Actively Reading: “Teach Naked” sans PowerPoint

Some Diigo comments on a Chronicle piece on moving lectures out of the classroom. (Or, if you ask the piece’s author and some commenters, on PowerPoint as a source of boredom.)

I’d like to transform some of my own comments in a standalone blog entry, especially given the discussions Pamthropologist and I have been having through comments on her blog and mine. (And I just noticed Pamthropologist had written her own blogpost about this piece…) As I’m preparing for the Fall semester, I tend to think a lot about learning and teaching but I also get a bit less time.

Semi-disclaimer: John Bentley, instructional developer and programme coordinator at Concordia’s CTLS pointed me to this piece. John used to work for the Open University and the BBC. Together, John and I are currently developing a series of workshops on the use of online tools in learning and teaching. We’ve been discussing numerous dimensions of the connection between learning, teaching, and online tools. Our current focus is on creating communities of learners. One thing that I find especially neat about this collaboration is that our perspectives and spheres of expertise are quite different. Makes for interesting and thoughtful discussions.

‘Teach Naked’ Effort Strips Computers From Classrooms – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Not to be too snarky but… I can’t help but feel this is typical journalism. Take a complex issue, get a diverse array of comments on it, boil it down to an overly simplistic point about some polarizing question (PPT: is it evil?). Tadaa! You got an article and you’ve discouraged critical thinking.Sorry. I’m bad. I really shouldn’t go there.But I guess I’m disappointed in myself. When I first watched the video interview, I was reacting fairly strongly against Bowen. After reading (very actively!) the whole piece, I now realize that Jeff Young is the one who set the whole thing up.The problem with this is that I should know better. Right?Well, ok, I wasn’t that adamantly opposed to Bowen. I didn’t shout at my computer screen or anything. But watching the video interview again, after reading the piece, I notice that I interpret as much more open a discussion than the setup made it sound like. In other words, I went from thinking that Bowen was imposing a radical view on members of his faculty to hearing Bowen proposing ideas about ways to cope with social changes surrounding university education.The statement about most on-campus lectures being bad is rather bold, but it’s nothing we haven’t heard and it’s a reasonable comment to make in such a context. The stronger statement against PPT is actually weakened by Bowen himself in two ways: he explicitly talks about using PPT online and he frames his comment in comparison with podcasts. It then sounds like his problem isn’t with PPT itself. It’s with the use of PPT in the classroom by comparison to both podcasts and PPTs online. He may be wrong about the relative merits of podcasts, online “presentations,” and classroom lectures using PPT. But his opinion is much less radical than what I originally thought.Still, there’s room for much broader discussion of what classroom lectures and PPT presentations imply in teaching. Young’s piece and several Diigo comments on it focus on the value of PPT either in the abstract or through appropriate use. But there’s a lot more ground to cover, including such apparently simple issues as the effort needed to create compelling “presentation content” or students’ (and future employers’) expectations about PPT presentations.

• Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool.
  • damn you got there first! comment by dean groom
  • I think the more important point that’s being made by the article – is something that many of us in edtech world realised very quickly – that being able to teach well is a prerequisite to being able to effectively and creatively engage technology to help others learn…Powerpoint is probably the most obvious target because oif its ubiquity – but I suspect that there will also be a backlash when the masses start adopting other technologies… they’ll be misused just as effectively as PPT is.When we can assume that all university lecturers/tutors are effective teachers then the argument will be moot… until then we’ll continue to see death by powerpoint and powerpointlessness…I’m a drama teacher and love the idea of active rooms filled with proactive engaged learners… and if we have proactive engaged learners we can more effectively deploy technology in the mix…The world of teaching and learning is far from perfect and expectations seem to be geared towards a paradigm that says : “professors should tell me every last thing I need to know in order to get good grades and if students sat still and shut up long enough they might just learn something useful.”I even had one “lecturer” recently tell me “I’m a subject specialist, why do I need to know about pedagogy?” – sadly he was serious. comment by Kim FLINTOFF
  • On the subject specialist uninterested in pedagogy…It’s not an uncommon perspective, in university teaching. In fact, it might be more common among French-speakers, as most of those I’ve heard say something like this were French-speakers.I reacted quite negatively when I first heard some statement about university teachers not needing pedagogy. Don’t they care about learning?But… Isn’t there a point to be made about “non-pedagogy?”Not trying to be contrarian, here. Not playing devil’s advocate. Nor am I going on the kind of “anti-anti” PoMo mode which seems not to fit too well in English-speaking communities. I’m just thinking about teacher-less learning. And a relativist’s attitude to not judge before I know more. After all, can we safely assume that courses given by someone with such a reluctant attitude to learning pedagogy are inherently bad?There are even some people out there who take constructivism and constructionism to such an extreme that they’d say teachers aren’t needed. To an extent, the OLPC project has been going in that direction. “Students will teach themselves. We don’t need to train teachers or to engage with them in building this project.”There’s also a lot of discussion about learning outside of formal institutions. Including “on-the-job training” but also all sorts of learning strategies which don’t rely on the teacher/student (mentee, apprentice, pupil…) hierarchy. For instance, actual learning occurs in a large set of online activities. Enthusiastic people learn about things that passion them by reading about the subject, participating in online discussions, presenting their work for feedback, etc. Oftentimes, there is a hierarchy in terms of prestige, but it’s mostly negotiated through actions and not set in advance. More like “achieved status” than “ascribed status” (to use a convenient distinction from SOC101 courses). As this kind of training not infrequently leads to interesting careers, we’d be remiss to ignore the trend.Speaking of trends… It’s quite clear that many universities tend toward a more consumer-based approach. Students register and pay tuition to get “credentials” (good grades and impressive degrees). The notion that they might be there to do the actual learning is going by the wayside. In some professional contexts, people are quite explicit about how little they learnt in classrooms. It makes for difficult teaching contexts (especially at prestigious universities in the US), but it’s also something with which people learn to cope.My personal attitude is that “learning happens despite teachers.” I still think teachers make a difference, that we should learn about learners and learning, that pedagogy matters a whole lot. In fact, I’m passionate about pedagogy and I do what I can to improve my teaching.Yet the bottomline is: do people learn? If they do, does it matter what pedagogical training the teacher has? This isn’t a rhetorical question. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal
  • http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a902053143 comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw.
  • Can somebody post links to especially good PowerPoint files? comment by Bill Chapman
  • I don’t think this is really about PPT, but more about blind use of technology. It’s not the software to blame but the user.Also if you’re looking for great PPT examples, check out slideshare.net comment by Dean Shareski
  • Looking forward to reading what their criteria are for boredom.And the exact justification they give for lectures needing not to be boring.Or if they discuss the broad implications of lecturing, as opposed to the many other teaching methods that we use.Now, to be honest, I do use PPT in class. In fact, my PPT slides are the very example of what many people would consider boring: text outlines transformed into bullet points. Usually black on white, without images.But, overall, students seem to find me engaging. In student evaluations, I do get the occasional comment about the course being boring, but that’s also about the book and the nature of what we discuss.I upload these PPT files to Slideshare before going to class. In seminars, I use the PPT file to outline some topics, themes, and questions brought up by students and I upload the updated file after class.The PPT files on Slideshare are embedded into Moodle and serve as “course notes,” in conjunction with the audio recordings from the class meetings. These slides may include material which wasn’t covered in class.During “lecture,” I often spend extend periods of time discussing things with the class as a whole, leaving a slide up as a reminder of the general topic. Going from a bullet point to an extended discussion has the benefit of providing context for the discussion. When I started teaching, several students were saying that I’m “disorganized.” I still get a few comments like that but they’re much less frequent. And I still go on tangents, based on interactions with the group.Once in a while, I refrain from using PPT altogether. Which can lead to interesting challenges, in part because of student expectations and the fact that the screen becomes an indicator that “teaching is going on.”Perhaps a more important point: I try to lecture as little as possible. My upper-level courses are rapidly transformed into seminars. Even in large classes, the last class meetings of the semester involve just a few minutes of lecturing.This may all sound like a justification for my teaching method. But it’s also a reaction to the frequent discussions about PPT as evil. I do hate PPT, but I still use it.If only Google Wave could be released soon, we could use it to replace PPT. Wikis and microblogging tools are good and well, but they’re not as efficient in terms of real-time collaboration on complex material. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions
• In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.
  • Does it follow so directly? It’s quite easy to integrate technology with “seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions.” comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• better than many older classroom technologies, like slate chalkboards or overhead transparencies
  • Which seems to support a form of technological determinism or, at least, a notion of a somewhat consistent improvement in the use of tools, if not in the tools themselves. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• But technology has hardly revolutionized the classroom experience for most college students, despite millions of dollars in investment and early predictions that going digital would force professors to rethink their lectures and would herald a pedagogical renaissance.
  • If so, then it’s only because profs aren’t bringing social technologies into their classrooms. Does the author of this article understand what’s current in ed tech? comment by Shelly Blake-Plock
  • the problem here is that in higher education, student satisfaction drives a service mentality – and students WANT summised PPTs and the want PODCASTS. Spoooon feeeeeed me – for I am paying. comment by dean groom
  • A rather broad statement which might be difficult to support with evidence.If we look at “classroom experience” in different contexts, we do notice large differences. Not necessarily in a positive sense. Technology is an integral part of all sorts of changes happening in, around, and away from the classroom.It would be quite different if that sentence said: “But institutional programs based on the adoption of specific tools in the classroom have hardly revolutionized…” It’s still early to assess the effectiveness of these programs, especially if we think about lifelong learning and about ongoing social changes related to technology use. But the statement would make more sense if it were more directly tied to specific programs instead of being a blanket critique of “technology” (left undefined). comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• dream of shaking up college instruction
  • One of the most interesting parts of the interview with Bowen has to do with the notion that this isn’t, in fact, about following a dream. It’s about remaining relevant in a changing world. There’s a lot about Bowen’s perspective which sounds quite strange, to me. But the notion that universities should “wake up and smell the coffee” is something I wish were the object of more discussion in academic circles. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• Here’s the kicker, though: The biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen’s ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods.
  • Great points, here. Let’s wish more students were involved in this conversation. It’s not just “about” them.One thing we should probably not forget about student populations is that they’re diverse. Chances are, some students in Meadows are delighted by the discussion focus. Others may be puzzled. It’s likely an adaptation for most of them. And it doesn’t sound like they were ever consulted about those changes. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• lecture model is pretty comfortable
  • And, though many of us are quick to criticize it, it’s difficult to avoid in the current systems of formal education in which we work. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• cool gadgets
  • The easiest way to dismiss the social role of technology is to call tools “gadgets.” But are these tools really just gadgets? In fact, some tools which are put to good use really aren’t that cool or even new. Are we discussing them enough? Are we aware of how they fit in the grand scheme of things?An obvious example would be cellphones. Some administrators and teachers perceive them as a nuisance. Rather few people talk about educational opportunities with cellphones, even though they already are used by people in different parts of the World to empower themselves and to learn. Negroponte has explicltly dimissed the educational potential of cellphones but the World isn’t waiting for approval from designers. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• seasoned performer,
  • There’s a larger point to be about performance in teaching. Including through a reference to Dick Bauman’s “Verbal Art as Performance” or other dimensions of Performance Theory.There’s also a more “mundane” point about a kind of conflict in universities between academic material and performance. In French-speaking universities, at least, it’s not uncommon to hear teachers talk about the necessity to be a “performer” as something of a distraction in teaching. Are teachers in front of the class to entertain students or is the classroom an environment in which to think and learn about difficult concepts? The consumer approach to universities, pushed in part by administrators who run universities like businesses, tends to emphasize the “entertainment paradigm,” hence the whole “boredom” issue.Having said all of this, Bowen’s own attitude goes beyond this simplistic “entertainment paradigm.” In fact, it sounds like he’s specifically not advocating for lectures to become a series of TEDtalks. Judging from the interview, it sounds like he might say that TEDtalk-style presentation should be put online and classroom-time should be devoted to analyzing those presentations.I do consider myself a performer, as I’ve been playing saxophone in a rather broad range of circumstances, from outdoor stages at festivals to concert halls. And my experience as a performer does influence the way I teach large classes. At the same time, it probably makes more salient the distinction between teaching and performing. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• The goateed administrator sported a suit jacket over a dark T-shirt
  • Though I’d be the first one to say that context is key, I fail to see what Bowen’s clothes contribute to the discussion. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• philosophical argument about the best way to engage students, he grounded it
  • A novel way to bring in grounded theory. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• information delivery common in today’s classroom lectures should be recorded and delivered to students as podcasts or online videos before class sessions
  • Fully agreed. Especially if we throw other things in the mix such as journal articles and collaboratively-created learning material. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• short online multiple-choice tests.
  • I don’t think he’s using the mc tests with an essessment focus rather an engagement focus – noit necessarily the most sophisticated but done playfully and creatively it can be a good first step to getting reluctatnt students to engage in first instance… comment by Kim FLINTOFF
  • I would also “defend” the use of MCTs in this context. Especially if the stakes are relatively low, the questions are well-crafted, and students do end up engaging.Like PPT, MCTs have some advantages, including because of student expectations.But, of course, it’s rather funny to hear Bowen talk about shaking things up and find out that he uses such tools. Still, the fact that these tests are online (and, one would think, taken outside of class time) goes well with Bowen’s main point about class time vs. tech-enabled work outside of class. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• Introduce issues of debate within the discipline and get the students to weigh in based on the knowledge they have from those lecture podcasts, Mr. Bowen says.
  • This wouldn’t be too difficult to do in social sciences and there are scenarios in which it would work wonderfully for lab sciences (if we think of “debate” as something similar to “discussion” sections in scientific articles).At the same time, some people do react negatively to such approaches based not on discipline but on “responsibilities of the university.” Some people even talk about responsibilities toward students’ parents! comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• But if the student believes they can contribute, they’re a whole lot more motivated to enter the discourse, and to enter the discipline.
  • Sounds a bit like some of the “higher” positions in William Perry’s scheme. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• don’t be boring
  • Is boredom induced exclusively by the teacher? Can a student bored during a class meeting still be motivated and engaged in the material at another point? Should we apply the same principle to the readings we assign? Is there a way to efficiently assess the “boredom factor” of an academic article? How can we convince academic publishers that fighting boredom isn’t necessarily done through the addition of pretty pictures? comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• you need a Ph.D. to figure it out
  • While I agree that these panels are difficult to use and could afford a redesign, the joke about needing a PhD sounds a bit strange in context. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• plug in their laptops
  • There’s something of a more general move toward getting people to use their own computers in the workplace. In fact, classroom computers are often so restricted as to be quite cumbersome to use in teaching. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• allow students to work in groups more easily
  • Not a bad idea. A good number of classrooms are structured in a way that makes it very hard to get students to do group work. Of course, it’s possible to do group work in any setting, but it’s remarkable how some of these seemingly trivial matters as the type of desk used can be enough to discourage some teachers from using certain teaching strategies. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• The classroom computers were old and needed an upgrade when Mr. Bowen arrived, so ditching them instead saved money.
  • Getting into the core of the issue. The reason it’s so important to think about “new ways” to do things isn’t necessarily that “old ways” weren’t conducive to learning. It’s because there are increased pressures on the system and some seem to perceive that cost-cutting and competition from online learning, making the issue so pressing. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• eliminate one staff position for a technician
  • Sounds sad, especially since support staff is already undervalued. But, at the same time, it does sound like relatively rational cost-cutting. One would just wish that they replaced that position with, say, teaching support. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• gave every professor a laptop
  • Again, this is a rather common practise outside of universities. Knowing how several colleagues think, this may also function as a way to “keep them happy.” comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• support so they could create their own podcasts and videos.
  • This is where the tech support position which was cut could be useful. Recording and podcasting aren’t difficult to set up or do. But it’s an area where support can mean more than answering questions about which button to press. In fact, podcasting projects are an ideal context for collaboration between tech, teach, and research. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• lugging their laptops to class,
  • It can be an issue, especially if there wasn’t a choice in the type of laptop which could be used. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• She’s made podcasts for her course on “Critical Scholarship in Communication” that feature interviews she recorded with experts in the field.
  • One cool thing about these podcasting projects is that people can build upon them, one semester after the other. Interviews with practitioners do help provide a multiplicity of voices. And, yes, getting students to produce their own content is often a good way to go, especially if the topic is somehow related to the activity. Getting students in applied communication to create material does sound appropriate. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• they come in actually much more informed
  • Sounds effective. Especially since Bowen’s approach seems to be oriented toward pre-class preparation. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• if they had been assigned a reading.
  • There’s a lot to be said about this. One reason this method may be more efficient than reading assignments could have to do with the particularities of written language, especially the very formal style of those texts we often assign as readings. Not that students shouldn’t read, of course! But there’s a case to be made for some readings being replaced by oral sources, especially those which have to do with people’s experience in a field. Reading primary source material, integrating some reference texts, and using oral material can all be part of an appropriate set of learning strategies. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• created podcast lectures
  • An advantage of such “lecturecasts,” “profcasts,” and “slidecasts” is that they’re relatively easy to build and can be tightly structured. It’s not the end-all of learning material, but it’s a better substitute for classroom lectures than one might think.Still, there’s room for improvement in the technology itself. For instance, it’d be nice to have Revver-style comments in the timeline. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• shows movie clips from his laptop
  • This one is slightly surprising because one would expect that these clips could easily be shown, online, ahead of class. It might have to do with the chilling effect of copyright regulation or Heffernan’s strategy of getting “fresh” feedback. There would have been good questions to ask Heffernan in preparation for this piece. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• “Strangely enough, the people who are most resistant to this model are the students, who are used to being spoon-fed material that is going to be quote unquote on the test,” says Mr. Heffernan. “Students have been socialized to view the educational process as essentially passive. The only way we’re going to stop that is by radically refiguring the classroom in precisely the way José wants to do it.”
  • This interpretation sounds a tiny bit lopsided. After all, aren’t there students who were already quite active and engaged in the “old system” who have expressed some resistance to the “new system?” Sounds likely to me. But maybe my students are different.One fascinating thing is the level of agreement, among teachers, about the necessity to have students who aren’t passive. I certainly share this opinion but there are teachers in this World who actually do prefer students who are somewhat passive and… “obedient.” comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• The same sequence of events
  • That part is quite significant: Bowen was already a reformer and already had gone through the process. In this case, he sounds more like one of those CEOs who are hired to save a company from a difficult situation. He originally sounded more like someone who wanted to impose specific views about teaching. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• ‘I paid for a college education and you’re not going to lecture?'”
  • A fairly common reaction, in certain contexts. A combination of the infamous “sense of entitlement,” the “customer-based approach to universities,” and student expectations about the way university teaching is supposed to go.One version I’ve had in student evaluations is that the student felt like s/he was hearing too much from other students instead of from me. It did pain me, because of the disconnect between what I was trying to do and that student’s notion of what university courses are supposed to bring her/him. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• PowerPoint lecture
  • As a commenter to my blog was saying about lectures in general, some of us (myself included) have been building a straw man. We may have negative attitudes toward certain teaching strategies, including some lecturing techniques. But that shouldn’t prevent us from discussing a wide array of teaching and learning strategies.In this case, it’s remarkable that despite the radical nature of Bowen’s reform, we learn that there are teachers who record PPT-based presentations. It then sounds like the issue isn’t so much about using PPT as it is about what is done in the classroom as opposed to what is done during the rest of the week.Boring or not, PPT lectures, even some which aren’t directly meant to engage students, can still find their place in the “teaching toolbox.” A dogmatic anti-PPT stance (such as the one displayed by this journalist) is unlikely to foster conversations about tools and learning. Based on the fact that teachers are in fact doing PPT lectures to be used outside the classroom, one ends up seeing Bowen’s perspective as much more open than that of the Chronicle’s editorial staff. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• Sandi Mann, the British researcher who led the recent study on student attitudes toward teaching, argues that boredom has serious implications in an educational setting.
  • Unsurprising perspective. Wonder if it had any impact on Mann’s research results. Makes the research sound more oriented than one might hope. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• according to some studies
  • Wow. Just… Wow. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• low-cost online alternatives to the traditional campus experience
  • This could have been the core issue discussed in an article about Bowen. Especially if we are to have a thoughtful conversation about the state of higher education in a changing context. Justification for high tuition fees, the latent functions of “college life,” the likely outcome of “competing with free,” the value of the complete learning experience as opposed to the value of information transmission… comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• give away videos
  • This is the “competing with free” part, to which record companies have been oblivious for so long but which makes OCW appear like quite a forward-looking proposition. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• colleges must make sure their in-person teaching really is superior to those alternatives
  • It’s both a free-market argument, which goes so well with the customer-based approach to learning, and a plea to consider learning in a broader way than the mere transmission of information from authoritative source to passive mass. An old saw, for sure, but one which surprisingly hasn’t been heard by everyone. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• add value
  • This might be appropriate language to convince trustees. At some institutions, this might be more important than getting students’ or teachers’ approval. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• not being online
  • Although, they do have an online presence. The arguments used have more to do with blended learning than with exclusively face-to-face methods. comment by Alexandre Enkerli
• might need to stay a low-tech zone to survive.
  • Rubbish there is no reason to dumb down learning; and he obviously is not teaching 2500 students at one time. PPT is not the problem here, and this really is a collection of facile arguements that are not ironically substantiated. Lowering his overhead does not increase student learning – wheres the evidence? comment by dean groom
  • Come to think of it, it sounds like the argument was made more forcefully by Young than by Bowen himself. Bowen is certainly quite vocal but the “need… to survive” sounds a tad bit stronger than Bowen’s project.What’s funny is that the video made Bowen sound almost opinionated. The article makes Young sound like he has his own axe to grind comment by Alexandre Enkerli

