TG@CF – Page 4 – Thought grazing

“Social Ways of Working in Higher Education” by Dr Kelly Page

I really enjoyed reading this post from Kelly Page (+Kelly Page – Google+ @drkellypage – twitter) . When the message is so strong and the actions that need to be undertaken so clear, the analysis and recommendations need to be clearly stated. Kelly manages this, so well. I wish I’d written it, because there’s not a word in this post that I would disagree with.

Yes, it’s hard to see how it can be achieved sometimes because there’s a load of cultural change that needs to occur in parallel, work practices need to change too, against a background of scarcity of time and resources to embrace change and often little support too for the innovator. However, universities should not believe themselves to be detached from the revolutions in communication technologies and popular engagement that are sweeping the world. It is surely better to lead than be led.

Coffee & cakes time again

In a bit of a rush this time, but felt we all needed another cup of coffee and possibly a cake (for Simon & Joe). So suggesting we meet up again in Costa Coffee, Park Place, next Tuesday – 15th November from 11:00 to 14:00 for a general chat over all things social media, including (as ever) changing the culture of the organisation, good practice, new tools, new gadgets and of course progress on existing programmes of work and initiatives – grant funded and unfunded, sponsored/initiated by the university/department or independent.

Come along and join the “regulars” – we had 11 at our meet-up last month. We all have a passion – “damn fine coffee” …

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PcoMrwEa5o&w=640&h=480]

Enjoy

While I was there… Treating collaborative thinking

I had to leave the thought-grazers at 12:35 to see at student up at the Heath… But, following a slightly disappointing event we had both attended, where learning seemed to be very much ‘assumed’, I was glad to discuss with Joe about shared thinking in collaboration and being able to accredit that. He, David and I were thinking about the idea of whether it is possible to identify networked learning activity, what does it look like, and if it is possible to then accredit that (link to my own blog post about it (again!)).

It seems contradictory to give individuals an individualised grade for a shared idea that emerged as part of a collaborative conversation. Joe was saying that it would be very useful for the students to explain how they came to the ideas they eventually decided to explicate. As much as we might disdain the idea, able students want a good classification. If their individual conversational ‘moves’ could be reified (i.e. shared online), perhaps this is where epistemic fluency (after Ohlsson 1995 – see below – as referenced in the 2001 Networked Learning Guidelines) comes in in terms of being able to classify a contribution – we could ask the question, does this qualify as epistemically valid contribution? Is it using an epistemic ‘move’?

Apparently Dr Kelly Page is getting a whole module acredited through the contribution to the wiki although I would need her to explain more fully. It is as David said, something about getting students to the process rather than the end product although ironically some things about ‘final’ exams had that effect… But we’re in the game of trying to keep students…. Jonathan Scott was saying he’d bumped into another Kelly who’d just been able to accredit her module as totally student lead and taught, that’s one way to engage students… although, apart from the students own opinions, I’m not sure what the NMC would make of that…

Describing	Writing about an object or event so that your reader acquires an accurate idea of that object or event.
Explaining	Writing about an event or pattern of events so that your reader understands why that event or pattern of events happened.
Predicting	Writing so that your reader becomes convinced that the event in question will happen.
Arguing	To give reasons for (or against) a particular position, thereby increasing (or decreasing) your reader’s confidence that the position is right.
Critiquing	Highlighting the good and bad points of something.
Explicating	Writing so that your reader acquires a clearer understanding of something.
Defining	To define a term is to propose how it should be used.

Ohlsson S. (1995) Learning to do and learning to understand: a lesson and a challenge for cognitive modelling. In Learning in Humans and Machines: Towards An Interdisciplinary Learning Science (eds P.Reimann & H.Spada), pp. 37—62. Pergamon, London.

Review of Google+ posts

Thought it about time I got together a few links relating to Google+

I like reading O’Reilly Radar – posts here have a modicum of authority. They’re written well and don’t suffer from tech media hyperbole. So the post “Google+ is the social backbone” is worth reading; it highlights the fact that the Google+ will not be a walled garden, it trumpets the need for Google to champion “openness” more than it already does and declares the need for the G+ API (now being rolled-out). It clearly states that facebook does not have the platform, infrastructure or desire to provide a social backbone.

Mashable and Pete Cashmore is always a good resource for Tech Media stories. It tends to be more reasonable in its approach to technology developments and is never scared to go back and review its posts. Their 40 Essential Google+ Resources is an early list to take a look at. I’m waiting awhile before I start changing the ‘vanilla’ G+ extension (as I’ve written in a G+ post) but with the API now launched I look forward to increasingly better (and safer) ways of integrating my social networks.

I encountered Luis Suarez during my encounter with IBM software, he’s a refreshing antedote to the Lotus Notes fraternity I always felt. He’s a passionate advocate for social software and the use of collaboration tools. So when he says that Google+ could be a threat to email – I’m all ears. This is what I immediately thought, and nothing has happened since to change my views. It’s not only a threat but actually facilitates the transition to social software by allowing easy out-posting from the social software environment to email – it’s sort of a transition by stealth. There’s more to this post than just this however, you should read it all to see a strategic framework for social software emerging. It complements the O’Reily Radar post very nicely.

You’re interested in Privacy and Information Control of course, here is the guide that takes you through how to post, how to construct Circles and what to watch out for. It also covers the features to prevent re-sharing of posts thus preventing leakage outside the Circle you posted to as well as a few tips as to how you should set your Profile page up.

