"like the early days of online learning..."

Last Thursday, I attended a gathering of educators hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in SL.



As you can see, there were about a dozen teachers from around the world discussing education in SL. In particular the focus was on SUNY Live, a consortium of New York colleges and universities that participated in a six month project where they explored using SL on Monroe Community College's island. The speaker Marcius Dowding (real life Larry Dugan, director of online learning at Finger Lakes CC), basically told about their experience, especially focusing on what they expected and what actually happened.

The participants expected to focus their attention on making learning objects, things that could be used by instructors in the classroom. They found early on that doing so wasn't that important. They could find/buy the learning objects they needed much more efficiently than making them. Instead, what they found was that the social collaboration and networking between participants was really the focus and benefit of the project, acting as a starting point and "proof of concept" for the different institutions which soon after the project spread out onto their own islands, expanding on what they had learned during SUNY Live. The focus during meetings f2f and in world was hashing out the pedagogical approaches and value of what they could do in SL. For example, presentation of information, such as with Power Point, became much less important than constructivist activity, where students work together to solve a problem rather than being lectured to.

And then Marcius said something that became a blinding flash of the obvious for me: "we look at [the SL project] like the early days of online learning."

His saying that, while my avatar sat on a floating cushion overlooking a virtual ocean, brought me back to 1996, when a handful of LCC faculty met with Chuck Bettencourt (I hope I remember his name correctly!) weekly to hash out what online learning should look like, how it should work, with even the most basic questions creating argument and puzzlement, such as when does an online class start, how does a student find out about assignments, can you email grades and so on, or even what should the link buttons look like!

In other words, the use of virtual worlds for online education leads colleges, universities, instructional designers, instructors to fundamental questions about what education looks like in a virtual world, creating a steep learning curve for all involved, where experimentation, risk taking, dealing with the vagaries of newish software creates a chaos from which both frustration and new pathways of learning both coexist.

Been there, done that. Those working with SL certainly are on the vanguard of online education, as we were in 1996. So, at some level, I know what to expect. But then again--I was quite a bit younger then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, here's a video clip from a electronica performance at New Media Consortium (NMC) in SL by nnoiz Papp:

Map of the Metaverse

A delightful map posted in 2007 by xkcd:



Obviously, even now the size of these countries/islands are shifting and expanding. Especially the Bay of Angst!!!!

Deja vu in SL

I've been exploring educational sites in SL the last few days, including several community colleges and libraries. I've also visited the Sistine Chapel, a Renaissance village, a timeline of earth, an Edgar Allen Poe exhibit, and the broadcast of Science Friday.

The colleges are at various levels of development, from just starting, to quite fully realized campuses, such as Winding River Campus, the SL iteration of Pellissippi State Technical CC.



Some of the content and interaction is intriguing, such as a feral cat exhibit and a Malcolm X exhibit at Monroe CC. And the Science Friday broadcast was informative and interesting, with over 60 avatars watching Ira Flatow's avatar talk on the mike and commenting about the science discussion going on.



However, I keep feeling a sense of deja vu while exploring SL. When I first began exploring the Internet in the mid nineties, it was cool being able to search for web sites and be able to pull up text and images from around the world. However, the expectation was often much greater than the reality. First off, imagery tended to take forever to load. Second, I'd often search for something only to find nothing. And when I did find web pages on a particular topic, it was often weak in content, much weaker than one might find with a five minute trip to the library.

Second Life is much like the Internet in 1996. It shows much promise, and occasionally I come across intriguing content, but more often than not, what I find is inferior to what I can find on the 2D Internet or a library. And often video or slides load really slowly, much more slowly than is the case on the Internet.

For example, I went to Info Island, a well developed Library site formed by the Alliance Library Systems and Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL), and checked out some of their exhibits. For example, they have a movie collection that is composed of a floor in a building of movie posters:



When I click on the poster, I get a brief essay on the movie, and that from Wikipedia. No clips, no stills, no bibliographies. In fact, I found Wikipedia prevalent in a good number of exhibits, such as the Science Fiction and Fantasy display.

