Online- Educa Berlin tends to be one or two years behind the research in Technology Enhanced Learning. But it is a great indicator of what technologies and ideas are mainstreaming. This year there is little or no discussion of Virtual Learning Environments: all the talk is of the use of social software for learning.

And with that discussion, comes concerns over users control of their own data, of data security, of privacy and safety – and of course issues related to digital identities.

In this respect, it is very good to see Jerry Zuckerberg’s open letter on the future of Facebook, pledging to provide greater and more fine grained control for users over who can access their data.

However Zuckermann’s letter, or rather the responses to it illustrate one of the big problems facing Facebook. At the time I looked at it, it had 33858 comments. And, as far as I can see, the vast majority were spam (see selection above). If Facebook cannot provide Jerry with user controls to prevent spam, what hope is there for teh rest of us?

I was fascinated by a presentation by Elizabetta Adami on issues on literacy in the contemporary semiotic landscape at the workshop on ‘Technology Enhanced Learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation’ at the Alpine Rendezvous at Garmisch Partenkirchen.

Here are my live blogging notes on her presentation. Her slides can be found here and their is a longer discussion around the workshop on the workshop Cloudworks site.

Part 1

“L.iteracy has extended meaning – but only in English! Literacy as fruit of power relationships. Literacy same meanings as competence in Italian.

Confused and diverse semiotic practices used for communication in different countries. Some practices become institutionalised if approved by elite and then become genres with conventions.

Descriptions are important in a genre as proscribed and prescribed practices – this is what is taught in schools as literacies e.g. CVs, academic articles, newspaper articles but also dance, architecture etc. Vertical power relationships – texts policed by limited number contributors or elite. Standards change but always is a standard. Literacy is to know the established conventions. schools teach the norms of a society.

Power relations in new media more horizontal – developing wide variety of types of text which do not have established conventions – eg podcasts, text.

Shift from competence to given norms to creative ad hoc agency.

If schools are to teach new literacies what norms can they teach to and what generalisations are possible? If was to be possible is it desirable to keep cycle of institutionalisation going?”

Part 2

“More from Elizabetta – media have affordances for new shared social practices. Many devices enable us to produce great variety multi modal artefacts and distribute in social spaces – all share copy and past – ability to select, represent and  recontextualise. Changes in mechanism for representation have led to changes in mechanisms for communication. Leading to individualised participation in networks / chains of semiosis according to participants wishes. But shared understanding becomes less important than usability. Leads to scattering of coherence patterns. Cooperating becomes less important than using according to ones interest. Browsing is not coherent – but related to our interests in links we encounter whilst browsing.

Collecetd (and often incoherent) artefacts define online identity.

Questions – moving from coherence in contents to forms in contexts. Does this lead to a lack of wholeness. What capabilities are developed most and least. Is coherence still useful and where is it needed?

1. What is gained and what is lost?

2. Where are we headed to?

– do we teach the most required abilities

– or do we teach the lost-in-transition abilities

3. Is the description – pre/proscription cycle avoidable”

I have been invited to particpate in a workshop on ‘Technology Enhanced Learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation‘, being sponsored by the EU funded Stellar Network of Excellence at Garnisch in Germany at teh start of December. I am contributing to a session on Work Based Learning and have written a short position paper on the subject, a draft of which is reproduced below. I have to say I am very much impressed with the work of the London Mobile Learning Group and my paper attempts to look at  the idea we have developed for a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE) through the Mature-IP project in the light of their framework for a socio-cultural ecology for mobile learning.

1. A socio-cultural ecology for learning

In his paper, The socio-cultural ecological approach to mobile learning: an overview, Norbert Pachler characterises current changes in the world from a perspective on mobile learning as “akin to social, cultural, media related, technological and semiotic transformation”. The world around us, he says, is “marked by fluidity, provisionality and instability, where responsibilities for meaning making as well as others such as risk-taking have been transferred from the state and institutions to the individual, who has become a consumer of services provided by a global market”. The paper, based on conceptual and theoretical work being undertaken by the London Mobile Learning group, proposes a socio-cultural ecology for learning, based on the “new possibilities for the relationship between learning in and across formal and formal contexts, between the classroom and other sites of learning.” Such an ecology is based on the interplay between agency, cultural practices and structures.

