of them could do with advice in how not to represent yourself to the world. Presenting a more flattering picture of yourself to people you haven't previously met doesn't make you a lier, it makes you normal.

3. Friendship is a universal, unwavering category

Hodgekinson seems to only have one definition for the word friend. ‘(insert social networking service) friends’ – are not necessarily your real friends (unless that’s how you work your connections). They are more often than not a badly thought out disperate set of connections, made up of people you really do know and like, people you went to work or were in formal education with, family members and complete strangers. 

4. Facebook as an all encompacing data-leech monster

Actually this would make a great horror movie. Not about Facebook of course - any of the named services would sue. But just some generic social networking site. If any South Korean film producers are reading this – I’m up for scripting. We could launch a brand off the back of it - it would be like Death Cigarettes all over again. Hodgekinson's line “The US defense department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier” is going in there. 

People should, of course, think about what data they submit to services. Read the privacy policy and the User Service Agreement. You don’t have to be a passive consumer of services. If your data is going to be sold - and most services make money through selling or renting data and/or through advertising - don't fill in data you don't mind being sold on to someone. If you really object to the terms and conditions, look for another service, or join the service and launch a protest.

5. “Facebook is profoundly uncreative”

Social Networking Services and social media tools provide platforms across which users create and deploy their own selection of content. Hodgekinson argues that they aren't providing services of any real value, since users are the ones doing all the hard work. You may as well argue that swimming baths and playgrounds shouldn’t be funded. Does the whole web 2.0 revolution boil down to virtual republics of idiots who donate their labour and data not only for free but in order to be exploited? My guess is that people are pretty much the same offline as they are online, in terms of their interests, intelligence levels and willingness to be exploited. There's no doubt that the internet can be used to support creativity, play, communication, and community building, and offers unprecedented opportunities for social participation and collaboration. Throwing your hands up in horror and going off to plant seeds in your back yard is one way of responding to services and practices you don't like. Or you could actually try doing something about them.

Childnet's Digizen Cyberbullying Competition for 14-19 year olds

We talked a lot last year about how we'd like to run a competition showcasing how young people were using social software to engage with local and global communities, and develop their own voices online. The Edublog Awards are run as a voluntary effort and we just weren't confident that we could expand the awards in terms of the category requests we were getting (you'll notice that we run to 20 categories this year - double the number we've previously had), and in terms of providing young people with a really high quality awards programme.

I've been fortunate to work with charity Childnet International this year - one of the worlds leading e-safety organisations, whose mission is to work in partnership with others around the world to help make the internet a great and safe place for children. Childnet provide a wide range of high quality resources covering topics including blogging, mobile phones, data protection, file sharing, aimed at young people, parents, carers, and schools. Most recently I've been working with them on their Digizen site - an amazing media literacy project which covers cyberbullying issues, and advice on using social networking services in education.

Childnet have a long history of running internationally based young peoples competitions which focus on the responsible use of technologies, and in supporting young people to models great practice. The Edublog Awards are delighted to be promoting Childnet's brand new Digizen competition (we've included the competition under category 19) and we hope that you will support it as well, by spreading the word and by encouraging young people to enter - or even supporting the production of entries in your school councils, or in your subject areas - citizenship, drama, English or IT for example.

The competition is open to young people between the ages of 14 and 19 who are in formal education, or who are being home schooled. There are main two criteria for entries:

1. Entries should address some aspect of cyberbullying.

This could be around a specific type of cyberbullying, or a particular debate or issue to do with cyberbullying. Any format or approach is allowed - it could be a videoed discussion, a comic about a students experience or views, a podcast of a radio show, reviews of resources. The entries should be targeted at their peers or at younger children. They don't need to be huge, overly complex or ultra slick - they do need to be thoughtful, interesting and engaging. One example of a potential entry could be a short discussion of why mobile phones might be banned in response to cyberbullying incidence in school, and whether or not this might be effective. A student could record this on their mobile and upload it to a video hosting site, inviting other students to leave their comments.

