Eliciting Answers using web 2.0 tools.
Linked-In is a tool for maintaining and developing contacts – one of the features is the ability to ask questions of your network of contacts and the ‘public visibility’ of these questions.
I thought it might be interesting to pose a question around web 2.0 and then see what sort of answers we got back.
The Question: Does Web 2.0 facilitate connectivism, circumvent constructivism, or just pollute the knowledge stream with contradictory chatter?
In one week I received 8 ‘public’ responses and 2 private responses. The private ones were from contacts that aren’t involved in this sector, and know me from separate routes - both of them questioned my sobriety at the time of posting the question!
The answers to the question are all below, so now it’s over to you, do they answer usefully? Is it a tool, when used with trusted colleagues, that could help us in our practice?
Jose Roig
Web 2.0 does all of the above… which is kind of a cop-out for an answer. I blogged last week (http://tech-consulting.blogspot.com/) about how some of its functionality has great potential for corporate use. Wiki’s and Blogs are great tools for collaboration and for the publishing/sharing of documentation. Coupled with instant messaging, such tools are transforming the way that geographically dispersed teams work together.
In the public arena, Blogs give everyone a forum for free expression, which carries with it the risk that only the most shocking and confrontational viewpoints get noticed. It also carries the risk of doing nothing but turning up the volume on the noise and clutter. But I believe the potential reward of knowledge sharing is worth the risk.
Marc Aniballi
Web 2.0 connects databases to web interfaces so that you can do custom content generation and personalisation. This includes (obviously) user generated content.
Put any group of 10 people in a room and you’ll get all of your situations above. Online just happens bigger and faster.
David Kernohan
Web 2.0 is a resource like any other, and can be used to facilitate learning based on any theory of pedagogy you fancy. It’s like asking whether a textbook facilitates connectivism, circumvents constructivism…
Just because it is interactive doesn’t mean it is not a learning resource. It’s what you do with it that counts…
Malcolm Murray
I agree with the concept that there isn’t a one to one mapping between any technology and pedagogy - i.e. using Web 2.0 doesn’t make, nor require you to be connectivist.
That said, I think some of the tools really help, if we take connectivism to mean the ability to stay in touch with and lever the collective intelligence of a network of contacts and indeed their network of contacts.
The key issue for me is one of credibility/quality. How does a user know that the information they find is any good. Some of the newer web 2.0 tools (such as this discussion) help by providing information and context about the posters. For other older tools (e.g. wikipedia) although content may be subject to peer review, much of it is not directly (read easily) attributable.
Does this matter? Yes I think it does! Whilst “pollution” may be too strong a term - and I can see the massed ranks of social scientists just waiting to analyse the cultural loading this term implies) the problem for many today can be summed up as “there a shit load of material out there, but loads of it is shit”. To succeed we still need to be selective. That’s where the networking aspect comes in - it gives us help filtering out the dross.
Bruce Mason
I would say that this question veers towards technological determinism. I suspect that a couple of thousand years ago there may have been similar questions about this new-fangled writing business. That’s a somewhat flip response but it gets at the point that these new resources are useful in as much as we make use of them.
I do think that we’re having to acquire competence in web2.0 usage and that also includes those who design SNS sites. For example, I was on the verge of quitting Facebook until, one day, I noticed a little “block this application” link beneath all my notifcations. Now Facebook is positive for me again. Those who run Facebook responded to an emergent phenomenon and the site has been improved.
So, I think what is happening is that we’re acquiring competence in the emergent, communicational affordances of web2.0. Give it a few years and we’ll wonder what all the fuss was about…
James Farnhill
I think my natural first response was that you’ve got to understand the terms before you can couch an answer to this at all. Web 2.0 means very different things to very different people and can be more confusing than it is helpful. Having said that, I’d agree with the other posters that if you’re using social networking tools like Facebook and LinkedIn (and even stuff like Flickr, that might not seem like an obvious choice) and other Web 2.0 ‘most wanted’ apps such as blogs and wikis sensibly then there is a considerable amount of benefit from them. It’s just that some people are using Web 2.0 because it’s there and because it’s a bandwagon, meaning a large volume of rubbish gets generated that doesn’t help connect people or do anything else; for example, I’m getting to the stage where Twitter and tweets are really annoying me as they’re used as buzz words by Nathan Barley noo media types who only use it because it’s ‘cool’! So, I think for the future we need to have Web 2.0 to generate content but we also need Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as some of the stuff being done with Google maps and AJAX to bring the content together in a meaningful way. We can also use text mining tools and some of the more sophisticated tagging to start getting data about data and get some provenance in there. All that’s doing is what any arts and social sciences student could tell you they’ve been doing for ages, which is quality assuring the data they trust by review, meaning large amounts of seemingly contradictory opinions can be distilled into material that makes sense for you. Hope that hasn’t turned into too much of a ramble…
Tony Linde
To me (and I agree that it means different things to different people) Web 2.0 means three things: 1) the ability for users to add content to a website; 2) the use of AJAX to make pages more dynamic; and 3) the exposure of a site’s content via one or more APIs. All of these things existed before the Web 2.0 term but the explosion of websites with all three features did mark a significant shift in the web experience.
