Learning via the Social Web

John Breslin Digital Enterprise Research Institute National University of Ireland, Galway

john.breslin@deri.org http://www.johnbreslin.com/
Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

Conversations on Teaching and Learning Seminars 30th April 2008

A little bit about myself!

Hello, World!

1990: VMS MAP.COM

1998: Forum* on the Irish Games Network

2000: boards.ie Ltd. Formed

2004: Researcher at DERI, NUI Galway

2008: 10th Anniversary*

A move from the Web to a Social Web

The New Yorker, 1993

The New Yorker, 2005

On the Internet, nobody knows youre a dog.

I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.

What is the Social Web?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_web
The Social Web is a term that can be used to describe a subset of interactions that are highly social, conversational and participatory. The Social Web may also be used instead of Web 2.0 as it is clearer what feature of the Web is being referred to.

Popular examples of social websites:

Wikipedia, MySpace / Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SecondLife, Upcoming, Digg / Reddit / StumbleUpon, Flickr / Zooomr, del.icio.us, World of Warcraft, Amazon

Related terms:
Web 2.0, social media, social software, social networks, social news, social bookmarking, user-generated content

The Social Web in simple terms

1. 2. 3. 4.

Users Content Tags Comments

Users post content Users share content Users annotate content with tags Users browse content via tags Users discuss content via comments Users connect via posted content Users connect directly to users

Content can be

Books Discussion postings Bookmarks Photos Music Movies Events Places Products Articles

Amazon Blogs del.icio.us Flickr Last.fm Netflix Upcoming.org Dopplr Microsoft Aura Wikipedia

Flickr, share your photos

SlideShare for presentations

The social bookmarking service del.icio.us

All Consuming, what have you read today?

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Upcoming event listings and meetups

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Dopplr for managing travel, tracking friends abroad

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You can even share your favourite walks

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and find others with like musical interests

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TouristR for travel destination stories and info

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Blogging: a phenomenon for a new generation?

Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2004

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Introduction

Weblog, web log or simply a blog is a web journal A web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common (usually open-access) webpage Individual diaries -> arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations (e.g. the Google Blog) Citizen journalism Posts are often shown in reverse chronological order Comments can be made by the public on some blogs Latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are syndicated using RSS or Atom formats (e.g. for reading favourite blogs with a feed reader)
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The state of the blogosphere

Source: Technorati (March 2003 to March 2007)

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Some quotes about blogs

It'll be no more mandatory that [CEOs] have blogs than that they have a phone and an e-mail account. If they don't, they're going to look foolish. - Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. Well find it anyway. Robert Scoble, Microsoft, Corporate Weblog Manifesto Famous people have enough space to talk already. Blogging is interesting because of non-famous people. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School

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Some non-famous and famous bloggers

Made famous by blogging:

Washingtonienne (http://washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com) Salam Pax (http://dear_raed.blogspot.com) Robert Scoble (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com)

Already (semi-) famous:

David Miliband (UK Labour Minister, http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/blogs/david_miliband/default.aspx) Jamie Oliver (Chef, http://www.jamieoliver.com) Jeremy Thompson (Sky, http://jeremythompson.typepad.com) Liz McManus (Labour Deputy, http://lizmcmanus.blogspot.com) Moby (http://www.moby-online.com/cms/viewalldiary.asp) Zach Braff (Scrubs, http://gardenstate.typepad.com)

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The Irish connection

There has been an explosion in the awareness of Irish blogs in the past three years Irish blogosphere (boggersphere!) size is in the thousands Irish blog aggregators:
http://www.irishblogs.ie/ http://planet.journals.ie/

Irish blogs awards in its third year:

http://www.awards.ie/blogawards The awards are being held this Saturday

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Get your own blog

journals.ie provides free hosting of Irish blogs Simple three-stage signup for a new blog at www.journals.ie Other popular services:
www.blogger.com www.wordpress.com

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Blogging in education

For teachers:
Instructions and summaries for students Course management / announcements and reading materials Personal knowledge sharing Peer networking and collaborating internally / externally Monitoring student culture Reflective writing or study journals Knowledge management Submission and review of assignments Dialogue for group work Share course-related resources

