SocialTech

Young People's Learning Technology Priorities

Photo credit: Marcus Kwan, shared under a Creative Commence Licence

Leicester City Council’s Youth Engagement project was a year-long innovative programme of research which involved 400 young people (11-19 years old).

The Youth Engagement Project was designed to ensure that the voice, opinions and views of young people are included in the development of Leicester City Council’s Building Schools for the Future Programme.

The project focussed on identifying young people’s priorities as they relate to the school environment. Their top 10 priorities were:

1. More indoor social spaces
2. Better designed library spaces
3. Comfortable chairs
4. Well-designed interiors – especially use of colour
5. More vegetable `patches/allotments
6. Sustainable features – including use of biofuels and recycling programmes
7. Nicer toilets
8. Larger dining room spaces –flexible seating arrangements and more food choice
9. Flexible classroom spaces
10. Greater variety in teaching methods

Learners were also asked to think about their priorities as they related to technology.

Young people told us their top 10 learning technology priorities are:

1.  Faster computers

Young people’s number one learning technology priority is for consistently fast, reliable computers and network access. They told us slow computers make them feel frustrated, waste class time and hold up learning. Problems with computers running programmes or connecting to the internet slowly also make teachers less likely to want to use them with learners within lessons.

2.  More creative uses of technology for learning

Even the most interesting uses of technology became boring if teachers use them in the same way all the time. Students told us that their experience of technology used to support learning was too frequently the same – a teacher delivering a Power Point presentation to the class, or being taken through tasks as a whole class on a fixed computer.

3.  More student centred and student led use of technology

Young People talked to us about the ways in which they work together on social networking services, particularly for revision and homework. They want more opportunities to use technology to support their peers and potentially other learners – younger pupils as well as teachers, parents, carers and governors.
Students want to be supported in using online platforms and sites to develop their school councils and other student organised initiatives such as internet radio shows, online magazines and blog sites.

4.  More flexible use/internet access – in schools, the city centre, and in local communities

Students want to be able to use technology and connect to the school network and internet from anywhere in their school. They tell us they do not like only being able to use computers in ICT suites. They want to see greater use of mobile devices – laptops, netbooks, tablets and phones.

5.  Laptop borrowing schemes for home use

Young people told us that going online and working collaboratively with their friends via their mobiles and computers was really helpful, and they did not think it was fair that some young people didn’t have good access so could not develop the skills to use technology effectively. They understand that not every family can afford computers and internet access, and that when money was very tight these would not be seen as priorities.
They also say that computer and internet access at home is really important to them to research and complete homework, and to talk to other people about lessons and exams.

6.  More collaboration with young people in other schools and countries

Young people told us about their positive experience of talking to students online from other countries, and learning about other cultures and ways of thinking about the world.

7.  Access to local and national decision makers via social media and social networking sites

Young people told us they want more opportunities to have a say in how decisions are made in schools, across the city and at national level. They would like to be able to use social media sites to talk about the issues that concern them with decision makers.

8.  ‘Young people only’ space in the city centre with computers and internet access

Young people would like a space that they can meet friends and drop in to use a range of technologies, learn new skills and work on either their school work or their own interests. They would like access to support but space to do things in their own time and at their own pace.

9.  Teachers who can help them use social media and social networking services and sites more effectively

Nearly all of the young people we talked to have social networking profiles and use social networks or social media sites. Many of them have friends who have been bullied online, or have been bullied themselves. Young people recognise that technology can be used in negative ways and would like support in dealing with online bullying. They would like more information and support in managing their online privacy.

10.  A say in school filtering and blocking policies

Students tell us that they would like to see fewer restrictions on accessing sites in their schools. They feel that many sites that would be useful for learning are currently blocked. They also want to be able to access games and social media sites in break times.

The full report lists and expands on young people’s top 15 priorities for the school environment, and young people's top 10 learning technology priorities:

Download Learner Voice in Leicester City 2012 (Word)

Download Learner Voice in Leicester City 2012 (PDF)

Developing digital literacies in practice

Picture Credit: Scaffolding by Victoria Pickering

Last week I took part in The Guardian Higher Education Network's Developing Digital Literacy in HE live chat. How we defining digital literacy obviously shapes how we take work in this area forward, and I added the definition I use to the conversation:

Currently, my favourite definition is the one Sarah Knight uses here and in the recent Guardian article:

digital literacy defines those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society

The definition I use most frequently is based on the version introduced by the wonderful Tabitha Newman in her still pertinent 2009 presentation Digital Literacy literature review: from terminology to action:

The 'short hand' definition I most frequently use is this one:

Digital Literacy =
digital tool knowledge +
critical thinking +
social engagement

My version only changes Tabitha's in the last point - she uses the term 'social awareness' whereas I'd always use the term 'social engagement' or even 'social activism', to highlight the importance of real world practice and activity as critical to socially situated digital literacy. Digital literacy is not just about supporting learners to understand and engage with the world, but about enabling learners to challenge, shape and change their worlds.

JISC adviser Helen Beetham replied to my definition post with a great link and a summery of how we can go about translating our aspirations for digital literacy into practice:

 Hello Josie, thanks for the chance to come out in public and admit to coining that definition - along with my colleagues Allison Littlejohn and Lou McGill, in our report Thriving in the C21st.