At Montclair College, you can find an Edgar Allen Poe exhibit. It's found at the end of a lane in a dark forest, and when you approach the house, a blood curdling scream rips through your speakers. The atmosphere set, you enter the house, hear the pounding of a heart and see a chair, a portrait of Poe and a penguin:



Click on the portrait, and it's supposed to give you a notecard that gives some "biography, citations and description." I got nothing, even after trying it several times. That's it. The total extent of the exhibit, oh, except for "The Raven," which you can read if you zoom in really close.

Also, most of the time, when in SL, your avatar is all by itself. In exploring educational sites, I've only run across two or three other people, one a very helpful instructional designer who is working on the Oregon Community Colleges island. But most of the time, it's like wandering a ghost town or like Vincent Price in Last Man on Earth:



Granted, when you attend events, or places of gathering, like a pub or radio broadcast, there is more going on. But it's an eerie feeling to be exploring supposedly active college campuses and libraries to find little activity. I do recognize that SL and virtual worlds are on the frontier of their development. But at present, sending students off to find intellectual content on SL seems premature.

In the next couple days, I plan to attend more events, to see how interaction and discussion take place. Meanwhile, I'll expect SL to develop like the web did: in a few years an avatar will be able to peruse a cornucopia of intellectually rigorous content.

Entry point in Second Life

Adding 2 gig of RAM made a big difference in roaming around SL. I am now able to move around, watch buildings rez (appear) in reasonable fashions, listen to live music at the Blarney Stone pub in Dublin,



explore some education sites, such as Angel Learning Island and Terra Incognita, without any interruptions, get roasted slowly on a rotisserie at the West of Ireland island,



and still have email, and music playing in the background.

However, with continued research and exploration, I'm finding the whole virtual world situation quite overwhelming. Here's a video that shows screenshots of 50 different virtual worlds currently operating or in private Beta:



Obviously, the development of virtual worlds is very much on the frontier. But they seem to be expanding exponentially, as is suggested by the term metaverse. Though metaverse basically means a 3D world that has "no specific goals or objectives," and is usually meant to describe a self contained world, like Second Life, it seems actually to be morphing more into the expanding landscape of multiple virtual worlds, including massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG). This exponential expansion leads to a steep learning curve for those just getting started in considering their use in education, at least it seems so to me at this point, even with my sabbatical opportunity to devote significant time to exploration.

What I'm having most difficulty with is an entry point into using SL for online classes. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Sarah Robbins requires students to use SL, and to meet as a class twice a week, minimum. I understand her reasoning--again, if students aren't required to use it, they won't--and I agree. However, making SL the primary "place" for the class means that the instructor has to have significant experience with the application. Now, I don't have a problem with getting to that point as an instructor. However, I've found--both for myself and other faculty who aren't ubergeeks (and I mean that in the most respectful way possible!)--that playing with online tools, software, applications gradually is the most effective way of getting my feet wet. Then from semester to semester, I add more where I see benefit.

I did so with discussion board, chat, sending documents, assignments on the web--through DIWE, AltaVista Forum, Blackboard, Angel and so on. And I've always encouraged other instructors at LCC just to start simply as an entry point into incorporating online applications into their classes, trying one thing in Angel, such as posting assignments, or playing with a discussion forum and then adding another the next semester.

So can one do so with SL? What is the entry point into using the application among the other online tools an instructor has at his or her disposal? That's part of what I need to discover in the next week or so.

Walkabout in Second Life

The last few days I've been doing a bit more research about Second Life, especially in comparison to Google's newly released Lively. I'll return to the comparison in a future blog posting. However, this time through, I'd like to describe my initial experiences with Second Life (SL).

Actually not my initial experiences. I tried Second Life a year and a half ago but didn't get much past running into walls in the initial Help Island.