In this short discussion paper, we will consider the possibilities for such an ecology in the context of work-based learning. In particular, we will examine work being undertaken through the EU funded Mature-IP project to research and develop the use of a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble) to support learning and knowledge maturing within organisations.

2. Work-based Learning and Technology

Although it is hard to find reliable quantitative data, it would appear that there has been a steady increase in work-based learning in most countries. This may be due to a number of reasons: probably foremost in this is the pressures for lifelong learning die to technological change and changing products, work processes and occupational profiles. Work-based learning is seen as more efficient and effective and facilitates situated learning. The move towards work-based learning has been accompanied in many countries by a revival in apprenticeship training. It has also been accompanied by a spread of the training function (Attwell and Baumgartl (eds.), 2008), with increasing numbers of workers taking some responsibility for training as part of their job.

The move towards increased work-based training has also been accompanied by the widespread us of Technology Enhanced Learning, at least in larger companies. However, this has not been unproblematic. Technology Enhanced Learning may be very effective where the work processes themselves involve the use of computers. It is also possible to develop advanced simulations of work processes; however such applications are complex and expensive to develop. More commonly, in the classical sense of the dual system, formal Technology Enhanced Learning has been used to support the theoretical side of vocational learning, with practical learning taking place through work-based practice (with greater or lesser face to face support). Given economies of scale, Technology Enhanced Learning has made most impact in vocational learning in those areas with a broad occupational application such as management, sales and ICT. In a previous paper I suggested that the development of technology for learning has been shaped by an educational paradigm, based on an industrial model of schooling developed to meet the needs and forms of a particular phase of capitalist and industrial development and that this paradigm is now becoming dysfunctional. Friesen and Hug argue that “the practices and institutions of education need to be understood in a frame of reference that is mediatic: “as a part of a media-ecological configuration of technologies specific to a particular age or era.” This configuration, they say, is one in which print has been dominant. They quote McLuhan who has described the role of the school specifically as the “custodian of print culture” (1962.) It provides, he says, a socially sanctioned “civil defense against media fallout” — against threatening changes in the mediatic environs.

Research suggests there has been little take up of formal Technology Enhanced Learning in the Small and Medium Enterprises which comprise the greatest growth area in many economies (Attwell (ed.), 2004). However the research, undertaken through an EU funded project into the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises, found the widespread everyday use of internet technologies for informal learning, utilizing a wide range of business and social software applications. This finding is confirmed by a recent study on the adoption of social networking in the workplace and Enterprise 2.0 (Oliver Young G (2009). The study found almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues. 63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that they hadn’t been able to do before

Of course such studies beg the question of the nature and purpose of the use of social software in the workplace. The findings of the ICT and SME project, which was based on 106 case studies in six European countries focused on the use of technologies for informal learning. The study suggested that although social software was used for information seeking and for social and communication purposes it was also being widely used for informal learning. In such a context:

• Learning takes place in response to problems or issues or is driven by the interests of the learner
• Learning is sequenced by the learner
• Learning is episodic
• Learning is controlled by the learner in terms of pace and time
• Learning is heavily contextual in terms of time, place and use
• Learning is cross disciplinary or cross subject
• Learning is interactive with practice
• Learning builds on often idiosyncratic and personal knowledge bases
• Learning takes place in communities of practice

However, it is important to note that the technology was not being used for formal learning, nor in the most part was it for following a traditionally curriculum or academic body of knowledge.

Instead business applications and social and networking software were being used to develop what has been described as Work Process Knowledge (Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. 2002).