More important than our definition, I stick by what we concluded about actually developing digital literacies in practice, that it requires:

- providing authentic contexts for practice, including digitally-mediated contexts
- individual scaffolding and support
- making practices of meaning-making explicit
- anticipating and helping learners manage conflict between different practice contexts
recognising and helping learners integrate their prior conceptions and practices

Anyone doing all that? I thought not. But it's very important to me that the Developing Digital Literacies programme involves groups of staff that have always taken this person-centred, culturally-situated approach to student development i.e. careers/employability staff, and learning development/learning skills staff. As well as student-facing staff in libraries of course.

I'm currently developing and rolling out a city-wide digital literacy programme across Leicester's Secondary Schools, as part of my role with Leicester City Council as ICT Strategy Lead for Children's Capital. One of the approaches I am taking is to work with the schools to talk about and to design a range of activities that support the development of digital literacy in the context of meeting challenges and solving problems faced by school communities. I'll write more about these and the process of supporting them as we get further along - there are some really exciting projects - but in this post I'm going to focus on the framework I'm using with schools to structure conversation around the ways in which developing skills, and reviewing or introducing new policies and processes can meet current needs and support learner outcomes.

The topics have been identified and developed in discussion with schools and with a range of individuals, governing bodies and working groups. They act as development framework markers to frame discussion, activity and research, and to structure the ongoing review of projects and commissioning taking place at individual school and estate-wide level.

The bullet points are indicative of areas that actions might be agreed and developed with schools to address. The majority of the 25 secondary (supporting students between 11 and 16 years old) have completed their first draft of actions and from these a range of activities and projects - either at individual schools, or where shared interests and issues have been identified, across clusters of schools, subject areas, or role.

Space & Place

• Ensuring the best possible use is made of digital environments in relation to the physical environment of the school buildings and grounds in supporting learning and teaching.

• Ensuring access and active participation as appropriate for all members of the school community from any location via both school and user owned internet connected devices; recognising that the function and role of the school is not confined to the school grounds and restricted by the school day.

• Increasing the numbers of parents and carers actively engaging with and contributing to school activities.

• Ensuring schools’ digital presence supports whole school community development, takes full advantage of engagement opportunities and keeps it’s community well informed of activities.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Innovation

• Identifying and addressing ICT training strengths and weaknesses at estate-wide and local school level.

• Raising the level of skills and confidence across the estate to ensure schools and individual staff are equipped to recognise and take advantage of opportunities for technology to support and enhance learning, teaching and school management.

• Promoting and supporting learner-centred and learner-led practice and pedagogy.

• Supporting staff in modelling effective and positive uses of technology for both learners and peers.

• Targeting the development of staff skills, competencies and confidence to support innovative and effective use of technology by learners.

Network Learning and Communities

• Supporting staff and learners to participate within, develop, create and manage collaborative web and mobile based networks.

• Ensuring staff and learners are equipped with the skills to support their own developmental personal learning networks.

• Supporting and developing collaborative working practices and activities between learners across schools, the city, nationally and internationally, including learner-organised activity.

• Supporting learners to utilise mobile and social technologies and practices for learning.

• Embedding a whole community approach to school practice and engagement in decision making.

• Ensure digital environments are safe and inclusive, support and promote equality of access for all members.

Information Management

• Supporting a city wide, robust approach to information management school policy and practices which address the management, handling, storage and disposal of data legally, effectively and safety.

• Managing the move to cloud based services and storage.

• Planning and support for the management of User Owned Devices and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) across the school estate.

• Promoting the creation and use of Open Education Resources.

Green ICT

• Ensuring a robust and accessible approach to Green ICT issues in schools, focusing on reducing unnecessary energy consumption and using technology to support schools in developing a culture of practical engagement with energy reduction.

• Ensuring that energy consumption data can be easily and effectively used to support the curriculum and evidence the schools commitment to ensuring energy consumption is kept to a minimum.

• Supporting effective user engagement programmes which allow learners and staff to manage their school environment.

e-Safety and Cyberbullying

• Ensure robust internal education, policy and processes are in place to effectively address e-safety and cyberbullying with regard to awareness, prevention, reporting, incident reporting, response and sanctions.

• Ensure that issues are addressed through whole community education and discussion, and responsible and safe use of technologies is addressed across the curriculum, wherever appropriate.

• Ensure that discussion, planning and accounts for the schools wider responsibility to learners and employees, and activity taking place outside of the school day, premises and networks are recognised and action taken where the school has responsibility/liability.

• Ensure that e-safety and cyberbullying guidance and activity accounts for the ways in which learners are using technologies, and that information, policy and planning remains up to date and relevant, and that learners are actively involved in shaping and supporting the schools approach.

• Ensure that the needs of vulnerable learners are identified and met.

TeachMeet SEN 2012

Tickets here!

I'm very excited to be organising TeachMeet SEN 2012 - or TMSEN12, a meetup talking place later this month on Saturday 28th of January, in Leicester's lovely Phoenix Square.

What's a TeachMeet?

A TeachMeet is an informal meet up of people working in and passionate about education - they support grassroots professional development. Events are framed by short talks and demos from people working within education - sharing practice that works. You can check out the Wikipedia definition here.

Practitioner talk and demo slots at TMEN12 are typical of TeachMeet talk lengths - 7 minute micro presentations or 2 minute mini presentations. These are short to encourage a wide range and diversity of contribution, to make sure as many people attending as possible get the opportunity to share, and to make joining in more accessible and less scary for people who have never spoken at an event before.

What's different about TMSEN12?