This time, I stuck with it, and started from scratch with a new avatar that will be identifiable for students should I decide to use SL for classes. Actually, I started and discarded a couple of avatars because I kept using all lower case for the first name, and I found it looking stupid when in world (the term used to mean you're in SL). I settled on an avatar named Profdan Netizen. For those who haven't tried SL, you come up with your own first name, and then choose from a list of last names.

Once on the orientation island, I practiced walking, flying, using camera angles, sitting. I talked to a couple people (through text--haven't tried voice or audio chat yet), and found a list of good places to visit. Here are a couple pictures of my avatar on the orientation island.



Here's Profdan Netizen after some alterations of the avatar image I chose. I tried to make it look somewhat like me. The original avatar had a full head of hair; since those days are long gone for me, I removed the hair (not actually sure how I stumbled upon doing so) and added a ponytail.



Profdan Netizen found quite a nice grand piano and began playing "Maple Leaf Rag."

I spent a couple hours on the Help Island, getting used to the controls to move around without running into things, and flying without smashing myself into the ground when landing. I then decided to try out some of the favorite spots, so I first teleported to a Mayan ruins, which was interesting; not very Maya like, though it may be I just didn't explore fully. I did, however, spend more time at a Japanese tea garden. I was struck with the verisimilitude of the soundscape. Wearing headphones, the direction of the ocean or a waterfall moved with the position of the avatar, both directionally and distance-wise, quieting when I retreated, gaining in volume when I approached the source of the sound. I also found some familiar faces from the Miyazaki film, My Neighbor Totoro:



By the way, you can buy these creatures for 100 Linden dollars each (the currency in SL).



Here, Profdan stands before a roadside shrine. I'm showing you a screen capture that includes all of the command buttons I have to interact with the situation. The screen of text is describing the shrine that the creator posted, explaining what it is and what you can do with it.

I found out while exploring that there are areas that are restricted (like private residents) and items that you cannot interact with if you don't have permission. I tried to ride a motorboat but was denied. I also found out that avatars don't swim, they just walk around at the bottom of the ocean. Fortunately, they don't drown. I also found a pillar at various places where you can vote for the site to be considered worth visiting, which then determines the hot spots for SL. Also, you can download from the pillar and place in your inventory the hotspots currently ranking at the time you're in-world.

My next stop was the SL Botanical Gardens.



A shot overlooking the ocean and a walkway lined with flags in the botanical gardens.



Profdan sitting on a toadstool during a thunderstorm. Again, I was struck by the soundscape of rain falling all around me, along with the occasional crack of thunder.



I found a covered arboretum to dry out in. An avatar spoke to me from the doorway asking if she could bite me, wanting to try out an animation. Before I could say yay or nay, she disappeared.



Another shot of Profdan resting from strenuous walks through the gardens. A perfect sabbatical stance, don't you think?

My next stop was Dublin in SL, but I didn't do much there, just walked around and looked at a couple shops and read about a literary tour that is conducted every evening. I became very frustrated at this point because of lagging. When I checked Windows Task Manager, I realized why--I was using 2 gigs of RAM memory, and I only have 1 gig. According to Second Life system requirements, you need a minimum of 512 mb of RAM, and they recommend 1 gig or more. The minimum might be fine for Help Island, and for low graphics areas, but I found I really needed 2 gigs for places like the botanical gardens and Dublin, and that would be only if everything else was shut down. If I want a browser open with email, or some music from an mp3 player in the background 2.5 or 3 gigs are likely necessary.

Final thoughts on my first excursions: movement around the world is pretty intuitive, and can be mouse or keyboard based. I focused on the latter so I could sit on a couch without fiddling with a mouse. I need more practice with smoother control use, but overall, I was able to walk, jump, and fly without falling off of cliffs too often.