Thought Streams about Online Literacy

Interestingly enough, in the last several days, at least five unrelated items of online content have made me think about what I’d call “online literacy.” Not too surprising a co-occurrence, given the feeds I follow, but I think still interesting. Especially because different perspectives were behind these items and the ways I was led to them.

Here are the five items I most directly connect with my streams of thought about online literacy, during the past few days.

• Digital Domain – First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry. – NYTimes.com (via the Buzz Out Loud tag on Delicious)
• Literacy Debate – Online, R U Really Reading? – Series – NYTimes.com (via Language Log)
• Who Will Digitize the World’s Books? – The New York Review of Books (via media/anthropology)
• A Portal to Media Literacy – YouTube (via Digital Ethnography and Moodle Lounge)
• Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » How to do research – special free sample

Several items in my streams of thoughts on online literacy have found their way into a Moodle Lounge thread where they were mostly connected with the future of textbooks.

My notion of “online literacy” might be idiosyncratic. The concept, to me, relates to “media literacy” which (as far as I can tell) refers to the efficient use of a set of conceptual tools meant to help in approaching media items from the perspective of critical thinking and intellectual engagement. “Online literacy” would be the same thing applied to the Internet in general. One element specific to online literacy, I would argue, is that some basic principles of the Internet (including its decentralized character) make the critical/engaged approach very prominent. Simply put, the way the ‘Net is set up almost forces people to apply critical thinking to what they read, view, watch, or listen to, online. In something of a “cool medium” sense, the ‘Net also encourages active engagement in the material (though for reasons different from McLuhan’s description of medium coolness).

Furthermore, I tend to associate “book literacy” with modernity while “online literacy” seems quite compatible with orality which is itself typical of both post- and pre-modernity. I’m guessing this last point seems exceedingly weird to a number of people, but it really seems to fit in a larger scheme.

There are ways to discuss these issues which are more tech-friendly or geeky. Synchronous communication, many-to-many relationships, peer-to-peer (file) sharing, distributed processing… But as I think out loud, these concepts are mostly in the background.

My basic claim in all of this is that, regardless of how positive we think the move toward online content and away from mass-produced books, it’s important to train ourselves (and others) to gain a level of savviness in the online world. This form of online literacy is especially important with students because of their active engagement in the construction of knowledge.

Selling Myself Long

Been attending sessions by Meri Aaron Walker about online methods to get paid for our expertise. Meri coaches teachers about those issues.

MAWSTOOLBOX.COM

There’s also a LearnHub “course”: Jumpstart Your Online Teaching Career.

Some notes, on my own thinking about monetization of expertise. Still draft-like, but RERO is my battle cry.

Some obstacles to my selling expertise:

• My “oral personality.”
• The position on open/free knowledge in academia and elsewhere.
• My emphasis on friendship and personal rapport.
• My abilities as an employee instead of a “boss.”
• Difficulty in assessing the value of my expertise.
• The fact that other people have the same expertise that I think I have.
• High stakes (though this can be decreased, in some contexts).
• My distaste for competition/competitiveness.
• Difficulty at selling and advertising myself (despite my social capital).
• Being a creative generalist instead of a specialist.

Despite all these obstacles, I have been thinking about selling my services online.

One reason is that I really do enjoy teaching. As I keep saying, teaching is my hobby (when I get paid, it’s to learn how to interact with other learners and to set up learning contexts).

In fact, I enjoy almost everything in teaching (the major exception being grading/evaluating). From holding office hours and lecturing to facilitating discussions and answering questions through email. Teaching, for me, is deeply satisfying and I think that learning situations which imply the role of a teacher still make a lot of sense. I also like more informal learning situations and I even try to make my courses more similar to informal teaching. But I still find specific value in a “teaching and learning” system.

Some people seem to assume that teaching a course is the same thing as “selling expertise.” My perspective on learning revolves to a large extent on the difference between teaching and “selling expertise.” One part is that I find a difference between selling a product or process and getting paid in a broader transaction which does involve exchange about knowledge but which isn’t restricted to that exchange. Another part is that I don’t see teachers as specialists imparting their wisdom to eager masses. I see knowledge as being constructed in diverse situations, including formal and informal learning. Expertise is often an obstacle in the kind of teaching I’m interested in!

Funnily enough, I don’t tend to think of expertise as something that is easily measurable or transmissible. Those who study expertise have ways to assess something which is related to “being an expert,” especially in the case of observable skills (many of those are about “playing,” actually: chess, baseball, piano…). My personal perspective on expertise tends to be broader, more fluid. Similar to experience, but with more of a conscious approach to learning.

There also seems to be a major difference between “breadth of expertise” and “topics you can teach.” You don’t necessarily need to be very efficient at some task to help someone learn to do it. In fact, in some cases, being proficient in a domain is an obstacle to teaching in that domain, since expertise is so ingrained as to be very difficult to retrieve consciously.

This is close to “do what I say, not what I do.” I even think that it can be quite effective to actually instruct people without direct experience of these instructions. Similar to consulting, actually. Some people easily disagree with this point and some people tease teachers about “doing vs. teaching.” But we teachers do have a number of ways to respond, some of them snarkier than others. And though I disagree with several parts of his attitude, I quite like this short monologue by Taylor Mali about What Teachers Make.

Another reason I might “sell my expertise” is that I genuinely enjoy sharing my expertise. I usually provide it for free, but I can possibly relate to the value argument. I don’t feel so tied to social systems based on market economy (socialist, capitalist, communist…) but I have to make do.

Another link to “selling expertise” is more disciplinary. As an ethnographer, I enjoy being a “cultural translator.” of sorts. And, in some cases, my expertise in some domains is more of a translation from specialized speech into laypeople’s terms. I’m actually not very efficient at translating utterances from one language to another. But my habit of navigating between different “worlds” makes it possible for me to bridge gaps, cross bridges, serve as mediator, explain something fairly “esoteric” to an outsider. Close to popularization.

So, I’ve been thinking about what can be paid in such contexts which give prominence to expertise. Tutoring, homework help, consulting, coaching, advice, recommendation, writing, communicating, producing content…

And, finally, I’ve been thinking about my domains of expertise. As a “Jack of All Trades,” I can list a lot of those. My level of expertise varies greatly between them and I’m clearly a “Master of None.” In fact, some of them are merely from personal experience or even anecdotal evidence. Some are skills I’ve been told I have. But I’d still feel comfortable helping others with all of them.

I’m funny that way.

Domains of  Expertise

French

• Conversation
• Reading
• Writing
• Culture
• Literature
• Regional diversity
• Chanson appreciation

Bamanan (Bambara)

• Greetings
• Conversation

Social sciences

• Ethnographic disciplines
• Ethnographic field research
• Cultural anthropology
• Linguistic anthropology
• Symbolic anthropology
• Ethnomusicology
• Folkloristics

Semiotics

Language studies

• Language description
• Social dimensions of language
• Language change
• Field methods

Education

• Critical thinking
• Lifelong learning
• Higher education
• Graduate school
• Graduate advising
• Academia
• Humanities
• Social sciences
• Engaging students
• Getting students to talk
• Online teaching
• Online tools for teaching

Course Management Systems (Learning Management Systems)

• Oncourse
• Sakai
• WebCT
• Blackboard
• Moodle

Social networks

• Network ethnography
• Network analysis
• Influence management

Web platforms

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Ning
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Jaiku
• YouTube
• Flickr

Music

• Cultural dimensions of music
• Social dimensions of music
• Musicking
• Musical diversity
• Musical exploration
• Classical saxophone
• Basic music theory
• Musical acoustics
• Globalisation
• Business models for music
• Sound analysis
• Sound recording

Beer

• Homebrewing
• Brewing techniques
• Recipe formulation
• Finding ingredients
• Appreciation
• Craft beer culture
• Brewing trends
• Beer styles
• Brewing software

Coffee

• Homeroasting
• Moka pot brewing
• Espresso appreciation
• Coffee fundamentals
• Global coffee trade

Social media

Blogging

• Diverse uses of blogging
• Writing tricks
• Workflow
• Blogging platforms

Podcasts

• Advantages of podcasts
• Podcasts in teaching
• Filming
• Finding podcasts
• Embedding content

Technology

• Trends
• Geek culture
• Equipment
• Beta testing
• Troubleshooting Mac OS X

Online Life

Communities

• Mailing-lists
• Generating discussions
• Entering communities
• Building a sense of community
• Diverse types of communities
• Community dynamics
• Online communities

Food

• Enjoying food
• Cooking
• Baking
• Vinaigrette
• Pizza dough
• Bread

Places

• Montreal, Qc
• Lausanne, VD
• Bamako, ML
• Bloomington, IN
• Moncton, NB
• Austin, TX
• South Bend, IN
• Fredericton, NB
• Northampton, MA