You can get more ideas about the range of issues cyberbullying touches on over at the Digizen site.

2. They must be online

Entries can be in the form of websites, blogs, social network site profiles or groups, and can be audio, visual or text based. Once entries have been posted online you can submit your students work here. Find out more information about the competition terms and conditions over at the Digizen site.

We'll be updating on the competition at the awards in December (the Digizen competition doesn't close for entries until January 31 2008) - and we hope to be able to highlight some of the examples of the entries to date.

Shout out for social networks in education

As some of you know I’m currently working on a project for Childnet International that looks at young people’s use of technology, specifically social network services (SNS).  One of the strands of this work is designed to help educators and carers in making informed decisions about using social network sites. The work will provide an introduction to what are new kinds of sites and practices for many people, outline potential risks and things to keep a look out for, and provide strategies to address these.

The project aims to

•    Look at how children and young people can use the internet safely to change the world for the better;
•    Recognise the huge positive potential young people have and the vital role they have to play in shaping the world; and
•    Celebrates the unprecedented opportunities that web 2.0 affords children and young people - to develop a voice, to collaborate, to organise, to debate, to create, to share, to learn, to develop essential skills, and above all - to participate. 

I’m putting a call out for help with two specific sections of the work:

1.    Examples of SNS currently being used to support education both big and small projects – from setting up your own social network platform to examples of students using flicker to organise a presentation.

2.    Ideas for using SNS to support education – perhaps your school blocks a lot of social network sites but you have some great ideas for how you would like to see students making the most out of these kinds of sites.

You can send your gems over to sns4ed@gmail.com
Please get them to me before the end of August!

Questions (please do add any others to the comments!)

What do you mean by social networking services Josie?

Part of the work of the project will be in addressing the thorny issue of definition. There’s a reasonable indicative list of social network sites over at wikipedia

As well as services like MySpace and Bebo, my definition would include all of those other services that support users to create content (including commentary and criticism) within a networked environment.  & Yes, I am counting virtual worlds and multi-user gaming sites. I’d also throw in social book marking services (like del.icio.us), microblogging services (like Twitter and Jaiku), and of course I’m interested in multimedia sites like Flickr, YouTube and other services that utilise mobile phone functionality.

I’m not focusing on freestanding blogs or wikis – not because these aren’t important, or don't allow people to create networks – but because of the scope of this project and also because I already run the Edublog awards which does a lot to recognise stuff going on using those tools. So if you have a great example of practice, why not enter this years awards?

What age range are you looking at?

I’m focusing on UK school aged children, that is, 11 – 16 year olds. However, if you’ve got a great example of practice with older or younger learners – please do send it in!

Are you only interested in UK based examples?

The work is primarily addressing UK education issues, but I’m happy to take examples and ideas from anywhere!

What will you do with my fantastic contribution?

Some of the entries will be featured on the website. I’ll release all of the ideas and examples as a separate CC licensed download to benefit all of us. I’ll be giving link credit to every contributor who wants it – so please remember to include your name and the site you’d like to link to.

I don’t have any ideas or examples :( What can I do to help?

Let people know about this call! Pass on the word! Huge thanks!

And the New Media winners are...

The New Statesman New Media Awards took place last night - congratulations to all the winners! As I've already said to one of the finalists, the quality of the shortlist was so high that this really was an occasion where any of them could have gone home with the tiara. Do check out the finalist list for some amazing, world-changing work.

Inspired? Why not head over to the fledgling New Media Open Innovation Exchange (you'll need a Facebook ID) - a group modeled on the Open Innovation Exchange's Open Source bid approach, focusing on using new media for social benefit and building bridges across education, arts, media, law, science and technology, politics and policy.

Euro-Machinima

Photo: PK Berlin 25 Friedrich Kirschner by Watz

Leicester is a pretty cool town. Not only does it boast the best indian food available in the UK, it also recently hosted the first European conference about women and social media, and is now gearing up for the first European Machinima Fest.