Speaking of flying--I kept getting the sense that Second Life operates like a dream world. Besides flying, lagging (like running but getting nowhere), strange creatures, avatars asking for unusual requests ("would you please allow me to bite you?"), or even running around naked--as was the case with one particular avatar in Dublin--it's almost like Second Life has become Jung's collective unconscious writ large in cyberspace.

Well, I'm off to buy some more RAM to keep me from tossing my laptop out of my second story office window!

Myspace and Facebook

I've been playing with the two titans of social networking sites the last couple of days. I've avoided both for several years basically because they've seen remarkably adept at slurping down rivers of time, at least that's what seemed to be the case when watching my children using the services.

And I was right. I've just scratched the surface of building profiles, adding pictures, video, audio, images, thematic presentation and such for both. And I've noticed that each, including Twitter, wants status blurbs as frequently as possible, which create responses from friends, increasing email and scribblings on walls.

Fortunately, I've found an effective shortcut to status/what are you doing? postings by using a ping.fm iGoogle gadget that allows me to write one posting that is sent to all three.

My first impressions of the two web applications are that Facebook is easier to send comments to others, while Myspace is easier to find schools/colleges (no, Facebook, I did not attend Concord High School in Australia!!!!!) . And call me crazy, but would it have been that difficult for Facebook to make their wall actually look like a wall?

So time consuming, and yet millions have flocked to these social networking sites. I wonder if the generation that grew up on video games (those under 30), where working on a game often takes days, finds it much more natural to work for hours filling out their niche in the social networking world because thy have grown up spending hours before a screen making Mario run/jump/hop from platform to platform to avoid or destroy goombas and koopa troopas until they've perfected the sequence and beaten the level?

Now it's true that the fastest growing population groups on Facebook are young (26-34) and middle aged (35-44) professionals, and older folks are picking it up in significant numbers as well (see http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/09/facebook-growth-by-age-group-s.html). But I bet the time spent on the web site is much higher with teens and college students. Part of it may simply be having more time, and yet I would defy anyone to support an assertion that contemporary college students have much free time, especially those attending community colleges.

Instead, I think it's a mindset that they've grown up with that those of us who remember playing Pong on a 19 inch video screen in the back of a beer bar did not develop--the investment of time in building something--video character skills, solving puzzles, gathering clues--in front of a glowing screen.

Aggregators and Mashups

As my overarching schedule suggests, October will be focused on playing with Second Life and other Web 2.0 applications. Of course, I've actually been playing with apps all along, such as this blog, social bookmark apps delicious and diigo, microblogging with Twitter, and just yesterday, starting up Facebook.

So, I'll also be mixing this month of exploration with more research.

I've been looking at aggregators and mashups lately. I at first saw little difference between the two, but I found a definition at Academic Commons that suggests aggregators are a sub category of mashups:

1. Mashups by integration are the ones that capture our imagination because they involve true "crossing." Data from one resource becomes the input for processing by another. Geotags from Flickr, for example, can serve as the grist for a Google Map. Mashups by integration typically require considerable time and expertise to develop. They are the domain of developers who know how to work with an application programming interface (API). These are the mashups that make it onto the "Programmable Web" mashup blog (or into the roster for a NERCOMP SIG).

2. Mashups by aggregation, on the other hand, simply juxtapose information from disparate sources. One should think here of applications such as MyYahoo, NetVibes , PageFlakes, iGoogle, and others. Individual users assemble collections of "feeds" whose contents then live side by side within the aggregator. Even if the "feeds" are otherwise unaware of one another, the act of juxtaposition is already a creative one. Mashups by integration require little expertise to create.

Seems to me also that aggregators are of two categories--those for personal use, such as iGoogle, and those for publication, which might be used in a course. I consequently plan to play around with NetVibes and PageFlakes to see what I can wrestle from them. A good example of what I'm talking about is an aggregation that Mark Marino at USC has put together for his writing course using PageFlakes: http://www.pageflakes.com/markcmarino/23536077.