Pedestrianism

• Carfree living
• Public transportation
• Pedestrian-friendly places

Tools I Use

• PDAs
• iPod
• iTunes
• WordPress.com
• Skype
• Del.icio.us
• Diigo
• Blogger (Blogspot)
• Mac OS X
• Firefox
• Flock
• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Maps
• Zotero
• Endnote
• RefWorks
• Zoho Show
• Wikipedia
• iPod touch
• SMS
• Outlining
• PowerPoint
• Slideshare
• Praat
• Audacity
• Nero Express
• Productivity software

Effective Web searches

Socialization

• Social capital
• Entering the field
• Creating rapport
• Event participation
• Event hosting

Computer Use

• Note-taking
• Working with RSS feeds
• Basic programing concepts
• Data manipulations

Research Methods

• Open-ended interviewing
• Qualitative data analysis

Personal

• Hedonism
• Public speaking
• GERD
• Strabismus
• Moving
• Cultural awareness

Another Point for Wikipedia: Rousseau’s Citizenship

Compare the following two articles on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At the onset of the first entry, Rousseau is described unequivocally as a “French philosopher.” In the second entry, Rousseau is first described through his contributions to philosophy, literature, and music. The beginning of the biography section of that second entry contains a clear, straightforward, and useful statement about Rousseau’s citizenship. As this Wikipedia entry explains, and is clear in Rousseau’s work, the well-known French-speaking thinker considered himself a citizen of Geneva throughout his life (which ended during the Old Swiss Confederacy, before Geneva became a Canton of Switzerland). While Rousseau’s connections to France are clearly mentioned, nowhere in the body of this Wikipedia article is Rousseau himself called “French.” The article has been classified in diverse Wikipedia categories which do contain the word “French,” but this association is fairly indirect. Though it may sound like the same thing, there’s a huge difference between putting Rousseau in a list of “French philosophers” or “French memoirists” and describing Rousseau as a “French philosopher.” In fact, Rousseau is also listed among “Swiss educationists” and “Swiss music theorists.” These classifications aren’t  inaccurate as classifications. They wouldn’t be very precise as descriptions.

As a dual Swiss/Canadian citizen myself, I easily react to this type of imprecision, especially in formal contexts.

The Encyclopædia Britannica carries quite a bit of prestige and one would expect such issues as citizenship to be treated with caution. Seeing Rousseau mentioned in the “On This Day” bulletin, I accessed the Britannica entry on Rousseau via a single click. The first word of this entry was “French,” which did seem quite inappropriate, to me. In fact, I hoped that the rest of the entry would contain an explanation of this choice. Maybe I had missed the fact that Rousseau became a naturalized French citizen, at some point. Or maybe they just mean “French-speaker.” Or the descriptor was meant as a connection to philosophical trends associated with France…

Nope! Nothing like that.

Instead, a narrative on Rousseau’s life with lots of anecdotes, a few links to other entries, and some “peacock terms.” But no explanation of what is meant by “French philosopher.” This isn’t about accuracy as an absolute. The description could be accurate if it had been explained. But it wasn’t. Oh, there are some mentions of Rousseau’s “rights as a citizen” of Geneva, in connection with The Social Contract. But these statements are rather confusing, especially in the artificial context of an encyclopedia entry.

The Britannica entry was written by the late British economist Maurice Cranston. Given the fact that Cranston died in 1993, one is led to believe that the Britannica entry on Rousseau has been left unmodified in the past 15 years. The Wikipedia version has been modified hundreds of time in the last year. Now, many of these modifications were probably trivial, some are likely to have been inappropriate, and (without looking at the details of the changes) there’s no guarantee that the current version is the best possible one. The point here isn’t about the rate of change. It’s about the opportunities for modifying an encyclopedia entry. One would think that, during the last fifteen years, the brilliant people at Britannica may have had the time to include a clarification as to Rousseau’s citizenship. In fact, one might expect that a good deal of research on Rousseau’s work has happened in the meantime and it would make sense to say that the Britannica entry on the scholar could integrate some elements of that research.

Notice that I’m not, in fact, talking about factual accuracy as an abstract concept. I’m referring to the effects of encyclopedia entries on people’s understanding. In my mind, the Wikipedia entry on Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes it easy for readers to exercise their critical thinking. The Britannica entry on the same person makes it sound as though everything which could be said about Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be contained in a single narrative.

My guess is, Rousseau and his «Encyclopédistes» friends would probably prefer Wikipedia over Britannica.

But that’s just a guess.

The Need for Social Science in Social Web/Marketing/Media (Draft)

[Been sitting on this one for a little while. Better RERO it, I guess.]

Sticking My Neck Out (Executive Summary)

I think that participants in many technology-enthusiastic movements which carry the term “social” would do well to learn some social science. Furthermore, my guess is that ethnographic disciplines are very well-suited to the task of teaching participants in these movements something about social groups.

Disclaimer

Despite the potentially provocative title and my explicitly stating a position, I mostly wish to think out loud about different things which have been on my mind for a while.

I’m not an “expert” in this field. I’m just a social scientist and an ethnographer who has been observing a lot of things online. I do know that there are many experts who have written many great books about similar issues. What I’m saying here might not seem new. But I’m using my blog as a way to at least write down some of the things I have in mind and, hopefully, discuss these issues thoughtfully with people who care.

Also, this will not be a guide on “what to do to be social-savvy.” Books, seminars, and workshops on this specific topic abound. But my attitude is that every situation needs to be treated in its own context, that cookie-cutter solutions often fail. So I would advise people interested in this set of issues to train themselves in at least a little bit of social science, even if much of the content of the training material seems irrelevant. Discuss things with a social scientist, hire a social scientist in your business, take a course in social science, and don’t focus on advice but on the broad picture. Really.

Clarification

Though they are all different, enthusiastic participants in “social web,” “social marketing,” “social media,” and other “social things online” do have some commonalities. At the risk of angering some of them, I’m lumping them all together as “social * enthusiasts.” One thing I like about the term “enthusiast” is that it can apply to both professional and amateurs, to geeks and dabblers, to full-timers and part-timers. My target isn’t a specific group of people. I just observed different things in different contexts.

Links

Shameless Self-Promotion

A few links from my own blog, for context (and for easier retrieval):

• “Social Butterfly Effect”: More Than a Silly Pun?
• Swiss Made Smiling
• Technology Adoption and Active Reading
• Handhelds for the Rest of Us?

Shameless Cross-Promotion

A few links from other blogs, to hopefully expand context (and for easier retrieval):

• the cluetrain manifesto
• Raising standards — by lowering them
• Web 2.0 != AJAX
• Qu’est ce que l’autorité cognitive
• Les 6 cultures d’Internet
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life – Note to Web 2.0 Companies: Early Adopters are not the Mass Market
• Perspective 2.0: The emperor has designer clothes
• Dissemination of Knowledge

Some raw notes

• Insight
• Cluefulness
• Openness
• Freedom
• Transparency
• Unintended uses
• Constructivism
• Empowerment
• Disruptive technology
• Innovation
• Creative thinking
• Critical thinking
• Technology adoption
• Early adopters
• Late adopters
• Forced adoption
• OLPC XO
• OLPC XOXO
• Attitudes to change
• Conservatism
• Luddites
• Activism
• Impatience
• Windmills and shelters
• Niche thinking
• Geek culture
• Groupthink
• Idea horizon
• Intersubjectivity
• Influence
• Sphere of influence
• Influence network
• Social butterfly effect
• Cog in a wheel
• Social networks
• Acephalous groups
• Ego-based groups
• Non-hierarchical groups
• Mutual influences
• Network effects
• Risk-taking
• Low-stakes
• Trial-and-error
• Transparency
• Ethnography
• Epidemiology of ideas
• Neural networks
• Cognition and communication
• Wilson and Sperber
• Relevance
• Global
• Glocal
• Regional
• City-State
• Fluidity
• Consensus culture
• Organic relationships
• Establishing rapport
• Buzzwords
• Viral
• Social
• Meme
• Memetic marketplace
• Meta
• Target audience

Let’s Give This a Try

The Internet is, simply, a network. Sure, technically it’s a meta-network, a network of networks. But that is pretty much irrelevant, in social terms, as most networks may be analyzed at different levels as containing smaller networks or being parts of larger networks. The fact remains that the ‘Net is pretty easy to understand, sociologically. It’s nothing new, it’s just a textbook example of something social scientists have been looking at for a good long time.

Though the Internet mostly connects computers (in many shapes or forms, many of them being “devices” more than the typical “personal computer”), the impact of the Internet is through human actions, behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. Sure, we can talk ad nauseam about the technical aspects of the Internet, but these topics have been covered a lot in the last fifteen years of intense Internet growth and a lot of people seem to be ready to look at other dimensions.

The category of “people who are online” has expanded greatly, in different steps. Here, Martin Lessard’s description of the Internet’s Six Cultures (Les 6 cultures d’Internet) is really worth a read. Martin’s post is in French but we also had a blog discussion in English, about it. Not only are there more people online but those “people who are online” have become much more diverse in several respects. At the same time, there are clear patterns on who “online people” are and there are clear differences in uses of the Internet.

Groups of human beings are the very basic object of social science. Diversity in human groups is the very basis for ethnography. Ethnography is simply the description of (“writing about”) human groups conceived as diverse (“peoples”). As simple as ethnography can be, it leads to a very specific approach to society which is very compatible with all sorts of things relevant to “social * enthusiasts” on- and offline.

While there are many things online which may be described as “media,” comparing the Internet to “The Mass Media” is often the best way to miss “what the Internet is all about.” Sure, the Internet isn’t about anything (about from connecting computers which, in turn, connect human beings). But to get actual insight into the ‘Net, one probably needs to free herself/himself of notions relating to “The Mass Media.” Put bluntly, McLuhan was probably a very interesting person and some of his ideas remain intriguing but fallacies abound in his work and the best thing to do with his ideas is to go beyond them.