Machinima is a rapidly maturing field - film making using gaming and MUVE software. Press release after the jump, sign up for further details here.

Women, Blogging & Business

I spent a great day on Friday at the Women, Blogging & Business conference - the first European event to focus on women and social media. The final programme offered a great line up, and this is the first conference I've been to since the early 90s that had an all women speaking cast, and certainly the first tech conference I've ever been to where the women clearly out numbered the male delegates.

It was a fantastic day. The first keynote was Meg Pickard (Head of Communities and User Experience for Guardian Unlimited) who delivered a great analysis of the web 2.0 transformation of the consumption, interaction, curation and creation of content.

Next up was Eileen Brown, Microsoft Technology Evangelist, who gave us the low down on the strategic use of employee blogging within Microsoft and outlined the impact it has had on humanising the public perception of the company, as well as on influencing policy and practice at Microsoft itself.

Jory des Jardins,  Media Consultant & Co-founder of BlogHer wrapped up the keynotes with an overview of women bloggers as producers and consumers.

Technorati here, Flickr here.

Open Source Cinema

The 'sphere has been humming recently to chatter surrounding open source cinema: The Basement Tapes Project, Stray Cinema, The Digital Tipping Point, Swarm of Angels and The Open Road Trip being amongst the most buzzed about examples.

I'm very interested in film and loving the democratisation of production and distribution that YouTube and the other commercial web 2.0 services  have supported. Open source cinema is looking to push this a little further and can be characterised by one or (usually) more of the following criteria:

• Collaborative writing, editing and decision making processes
• The use of OS software such as CinePaint and Blender to produce films
• The release of footage or films under free content licenses or under less liberal licenses that encourage sharing, remixing and reusing (for example, creative commons licensing)

 

Creative Commons UK is currently running Mix & Mash, a remix film competition, sponsored by Google UK, the Arts Council, and Avid. Submissions are being accepted now until the very rapidly approaching 10th of March, so if you do want toenter you'll have to get your mix on pretty darn quick. The four best entries win professional film editing software and hardware (not mention of how open source the bundle might be, my guess is, not).

"Remixing digital content is the basis for this competition. Digital pictures, sound or films licensed through Creative Commons and Public Domain material need to be used. Entrants can use their creativity to remix the work of others with their own. The result will be a collage of original and re-used material.

Submissions can be made under the theme: Britannia Rules / Britannia Sucks – No work should be longer than three minutes."

YouNiversity in the open

Henry Jenkins has posted his recent article From YouTube to YouNiversity over at his own blog, which is good news because the Chronicle of Higher Education (where the piece was previously only available from online) is walled off to non subscribers. I previously received the whole text via an unauthorised email list posting - so it's nice to have it in a form I can pass on.   

The article discusses the shape and impact of networked culture, and looks at how its recognition could be used to transform academic design and organisation - zoning in on Media Studies.

Christopher Sessums has also been focusing on this theme a lot recently, try checking out Read, Write, Mix, Rip, and… Burn, Baby, Burn: Notes on How Social Media Affects Conventional Teaching and Learning Practices and The Future Begins Now: School 2.0 Manifesto

Pictures of children online

Image: 'Beehive Head' by Josie Fraser

Via D’Arcy, who has been ‘Deflickring’ (resetting permissions to friends and family-only access) his account of his son’s pictures in response to Flickr You from Cole Camplese.

The post draws attention to a bunch of issues and decisions to be made about putting pictures of our kids online. As a parent, and also as someone who has the opportunity to talk to young people in the context of work about there own web practices and strategies for a great and safe experience of tech, the implications and impacts of posting children’s pictures publicly is something I’ve had to think about. So Coles post offers a neat starting point for looking at some of the strands.