The concept of Work Process Knowledge emphasises the relevance of practice in the workplace and is related to concepts of competence and qualification that stress the idea that learning processes not only include cognitive, but also affective, personal and social factors. They include the relevance of such non-cognitive and affective-social factors for the acquisition and use of work process knowledge in practical action. Work often takes place, and is carried out, in different circumstances and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary for the individual to acquire and demonstrate a certain capacity to reflect and act on the task (system) and the wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape it. Such competence is captured in the notion of “developmental competence” (Ellstroem PE, 1997) and includes ‘the idea of social shaping of work and technology as a principle of vocational education and training’ (Heidegger, G., Rauner F., 1997). Work process knowledge embraces ‘developmental competence’, the developmental perspective emphasising that individuals have the capacity to reflect and act upon the environment and thereby forming or shaping it. In using technologies to develop such work process knowledge, individuals are also shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different purposes, for social learning.

3. Knowledge Maturing, Personal Learning Environments and Wombles

MATURE is a large-scale integrating project (IP), co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It runs from April 2008 to March 2012. The Mature-IP aims to research, develop and test Personal Learning and Maturing Environments (PLME) and Organisational Learning and Maturing Environments (OLME) in promote the agility of organisations. Agility requires that companies and their employees together and mutually dependently learn and develop their competencies efficiently in order to improve productivity of knowledge work. The aim is to leverage the intrinsic motivation of employees to engage in collaborative learning activities, and combine it with a new form of organisational guidance. For that purpose, MATURE conceives individual learning processes to be interlinked (the output of a learning process is input to others) in a knowledge-maturing process in which knowledge changes in nature. This knowledge can take the form of classical content in varying degrees of maturity, but also involves tasks and processes or semantic structures. The goal of MATURE is to understand this maturing process better, based on empirical studies, and to build tools and services to reduce maturing barriers.

The Mature-IP project has undertaken a series of studies looking at learning and knowledge maturing processes within organisations. Based on this work, in year 2 of the project, it is undertaking a series of five Design Projects, developing and testing prototypes of technology based applications to support knowledge maturing within these organisations. One of these projects, the Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble), is designed to enable workers to appropriate the mobile phone as a Personal Learning Maturing Environment (PLME) and to support contextualised Work-based Learning, problem-solving, interaction and knowledge maturing via a user owned, mobile PLE.

The design study/demonstrator includes support for structured learning dialogue frameworks, with a social software ‘substrate’ and multi- user / multi-media spaces that will provide workers with the ability to collaborate with co-workers. At the most basic level, Womble services will, for example, allow workers to tag fellow work colleagues (contacts); when a problem arises this service will enable collaborative problem solving. At a more advanced stage a ‘lite’ dialogue game service will be linked to the tagging of personal competencies to scaffold workers in their active collaboration and ‘on the spot’ problem solving.

4. The Womble and a socio-cultural ecology for learning

The conceptual framework proposed by Norbert Pachler and the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG) proposes a non-hierarchal model based on the interaction between agency, cultural practices and structures. In the penultimate section of this discussion document, we examine how the deign of the Womble matches the framework proposed by the LMLG.

4.1 Agency

Agency is seen by Pachler as “the capacity to deal with and to impact on socio cultural structures and established cultural practices” and “to construct one’s life-world and to use media for meaning making…..”

The aim of the Womble is to develop a “participatory culture” in the workplace including ludic forms of problem solving, identity construction, multitasking, “distributed cognition,” and “transmedial navigation” (Jenkins at al, 2006). It is designed to scaffold developmental competence through sense and meaning making in a shared communicative environment, though exploring, questioning and transcending traditional work structures. Situatedness and proximity are key to such an exploration, the ability to seek, capture store, question and reflect on information, in day to day practice. This the use of the Womble for meaning making goes beyond the exploration of formal bodies of expert knowledge to question manifestations of cultural practice within communities.

A further aspect of agency is the ability to shape the form of the Womble as a user configurable and open set of tools. Wild, Mödritscher and Sigurdarson (2008)suggest that “establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition.” They go on to say: “Considering the learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning, moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform which is personalisable or customisable by learners (‘easy to use’) and heading towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process – freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (‘easy to develop’). ”

4.2 Cultural Practices

By cultural practices, Pachler, refers to “routines in stable situations both in terms of media use on everyday life as well as the pedagogical practices around teaching and learning in the context of educational institutions.” He points out that the multimodality of mobile and media technologies names: them more difficult to map onto traditional curricula and puts pressure on established canons.”