For students:

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Blogging in education (2)

For institutions:
Recruitment tool Alumni relations Outreach
Many of the big ten US institutions such as the University of Michigan have made free blogs available to students, faculty and staff

FroshComp course management:

tellio.net

Archinect information sharing and collaboration:

www.archinect.com/schoolblog

Albion College student senate blog communication:

www.albion.edu/senate/blog

University of Pennsylvania MBA admissions blog outreach:

adcomblog.wharton.upenn.edu

Chronicle of Higher Education news blog communication:

chronicle.com/news

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* Source: studentaffairs.com/vcs/2007entries/IndianaUniversity_Mitchell.ppt

Positives and negatives of blogs for universities

+ Can appeal to students in a more personal manner + A way to engage and connect deaf students in and out of class + Reflects the Universitys technology prowess + Keeps the reader current on news in specific field + Easy to create, publish, update and collaborate, while being low cost and not requiring complicated software to implement and maintain + Blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning Legal implications mostly focus around confidentiality and defamation When used in higher education, uncontrolled user-generated content will result in greatest liability, so constant monitoring is necessary Students or those targeted by blog may not have the patience to invest the time needed to stay informed about the blog A blog can be a perfect distraction or procrastination tool for students, faculty, or staff As a professional, a misguided blog can have negative implications for your career

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* Source: studentaffairs.com/vcs/2007entries/IndianaUniversity_Mitchell.ppt

Definition of wikis

A community-developed documentation project A piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. -- http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki A wiki is a type of website that allow users to easily add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative writing. The name is based on the Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick", "fast", or "to hasten" (Hawaiian dictionary). -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Makao, famous Hawaiian runner

Some uses of wikis

Wikis are being used for:

online encyclopaedias free dictionaries book repositories software development project proposals writing research papers event organisation

The Wikipedia: from Gaeilge to Esperanto

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Some Irish wiki sites

www.wiki.ie Wiki Ireland

The aim of Wiki Ireland is use wiki technology to create a knowledge store for Ireland's culture and heritage

wiki.politics.ie An Irish politics wiki

Aim is to create the largest online resource of Irish political information

wiki.boards.ie The boards.ie Wiki or Biki

Collaborative pages devoted to boards.ie culture and topics of interest

Make your own wiki:

http://www.wikidot.com

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Podcasts are like audio blogs

Podcasts are to radio what blogs are to newspapers and magazines The name Podcast is a portmanteau of pod from iPod and broadcast Basically, podcasts are MP3 audio files created by individuals or organisations, published on the Web and downloaded by others to their iPods or other MP3 playing devices Can be interviews, music shows, comedies, etc. Famous podcasters include Ricky Gervais for the Guardian Unlimited site

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History of podcasts

Concept suggested in 2000 Technical roots in 2001, with blogs being the key The term came into use around 2004 (Adam Curry = #1) Several technologies had to be in place:
High-speed Internet MP3 technology RSS, podcatching software Digital media players

2005, >100M Google hits In 2006, the number of podcasts surpassed the number of radio stations worldwide

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How do I get them?

Can play on your PC even if you dont have an iPod or Portable Media Player Can use iTunes for Windows or MacOS
Click on Music Store -> Podcasts -> Browse

Get direct from sites Odeo podcast directory

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And now there are video podcasts

Video podcasts are similar to audio podcasts, and can be downloaded to PCs or PMPs Some television stations are making episodes of series downloadable for free (e.g. C4s 4oD) or for a fee There are also many free video podcasts (interviews, news, documentaries, behind the scenes, etc.) Your own internet TV station All you need is a cam! AKA vodcasts or vidcasts (VOD = video-on-demand)

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Podcasting process

Podcast creation:
Computer with a line-in jack or USB microphone (8!) Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (Free!)