Most information tech professionals have, by definition, a reasonably easy to find online presence – their non-anonymous blogging, networks, and service use are typically part of their professional as well as off-duty activities. We’re also used to belonging to communities of people we mostly like, who we perhaps know exclusively or primarily online. So it may seem like an obvious extension of that to post up pictures of our families, to model our everyday sense of our experience of ourselves online. There are probably a lot of parents who just don’t think about the implications of the whole world being able to check out their children’s pictures. So what are the issues?

Firstly, there’s thorny the issue of consent. Children aren’t recognised as being able to give conformed consent about a lot of things. If your child’s school, for instance, wanted to use a picture on their website, they would have to seek parental consent. Here are Surrey County Councils guidelines for using images of children. Some of these guidelines address legal issues and responsibilities; some additionally address equality and e-safety issues.

There are also ethical, or just straightforwardly thoughtful, considerations. My mum has a particularly embarrassing picture of me that haunted the whole of my childhood. As an adult, I’m ok with it (no, really). Thankfully my mum was mostly sensitive about my particular loathing of this picture and didn’t get it out at every available opportunity – if she’d have put it online I can imagine I would have been mortified. Maybe not at the time she put it up, but certainly a few years down the line, and especially if anyone from my school had come across it.

There's also the issue of digital presence. Is it up to us to contribute to our children’s digital presence? Would you have liked your parents contributing to what searches of you might return? As Scott comments on Flickr You:

“…they have no say in the matter, and yet you are making choices about their identity online, which impacts their identity far into the future. I think the issue of safety is real, but I also think you have an obligation to allow your children (and your wife) to create their own sense of self.”

The other obvious issues are internet related child abuse and bullying. I’m very much against a moral-panic approach to using technology, and I also think it’s very important that we evaluate and regard risks appropriately. While the vast majority of child abuse takes place entirely offline, and is typically perpetrated by the victims family or immediate circle, that’s also no reason to dismiss the chances of a child or young person we know coming into contact with someone who could harm them. We take steps to educate them about a range of strategies they can use to look out for themselves in their offline and online dealings. In the same way, we need to model good practice ourselves. I’d encourage my son not to put inappropriate pictures of himself online, including ones that could come back to haunt him, and to never put pictures of his friends online without express permission. I don’t want him posting and individual pictures that identify him by his name and by specific everyday locations, and I’d ask him to consider the information that someone could put together from the range of resources he puts out there, in the same way I’d ask him not to give his home address to complete strangers.

Education for a digital generation

Image: 'Franci plays maze' by Nico Cavallotto

Demos, the UK thinktank 'for everyday democracy', released Their Space: Education for a digital generation, written by Hannah Green and Celia Hannon on January the 11th, and available as a free CC licensed download. For the edtechs amongst you it offers a good overview to the national policy level approach the UK is increasingly adopting. For the non-digital, it provides an introduction of some the key ideas currently informing calls for educational reform.   

The increasing recognition and consensus that digital literacy is something that needs to be mainstreamed is obviously a welcome one. The authors take a practical, moral-panic defusing approach to the reality of new technologies and practices, focusing on participation and economic arguments.

The brief glossary  features more commercial services (ie Facebook) than it does tools (eg blogs) and some of the entries are debatable.

Chapter two, Myths and misconceptions, is handy, and rehearses a few discussions that will be familiar to people working in education and trying to promote a positive view of young peoples use of technology.

Chapter 5, The world has changed so why haven't we? is a bit of a mish-mash. It aims to "lay out a set of opportunities and challenges for the government and for school leaders and their staff", most of which are familiar and aren't particularly well resolved here - informed leadership, better staff development, a more relevant and integrated approach to ICT as a subject, access for disadvantaged learners, parental involvement, a re-evaluation of the assessment system, greater learner involvement (dynamic (or deep) personalisation, as I've characterised it).