1. This is a Special Education Needs (SEN) focused TeachMeet. Learners with SEN are a significant and diverse group, and we expect the first SEN focused TeachMeet to be an exciting one - reflecting the creativity, enthusiasm and the wide range of knowledge and approaches of practitioners.

2. This is the first face-to-face SEN focused TeachMeet. There was an online TeachMeet for Additional Support Needs/Special Education Needs back in April 2009. We are very proud to be continuing the tradition.

3. We recognise that parents and carers play an important role in supporting children and young peoples education, and that while parent and carer partnership with schools are always important, parents and carers sometimes play a particularly critical role in supporting learners with SEN. We also recognise that parents and carers of learners with SEN may home school. Because of this, we are also inviting parents and carers who would like to share effective practice to come along.

Is TMSEN12 just for SENCos and people who work at SEN Schools?

No! Every school supports learners with SEN.

What kind of thing do people talk about/demo at TeachMeet?

All sorts of things! You might speak about a really useful app, web tool or site; a technique that supports listening or speaking; an interesting and successful project; how you capture or share achievement; a simple, little change that has made all the difference to your learners; something you've created or a resource someone else has shared.

I think TeachMeet SEN is a great idea! How can I support it?

Excellent! Here are 7 ways you can help us:

1. Sign up to present your ingenious and effective practice. Come along and share.

Get your free ticket here, and then head over to the wiki to tell us what you will be presenting on.

2. Sign up to encourage and support. Get your free ticket here.

3. Tell people and organisation who need to know about TMEN12 - send them a link, encourage them to sign up to speak. We really appreciate it!

4. Tag your favorite blog posts, resources and ideas: Use #TMSEN12 on Twitter, TMSEN12 on Delicious. Let us know what and where else you tag resources. We will curate and share!

5. Watch the live stream and join in the debate on Twitter. The link will magically appear here and across the web nearer the time.

6. Sponsor TMSEN12! Help towards the event costs/resource for sponsor credit. Get in touch to find out more.

7. Suggest other ways you/people can support and celebrate TMEN12. Share your ideas!

 

Should you friend your students? The short answer is no

Earlier this year I delivered a further cyberbullying guidance document on behalf of Childnet International for the UK Government's Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Guidance follows up (and designed to compliment) cyberbullying guidance, a comprehensive document  that formed part of the Safe To Learn: Embedding anti-bullying work in schools suite of advice. While the initial document was really well received both within the UK & internationally, teachers unions and associations were increasingly being asked to deal with school employee cyberbullying cases - in which the staff member was the person being victimised. I welcomed the opportunity to produce further guidance which would both support employees in term of basic digital literacy information and encourage employers to meet their statutory obligations. The document set out, ambitiously, to encourage policy and procedure be put in place for preventing and dealing with cyberbullying as a whole school community issue - which includes meeting and recognising the specific needs, rights and responsibilities of employees. In no other area of harassment would it be acceptable for an employee to be expected to deal with cases that rose within the work place on their own - yet the reports from school staff included cases where cyberbullying was not taken seriously or understood, and where they had been expected to sort out situations for themselves.

Cyberbullying: Supporting School Staff (PDF) was released in April this year (Google doc version here).  I've been talking about the document a lot recently, and I want to just explore in a little more detail the thinking behind the advice given to school employees regarding friending students in social networking services. The actual text is (with my emphasis):

‘Friending’ refers to the act of giving contacts permission to view information or contact you within web-based services. The terminology will vary from service to service – ‘Friends’ may be called contacts or connections, for example. Most social sites enable you to give different levels of access and set privacy levels on your own content and activity. These functions will vary from service to service but typically include:
•     Information that is only available to the account holder
•     Information that is accessible by contacts on the account
holder’s approved list, and
•     Information that is made publicly available, either within
the service or across the whole of the internet.

‘Friends’ does not necessarily refer in this case to people who are your actual friends, although you may choose to restrict your connections to that. ’Friends’ in this context may also be work colleagues, family members, and people that you have met online.

If you have a social networking account, do not friend pupils or add them to your contact lists. You may be giving them access to personal information and allowing them to contact you inappropriately. They may also be giving you access to their personal information and activities

So the text above outlines three basic levels of permissions granularity that can be found on most sites, gives a definition of friending, and very explicitly says don't friend pupils. This is explicitly prescriptive advice, based on the case studies reviewed during the document negotiations, and an implicit understanding that the school staff accounts referred to are either personal, or contain elements of personal activity (I previously posted on a definition of three basic online identities, characterised as personal, professional, and organisational).

The approach taken then - don't friend pupils - reflects the kind of boundaries between staff and learners that we'd expect to see in offline behavior. You wouldn't expect a teacher to give a school aged pupil their home phone number, show them pictures of their friends or regale them with the weekends social exploits. Obviously friending isn't the only issue here - managing publicly available information so that you are comfortable with what co-workers, learners and employers can access about you is also addressed in the document. The research and anecdotal evidence indicates that we operate within social network services as if we were in a closed, private world. This isn't naive - I think it's a necessary fiction which makes social networking services human spaces. The do not friend advice is there to reinforce the message that private online is typically back of a post-card private, especially if we are within environments where we're not entirely sure who has permission to see what (*cough*Facebook*cough). It also reflects the leakiness of our online identities, the way in which the personal is often hand in hand with the professional.