One key idea behind the Womble is that Personal Learning Environments are owned by the user.But at the same time, the Womble tools are designed to make it easy to for users to configure their  environment.

Critically, the pedagogy, if it can be described as such is based on shared practice with learners themselves actively developing learning materials and sharing them through reflection on their context. Whilst such materials might be said to be micro learning materials, the semantic aggregation of those materials, together with advanced search capabilities should provide a holistic organisational learning base. As such the Womble is designed to support , the recognition of context as a key factor in work related and social learning processes. Cook (2009) proposes that new digital media can be regarded as cultural resources for learning and can enable the bringing together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution, or in this case the organisation, with those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions. Cook also suggests that informal learning in social networks is not enabling the “critical, creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.” Instead he argues for the scaffolding of learning in a new context for learning through learning activities that take place outside formal institutions and on platforms, such as the Womble, that are selected or configured by learners. Such ‘episodic learning’ is based on Vygotskys idea of ‘zones of proximal development’. However, we would agree with Pachler, that in the need for a departure from the terminology associated with Vygostsky’s work. Rather than viewing developmental zones as mainly temporal within a life course, they should be seen as situative contexts within work practice, which both allow the production of user generated content in response to such a situation and reflection on content generated by other users in such situations.

In this context digital artefacts can assist in sense making through the process of bricolage (Levi Strauss, 1966) The concept of bricolage refers to the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings in fresh contexts. Bricolage involves a process of resignification by which cultural signs with established meanings are re-organised into new codes of meaning.

This approach to work-based learning through the use mobile devices and services such as the Womble is the relation between work-based activities and personal lives. This goes beyond worklife balance, or even digital identities. It involves agreed and shared understandings of what activities and digital practices are acceptable in work time and work spaces, ethical considerations especially in with regard to work practice involving clients and how private use of social media impacts on work relations.

4.3 Socio cultural and technological structures

Of course critical to such an approach to situated learning, is the ability to utilize mobile devices within work situations. However for this to take place requires more than just the appropriation of user owned technologies (indeed our initial studies suggest resistance to user owned mobile devices being used for work purposes unless funded by the employer. More important is the expropriation of work processes and technologies used for monitoring and recording work processes as the basis for learning. Indeed one aim of the mature project is to overcome the divide between the use of technologies of learning and for knowledge management. Without the ability to transcend these technologies sit is unlikely that the Womble or any other PLE based applications will gain traction and usage. The use of such a learning and knowledge sharing platform has to take place without imposing a substantial additional work and attention burden on the user.

5. Organisational and developmental learning

The use of mobile devices to support situated work-based learning is base don the idea that appropriation of both technologies and processes will lead to the formation of developmental competences based on intrinsic motivation. Barry Nyhan (Nyhan et al, 2003) states “one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights. Thus, people are learning from their work – they are learning as they work.”

He goes on to say: “This entails building organisations in which people have what can be termed‘ developmental work tasks’. These are challenging tasks that ‘compel’ people to stretch their potential and muster up new resources to manage demanding situations. In carrying out ‘developmental work tasks’ people are ‘developing themselves’ and are thus engaged in what can be termed ‘developmental learning’.”

This notion of developmental competences and learning, using mobile devices and environments such as the Womble, would appear as a way of building on the conceptual framework for a social cultural ecological approach advanced by the London Mobile Learning group.

6. Questions

• Can developmental competences be acquired in the absence of formal and institutional learning?
• How can developmental competences based on informal learning be recognised?
• How can we develop intrinsic motivation for work-based learning and competence development?
• How can we recognise development zones for reflection and learning?
• Is it possible to appropriate social and business processes and applications for learning?
• Is there a continued role for educational technologies if learning materials are user generated and technologies and applications are appropriated?
• What are the socio – technical competences and literacies required to facilitate learners to appropriate technologies?