Personal Learning Environments get a mention in the guise of the 'Creative Portfolio'. A little weirdly, the authors final two "opportunities and challenges" are classroom wikis and Del.icio.us. I've got nothing against either tool or site, and I know that loads of educational professionals have found effective uses for wikis, other collaborative tools, and social bookmarking sites. It seems incongruous to be promoting particular services at policy level in the context of a document which has clearly articulates the fast moving state of play. 

EdTech activism

The recent Florida Educational Technology Conference blogger meetup seems to have stirred up some hi-octane interest in edublog lobbying to  “make education and read/write technology a social/economic priority”, and for working towards the political mainstreaming of educational transformation which embeds new social technologies and practices (software, networks, media production and sharing).

Christopher Sessums outlines the US edubloggers embryonic manifesto in ‘Why the future needs us: educational reform, collaboration and social action”, and co-conspirator Will Richardson pitches in with A Call to…?

Focusing on the next US election is an interesting strategy, and one that might well provide some useful models and lessons for other countries. I’m interested in what a US-wide organization is going to look and work like, how it might influence and collaborate with other emerging social and educational tech associations, and very much looking forward to hearing more info on the planned June Stateside edubloggercon.

A whole bunch has happened since last June, when we held the UK’s first edublogger conference. There will be a formal announcement shortly about the new grass-roots, independent UK organization, Future Learning Online (FLO) which has emerged from a series of on and offline events, meetups, and conversations taking place over the past few years between educational bloggers, technologists, developers, IT support staff, librarians, consultants, researchers, teachers, post-grad students, trainers and many other people who don’t fit easily into these, or any single, role. We’ll be holding our next annual conference in June as well - so it’s shaping up to be an interesting summer. 

Guardian profiles the 2006 Edublog Awards

Ace tech reporter Steve O'Hear contacted me about covering the Edublog Awards for the Guardian this year, and the resulting article, The best of the blogs appeared today.

A lot of the interview, as usual, didn't make it to the final cut - but luckily for me I blog! So here are the offcuts for anyone else interested in recycling content.

What is the aim of the edublogger awards?

There are three main aims behind the awards:

1. They provide an opportunity for an international community who are interested and involved in scholarly and education based blogging a chance to come together as a community, have fun, discover new ways of using blogging to support learning, and highlight the wealth of fantastic work going on around the world.

2. They provide an amazing resource for those involved in or thinking about using social software and user generated content sites to support education communities of all kinds. They also demonstrate the diverse use to which blogs, wikis, pod casts etc can be put to our nominees showcase contributions from infant school pupils to Professors, and everything in between.

3. As a community of education professionals who understand the use of new technologies, we are using the awards to demonstrate that new technologies can be used in positive, powerful, safe and transformative ways. We want to argue against the moral panic that threatens the innovative and creative uses of technologies, most recently apparent in the US’s DOPA proposals. The message we’re sending out is pretty clear in that regard – digital literacy and social participation, for our students, staff and institutions, is the way to address potential dangers – not banning access to tools that are perceived as potentially threatening.

Who organised / runs the awards?

I’ve convened the awards for the last two years, taking over from Incorporated Subversion’s James Farmer, an Australian-based Online Education and Training/Social Software guru, who runs edublogs.org – a free blog service for education workers. I also received invaluable Awards ceremony assistance from Jeff Lebow (US) and Dave Cormier (Canada) from the Worldbridges webcasting initiative.

What do you make of the winners, any personal highlights?

Time moves fast on the internet, and it’s interesting that most of this years winners can be characterized as second generation edubloggers – bloggers who have been inspired and guided by the pioneers of educational blogging – for example Stephen Downes, Anne Davis, and Will Richardson, (although edublogging luminaries Barbara Ganley and David Warlick did both make it to the finals). Along with so many new faces it was also great to see edublogs and projects from so many different countries being put forward.

Christopher D. Sessums, Director of the Office of Distance Education for the College of Education at the University of Florida, won best Individual Blog this year, and I’m a big fan of his work – he was one of the most popular winners we’ve had to date.