One of my favourite examples of the overuse of “media”-based concepts is the issue of influence. In blogging, podcasting, or selling, the notion often is that, on the Internet as in offline life, “some key individuals or outlets are influential and these are the people by whom or channels through which ideas are disseminated.” Hence all the Technorati rankings and other “viewer statistics.” Old techniques and ideas from the times of radio and television expansion are used because it’s easier to think through advertising models than through radically new models. This is, in fact, when I tend to bring back my explanation of the “social butterfly effect“: quite frequently, “influence” online isn’t through specific individuals or outlets but even when it is, those people are influential through virtue of connecting to diverse groups, not by the number of people they know. There are ways to analyze those connections but “measuring impact” is eventually missing the point.

Yes, there is an obvious “qual. vs. quant.” angle, here. A major distinction between non-ethnographic and ethnographic disciplines in social sciences is that non-ethnographic disciplines tend to be overly constrained by “quantitative analysis.” Ultimately, any analysis is “qualitative” but “quantitative methods” are a very small and often limiting subset of the possible research and analysis methods available. Hence the constriction and what some ethnographers may describe as “myopia” on the part of non-ethnographers.

Gone Viral

The term “viral” is used rather frequently by “social * enthusiasts” online. I happen to think that it’s a fairly fitting term, even though it’s used more by extension than by literal meaning. To me, it relates rather directly to Dan Sperber’s “epidemiological” treatment of culture (see Explaining Culture) which may itself be perceived as resembling Dawkins’s well-known “selfish gene” ideas made popular by different online observers, but with something which I perceive to be (to use simple semiotic/semiological concepts) more “motivated” than the more “arbitrary” connections between genetics and ideas. While Sperber could hardly be described as an ethnographer, his anthropological connections still make some of his work compatible with ethnographic perspectives.

Analysis of the spread of ideas does correspond fairly closely with the spread of viruses, especially given the nature of contacts which make transmission possible. One needs not do much to spread a virus or an idea. This virus or idea may find “fertile soil” in a given social context, depending on a number of factors. Despite the disadvantages of extending analogies and core metaphors too far, the type of ecosystem/epidemiology analysis of social systems embedded in uses of the term “viral” do seem to help some specific people make sense of different things which happen online. In “viral marketing,” the type of informal, invisible, unexpected spread of recognition through word of mouth does relate somewhat to the spread of a virus. Moreover, the metaphor of “viral marketing” is useful in thinking about the lack of control the professional marketer may have on how her/his product is perceived. In this context, the term “viral” seems useful.

The Social

While “viral” seems appropriate, the even more simple “social” often seems inappropriately used. It’s not a ranty attitude which makes me comment negatively on the use of the term “social.” In fact, I don’t really care about the use of the term itself. But I do notice that use of the term often obfuscates what is the obvious social character of the Internet.

To a social scientist, anything which involves groups is by definition “social.” Of course, some groups and individuals are more gregarious than others, some people are taken to be very sociable, and some contexts are more conducive to heightened social interactions. But social interactions happen in any context.
As an example I used (in French) in reply to this blog post, something as common as standing in line at a grocery store is representative of social behaviour and can be analyzed in social terms. Any Web page which is accessed by anyone is “social” in the sense that it establishes some link, however tenuous and asymmetric, between at least two individuals (someone who created the page and the person who accessed that page). Sure, it sounds like the minimal definition of communication (sender, medium/message, receiver). But what most people who talk about communication seem to forget (unlike Jakobson), is that all communication is social.

Sure, putting a comment form on a Web page facilitates a basic social interaction, making the page “more social” in the sense of “making that page easier to use explicit social interaction.” And, of course, adding some features which facilitate the act of sharing data with one’s personal contacts is a step above the contact form in terms of making certain type of social interaction straightforward and easy. But, contrary to what Google Friend Connect implies, adding those features doesn’t suddenly make the site social. The site itself isn’t really social and, assuming some people visited it, there was already a social dimension to it. I’m not nitpicking on word use. I’m saying that using “social” in this way may blind some people to social dimensions of the Internet. And the consequences can be pretty harsh, in some cases, for overlooking how social the ‘Net is.

Something similar may be said about the “Social Web,” one of the many definitions of “Web 2.0” which is used in some contexts (mostly, the cynic would say, “to make some tool appear ‘new and improved'”). The Web as a whole was “social” by definition. Granted, it lacked the ease of social interaction afforded such venerable Internet classics as Usenet and email. But it was already making some modes of social interaction easier to perceive. No, this isn’t about “it’s all been done.” It’s about being oblivious to the social potential of tools which already existed. True, the period in Internet history known as “Web 2.0” (and the onset of the Internet’s sixth culture) may be associated with new social phenomena. But there is little evidence that the association is causal, that new online tools and services created a new reality which suddenly made it possible for people to become social online. This is one reason I like Martin Lessard’s post so much. Instead of postulating the existence of a brand new phenomenon, he talks about the conditions for some changes in both Internet use and the form the Web has taken.

Again, this isn’t about terminology per se. Substitute “friendly” for “social” and similar issues might come up (friendship and friendliness being disconnected from the social processes which underline them).

Adoptive Parents

Many “social * enthusiasts” are interested in “adoption.” They want their “things” to be adopted. This is especially visible among marketers but even in social media there’s an issue of “getting people on board.” And some people, especially those without social science training, seem to be looking for a recipe.

Problem is, there probably is no such thing as a recipe for technology adoption.

Sure, some marketing practises from the offline world may work online. Sometimes, adapting a strategy from the material world to the Internet is very simple and the Internet version may be more effective than the offline version. But it doesn’t mean that there is such a thing as a recipe. It’s a matter of either having some people who “have a knack for this sort of things” (say, based on sensitivity to what goes on online) or based on pure luck. Or it’s a matter of measuring success in different ways. But it isn’t based on a recipe. Especially not in the Internet sphere which is changing so rapidly (despite some remarkably stable features).

Again, I’m partial to contextual approaches (“fully-customized solutions,” if you really must). Not just because I think there are people who can do this work very efficiently. But because I observe that “recipes” do little more than sell “best-selling books” and other items.

So, what can we, as social scientists, say about “adoption?” That technology is adopted based on the perceived fit between the tools and people’s needs/wants/goals/preferences. Not the simple “the tool will be adopted if there’s a need.” But a perception that there might be a fit between an amorphous set of social actors (people) and some well-defined tools (“technologies”). Recognizing this fit is extremely difficult and forcing it is extremely expensive (not to mention completely unsustainable). But social scientists do help in finding ways to adapt tools to different social situations.

Especially ethnographers. Because instead of surveys and focus groups, we challenge assumptions about what “must” fit. Our heads and books are full of examples which sound, in retrospect, as common sense but which had stumped major corporations with huge budgets. (Ask me about McDonald’s in Brazil or browse a cultural anthropology textbook, for more information.)

Recently, while reading about issues surrounding the OLPC’s original XO computer, I was glad to read the following:

John Heskett once said that the critical difference between invention and innovation was its mass adoption by users. (Niti Bhan The emperor has designer clothes)

Not that this is a new idea, for social scientists. But I was glad that the social dimension of technology adoption was recognized.

In marketing and design spheres especially, people often think of innovation as individualized. While some individuals are particularly adept at leading inventions to mass adoption (Steve Jobs being a textbook example), “adoption comes from the people.” Yes, groups of people may be manipulated to adopt something “despite themselves.” But that kind of forced adoption is still dependent on a broad acceptance, by “the people,” of even the basic forms of marketing. This is very similar to the simplified version of the concept of “hegemony,” so common in both social sciences and humanities. In a hegemony (as opposed to a totalitarian regime), no coercion is necessary because the logic of the system has been internalized by people who are affected by it. Simple, but effective.

In online culture, adept marketers are highly valued. But I’m quite convinced that pre-online marketers already knew that they had to “learn society first.” One thing with almost anything happening online is that “the society” is boundless. Country boundaries usually make very little sense and the social rules of every local group will leak into even the simplest occasion. Some people seem to assume that the end result is a cultural homogenization, thereby not necessitating any adaptation besides the move from “brick and mortar” to online. Others (or the same people, actually) want to protect their “business models” by restricting tools or services based on country boundaries. In my mind, both attitudes are ineffective and misleading.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

I think the Cluetrain Manifesto can somehow be summarized through concepts of freedom, openness, and transparency. These are all very obvious (in French, the book title is something close to “the evident truths manifesto”). They’re also all very social.

Social scientists often become activists based on these concepts. And among social scientists, many of us are enthusiastic about the social changes which are happening in parallel with Internet growth. Not because of technology. But because of empowerment. People are using the Internet in their own ways, the one key feature of the Internet being its lack of centralization. While the lack of centralized control may be perceived as a “bad thing” by some (social scientists or not), there’s little argument that the ‘Net as a whole is out of the control of specific corporations or governments (despite the large degree of consolidation which has happened offline and online).

Especially in the United States, “freedom” is conceived as a basic right. But it’s also a basic concept in social analysis. As some put it: “somebody’s rights end where another’s begin.” But social scientists have a whole apparatus to deal with all the nuances and subtleties which are bound to come from any situation where people’s rights (freedom) may clash or even simply be interpreted differently. Again, not that social scientists have easy, ready-made answers on these issues. But we’re used to dealing with them. We don’t interpret freedom as a given.

Transparency is fairly simple and relates directly to how people manage information itself (instead of knowledge or insight). Radical transparency is giving as much information as possible to those who may need it. Everybody has a “right to learn” a lot of things about a given institution (instead of “right to know”), when that institution has a social impact. Canada’s Access to Information Act is quite representative of the move to transparency and use of this act has accompanied changes in the ways government officials need to behave to adapt to a relatively new reality.

Openness is an interesting topic, especially in the context of the so-called “Open Source” movement. Radical openness implies participation by outsiders, at least in the form of verbal feedback. The cluefulness of “opening yourself to your users” is made obvious in the context of successes by institutions which have at least portrayed themselves as open. What’s in my mind unfortunate is that many institutions now attempt to position themselves on the openness end of the “closed/proprietary to open/responsive” scale without much work done to really open themselves up.

Communitas

Mottoes, slogans, and maxims like “build it and they will come,” “there’s a sucker born every minute,” “let them have cake,” and “give them what they want” all fail to grasp the basic reality of social life: “they” and “we” are linked. We’re all different and we’re all connected. We all take parts in groups. These groups are all associated with one another. We can’t simply behave the same way with everyone. Identity has two parts: sense of belonging (to an “in-group”) and sense of distinction (from an “out-group”). “Us/Them.”