Podcast hosting:
Loudblog http://www.loudblog.de/ WordPress (and optional PodPress) http://www.wordpress.org/ and http://www.podpress.org/ Blast http://www.blastpodcast.com/ Blogger Upload a file to archive.org for example, link from a post using Show link field

Podcast listening:
iTunes - http://www.apple.com/itunes/ Juice - http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

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Podcasting legalities

Copyright is the branch of law that protects creative expression, including:

Texts displayed, read aloud, etc. Music played during podcasts, intros, outros Audio content performed or displayed Interviews of others are also protectable

Solution is to try and use podsafe content:

Creative Commons-licensed works, PD works, fair use, etc.

Related links:
http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/legal-issues-inpodcasting-the-traditional-classroom/print/ http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

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Podcasting in education

Listen to or view your lectures on demand! Teachers can publish podcasts of their lectures and assignments for an entire class or for the public:
May supplement physical lectures, e.g. language teaching May fully serve distance learning students

Conversely, students can create and publish content and deliver it to their teachers or other students CELTs Iain MacLaren on podcasting in education:
http://ollscoil.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcasting-in-highereducation.html

Educational podcasts:
http://www.uccinteractive.tv/test/new/podcasts/index.html http://itunes.stanford.edu/ and http://web.mit.edu/ist/podcasts/
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Podcasting in education (2)

Monk-e-mail advertising:
www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/?mid=19373796

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - orientation:

web.mit.edu/ist/start/students/podcasts

Perkins School of Theology admissions:

www.smu.edu/theology/admissions/podcast.html

Yahoo! - English as a second language courses:

podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=5affc3f4d0fc40be060e2ac3ce93fe84

Michigan State University - campus radio:

http://www.msucampusradio.org/

University of Wisconsin-Madison - services to create podcasts:

engage.doit.wisc.edu/podcasting/teachAndLearn

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Podcasting in Ireland

Bernie Goldbachs podcast from the Tipperary Institute:

http://www.podcasting.ie/

Brian Greenes Irish podcasting news:

http://www.doop.ie/podcasting_news/

Irish podcast directory:

http://www.podcastingireland.ie/

RTs R1 podcasts:
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/

Irish Emigrant podcasts:

http://www.emigrant.ie/podcast.htm

Irish podcasting representative body:

http://podireland.org/

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We all live in a social network

of friends, family, workmates, fellow students, acquaintances, etc.

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Everyones connected

Friend of a friend, or dirt bean liom go ndirt bean le

Theory that anybody is connected to everybody else (on average) by no more than six degrees of separation
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The Erds number

Number of links required to connect scholars to Erds via co-authorship of papers Erds wrote 1500+ papers with 507 co-authors Jerry Grossmans site allows mathematicians to compute their Erds numbers:
http://www.oakland.edu/enp/

Paul Erds (1913-1996)

Connecting path lengths, among mathematicians only:

The average is 4.65 The maximum is 13

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The Kevin Bacon game

Invented by three Albright College students in 1994:
Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, Mike Ginelly

Boxed version of the game

Goal is to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon, by linking actors who have acted in the same movie The Oracle of Bacon website uses IMDB to find the shortest link between any two actors:
http://oracleofbacon.org/

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What are social networking services (SNSs)?

From the beginning, the Internet was a medium for connecting not only machines but people
Idea behind SNSs is to make the aforementioned real-world relationships explicitly defined online

2002:
Friendster

2003:
MySpace, LinkedIn, hi5

2004:
orkut, Facebook

2005:
Bebo

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The popularity of SNSs

The 10 most popular domains ~= 40% percent of all page views on the Web (Compete, November 2006)
Nearly half of those views were from the social networking services MySpace and Facebook wow! And thats just in the top 10

Alexa rankings:
#6: MySpace #7: orkut #8: Facebook #10: hi5 #16: Friendster #95: Bebo #142: LinkedIn

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SNSs attracting lots of monetary / media attention

Friendster $13M VC Tribe $6.3M VC LinkedIn $4.7M VC Bebo $15M VC MySpace Sold for $580M Friends Reunited Sold for 120M Facebook Purported $1B Y! offer, 1.6% sold to MS

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Other niche SNSs

Age:
Multiply (seniors and settled); Boomj (baby boomers); Rezoom

Country of origin:
Silicon India

Gender:
CafMom; MothersClick; Sister Woman (female friends)