References

Attwell G and Baumgartl B. (ed.), 2008, Creating Learning Spaces:Training and Professional Development for Trainers, Vienna, Navreme

Attwell G.(ed) 2007, Searching, Lurking and the Zone of Proximal Development, e-learning in Small and Medium enterprises in Europe, Vienna, Navreme

Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. (2002) Work Process Knowledge, Routledge

Boushel M, Fawcett M, Selwyn J. (2000), Focus on Early Childhood: Principles and Realities, Blackwell Publishing

Cook, J. (2009), Scaffolding the Mobile wave, Presnetation at the Jisc Institutional Impact programme online meeting, 09/07/09, http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook/cook-1697245?src=embed, accessed 10 July 2009

Ellstroem P. E.  (1997) The many meanings of occupational competence and qualifications, In Brown, A (ed.) Promoting Vocational Education and Training: European Perspectives,University of Tampere Press, Tampere

Friesen N and Hug T (2009), The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts for Media Pedagogy

Heidegger, G., Rauner F. (1997): Vocational Education in Need of Reform, Institut Technik und Bildung, Bremen

Jenkins, H., Purushotoma, R., Clinton, K.A., Weigel, M., and Robison, A. J. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. White paper co-written for the MacArthur Foundation. Accessed July 14, 2008 from: http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf

Levi Strauss C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [first published in 1962]

McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nyhan, B et al (2003). Facing up to the learning organisation challenge. Vol. I. Thessaloniki, CEDEFOP,

Oliver Young G (2009), Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013, Forrester

Pachler (forthcoming) The Socio-cultural approach to mobile learning: an overview

Wild F. Mödritscher F. and Sigurdarson S., (2008), Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments, elearning papers, http://www.elearningeuropa.info/out/?doc_id=15055&rsr_id=15972, accessed 2 September, 2008

Lets return to the Facebook dilemmas. Why am I so hung up about this at them moment? Its because though some empirical research I am doing at the moment – and from talking to friends and colleagues – Facebook seems to be playing increasingly important role in their lives and digital identities. And it is not just their online lives – Facebook is bridging the physical world and day to day social interactions within the digital. especially for young people, what they are talking about at school is what their friends have been saying and doing on Facebook the previous evening (or night as it seems to be for so many people). And of course from another perspective – the online discussions are based often on face to face social encounters.

Thus the widespread adoption of Facebook as a part of peoples everyday lives exposes issues around social networking – issues which have not been sufficently studied and which pose dilemmas for us as researchers and as a society.

I have read a series of blog posts recently by teachers frustrated at legal limits at posting any pictures of students on-line. These are teachers who want to celebrate their students achievements yet are unable to because of restrictions imposed on the rights to post images. Equally I have talked to educational technologists and researchers frustrated by the timidity of progress there is in terms of implementing social networking features in educational web sites for fear of transgressing perceived (or real) privacy rules

On the other had I have talked to people, young and not so young, deeply unhappy about images posted and tagged by others with their names and about which they knew nothing. With the present Facebook settings anyone is free to upload any picture of another person and tag them. Yet these images form an integral part of our digital identity and are an area over which we have little control. this can be of considerable distress to teenagers who may be concerned about their appearance, or indeed to adults. And as previous studies have shown it is remarkably difficult to get an image erased from Facebook, once it has been posted. Equallyworrying is that the present Facebook tagging system makes it very easy for many people, whether friends or not, to access photo albums.

Facebook does have settings, which allow for more privacy. But the default settings are remarkably open: it probably is simply not in Facebook’s interests to discourage more restrictive settings. And how many people know how to change their privacy settings in Facebook.

I am all for openness, open education, open discussions, open knowledge and a culture of sharing. Yet as digital identities become ever more important, it is critical that we have the rights and the tools to manage that identity and that social network providers appreciate and support those rights and make it easy for individuals to understand how they can mange both privacy and openness. This is an issue which will not go away.

Sadly it seems my previous post can only be viewed by those with a Google Wave account. for those who don’t, here is a plain blog copy.

“I am ever more intrigued with the possibilities of Google Wave. If you do not have a wave account , please add comments to this post in the normal way. But if you do have a wave account, you are invited to directly reply and add your ideas within the wave.