Within the “in-group,” if there isn’t any obvious hierarchy, the sense of belonging can take the form that Victor Turner called “communitas” and which happens in situations giving real meaning to the notion of “community.” “Community of experience,” “community of practise.” Eckert and Wittgenstein brought to online networks. In a community, contacts aren’t always harmonious. But people feel they fully belong. A network isn’t the same thing as a community.

The World Is My Oyster

Despite the so-called “Digital Divide” (or, more precisely, the maintenance online of global inequalities), the ‘Net is truly “Global.” So is the phone, now that cellphones are accomplishing the “leapfrog effect.” But this one Internet we have (i.e., not Internet2 or other such specialized meta-network) is reaching everywhere through a single set of compatible connections. The need for cultural awareness is increased, not alleviated by online activities.

Release Early, Release Often

Among friends, we call it RERO.

The RERO principle is a multiple-pass system. Instead of waiting for the right moment to release a “perfect product” (say, a blogpost!), the “work in progress” is provided widely, garnering feedback which will be integrated in future “product versions.” The RERO approach can be unnerving to “product developers,” but it has proved its value in online-savvy contexts.

I use “product” in a broad sense because the principle applies to diverse contexts. Furthermore, the RERO principle helps shift the focus from “product,” back into “process.”

The RERO principle may imply some “emotional” or “psychological” dimensions, such as humility and the acceptance of failure. At some level, differences between RERO and “trial-and-error” methods of development appear insignificant. Those who create something should not expect the first try to be successful and should recognize mistakes to improve on the creative process and product. This is similar to the difference between “rehearsal” (low-stakes experimentation with a process) and “performance” (with responsibility, by the performer, for evaluation by an audience).

Though applications of the early/often concept to social domains are mostly satirical, there is a social dimension to the RERO principle. Releasing a “product” implies a group, a social context.

The partial and frequent “release” of work to “the public” relates directly to openness and transparency. Frequent releases create a “relationship” with human beings. Sure, many of these are “Early Adopters” who are already overrepresented. But the rapport established between an institution and people (users/clients/customers/patrons…) can be transfered more broadly.

Releasing early seems to shift the limit between rehearsal and performance. Instead of being able to do mistakes on your own, your mistakes are shown publicly and your success is directly evaluated. Yet a somewhat reverse effect can occur: evaluation of the end-result becomes a lower-stake rating at different parts of the project because expectations have shifted to the “lower” end. This is probably the logic behind Google’s much discussed propensity to call all its products “beta.”

While the RERO principle does imply a certain openness, the expectation that each release might integrate all the feedback “users” have given is not fundamental to releasing early and frequently. The expectation is set by a specific social relationship between “developers” and “users.” In geek culture, especially when users are knowledgeable enough about technology to make elaborate wishlists, the expectation to respond to user demand can be quite strong, so much so that developers may perceive a sense of entitlement on the part of “users” and grow some resentment out of the situation. “If you don’t like it, make it yourself.” Such a situation is rather common in FLOSS development: since “users” have access to the source code, they may be expected to contribute to the development project. When “users” not only fail to fulfil expectations set by open development but even have the gumption to ask developers to respond to demands, conflicts may easily occur. And conflicts are among the things which social scientists study most frequently.

Putting the “Capital” Back into “Social Capital”

In the past several years, ”monetization” (transforming ideas into currency) has become one of the major foci of anything happening online. Anything which can be a source of profit generates an immediate (and temporary) “buzz.” The value of anything online is measured through typical currency-based economics. The relatively recent movement toward ”social” whatever is not only representative of this tendency, but might be seen as its climax: nowadays, even social ties can be sold directly, instead of being part of a secondary transaction. As some people say “The relationship is the currency” (or “the commodity,” or “the means to an end”). Fair enough, especially if these people understand what social relationships entail. But still strange, in context, to see people “selling their friends,” sometimes in a rather literal sense, when social relationships are conceived as valuable. After all, “selling the friend” transforms that relationship, diminishes its value. Ah, well, maybe everyone involved is just cynical. Still, even their cynicism contributes to the system. But I’m not judging. Really, I’m not. I’m just wondering
Anyhoo, the “What are you selling anyway” question makes as much sense online as it does with telemarketers and other greed-focused strangers (maybe “calls” are always “cold,” online). It’s just that the answer isn’t always so clear when the “business model” revolves around creating, then breaking a set of social expectations.
Me? I don’t sell anything. Really, not even my ideas or my sense of self. I’m just not good at selling. Oh, I do promote myself and I do accumulate social capital. As social butterflies are wont to do. The difference is, in the case of social butterflies such as myself, no money is exchanged and the social relationships are, hopefully, intact. This is not to say that friends never help me or never receive my help in a currency-friendly context. It mostly means that, in our cases, the relationships are conceived as their own rewards.
I’m consciously not taking the moral high ground, here, though some people may easily perceive this position as the morally superior one. I’m not even talking about a position. Just about an attitude to society and to social relationships. If you will, it’s a type of ethnographic observation from an insider’s perspective.

Makes sense?

Culture and Health: Contact and Coverage

It’s late in the game, as the story has already made the rounds, but I guess I was under a rock.

FUNAI, a Brazilian foundation which aims to help indigenous groups, has released pictures of a relatively isolated group in the Amazon region. Apparently, the purpose of those pictures was to show how healthy these people seemed to be, contrary to folk beliefs about indigenous groups. These folk beliefs are widespread in post-industrial societies and seem to relate to basic ethnocentrism.

Some major media outlets released those same pictures with captions and other comments about allegedly “uncontacted tribes.” Through the “telephone game,” the same images became part of an awkwardly anachronistic coverage of cultural diversity, many comments being made from a resolutely neo-evolutionist perspective. A whole debacle ensued. Several anthropologists have been contacted to comment on the situation.

So far, the most thoughtful piece of writing I’ve seen about the whole situation is this one:

‘Uncontacted Indians?!’ — contact an anthropologist! « Culture Matters

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if media debacles such as this one could be avoided? One would hope that a good dose of critical thinking and some thoughtful blogging might help.

Actively Reading Open Access

Open Access

I’ve been enthusiastic about OA (open access to academic texts) for a number of years. I don’t tend to be extremely active in the OA milieu but I do use every opportunity I can to talk about OA, both in formal academic contexts and in more casual and informal conversation.

My own views about Open Access are that it should be plain common-sense, for both scholars and “the public.” Not that OA is an ultimate principle, but it seems so obvious to me that OA can be beneficial in a large range of contexts. In fact, I tend to conceive of academia in terms of Open Access. In my mind, a concept related to OA runs at the very core of the academic enterprise and helps distinguish it from other types of endeavours. Simply put, academia is the type of “knowledge work ” which is oriented toward openness in access and use.

Historically, this connection between academic work and openness has allegedly been the source of the so-called “Open Source movement” with all its consequences in computing, the Internet, and geek culture.

Quite frequently, OA advocates focus (at least in public) on specific issues related to Open Access. An OA advocate put it in a way that made me think it might have been a precaution, used by OA advocates and activists, to avoid scaring off potential OA enthusiasts. As I didn’t involve myself as a “fighter” in the OA-related discussions, I rarely found a need for such precautions.

I now see signs that the Open Access movement is finally strong enough that some of these precautions might not even be needed. Not that OA advocates “throw caution to the wind.” But I really sense that it’s now possible to openly discuss broader issues related to Open Access because “critical mass has been achieved.”

Suber’s Newsletter

Case in point, for this sense of a “wind of change,” the latest issue of Peter Suber’s SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Suber’s newsletter is frequently a useful source of information about Open Access and I often get inspired by it. But because my involvement in the OA movement is rather limited, I tend to skim those newsletter issues, more than I really read them. I kind of feel bad about this but “we all need to choose our battles,” in terms of information management.

But today’s issue “caught my eye.” Actually, it stimulated a lot of thoughts in me. It provided me with (tasty) intellectual nourishment. Simply put: it made me happy.

It’s all because Suber elaborated an argument about Open Access that I find particularly compelling: the epistemological dimension of Open Acces. Because of my perspective, I respond much more favourably to this epistemological argument than I would with most practical and ethical arguments. Maybe that’s just me. But it still works.

So I read Suber’s newsletter with much more attention than usual. I savoured it. And I used this new method of actively reading online texts which is based on the Diigo.com social bookmarking service.

Active Reading

What follows is a slightly edited version of my Diigo annotations on Suber’s text.

Peter Suber, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 6/2/08

Annotated

June 2008 issue of Peter Suber’s newsletter on open access to academic texts (“Open Access,” or “OA”).

tags: toblog, Suber, Open Access, academia, publishing, wisdom of crowds, crowdsourcing, critical thinking

General comments

• Suber’s newsletters are always on the lengthy side of things but this one seems especially long. I see this as a good sign.
• For several reasons, I find this issue of Suber’s newsletter is particularly stimulating. Part of my personal anthology of literature about Open Access.

Quote-based annotations and highlights.

Items in italics are Suber’s, those in roman are my annotations.