Occupation:
ModelsHotel; FanLib (fiction writers); AdGabber; TheFeng.org (financial services executives); MilitarySpot (military families); Sermo (doctors and physicians)

Business and careers:

ConnectBuzz; Doostang; Execunet; Netshare; Ryze; Viadeo; Xing

Interests:
TradeKing (investors); StreetCred (hip hop); IndiePublic (art and design); PeerTrainer (health and wellbeing)

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* Source: Paul Gibler, Wisconsin Technology Network

Learning opportunities from organisational SNSs

An opportunity to create an internal network for sharing information and expertise:
Share information within an organisations own walls Efficient way to mine for inhouse expertise (expert finding) Reduce the time spent mailing docs and e-mailing comments Encourage employees, alumni, students, interns, new hires, retired staff, other stakeholders to interact with each other

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Public SNSs for informal learning (in industry)

Figures estimate that 75-80% of learning is done informally, and with 40-50% of employees accessing information and knowledge from social media sites, Web 2.0 is potentially responsible for a large proportion of this informal learning (up to 30-40%):
More than 40 percent of business users consume social networking applications like blogs, intranets and RSS [really simple syndication] feeds more than three times a week. More than 30 percent of respondents read information in wikis, social networks, discussion boards and videoconferences / IMs more than three times a week. More than 20 percent of respondents contribute to blogs, intranets, social networks, discussion boards, video conferencing and tagging [social media sites] more than three times a week.

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Elgg, social networking software for education

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Creating your own SNS

Which method is best for you?
1. Create a social network via a web interface, hosted on someone elses site (e.g., ning.com) 2. Install off-the-shelf social networking software on your own server 3. Install a content management system and customise the SN modules / themes yourself

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Online games

Then first-person shooter games became popular during the 1990s (with corresponding multiplayer versions):
Doom Quake Half-Life

Followed by MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) and MMORPGs (MMO role playing games) from the late 1990s to date:
Everquest World of Warcraft

Virtual worlds:
Second Life
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Unreal-powered EduFrag for chemistry education

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The Second Life virtual world

Freely downloadable virtual world for Windows and Mac A social networking service combined with metaverse 3 million registered accounts as of 28 January 2007 First occurrence of 30,000 concurrent residents on 1 February 2007 Probably around 150,000 active users (high churn rate) Linden Lab making some SL software (viewer) open source Virtual riot between French National Front and anti-racist SL residents in January 2007 Concerts from Duran Duran, Suzanne Vega and others Companies, organisations (Unitarians) all setting up shop $1 US = 250 Linden dollars Unofficial John Edwards presence

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Outside Trinity College Dublin

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Doug Engelbart event in first and second lives

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An issue with the Social Web

Need interesting objects to draw you back to keep on using social networking services

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* Source: Jyri Engestrom, Object-Centered Sociality, Reboot 7

Many social networking services can be boring

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* Source: Jyri Engestrom, Object-Centered Sociality, Reboot 7

Object-centred sociality can provide meaning

Users connected via a common object, e.g., their job, university, hobbies, a date
Another tradition of theorizing offers an explanation of why Russell linked out, and why so many YASNS ultimately fail. According to this theory, people dont just connect to each other. They connect through a shared object.

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* Source: Jyri Engestrom, Why Some Social Networks Work

Object-centred sociality can provide meaning (2)

When a service fails to offer the users a way to create new objects of sociality, they turn the connecting itself into an object [LinkedIn].

Good services allow people to create social objects that add value.
Flickr = photos del.icio.us = bookmarks Blogs = discussion posts

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* Source: Jyri Engestrom, Why Some Social Networks Work

Everything we make and do

Video annotations Chats Photos Micro-blogs OSN profiles Bookmarks

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can connect us to other people

References
Recent presentations about Web 2.0 and education:
www.studentaffairs.com/vcs/2007entries/IndianaUniversity_Mitchell.ppt www.ucl.ac.uk/learningtechnology/events/showcase

What is Web 2.0: ideas, technologies and implications for education - JISC:
www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf

Social networking: a quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use - Ofcom:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_04_08_ofcom.pdf

Emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations - Horizon:
www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf

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Questions and answers

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