Anyway on to the issues.

I have always advocated the use of social software for learning. The ability to develop and exchange ideas within a community seems to me central to how we can both develop our own learning and share that learning to develop and mature knowledge.

And social networking in allowing us to form and develop Personal Learning Networks – peer networks with whom we share learning and ideas.

Thus, I have always opposed attempts by institutions, companies and schools to limit access to social networking sites. Of course, companies are concerned about the amount of time employees spend on such sites – and indeed in surfing the web, watching sport, reading and talking to friends about matters not concerned to work. But, overall, I have tended to argue that the benefits outweigh the risks in allowing employees access. Many companies are wrestling with these issues and trying to come up with fair policies. One manager I talked to earlier this week explained they allow their employees one hour a day in work time to access whatever web sites they wish in work time. There is no blocking software but rather they trust employees not to abuse such access – although web usage is monitored. Indeed, that decision then leads to other policy issues in terms of who should have rights to request access to monitoring data and in what circumstances?

I am also firmly of the belief that the use of social networking software can be beneficial for younger learners and am sceptical about the ‘nanny software or lists of approved and blocked sites that many schools employ.

However, talking to students has caused me to pause and rethink some of these ideas. Almost unanimously, school age students are saying to me that they are feel distracted from their work by social networking software and particularly by Facebook. If they are allowed unfettered access, they say, they do not think they are strong willed enough to work. They support schools blocking access, not because of any safety concerns, but because they are worried they will not work if they can instead ‘play’ on line. They are even concerned that they spend too much time on Facebook at home, especially late at night (interestingly, not one student I have talked too has technically restricted access at home, although many say their parents limit or try to limit their time on Facebook).

What are the answers. I think it is urgent that we consider, not just how to teach children online safety, but how to start them thinking about how they use technology in their lifestyle. And with the widespread access to internet enabled mobile devices, let alone augmented reality, this issue is urgent.

What do you think? Add your comments or participate in this Wave.

[wave id=”googlewave.com!w+KNJnYUFeA”]

Invites to Google wave seem to be fast rippling out so time for some first thoughts. Like most people I guess, my first reaction was what is it and what can it do?

The first problem is trying to find someone to play with. Wave is decidedly a collaborative environment and it is not easy to find open waves to join. I found an educators directory and added my name along with the 300 or so others there. But that didn’t seem particularly useful – why create a list of people just because they are in education and in possession of a precious wave invite.

So I reverted to some old technology and twittered out. Pat Parslow invited me to join a ‘sandbox wave’ he had set up for people to introduce themselves and play. And play we did – to such a degree that it was decided to copy what was useful and sensible to yet another introductions wave.

More importantly, the next day Shirley Williams suggested we try out a serious project. Given that Pat and Shirley are working on the This Is Me project and I am working on the Rhizome project , both funded by Eduserve and both focusing on Digital Identities, we chose that as a subject. Pat posted a short text to launch the Wave, and then we all waded in commenting and annotating the text. And much to my surprise it seems to work. It is the first truly usable collective authoring tool that I have used. A bit like Google docs on steroids. And it is particularly interesting to see how we are fast evolving social conventions for using this new tool

Don’t get me wrong, Google Wave is by no means finished. The interfaces can be clunky, it is not always easy to find where text has been added or edited or commented on, the replay doesn’t work – at least on my computer, and the people aspect of social networking seems a little rudimentary.

Now onto the next experiment, suggested by Pat and Shirley – to create a Workbook to help educators, mentors and guidance staff (e.g. careers guidance and the like) learn about their Digital Identity (process…) and how to enhance it, tame it, and use it.”

The idea is to write the workbook together in one week and to publish it under a Creative Commons BY SA license on www.lulu.com with co-authorship to anyone who contributes. Shout (or should I say wave) if you are interested.

More on the issue of cultures. I have had an interesting exchange of emails with Eileen Luebcke from the University of Bremen. Eileen talks of the paradox of New Media in terms of “the promise of worldwide global use but the cultural embeddedness of the technology.”