What the advice isn't trying to do is to put anyone off evaluating social networking services to see if they could support learning & teaching effectively. The advice goes on to state:

If you want to use web-based social networking sites for a class or for the whole school, use a service that doesn’t give contacts access to personal information and updates, or allows collaboration without requiring permissions.

Alternatively ask pupils to create new, work-focused accounts for themselves, and run them as they would an online portfolio or CV.

You can find more information and advice about Social Network Services at www.digizen.org/socialnetworking.

reusing the stream

OK - so this is my first attempt at selectively re-purposing content from my twitter stream. There are a bunch of export tools, but what I'm interested in is panning the stream to provide content that it's easy to miss within twitter, and difficult to access outside. Haven't decided where this will go yet, so I'd appreciate feedback (feel free to be as critical as you like - is this just pointless?). I'm also not entirely happy with the army of avatars - I've included the originals of people I've retweeted during the time frame I've taken the content from (yesterday) to stop it from being quite so Josie-scary. I'm thinking this might work better in smaller chunks - just a hand full of links or a thread. I've left out a lot from yesterday - a brief discussion with @rliberni about the politics of fruit and vegetable taxonomies, conversations about virtual learning environments and informal learning (although have left some links in), and a chat with daveowhite and @mweller about the dark side of interoperability and my future as a writer of sports stars autobiography titles. The conversations and broader context stuff that makes twitter a fun place to hang out. Maybe all this needs to be is a row of pick of the day links?

josiefraser 'Human flesh search engine' http://u.nu/7z8w3

palmer_eldritch I thought it was about librarians - RT @josiefraser: 'Human flesh search engine' http://u.nu/7z8w3

josiefraser . @palmer_eldritch if we called librarians 'human flesh search engines' most would never get past their own internet filtering software

josiefraser RT @josswinn: Read, comment, discuss. The Future of Universities in a Knowledge Economy http://j.mp/ThQDx #writetoreply 

josiefraser RT @GrahamAttwell: New blog post and video on User Generated content, user generated contexts and learning http://is.gd/4XSe4 

josiefraser Checking out Hyperwords for Firefox http://www.hyperwords.net/

josiefraser Andrew Keen on the simple joys of homophily RT @ajkeen: how Sarah Palin made me love the Internet http://u.nu/9s9w3

josiefraser & fr those of you who haven't installed hyperwords, homophily : http://retwt.me/13RfW

Eingang @josiefraser I thought we already had a term for homophily -- Balkanization?

josiefraser @Eingang Balkanisation useful - emphasises geo, social & political. Homophily more personal/granular? both good terms

Lawrie: @josiefraser good tools for tweeting into and out of Powerpoint here: http://bit.ly/33BYeB 

josiefraser RT @freecloud: Streams of Content, Limited Attention - & Twitterwalls http://bit.ly/2R2cQM (Thoughts on @zephoria 's #w2e paper) 

josiefraser RT @Documentally: "Even if you are a complete psychopath you can earn an A+ in your citizenship exams." Proff Richard Pring #ukyouth

josiefraser RT @markchilds: Hhhmm counted tweets for @allthecheeses and @beatles. Lennon was wrong. the Beatles aren't bigger than cheeses

josiefraser 1st herald of the tech apocalypse: IBM's supercomputer can think like a cat http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=27507

adfig The Creator of Wikipedia Turns to Education Videos. http://bit.ly/31BOSw 

josiefraser All the tweets - including souvenir trend spam! RT @manojranaweera: twitter event report - #140conf http://bit.ly/QBv0M 

josiefraser Narcissism: the new shark in social networking pool. With obligatory Greenfield quote RT @amcunningham: http://bit.ly/2XRTR7

socialtechno "The unicorns don’t look realistic enough." Clients From Hell http://bit.ly/431d0Q

markbullen Net Gen Skeptic: Conference Board Study Warns Against Generational Stereotyping: http://bit.ly/4slFaW

Anonymity & the carnival of the fakesters

Many of my readers have a fairly 'meh' approach to old media - they'll read the Metro if they find it on their bus/tube seat, they may enjoy the weekend deforestation editions as an excuse to lounge at the weekends - they're mostly too connected to actually just chew over their toast & stare into the distance - and fill up their recycling boxes. They'll happily hijack the odd Daily Mail readers poll. They'll follow their favorite tech writers & journalists in Twitter. Mainly they get their news from their network - which means in practice a mix of online newspapers & services, across a range of sites where people may be paid to research, reflect & write, but mostly aren't.

Who do I know that reads the Telegraph? Off the top of my head, no one, although there must be a couple of you who have. New Telegraph tech bloggers Paul Carr & Andrew Keen have been link/troll baiting this week with a couple of posts about the undesirability of online anonymity - Carr's takes massive chunk of Schopenhauer out of  historical, cultural and technological contexts, And Keen's verges on Brass Eye territory so much (110%, in fact) that all that's missing is the poll made up of foxes heads on sticks. It doesn't take a genius to work out that effectively removing internet anonymity, even if that level of authentication was remotely possible, might cause a few more problems for everyone than it solves for a couple of disgruntled tech journalists.

One of (the many) objections to the Ministry of Anonymous but Authenticated Names approach is that one of the best things about the internet has always been the opportunities it provides for play. Mediation through avatar, text, and all the other internet props can obviously be misused, but it also enables a creative exploration of identity, representation, engagement. When I first started hanging out online in the 90s, in the days before meeting up and eventually marrying people you met online was the norm, I just assumed that everyone I met was probably a mustachioed Texan cop or a retired librarian, pretending to be a hot and overly intelligent seventeen year old boy. 