Two posts that challenge the new orthodoxy of using real names on Google+ and Facebook comes from Danah Boyd and Alexis Madrigal. These are both interesting points and I have a lot of time for the idea that, for some people, there are strong reasons for protecting your real identity online. I’m neutral on this one. I’m happy using my real identity but of course I haven’t got a “Thought grazing” identity on Google+. In one sense this doesn’t matter as I can use Circles appropriately and if necessary, and in any case the context of the post in G+ is much easier to explain when you don’t have a 140 character limit to restrict you. I just love the work @amcunningham has done on Privacy and Identity in the Medical Profession and the whole area of context, professionalism and identity is one that’s very close to my heart. However, perhaps being close to Higher Education is a privilidged position to be in. There is a need for whistle blowers and of course activists who would otherwise be persecuted, so a Real Names Policy does need to be tempered by a dose of reality and public interest as well.

The next one is a post from Tom Anderson (founder of MySpace). He writes “How Google+ will succeed and why you’ll use it whether you want to or not“. There’s so much in this post but the one I’ll concentrate on is that he reminds us that Google own Search, they have arguably the best email platform in the cloud, they own a decent (though not the best) blogging platform – blogger, and then of course there’s YouTube and Picasa Web. With so much integration possible, with the much heralded integration with Google Apps (and Google+ for the Enterprise) to come, this platform is going to succeed. You just know it is, even though you were puzzled about Wave and Buzz.

Finally, and now in G+ I find a platform that allows me to read his work and comment upon it occasionally as I have with Paul Allen as well, I come to Robert Scoble. He’s always been on my Google Reader Feeds, but did I get round to reading what he wrote? Unfortunately not. Now I find someone who’s actively and entusiastically moving, shaping and forming a community of users and it’s just great to read what he writes as well as the comments that follow. He’s said that he never got so much worthwhile inter-action with his traditional blogging, or with twitter, and I can agree with that. You use G+ to work up ideas and then do the blog post, or whatever. In “Help, I’ve fallen into a pit of steaming Google+ (what that means for tech blogging)” he describes (eclectically) why he’s in love with Google+. I must say I share a lot of his feelings. Google+ is definitely the best thing that’s happened to social networking yet!

[However he’s not totally blind to the issues relating to content being held by Google – a very recent post (after I’d completed and published this by about 10mins) is interesting in that it foresees the need for legislation to control Google at some time in the future.]

For the future, I wait for diaspora and see what that will bring. I’m promised an invitation in October … I’ll give you my thoughts on it as soon as I can! [UPDATE: Thanks @m1ke_ellis – will be investigating later but like the open source credentials.]

How Facebook threatens “the social network” [UPDATED]

It won’t have gone un-noticed to any readers of this blog that I’ve been quite impressed at Google+ – what it can do, and more important what it could be possible of doing to our use of social networks. I’m particularly impressed at the implied movement away from the “social graph” to what has been described as the “interest graph” and the focus on task-related posting rather than people-focussed posting. In fact the demise of Google+ which has been trumpeted by the tech media press is almost certainly the result of posts disappearing from the “public stream” with more selective posting to Circles. A success story therefore you might argue for anyone who values their privacy.

Copying is said to be an indication of success too, and we’ve seen a “re-launch” of Posterous, trumpeting a feature that was always there which looks very similar to Circles, and of course there’s been the changes to Facebook. These have been thick and fast over the past few weeks, culminating in the announcements last week. First of all, I have to hold my hand-up … I’m not a great, nor active, Facebook user. It’s just too complicated to get the privacy controls correct, and as they keep on changing things, there’s just that nagging doubt always present in my mind that I might inadvertently be sharing something with people I don’t want to share with. So what goes on Facebook (from me) is generally of little interest to my “followers”, or it is factual and not likely to cause me any concern. But all that’s just changed because Facebook wants to change “the social network”, hold even more information about you – which you can’t get out without deleting your account, and wants to share that information with even more people that you don’t want to share it with.

Every time Facebook changes the timeline, or your profile, or whatever, a groundswell of complaint can be heard “from those in the know”. Of course Facebook probably doesn’t care about them (us) anyway – they’re more interested in the information they’ve trapped inside the Facebook firewall provided by the far greater number of users who don’t know, or who prefer not to know, what they’re doing. However, this time there’s been an up-welling of comment that beats most previous announcements and I thought I’d share some of that comment with you.

First of all take a look at the summary of features listed here. [If you want a sickening few minutes (you won’t want to stay to the end) watch the video of Mark Zuckerburg’s launch address.] “Is Facebook trying to kill privacy” – well yes it is, and this is seen by their view that “the social graph” should be open, so that everything you do can be made visible to just about anyone – read a review from Wired here. All those apps that you’ve allowed access to your Facebook profile, well now they will be following you, and what you do, even though you’ve not given them permission to do so – read Phil Bradley’s excellent post here, and as he and others have commented – it’s shameful that The Guardian has signed-up to this invasion of our private lives, and I’ll be even more worried if The Independent follows suit.

Two more links I ought to share with you as well are this one, detailing how the social reading apps will work, and this one which gives very wise advice – never leave your browser logged into Facebook, the cookies may be tracking everything you do.

[UPDATE: The storm doesn’t seem to be abating – @briankelly this morning (26/09/2011) tackles some of us who were tweeting that Fb is a walled garden with a riposte that suggests Russell Group (and presumably all Universities) can not afford to ignore it as there are so many fans using Fb Groups and suggests its not a walled garden anyway. However, my doubts are beginning to firm up even more and you ought to read “Facebook’s New Features Might Not Be as Private as You Think” and some of the comments that follow to help you come to your own conclusions.]

So … I’ll be reviewing my applications on Facebook again. I won’t be taking any of the new features and if I’m forced to change I’ll be deleting my account. My “followers” will always be able to find me on Google+ where I can then decide whether I want to follow them, or more importantly, post updates to them. I suspect The Force will remain undisturbed by any actions I take!