The Polar Science 2006 teams work is pretty exemplary – they won best Group Blog for their Polar Science collaborative learning environment which allows teachers and students, (aged 8-18), to take part first-hand in the research of Dr. Shane Kanatous and his “Ice Team” in Antarctica, and Canadian biophysicist, Dr. Thomas Hawke and his “Lab Team” in Toronto, Canada.

I also awarded a conveners prize this year – the Edublog Star Award, to a blog that ran in April and May this year to document the short-lived adventures of a duck and her egg at a US school, A Duck with a Blog. I love how the school community has used the technology to create a focused resource, sharing pictures, writing and photographs – it’s a really wonderful example of how blogs can be mobilized to facilitate and extend learning communities and opportunities. And it isn’t precious or time consuming – the blog was just used for a few weeks, for a specific purpose, which it serves brilliantly.

How do you think edublogging has progressed since last year (or the early years)?

Edublogging has come a long way! Both tools and practices have proliferated, and there has been an explosion of practice at individual, group and institutional level. Educators are increasingly seeing the benefits of using the whole range of new media – blogs, audio and video files, web feeds, wikis and social networking sites – tools which are easier than ever to use.

I think educators could do with a lot more support in terms of face to face training and in-house resources – the edublogging community have been extremely busy providing a wealth of support material and advice, but it’s not necessarily easy for people new to the technologies to track down the examples and information they need.

I’ve been working hard this year to lobby for the inclusion of social software training in Initial Teacher Training, in Continuous Professional Development and for education leaders and managers. It’s vital that our learners are properly supported in developing their skills – most of them use social networking sites, games, instant messaging, and mobile phones and regard these as basic tools. We need to ensure that we are supporting them to use them creatively, safely and responsibly.

Has UK edublogging stalled? If so, why is that?

UK edublogging hasn’t stalled at all – it’s growing from strength to strength. That it is doing so however has be largely dependent on the commitment, passion and energy of individual teachers, researchers, librarians and educational professionals, who are able to see how to take advantage of distributed networks to create formal and informal learning opportunities.

There are increasingly examples of whole institutional use of social software, the campus wide implementation of Elgg at the University of Brighton is a great illustration of cutting-edge practice happening in UK education.

We still have a level of mistrust and misunderstanding of new technologies that has resulted in institutions and regional providers blocking access to sites that they consider to have no educational value. I’m unconvinced that this actually prevents anyone except for teaching staff – who are precisely the ones who need to know how these sites work and what their potential is – from visiting them.

Placeblogger

 
Center for Citizen Media luminary and Lisa Williams launched Placeblogger on January 1st, an OPLM directory of (predominantly, but not exclusively) US placeblogs. What's a placeblog? From the site FAQ:

"A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that’s open to community contribution
It’s not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
It’s about the lived experience of a place"

I took my son to the Leicester in Cardboard last year, a genius exhibition put together by Leicester based art collective DOT, which pretty much recreated Leicester in cardboard. We very much enjoyed acting like Godzilla amongst a mini-version of child's hometown, but my favorite part had to be the Royal Infirmary (birthplace of child) which was covered in visitors tales of their own and others pain (most of which were pretty hilarious). I know there are a few projects around which are investigating innovative ways of creating (and redefining) local histories, narratives and networks - the most interesting of these are using various forms of geotagging and MoSoSo - Mobile Social Software. 

I'm kind of more interested in the social layers of space and place that might result from placeblogging, but I like the concept of placeblogging as a specialized form of activity, and I'd be interested to test out the different kinds of ways it could be used within communities. & if someone entertaining enough started blogging about my area, I'd certainly be a regular reader. 

Jay Rosen, a site advisor on the Placeblogger launch

From the 7 August 2006 Citizen Journalism Unconference:
Lisa Williams Placeblogs session notes

Lisa Williams panel overview from the 5 October 2006 Citizens Media Summit II