Then blogging took off, and the internet as playground began it's transformation into the internet as factory. The early insistence on transparency has been adopted by nearly everyone who has a professional stake in their online presence, and what has been variously named the link or reputation economy is critically an economy of trust - trusted connections defined within a dominant aesthetic of a particular kind of authenticity.

While I'm not arguing against the numerous benefits of accountability and responsibility, I do also miss the old internet, and I look for trusted connections with people who haven't let the factory rob them of their sense of wonder, and even mischievousness.

It's in this vein I've been on a mini-crusade to support the fakesters in my neighborhood, which at the moment is primarily Twitter. 'Fakester' is a broad term, covering any account pretending to be someone they aren't. They could be pretending to be another living or dead actual person, or a fictional or personally created character, or the incarnation of a place, thing, time, organisation etc. So it includes historical, religious and cultural figures, as well as alternative persona, marketing scams and campaigns, God (well, a bunch of them) and the Mars Phoenix, NASA’s celebratory robotic lander.

Following complaints and a proposed lawsuit Twitter recently began to introduce verified accounts for the Twitterati & the popularly impersonated celeb member, "people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis". However, their Terms of Service only disallow users to impersonate other Twitter users. This doesn't help Kanye West out much, but it does encourage him to sign up to twitter & I bet it gets the Twitter staff a fair few celeb lunches too. 

Personally, I'm not that interested in following celebs via Twitter, although I can understand that there's a lot of (potential) money and (actual) publicity at stake. I'll also be clear that I am obviously not in favor of illegal or malicious impersonation, a topic which I've engaged with quite substantially in terms of my work for the UK government on cyberbullying. I'm keener on those more imaginative misuses of twitter, many of which have educational potential and application, but regardless of that, make life more interesting :)

danah boyd wrote a defence of fakesters way back in 2003 - about a hundred years ago in internet terms. Her early work tracked the presence of fakesters on Friendster, drawing attention to the blurring between the authentic-inauthentic-constructed lines fakester accounts throw non-fakester accounts into, the way that fakester accounts challenged social (network service) norms, and the fact that the fakesters were often the most interesting accounts to connect to. 

So who's faking it on Twitter?

One of the most beloved of the Twitter fakesters has to be @darthvader, self appointed Evil Orphan Annie and geek magnet. Recent #imperialedicts have included "Open more Starbucks" and "Continually raise the price of stamps without warning". 

@MarsPheonix, NASAs account for a mission to land a robotic craft at the North Pole of Mars was so popular that Wired ran an epitaph contest for the lander. 

Many fakester accounts basically just publish the text or quotes of the persona they assume. The ultimate fit-for-purpose example of this has got to be @JennyHolzer, the American conceptual artist who is most celebrated for her public displays of aphorism, perfectly suited to her anonomus Twitter account, where HABITUAL CONTEMPT DOESN'T REFLECT A FINER SENSIBILITY and MONOMANIA IS A PREREQUISITE OF SUCCESS.

Jenny Holzer isn't on Twitter, although if she were I'd like to think she was @fakejennyholzer - shouting SUFFERING IS CAUSED BY ATTACHMENT AND NAIL GUNS and THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS REALLY STUCK ISN'T IT at us. 

One of my favorite fakesters has got to be @palmer_eldritch, a title character from the Philip K. Dick novel. as well as Phil Dick related comment & content, Palmer has recently transformed into a veritable mecanical turk of an auto-bot, selectively re-tweeting related content from around the twitterverse, including "@tanuki0: I've read too much Philip K Dick, I'm starting to doubt the nature of reality." and "@FatherRoderick: Getting ready for Mass. Still very sleepy. Shouldn't have watched that Blade Runner documentary late last night."

Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, Data Sharing Czar, aka @sirbonar and his Whitehall musings on the surveillance society pretty much leads the field in fakester political satire. "It seems some hobbyist suffering from Aspergers has done a stunt for the news media in which he appears to clone a British ID Card" and "If only we could achieve total fusion of all possible data, I think we could at last feel secure. I wonder how much data that is?" are amongst his recent musings. You can also catch a video of him addressing Open Tech 09 on Data Sharing here.

I'm a big theory fan, so I follow a bunch of would be swafty-philosopher fakesters, including @zizekspeaks, who purports to be Hegelian philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalisist Slavoj Zizek. "Interested in Deleuze & Twitter? If so, you're probably misreading Deleuze." Is he real or not? Perfectly, for a Lacan follower, it doesn't really matter. 

Personal - Professional - Organisational: three basic online identities

There are three main ways we can characterise most peoples online internet and mobile activity and presence. Let me state up front that these distinctions are purposely blunt, but do act as effective and critical distinctions, especially when talking to people about how and why they can manage their online identities. They're also very indiscreet, leaky categories, although it is of course possible to find examples of people who's online identity is confined to or dominated by a single category. Why are these differences important? Because they provide us with the building blocks to talk about and actively reflect on our online activity. How we represent ourselves, and how we are viewed online, is increasingly a part of daily social and economic life. Critically, for people working within social media or supporting digital literacy, they provide a robust framework within which to talk about key issues: privacy, data ownership/mobility, representation and voice.

The three main categories I use then are personal, professional, and organisational.