She is interested in the idea of comparing e-learning environments with regard to hidden cultural differences. In terms of evidence for such cultural differences she suggests:

1. “There are cultures that heavily depend on oral traditions for learning (the whole Orient, first nation people all over the world). It is still unclear how to deal with this difference, but it seems that the Western idea of libraries are not efficient for this. There is an article from South Africa describing that a certain disadvantage for African people is manifested even in the digital divide due to a focus on written information within library and e-learning systems. It is still unclear how to adapt Western e-learning concepts to this.
2. This adds to differences in hierarchy and differences in the concept of teachers. Discourse approaches like in Western class rooms often fail because expectations towards the role of teachers are different. There is also comparative research investigating the different online behaviour of Norwegian, American, and Korean students. Norwegian students tend to be more discourse oriented than American students. If discourse is a main educative goal I would assume that this is mirrored in the e-learning environments used or in how e-learning environments are used.
3. An additional interesting aspect is the design. There are some studies which investigate the design of websites. Especially interesting is a study of the use of American and Chinese users of websites constructed by native and non-native programmers. It turned out that even with the same content Americans find the information faster on websites with American origin and vice versa. “

Such cultural factors may interact with pedagogic approaches to learning using technology. In an article in First Monday Lisa Lane suggests that different Content Management Systems “may not only influence, but control instructional approaches. She says that Blackboard “forces the instructor to think in terms of content types instead, breaking the natural structure of the semester, or of a list of topics.” Lane compares the design of Moodle to Blackboard, proposing that the ‘opt in’ structure of the Moodle CMS allows  the instructor to make “choices about context on a macro level, and choices about features and tools on a micro level. This makes it possible to explore pedagogical options more freely.”

I will meet Eileen Leubcke next week to discuss designing a research project around these issues. If you are interested and have ideas around this, please get in touch.

Just spent half an hour checking around blogs and twitter to see what is new on a Monday morning. And I was interested to see the latest survey from Pew Internet (just an aside – why cannot we organise as thorough a survey in Europe as Pew does for the US?).

The latest Pew Internet & American Life Project survey asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020 and they provide the following summary of the (very substantial) report:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing arms race, with the crackers who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
• Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.”

I will be coming back to many of these issues in the next few posts. But I am particularly interested in the issue of the division between personal and work time and between physical and virtual reality – although I am not sure about some of the terminology. two weeks ago we ran a workshop on Digital identities at the European Conference on Educational Research in Vienna as part of the Eduserve Rhizome project on Digital Identities. We are working on a short video on the workshop which should come out later this week. Most of the issues arising from the workshop were as we would have expected and in line with similar workshops we have organised in the UK. But what was surprising were some of the discussions in the workshop especially around the issues of privacy, personal spaces and work . personal life issues. Why surprising? Mainly because there was such a divergence of feelings around these issues. there were some 18 participants in the workshop from 15 different countries. And it appears that attitudes towards privacy and work / personal life divisions are heavily influenced by culture. This finding requires far more investigation than we were able to undertake in a short workshop. But it does appear that in different countries there are very different attitudes towards for instance what data should be private and the degree ot which entries on a social networking sites should be viewed as part of professional activities.

One participant provided an example of where a teacher had expressed personal opinions on a social networking site which were seen as racist by parents of some of the students and resulted – if my memory is right – in them being dismissed. Some felt this was reasonable, given that such an opinions would effect their ability as a teacher. Others felt that however objectionable such opinions this infringed on rights of personal free speech in a non work related forum.

Steven Warburton summaries the dissussion on the Rhizome project blog:

The “richness in nationalities immediately foregrounded what is an often overlooked dimension in discussions around digital identity – namely the impact of cultural difference. Different cultures both create and consume their [digital] identities in different ways. This was most keenly reflected in the shared conversations around where we perceive the boundary between our public and private lives. The mass use of social services such as Facebook can appear to have a homogenising effect, erasing cultural distinctions through normalised ’social-networking’ practices.”

I have not read the full Pew report. But issues like this will not go away and I am intrigued to find out in which ways the experts Pew interviewed see the mixed impact on basic social relations