It is primarily #3 above which helps ‘facilitate connectivism’: our own experiences, exposed via #1 above are connected by #3 and by the internal workings of the website. Seeing these connections would, I would have thought, aid constructivism rather than circumvent it, in that only simple connections will be forged by data and software: the user of the sites ought to be able to construct knowledge upon a wider base using the connections supplied (needs research though).
The knowledge stream will only ’seem’ polluted by those students who are not able to critically assess what they see. Critical reasoning ought to be the first skill any student is imbued with, from primary school onwards.
Mark Childs
I’m currently conducting a research project (funded by the wonderful people at JISC actually - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning_pedagogy/elp_blups.aspx) looking at how students use web 2 technologies and whether this has any effect on their learning. The answer is that, yes it does. Because students are more connected now, this gives them more opportunities to share ideas, help each other with their learning and (often underestimated in its importance) exchange information about the course and university procedures. This is sometimes due to them setting up specific groups within Facebook, for example, but it’s mainly because they are communicating so much using web 2.0 tools for social reasons, and it’s natural for them to segue from talking about meeting up to go down the pub to talking about the latest assignment.
Connectivism at the Blackboard Users Conference
Last week I spoke at the Eighth Annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference (metaphors on a postcard!). The theme of the event was Connectivism and suggested reading prior to the event was George Siemen’s paper ‘Connectivism: a learning theory for a digital age’. I opened with a quote from Dave Cormier’s blog:
Many of us have taken a huge leap this year from the dungeons of our physical existence up to the light and wonder of connectivism. Each of us has had the wonderful experience of having hundreds of people send us a message in a hundred ways to in some way interact with what they’re doing. Each of us has also had the awful experience of having hundreds of people send us a message in a hundred ways to in some way interact with what they’re doing. Connecting is the only way we can succeed in the world of edtech.
The conference was a good example of connectivism, there were a lot of people with the same kinds of issues and a variety of solutions, and they were connecting and sharing. I know that there will be a few people who read this blog who, perhaps, aren’t that fond of Blackboard, but that shouldn’t colour our perceptions of the people out there that are having to use it and make the best of it. And the best of it was what I think I saw at the conference. There were several good presentations/discussions around how blackboard could fit with connectivism and what that might look like, and there were several really well presented cases of Blackboard and social networking tools being used in parallel.
In my presentation I tried to contextualise the future of the VLE in an educational system that accepts Connectivism as a valid and current theory. Several key points from George’s paper stood out for me and I staged my presentation around them:
- What is the impact on learning theories when knowledge is no longer linear?
There is a lot of use of VLEs where we see knowledge constructed with a beginning and an end point. Even the most constructivist tutor may have beginning and end points at the back of their minds. - How do we stay current in a rapidly evolving information ecology?
- I have no idea – my head hurts from trying to keep up with everything I need to know, what happens to the stuff that I should know. Connectivism seems to recognise that the ‘know where’ is at least as important, if not more so, than ‘know what’ and ‘know how’ which is an important survival strategy in this kind of information environment.
- Connectivism recognises that the pipe is more important than the content of the pipe.
Recognition that our capacity to learn is more important than what we already know. - Finally George’s paper suggests that the technology we use can shape the way we learn?
This final one hit home with me. I didn’t use mind mapping tools until 4 years ago, and I had to force myself to use it. Now it is my preferred method of taking notes and I often jot down mind maps when I’m thinking.
And on that note, here is the mind map for the presentation.
Lawrie’s Mind Map for the Bbd conference
Blackboard and Facebook
I missed day one of the conference, but day two was fun. For me (given my role) the paper that most caught my attention was Pat Parslow’s (Patrick Parslow, Shirley Williams, Michael Evans, Karsten Øster Lundqvist, Edwin Porter-Daniels, Robert Ashton) that discussed Facebook and Blackboard in a ‘competitive’ way. The paper will be written up so keep an eye on https://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/sir06pnp/weblog/ one of my favourite quotes from the presentation was:
Learners will learn through social networking; Even in the absence of course materials.
I won’t report more on the teams findings until the full paper is written up but it should make interesting reading.
Blackboard Scholar Terms and Conditions
Previous readers will know I have a little bee in my bonnet about terms and conditions, Facebook terms were of a little concern earlier in the year and when I put those relating to content in Facebook on a slide someone from the audience suggested they were the same as Blackboard Scholar. Although I missed it, and I’m sure that some one will correct me if I’m wrong, Blackboard talked about the ‘Scholar’ product on the previous day. When I checked the terms, it could be argued that they are perhaps a little similar 
4. User Content
Any Content that you upload or otherwise make available (”User Content”) as part of the Services, is and remains your sole property or the property of your licensors. By uploading or otherwise making available any User Content, you automatically grant and/or warrant that the owner has granted Blackboard, the perpetual royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, perform, display, and transmit the User Content to Scholar. You also permit any other user of Blackboard with access to that Services, subject to your restrictions, to access, view, store, and reproduce the User Content to the same extent permitted herein.
Once they have it, they have it forever.
Season’s Greetings to all, I’ll be back in the New Year.
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Lawrie is available through Skype
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