Personal use might include using dating sites, having a social network account to connect to friends and family, uploading your family photos to a photo-sharing site. Personal use is most likely to be the category where attention to social network service permissions - who is able to see what - is particularly important to users.

Professional use could include the use of a professional networking site, or the use of a social network, a blog or other website to showcase and record work, develop connections and contribute to national and international professional networks. It includes a public facing CVs, publicly accessible parts of a personal learning environment, or an e-portfolios, conversations across mailing lists or social network services. Typically, these activities are public facing, so the most pertinent issues are typically about voice, representation, reputation and trust,

Organisational use would involve the employee using tools or platforms on behalf of their employer or in the line of their work duties. For example, an employee may run a blog as part of their role, maintain a social networking profile in order to make information accessible to students and parents, deliver assignments using a Virtual Learning Platform or set up a group account for learners on a video sharing site. Organisational use may be public, promotional and conversational, or operate within walled garden environments, or, indeed, a mixture of the two.

Edublog Awards 2008

Its the Edublog Awards 2008! Dust off your party outfits and get ready to join us on Saturday night for the spectacular 5th awards show, celebrating the vibrancy of blog and social media practice to support learning. 

Voting is still open across this years 16 categories, and every vote still counts since most of the category nominees are within spitting distance of each other. James is holding the vote doors open like a veritable Atlas until the last minute possible this year. Needless to say, the live online awards show will be well worth attending. The Edublog Awards team - me, Dave Cormier, Jeff Lebow, James Farmer, Jo Kay, warmly invite you all over to the multisite party.

When? 

This years event is scheduled for:

• GMT/UTC: 11pm, Saturday 20 Dec 2008
• AEST: 10am, Sunday 21 Dec 2008
• SLT: 3pm, Saturday 20 Dec 2008

Get your local time details here!

Where?

The fabulous team at EdTechTalk will be providing a web-based audio stream of the event. The landing page for web based listening and text based chat will be http://edtechtalk.com/live. Head over there if you'd like to listen in live (low bitrate audio-only stream for those with with slower connections), and catch the ustream of SL activities, and chat amongst the attendees.

There's also a Facebook page for those of you over there, and there will be live updating over at Twitter.

For the second year running we will also be meeting over at Second Life, thanks to the wonderful Jo Kay. The meeting point on the beautiful Islands of jokaydia will be the jokaydia Landing point (SLurl) for newbie support and pre-event hot chocolate. The ceremony will be held in our new auditorium (SLurl).

There are limits on the number of visitors to a Second Life Island (& this isn't entirely to do with how big my dress will be this year, so do get your seat early! There will also be an overflow area with chat bridge and audio streaming at the jokaydia Meeting Hall (SLurl) for those who don't get a seat but would still like to hang out inworld.

We are all very excited abut this years chat bridge - connecting Second Life attendees to  our web-based participants. You’ll be able to access the chat room here just prior to the event!

The fabulous residents of jokaydia have also lined up a post event beach party and celebration of yet another year of great blogging. The party will start right after the awards ceremony: Meet at jokaydia Beach! (SLurl)

2008 Edublog Awards Nominees Display!

Dont forget to visit the 2008 Edublog awards Nominees Display which celebrate all 210 nominees and their achievements this year. The display is a permanent structure on the Islands of jokaydia and serves as a great resource for educators. You can visit the Edublog Awards Display at jokaydia (SLurl).

Those nominations in full:

1. Best individual blog

Mobile Technology in TAFE
Education Investigation
Learn Online
Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs
Bionic Teaching
SCC English
Nadstar’s Blog
Teachers at risk
John Connell
Doug - off the record
Mathemetics Learning
The Scholastic Scribe
Newly Ancient
Chrisina’s Classroom Early Childhood blog
Cliotech
ICTlogy
Theology in the Vineyard
Computer Science Teacher - thoughts and information from Alfred Thompson
Darcy’s blog
The Edublogger
Teaching and Learning Design
The Bamboo Project
All teachers are learners - All learners are teachers
Sarah’s Musings
Using Blogs in science Education
Learning with ‘e’s
What It’s Like on The Inside
EFL20
Generation YES Blog
Betty’s Blog
Teach42
Creating Lifelong Learners
Always Learning
The English Blog
David Truss: Pair-a-dimes for your Thoughts

2. Best group blog

Salford University Occupational Therapy Education blog
SCC English
WorkLiteracy
The Stratford Sentinel
Mortarboard Blog
Pontydysgu
Brandon Hall Research Workplace Learning Today
Scholastic News Blog
Digital Learning Environments
Tomorrow’s Trust
The Chancellor’s New Clothes
ECO group
360
Leader Talk
PortablePD.CA
Youth Voices

3. Best new blog

Fled: Flexible Learning Education Design
Yuichi’s Games
Angela Maiers
Huzzah
Dkzody’s Weblog
2JE Shining Stars
Chrisina’s Classroom Early Childhood blog
Journeys on the road
Human
Teaching in Second Life
Fiona’s Journey
Christy Bowman
Technology in The Classroom
Thumann Resources

4. Best resource sharing blog

Free Technology for Teachers
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day/
Mobile Technology in TAFE
Videoconferencing Out on a Lim
Woodchurch Science
Teach J: For Teachers of Journalism and Media
Langwitches
Edina Publich Schools NUA Program
What’s New @Scholastics.com
ZaidLearn
Teaching College Math
Around the Corner - MGuhlin
Stephen’s Web
meta-ot
Discovering Biology in a Digital World
Thumann Resources
Creative Teaching
Welcome to NCS-Tech
Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day
Learning technology teacher development blog