Mashups by integration seem to need more expertise to create, something I probably will not be able to gather this semester. However, there are some intriguing uses of mashups. For example, twittervision and flickrvision combine Google maps and Twitter/Flickr to show what users are posting all over the world. At one level, real time wasters, but on another, a fascinating way to get a sense of what people are doing and thinking at any given time. I was watching twittervision when AIG was crashing and burning, and it was really intriguing to see the rising concern being expressed all over the world. In fact, most mashups in my quick perusal focus on images, video and maps. I could see, and hope to explore sometime soon, the use of mashups in a film class, where one could bring photos, clips and locations to one place after typing in a movie title from imdb.com.

Another mashup that looks intriguing, and might be something to pursue with student projects, especially if the manipulation of media images is valued, is Remix America, where users can put together mashups of videos to comment on current events with tools provided by the service.

Here's an example:



Seems like this could be a lot of fun for students and a way to build multimedia literacy.

Second Life and Twitter

I've been researching the two ends of the social networking spectrum this week. On one end is the one-note wonder of Twitter, a form of microblogging that does one thing--allows users to broadcast their response to one single question, "What are you doing?" And in 140 characters or less.



On the other end is Second Life, the 3D immersive world where users can explore an online environment with an avatar, like a video game.


(from Oakton Community College web site)

I've been playing with Twitter the last few weeks. As is mentioned by several who try to explain Twitter, most don't get it at first: who cares what you're doing, or what I'm doing. And each tweet (post onto Twitter) often does seem inconsequential. But by watching the stream of tweets over a period of time, one develops a sixth sense about one's friends, as Clive Thompson at Wired puts it. Here's an interesting metaphor he uses:

"It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination."

Also, there are a couple of Twitter tools that are fascinating: Twittervision, which allows you to see what people are tweeting all over the world, and Twitter search, which allows you to see what people are tweeting about a particular subject right now. If you want an active search right now, just type in Sarah Palin!

Education-wise, I haven't really wrapped my head around how I might use Twitter, though I did just think of a way to use Twitter search, to see if an issue that a student might want to write about is being discussed in our society right now. And there are a number of suggestions posted on a couple blogs: AcademHack and and Web 2.0 Teaching Tools that I'll likely explore more fully later.

Second Life (SL) is much more complex, of course, and central to the issue of online education since it creates a virtual world within which to operate, well beyond what course management software (CMS) does, as I've mentioned before. It has the potential to create a sense of place and embodiment that CMS's cannot even approach. There is a scad of stuff online about education in SL: Second Life Education or SLED has an official Linden Labs wiki of educational resources. And Angel has their own island where faculty can go to explore the use of teaching in a virtual world.

I watched with particular interest a lecture given in SL at a conference about education by Sarah Robbins, an advocate for SL learning for the last couple years. She argues that the use of SL can enhance student engagement and hence foster deeper learning and better retention than what takes place in a typical CMS online class. I've had a suspicion for a number of years that a more immersive, less desk-top, environment would do so. I had pursued the possibility of using MOOs in online classes to enhance a sense of there-ness, but always found the learning curve too steep to walk students through for a completely online class.

So in October, I expect to spend quite a bit of time in SL, both for further research--I've found a good number of sources are "in-world"--and to see if I find the learning curve doable.

Also, I'd really like to see how community colleges do this. Robbins works at the university level, speaks with and meets each student in SL before they can register, advertises the class as an SL online course, and hence can require a certain level of computer equipment, especially the need for high speed Internet. Also, she in essence teaches the class synchronously. In other words, students are required to show up two nights a week and participate in class, just as they would in f2f.

Obviously, many CCs don't have quite the flexibility she notes. I do, though, think that our administration would be open to some experimentation, especially if it's linked to engagement and retention. However, our institution's disdain for synchronous online learning would have to be overcome. Also, Robbins suggests that an instructor would have to require SL in order for it to work. If you make applications that are central to the activities of an online class optional, they will not be used. I'm curious how CCs deal with requiring higher end equipment and plan to explore more fully community colleges and community college groups that use/promote the use of SL.