• Open access and the self-correction of knowledge

  • This might be one of my favourite arguments for OA. Yes, it’s close to ESR’s description of the “eyeball” principle. But it works especially well for academia.
• Nor is it very subtle or complicated
  • Agreed. So, why is it so rarely discussed or grokked?
• John Stuart Mill in 1859
  • Nice way to tie the argument to something which may thought-provoke scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences.
• OA facilitates the testing and validation of knowledge claims
  • Neat, clean, simple, straightforward… convincing. Framing it as hypothesis works well, in context.
• science is self-correcting
  • Almost like “talking to scientists’ emotions.” In an efficient way.
• reliability of inquiry
  • Almost lingo-like but resonates well with academic terminology.
• Science is special because it’s self-correcting.
  • Don’t we all wish this were more widely understood?
• scientists eventually correct the errors of other scientists
  • There’s an important social concept, here. Related to humility as a function of human interaction.
• persuade their colleagues
• new professional consensus
• benefit from the perspectives of others
  • Tying humility, intellectual honesty, critical thinking, ego-lessness, and even relativist ways of knowing.
• freedom of expression is essential to truth-seeking
• opening discussion as widely as possible
  • Perhaps my favourite argument ever for not only OA but for changes in academia generally.
• when the human mind is capable of receiving it
  • Possible tie-in with the social level of cognition. Or the usual “shoulders of giants.”
• public scrutiny
  • Emphasis on “public”!
• protect the freedom of expression
  • The problem I have with the way this concept is applied is that people rely on pre-established institutions for this protection and seem to assume that, if the institution is maintained, so is the protection. Dangerous!
• If the only people free to speak their minds are people like the author, or people with a shared belief in current orthodoxy, then we’d rarely hear from people in a position to recognize deficiencies in need of correction.
  • This, I associate with “groupthink” in the “highest spheres” (sphere height being giving through social negotiation of prestige).
• But we do have to make our claims available to everyone who might care to read and comment on them.
  • Can’t help but think that *some* of those who oppose or forget this mainly fear the social risks associated with our positions being questioned or invalidated.
• For the purposes of scientific progress, a society in which access to research is limited, because it’s written in Latin, because authors are secretive, or because access requires travel or wealth, is like a society in which freedom of expression is limited.
• scientists who are free to speak their minds but lack access to the literature have no advantage over scientists without the freedom to speak their minds
• many-eyeballs theory
• many voices from many perspectives
• exactly what scientists must do to inch asymptotically toward certainty
• devil’s advocate
• enlisting as much help
• validate knowledge claims in public
• OA works best of all
  • My guess is that those who want to argue against this hypothesis are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion, perhaps based on personal motives. Nothing inherently wrong there, but it remains as a potential bias.
• longevity in a free society
  • Interesting way to put it.
• delay
• the friction in a non-OA system
  • The academic equivalent of cute.
• For scientific self-correction, OA is lubricant, not a precondition.
  • Catalyst?
• much of the scientific progress in the 16th and 17th centuries was due to the spread of print itself and the wider access it allowed for new results
  • Neat way to frame it.
• Limits on access (like limits on liberty) are not deal-breakers, just friction in the system
  • “See? We’re not opposed to you. We just think there’s a more efficient way to do things.”
• OA can affect knowledge itself, or the process by which knowledge claims become knowledge
• pragmatic arguments
  • Pretty convincing ones.
• The Millian argument for OA is not the “wisdom of crowds”
  • Not exclusively, but it does integrate the diversity of viewpoints made obvious through crowdsourcing.
• without attempting to synthesize them
  • If “wisdom of crowds” really is about synthesis, then it’s nothing more than groupthink.
• peer review and the kind of empirical content that underlies what Karl Popper called falsifiability
  • I personally hope that a conversation about these will occur soon. What OA makes possible, in a way, is to avoid the dangers which come from the social dimension of “peerness.” This was addressed earlier, and I see a clear connection with “avoiding groupthink.” But the assumption that peer-review, in its current form, has reached some ultimate and eternal value as a validation system can be questioned in the context of OA.
• watchdogs
• Such online watchdogs were among those who first identified problems with images and other data in a cloning paper published in Science by Woo Suk Hwang, a South Korean researcher. The research was eventually found to be fraudulent, and the journal retracted the paper….
  • Not only is it fun as a “success story” (CHE’s journalistic bent), but it may help some people understand that there is satisfaction to be found in fact-checking. In fact, verification can be self-rewarding, in an appropriate context. Seems obvious enough to many academics but it sounds counterintuitive to those who think of academia as waged labour.

Round-up

Really impressive round-up of recent news related to Open Access. What I tend to call a “linkfest.”

What follows is my personal selection, based on diverse interests.

• The venerable French encyclopedia, Larousse, will publish a free online edition, open to vetted user contributions.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/larousse-offers-free-online-access-some.html
• Harvard Law School joined the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in adopting an OA mandate. Just as in the FAS, the Law School mandate was adopted by a unanimous vote of the faculty.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/harvard-law-school-joins-harvard-fas-in.html
• The Canadian Library Association approved a Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries. It not only calls for a mandate OA for publicly-funded research, but regards embargo periods as a temporary compromise, justified only to help publishers adapt during a transition period.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/preview-of-cla-statement-on-oa.html
• Google Books and WorldCat agreed to link their records to one another.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/google-books-and-worldcat-records-link.html
• Microsoft pulled the plug on Academic Search, Book Search, and its book-scanning program. It will fulfill existing contracts (e.g. with the British Library), give digital copies of scanned books to their publishers, donate its book-scanning equipment to its partners, and remove usage restrictions the public-domain books it has already scanned.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/microsoft-phases-out-academic-search.html
• The Open Humanities Press launched with a portfolio of seven peer-reviewed OA journals.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/looking-forward-to-open-humanities.html
• Gramophone Magazine converted its 85 year backfile to OA.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/gramophone-magazine-provides-oa-to.html
• Scholars Without Borders created a list of peer-reviewed Open Access Journals published in India and the subcontinent.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-journals-published-in-india.html
• Science Commons and partners announced Health Commons, an ambitious ecosystem of OA literature and data, the semantic web, intelligent licensing, specimen-sharing services, and economies of scale, all in the service of developing cures. The other partners are CollabRx, CommerceNet, and the Public Library of Science.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/introduction-to-health-commons.html
• Medecins Sans Frontieres launched an OA repository.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-to-msf-field-research.html
• Scientists Without Borders launched an OA database to “coordinate science-based activities that improve quality of life in the developing world.”
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-database-to-coordinate-science.html
• The folks at EPrints revamped ROARMAP, the database of funder and university OA mandates. The front page now has a very useful tally of the worldwide OA mandates in six categories.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-mandate-tallies-at-roarmap.html
• The Open University of Israel started publishing OA textbooks.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-to-textbooks-from-open-u-of-israel.html
• The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/czech-academy-signs-berlin-declaration.html
• Stanford University will provide OA to the papers of Stephen Jay Gould, and add cross-links to his sources.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-to-goulds-papers.html
• SURF released a new guide for scholars: How to use copyright wisely within scholarly communication.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/scholar-guide-to-copyright-now-in.html
• The Research Information Network released a major report on the costs and funding of scholarly communication in the UK.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/more-on-costs-of-scholarly.html
• The University of California Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education released a new report on faculty views on the future of scholarly communication.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/faculty-views-on-future-of-scholarly.html
• The Association of Research Libraries updated its Brown-Bag Discussion Guide Series on Issues in Scholarly Communication, adding new guides on Author Rights and New Model Publications.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/new-arl-scholarly-communication.html
• Les Carr reported that monthly deposits in UK institutional repositories doubled in the last 18 months.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/uk-repository-deposits-double-in-18.html
• Two OA activists won Berkman Awards “for their outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society over the past decade”: Richard Baraniuk (of Connexions) and Carl Malamud (of Public.Resource.Org).
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/two-oa-activists-win-berkman-awards.html
• Sean Kass, a third year Harvard law student, has released a 14 minute video, Open Access to Scholarly Publications. The video is a project in the course, The Web Difference, taught by John Palfrey and David Weinberger.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/video-on-oa.html
• Siyavula is a large, new open education project in the planning stage by the South African government.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/preview-of-siyavula-open-education.html
• Britain will provide temporary OA to its UFO files. After a month of OA, the files will convert to TA.
  • http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/oa-to-uk-ufo-files-for-limited-time.html

OLPC Linkfest

I’m still giving Diigo.com a try, so this is partly an excuse to try out the “send to blog” feature.
These are selected links to blogposts and articles about issues related to the One Laptop Per Child project, with my embedded annotations.

• graphpaper.com – Challenge: If You Can’t Say Something Nice about OLPC…

  tags: OLPC

  • Thoughtful and culturally aware criticism of the the top-down approach used in designing the OLPC XO and its Sugar interface. – post by enkerli

• The Fonly Institute: Problems with the $100 laptop

  tags: OLPC

  • Early critique of the OLPC project. Thoughtful, level-headed, prescient. – post by enkerli

• Create Digital Music » OLPC’s Sugar and Music Learning: Education, Not OS, is the Point

  tags: OLPC

  • Let’s use Sugar to create cool music tools which will help in learning. – post by enkerli

• OLPC News: OLPC Unveiling of the Next Generation XO Laptop

  tags: olpc

  • Will we see major changes in the XO-2? – post by enkerli

• Thoughts from Tomi: Getting the right attention

  tags: OLPC

  • Thinking about the OLPC legacy. – post by enkerli

• The OLPC project and competition | John Carroll | ZDNet.com

  tags: OLPC

  • Did the OLPC project welcome competition, or not? Depends on which OLPC person you talk to. – post by enkerli

• Perspective 2.0: The emperor has designer clothes

  tags: OLPC

  • Discussion of the relationship between the design approach used and the lukewarm adoption of the OLPC XO. – post by enkerli

• Literacy before laptops | Comment is free – Annotated

  tags: OLPC

  • The tone of the main article seems fairly appropriate, in my mind. Take home message of “let’s move on to the more important issues?” – post by enkerli
  • collapse of a well-meaning computer scheme
    • Sounds harsh but is actually quite realistic. In fact, the “well-meaning” part depends on individuals’ actual intentions, a tricky subject. – post by enkerli
  • implosion
  • great masters of technological hype
    • Though partly sarcastic, a recognition of Negroponte’s talent. – post by enkerli
  • endorsed
  • constructionism
  • expensive gimmick
    • OLPC members keep getting defensive at comments like these but the fact that the Indian government found the device expensive points to a disconnect in the ways the device has been perceived in different parts of the world. – post by enkerli
  • no evidence at all that they will actually help
    • Even if evidence is available to OLPC members, it has not been presented publicly. Evidence-based research needs not be incompatible with non-profit efforts. – post by enkerli
  • article of faith
    • Addressing the religious fervor with which some technology enthusiasts have been defending their ideas. “These effects are real because we say they are.” – post by enkerli
  • learn about computers
    • Though it’s not always a well-acknowledged point, the OLPC project’s goal was, in a way, to transform children abroad into something which could serve in “our” workforce. “Neocolonialism” is one way to put it. – post by enkerli
  • don’t try to bypass the adult world
    • Probably because of a “childhood is sacred” ideology, the OLPC project effectively sought to widen the generation gap in communities where they have been active. This seems quite detrimental to community-building but may, in fact, help in turning group solidarity into socially mobile individuals. Neo-liberals and neo-conservatives tend to like these types of social changes. – post by enkerli
  • end up back in the mainstream computer industry