5. Most influential blog post

Becoming a more reflective Individual Practitioner
Why Can’t Inner City Kids Learn/a>
The Glass Bees
Planning to share versus just sharing
The Time is Now
Be an elearning action hero
President-elect Barack Obama
The truth is Out There
The New Digital Divide?
Order for Closure
Getting our Knickers in a twist?
The Macgyver Project: Genomic Dna Extraction And Gel Electrophoresis Experiments Using Everyday Materials
Monkey Business
Ten Tips for Growing Your Learning Network

6. Best teacher blog

Teaching in the 408
Mrs Cassidy’s Classroom Blog
Science Of The Invisible
The Cool Cat Teacher
Practical Theory
dy/dan
Web.Cad.6abc
Kevin’s Meandering Mind
Creating Lifelong Learners
Teaching College Maths
Bald Worm’s Blog
Betty’s Blog
Songhai Concept
Bellringers
Science Teacher
Sliced Bread
The Journey
Reflections on Teaching
Cliff’s Notes
Endless Forms Most Beautiful
OllieBray.com
Nashworld
Box of Tricks
Mysterious Teaching
The Why of it all
Always Learning
On an e-journey with Generation Y
ICT in my Classroom
Educating Alice
Kenneth’s ESL Blog

7. Best librarian / library blog

Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog
UoL Library Blog
Paul Walk’s weblog
Hey Jude
School Library Journal
Blue Skunk Blog
TechnoTuesday

8. Best educational tech support blog

The Edublogger
The Clever Sheep
The Wired Campus
UK Web Focus
Geeked
Tech Tutors
Teach42
Teacher in a Strange Land
Off on a Tangent
efoundations
JoeWoodOnline
Teachers love Smartboards
Langwitches
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org

9. Best elearning / corporate education blog

Britannica Blog
eLearning Technology
Presentation Zen
Windows to Open Source
Making Change
Tech Tools
Laurel Papworth
TechnOT
Andy’s black hole
Janet Clarey

10. Best educational use of audio

Wicked Decent Learning
Project Xiphos
Twenty Minutes for Tech
Teachers Teaching Teachers
Parents as Partners
Bildum im Dialog
Integrating ICT
Bit By Bit
Secondary Worlds
Ed Tech Talk

11. Best educational use of video / visual

Digital Ethnography
Tamaki Intermediate School
Geography at the Movies
Flick School
Video 2 Zero
Steve Spangler blog
Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Murdoch University Island in Second Life
Qik MAMK
TEFL Clips
The Common Craft Show

12. Best educational wiki

eToolBox
The 2008 Comment Challenge
Kidpedia
Educational Origami
WikiEducator
S.D.Public School, Pitampura
Learning in Maine
Digitally Speaking
Clif’s Wiki
Miss Baker’s Biology Class
F-ALT
Salks Periodic Table
Flat Classroom Project 2008
School AUP 2.0
Classroom Displays
Digital Media Across Asia

13. Best educational use of a social networking service

EFL Classroom 2.0
Fireside Learning
Classroom 2.0
Maine Holocaust Education Network
Youth Voices
MACUL Space
Principles of Biology
Ed Links
Teen Second Classroom
My Learning Space

14. Best educational use of a virtual world

Jokadia
Discovery Education Second Life
Drexel Island
Edunation
Oh! Virtual Learning!
Literary Worlds

15. Best class blog

A really different place
Risley Roarer’s Blog
Learning Area 20
Al Upton
Extreme Biology
English Advertising Class
Mr. Kootman’s Class
Remote Access

16. Lifetime achievement award

Stephen Downes
Scott Leslie
Will Richardson
Nancy White
David Warlick
Chris Lehmann
Graham Wegner
Michele Martin
Jay Cross

ALT-C 2008: Radio, edubloggers, edupunks & digital divides

So this is my round up of some of the highlights of my ALT-C2008, and links to some of the stuff we made & documented. Thanks to ALT for an excellent conference, and to everyone who I was lucky enough to get to hang out with this year. As Steve Wheeler's already noted, it was a excellent one.

A bunch of us delivered F-ALT this year - the first ALT-C fringe, designed to give delegates new spaces and new ways of collaborating and taking forward ideas and topics. The idea was to support activity that fell outside the typical conference format and structure, and allowed for a more creative and inclusive approach. It was a reckless and experimental approach to take, and by and large it worked out really well - it attracted a lot of delegates and demonstrated and started to explore ways in which participants could organise conference space for themselves. There were a variety of sessions - the Learning Objects session failed to attract enough interest to take off while others were very popular - I really enjoyed the EduPunk session, and the Microblogging session which took place during this years Edublogger meetup. I've added a bunch of stuff over at the wiki, I'm pretty much done for now. If you have F-ALT related goodness to share or link to, please do help make the site better. Also, you can check out some of the distributed action over at Twemes (welcome back Twemes! We really missed you!)

The 4th ALT-C Edublogger meetup went down a storm, we had a great time and managed to take over a substantial section of the pub. I've posted the list of attendees and blog links over at the F-ALT site - again, please do edit your entry/add yourself in if you were there.

I co-hosted a live radio show with Graham Attwell at the conference for Emerge - one of the series of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar shows. It was probably the most fun it's possible to have at a conference (for me anyway, Scott Wilson didn't seem to enjoy his surprise interview quite so much). Cristina Costa did a fantastic job facilitating the live chat room for our international audience and Joe Rosa an equally amazing job with the production. If you missed it, you can recapture the craziness over at Graham's blog.