• ScribeMedia.Org | This is Not a Toy: The Little Computer That Could

  tags: OLPC

  • Behar’s enthusiastic presentation of some of the OLPC XO-1’s neatest features. The enthusiasm may be communicative but is it as strong as the Reality Distortion Field? – post by enkerli

• Lounge: OLPC and Constructionism

  tags: OLPC

  • Moodle thread on constructionism motivated by my knee-jerk reactions to what I perceived as dismissive anti-constructionist and anti-constructivist backlash in comments about the OLPC. – post by enkerli

• Twenty-four hours with my OLPC « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird

  tags: OLPC

  • Allegedly a harsh criticism but more of a thoughtful review of design issues with the OLPC. – post by enkerli

• Asustek’s move to rival OLPC a ‘poor strategy’ | Mobile Handset DesignLine

  tags: OLPC

  • Maybe a poor strategy, but it seems to have worked better for Asustek than for OLPC. – post by enkerli

• OLPC News: When Constructivism Hits the Road

  tags: OLPC

  • Despite the snarky comments about “constructionism”/”constructivism” being “mixed up,” Ploskonka’s piece comes from an interesting perspective. Just noticed Ploskonka lives in Austin, where I was living until recently. Just – post by enkerli

• The Face of the $100 Laptop

  tags: OLPC

  • Some relatively early statements defending the top-down approach to design. (“You just do it right.”) – post by enkerli

• Perspective 2.0: Education and mobile phones: a whole world in your hands

  tags: OLPC

  • Cellphones, leapfrog, and education: the more you think about it with a fresh perspective, the more you imagine possibilities. Why is it that so many people dismiss cellphones as learning tools? – post by enkerli

• What’s in the Water at OLPC? | Linux Journal

  tags: OLPC

  • Straightforward summary of recent events surrounding former members of the OLPC team. – post by enkerli

“To Be Verified”: Trivia and Critical Thinking

A friend posted a link to the following list of factoids on his Facebook profile: Useless facts, Weird Information, humor. It contains such intriguing statements about biology, language, inventions, etc.

Similar lists abound, often containing the same tidbits:

• Have Laptop Will Travel » Unusual Trivia
• Trivia 1 and Trivia 2
• Quotes for Everyday
• B.B. Goyal (India) Interesting Facts
• The Talk2 List Fwd: Strange but True Facts
• Diatribe Facts du Jour
• Totally Useless Facts

Several neat pieces of trivial information. Not exactly “useless.” But gratuitous and irrelevant. The type of thing you may wish to plug in a conversation. Especially at the proverbial “cocktail party.” This is, after all, an appropriate context for attention economy. But these lists are also useful as preparation for game shows and barroom competitions. The stuff of erudition.

One of my first reflexes, when I see such lists of trivia online, is to look for ways to evaluate their accuracy. This is partly due to my training in folkloristics, as “netlore” is a prolific medium for verbal folklore (folk beliefs, rumors, urban legends, myths, and jokes). My reflex is also, I think, a common reaction among academics. After all, the detective work of critical thinking is pretty much our “bread and butter.” Sure, we can become bothersome with this. “Don’t be a bore, it’s just trivia.” But many of us may react from a fear of such “trivial” thinking preventing more careful consideration.

An obvious place to start verifying these tidbits is Snopes. In fact, they do debunk several of the statements made in those lists. For instance, the one about an alleged Donald Duck “ban” in Finland found in the list my friend shared through Facebook. Unfortunately, however, many factoids are absent from Snopes, despite that site’s extensive database.

These specific trivia lists are quite interesting. They include some statements which are easy to verify. For instance, the product of two numbers. (However, many calculators are insufficiently precise for the specific example used in those factoid lists.) The ease with which one can verify the accuracy of some statements brings an air of legitimacy to the list in which those easily verified statements are included. The apparent truth-value of those statements is such that a complete list can be perceived as being on unshakable foundations. For full effectiveness, the easily verified statements should not be common knowledge. “Did you know? Two plus two equals four.”

Other statements appear to be based on hypothesis. The plausibility of such statements may be relatively difficult to assess for anyone not familiar with research in that specific field. For instance, the statement about typical life expectancy of currently living humans compared to individual longevity. At first sight, it does seem plausible that today’s extreme longevity would only benefit extremely few individuals in the future. Yet my guess is that those who do research on aging may rebut the statement that “Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.” Because such statements require special training, their effect is a weaker version of the legitimizing effect of easily verifiable statements.

Some of the most difficult statements to assess are the ones which contain quantifiers, especially those for uniqueness. There may, in fact, be “only one” fish which can blink with both eyes. And it seems possible that the English language may include only one word ending in “-mt” (or, to avoid pedantic disclaimers, “only one common word”). To verify these claims, one would need to have access to an exhaustive catalog of fish species or English words. While the dream of “the Web as encyclopedia” may hinge on such claims of exhaustivity, there is a type of “black swan effect” related to the common fallacy about lack of evidence being considered sufficient evidence of lack.

I just noticed, while writing this post, a Google Answers page which not only evaluates the accuracy of several statements found in those trivia lists but also mentions ease of verifiability as a matter of interest. Critical thinking is active in many parts of the online world.

An obvious feature of those factoid lists, found online or in dead-tree print, is the lack of context. Even when those lists are concerned with a single topic (say, snails or sleep), they provide inadequate context for the information they contain. I’m using the term “context” rather loosely as it covers both the text’s internal relationships (the “immediate context,” if you will) and the broader references to the world at large. Without going into details about philosophy of language, these approaches clearly inform my perspective.

A typical academic, especially an English-speaking one, might put the context issue this way: “citation needed.” After all, the Wikipedia approach to truth is close to current academic practice (especially in English-speaking North America) with peer-review replacing audits. Even journalists are trained to cite sources, though they rarely help others apply critical thinking to those sources. In some ways, sources are conceived as the most efficient way to assess accuracy.

My own approach isn’t that far from the citation-happy one. Like most other academics, I’ve learned the value of an appropriate citation. Where I “beg to differ” is on the perceived “weight” of a citation as support. Through an awkward quirk of academic writing, some citation practices amount to fallacious appeal to authority. I’m probably overreacting about this but I’ve heard enough academics make statements equating citations with evidence that I tend to be weary of what I perceive to be excessive referencing. In fact, some of my most link-laden posts could be perceived as attempts to poke fun at citation-happy writing styles. One may even notice my extensive use of Wikipedia links. These are sometimes meant as inside jokes (to my own sorry self). Same thing with many of my blogging tags/categories, actually. Yes, blogging can be playful.

The broad concept is that, regardless of a source’s authority, critical thinking should be applied as much as possible. No more, no less.

Post-March Wrap-Up

Well, it’s that time of the year…

TechCrunch has some important stories, today:

• They’re Suing Facebook For Statutory Damages
• Google Launches Future Search
• Gmail’s Custom Time Backdating
• Unique YouTube Featured Videos
  
• Google And Virgin Team For Human Settlement On Mars

Also:

• iPhone Dev Team Splitting Up
• Revision3 Acquired by Fox

Not to mention ThinkGeek‘s seasonal offerings, like the Betamax to HD-DVD Converter, USB Pregnancy Test, YouTube Tazer, and Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt.

Remember, this is “Believe Everything You Read” Day.

Playfully Noted

Got a number of things about which I want to blog. Many of them in notes/outline form. Might have to wait a bit.

But one thing which keeps coming up is the notion of playfulness. Been blogging about it a bit over the years,  especially since this February 2006 post which was connected with my teaching. The next day, I was posting a short entry in French about playfulness in music. Music playing in the strongest sense. Free play.

That was over two years ago. Flies are being timed.
Still thinking about playfulness quite a bit. In music, learning, technology…
What I mean by playfulness is rather simplistic, but it works: free, undirected, aimless, open behavior. Acts of playfulness, in my mind, appear not to be goal-oriented nor competitive. Extremely low stakes. Failure isn’t even registered. No evaluation whatsoever. The opposite of performance, to go back to performance theory which inspired part of that first entry.
Of course, my notion of playfulness might be different to that of many of the people who work on and “play with” games. Some people conceive of fun as embedded in competition. As I’m personally not very competition-driven, my conception and perception are different.
I’m neither a game theorist nor an avid gamer. At best, I’d be labelled as one of those “casual gamers” game developers are finally trying to reach. So: I’m no expert. But I do enjoy discussions of playfulness facilitated by those who work on game. Thanks in part to the video game industry, playfulness is making its way into the technology/education confluence as well as in corporate circles.
Some recent things I’ve thought about in terms of playfulness.
Playing music on Touch devices or other handhelds. My French post on “easy musicking” mentioned Electroplankton. Other forms of handheld musicking:

• Nanoloop
  • Presented by Eric Skiff at BarCampAustinIII
• Bhajis Loops
  • Used it for a while on a Clié NX70V
• Jam Sessions
  • DJ Champion and His G-Strings
• MooCowMusic
  • iBand

Can’t help but think that handheld music can really “spring up,” especially in terms of casual musicking. With the release of the software development kit for Apple’s Touch devices, there’s mindshare for handhelds as ultimate interface.

Of course, music games are gaining attention and people are jumping on the bandwagon. After all, music games may mean big business. Usually, I blog about music at Critical World or at my ethnomusicology course blog. Here, I’m mostly thinking about playfulness. And music games aren’t really playful in my sense of the term. Too competitive.

In terms of playful learning, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about “playing with data.” In part thanks to Gapminder, that I just discovered through Google Spreadsheets (even though Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software has been acquired by Google over a year ago). In my mind, Hans Rosling’s 2006 and 2007 TED presentations about Gapminder really capture the spirit of playful learning. Especially in connection to critical thinking, open-mindedness, creativity, and cultural awareness. (Anthro FTW!)

Now, if I could only get paid to do a project on using Touch devices for playful musicking in learning contexts… 😉