I also helped run an official conference workshop session, Learning About the Digital Divide, along with Frances Bell, Helen Keegan and Cristina Costa. Our session built the experience of our first slam workshop the year before, which encouraged participants to create and perform what we are calling slams (after the style of Poetry Slams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_slam), that time around their experience of engaging with web 2.0. Our slam are really shorthand for a rapid, creative approach to creating a performance and/or object which engages with, and encourages others to engage with, an aspect or description of a topic. In this way we're seeking to do a few things. The approach is designed to support innovative, conversational and light weight content creation, acting as a counterpoint and compliment to traditional academic processes and methods.

You can go view the amazing contributions people created and delivered during the session over at the wiki, and also (until tomorrow night) vote on which is your favorite. My slam - I <3 Public Libraries is included in the vote list, but please don't vote for it! It's only there because I was really rubbish at getting it up in time and into it's proper place in the sample slam lists. The text I've included with the slides includes my workshop methodology, so do go and browse if you are interested in exploring this kind of format yourself.

Finally, I'm still really happy about winning the Learning Technologist of the Year award. I brought a hard copy of the announcement back for my mum, and she's very pleased too :) If you'd like a flavor of the gala dinner and a peek at the presentation check out James Clay's excellent (& very) short film of the evening. I eat chocolate in it.

Looking forward to next year already. You can see my pictures here and Sam (who always takes the best ones!)'s pictures here.

Digital Communities & Digital Identities

Most of my week was taken up presenting, hosting, and having a huge deal of fun at the Emerge project three day online conference, Digital Communities and Digital Identities. I lead on the programming for the event,& recruited many of the speakers, so it wasn't altogether surprising that I really enjoyed myself. The quality of the session content, speakers, and participant contributions exceeded even my high expectation though. I'm going to blitz through some of the sessions here, linking to resources on an ongoing basis (not everything is up yet) and inviting additional linkfo where people want to contribute them. Also, a quick reminder that following the ol Emerge tag convention, we went with jiscemerge0408. We used three primary environments: Elluminate (java based online conferencing software) for synchronous activities, Moodle (open source virtual learning environment) for asynchronous activity and conference co-ordination, and Second Life (multi-user virtual environment), for the conference social. We also used a host of other tools for specific tasks - twitter, wikis, media players, and the Emerge main site (a social networking platform), primarily for blogging.

You can see a visual record of the conference here. I tried to record as I went along, using screen shots of the presenters on cam. A very simple solution to creating a visual record of the online conference, but I can't say I've really seen it used at other online events.

What were my conference highlights? One of the big things that hit home for me at this conference was the definite sense of community belonging. Certainly, community members have a very diverse experience of and understanding of Emerge, and it's primarily (as Graham Attwell noted) a community of interest. Although the Emerge 'border policy' has been a semi-permeable and pragmatic one, our majority of our members are primarily associated with two funding rounds, designed to support innovation and user engagement in the UK post-compulsory education sector.   

However, the more important understanding that really hit home for many of us at this particular conference is the appreciation of Emerge as a community of cultural and social practice. Graham Attwell and Stephen Warburton will doubtless add to this far more graciously shortly. For me, the conference really highlighted the business of serious fun and how conductive and essential providing an relaxed, comfortable environment where people were able to express themselves, take risks and reach out. Knowing that you are part of a community which is interested in your work, sympathetic and alert too the problems and contexts you operate in, and basically on your side, can operate as a critical safety net, fostering creative risk taking and collaboration.  I'm not talking about blandly sycophantic  agreement here either. Meaningful friendship involves critical engagement - people who care enough and are interested enough to say things that might be challenging. It's difficult to have and engage openly in critical conversation - but ignoring it and hoping it will go away is a childish, disrespectful strategy which will eventually bite you in the ass.

A fun illustration of this was the revival of Frances Bell's community beard meme, originally coming from a funny critical post on the the prevalence of beards in the community  commenting on the gender imbalance of the visible community. Frances is an consummate expert in being a critical friend, and partly what I'd like to see actively cultivated in the community is  an environment that allows constructive criticism to be given and received non-threateningly.

George Siemens delivered a great keynote on Technology and Community as Identity, and raised a lot of themes which continued to resonate throughout the three days. So hats off George - you're a great keynote speaker!

Brian Kelly's session on Developing a sustainable approach to the use of web 2.0 was a masterclass in service design and management, summing up where we currently are in terms of institutional, legal and ethical terms regarding using third party services to support learners in formal education.

The Emerge Bizarre launch (mp3 file)- that went out as a live radio show - was a triumph of content and production values, and includes some interviews with a couple of our projects. Great use of CC licensed music and a big kick to us to used multimedia more effectively in future.

The ARGOSI and HABITAT projects community slot - presented by D.H. Lawrence and two ladyz also wearing rather fetching beards - The User experience of Virtual Worlds was very interesting and exciting. I'm particularly in love with the ARGOSI project which seems to be inspired by 80's TV programme The Adventure Show (which I loved! Please send me a link someone!). I'll add more detail and links to this shout out shorty.

What Not to Rez - our fashion show social on Second Life was something that I really enjoyed too - you can check out the Flickr show link at the top of the post for pictures of me in my monster-truck proportioned frock.