Creepy Treehouse III

Last post on creepy treehouses. I think that course management software falls into creepy treehousedom when it does two things:

1. keeps users from accessing applications from outside of its walls.
2. offers services that are so obviously more effective elsewhere.

I'll use some examples from my experience with three CMS's we've used at LCC.

Chat

In AltaVista Forum, one could chat with the CMS client, or with another client like mIRC. With both Blackboard and Angel, such is not possible. Furthermore, in both CMS's, chat has been clunky, dull (no actions as with MOOs or mIRC), and unreliable.

Email

I don't recall AltaVista Forum having an email function. Both Blackboard and Angel do, and especially with Angel, the email sucks. It's like they never looked at how it's done anywhere else and are trying to reinvent the wheel. Furthermore, you can't email to Angel email; you can only send out from Angel email to Internet email.

Dropboxes

You would think CMS's would be the most uncreepytreehouse with drop boxes, since they were integral to CMS's from the early days. However, in uploading files on Flickr, I've realized how clumsy they are. Angel's drop box function is much improved with that found in Blackboard. However, Angel's philosophy seems to be why use only one click when three will do? Consequently, getting anything done takes much longer than necessary and adds to that feeling of something being very wrong.

That's enough. I haven't tried the web 2.0ish features that Angel (and I'm sure Blackboard) has added in recent years such as blogs and wikis. However, from those I've talked to (or read on listservs), they aren't very good. It just seems that it would make a lot more sense to treat a CMS as a portal that offers things it does well at (or should do well at), such as a secure gradebook, and allow applications such as blogs, wikis, email, chat and such to be accessed through the common web page, like an aggregator does with widgets (more on these soon).

OK, enough creepiness!!!!

Social Networking video

Very funny video I found on Vodpod.

Creepy Treehouse II

Here's another criticism on creepy treehouses.

Are Institutional Portals and VLEs Really “Creepy Treehouses”? @ UK Web Focus

I particularly found the following quotation from a commenter (Phil Wilson) insightful concerning what makes treehouses creepy:

"The creepy treehouse (which has been around for years and years, and started with video games I think) is, classically, about an inauthentic experience of some kind created by adults, designed for children and which normally singularly fails to achieve what it set out to - that is to provide an experience the children are already used to and enjoy (and to therefore become popular). It’s the uncanny valley of using software - you know *something* is wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it."

Uncanny valley is a metaphor within a metaphor, usually used concerning animation, where animated characters that become too realistic are deemed creepy by viewers, as particularly happened with the Polar Express. See http://www.wwnorton.com/college/film/movies2/ch/04/essay_uncanny_valley.aspx for more.

Creepy Treehouse vs. Functional Mall

I've been exploring web 2.0 in a scattershot manner this week (I warned you!), reading about Facebook, exploring ning, comparing delicious with diigo and playing with goodreads.com. But I do keep coming back to the issue of social networking. I at some level understand the use of social network sites, such as Myspace.com and Facebook as a pastime, or a way to keep in touch with friends and family, though I've yet to try either (I will soon, both for the needs of this project, and so my children will quit bugging me to get on Facebook!). And virtual worlds like Second Life take such interaction to a new level with a more immersive experience, reminding me of a nascent virtual reality found in the Tad Williams' Otherworld novels.

But my overriding question--what has this all to do with education? Here's a quotation from an Inside Higher Ed article "Will Colleges Friend Facebook?" that deals with the issue:

"Online social networking and 3D simulations between faculty and students may help colleges and universities foster a stronger sense of community in the class, regardless of the physical limitations imposed by class size, or the interpersonal limitations contingent upon traditional markers of experience and identity through race, class, gender, etc." (my italics)

One of the complaints I've always had about course management software, like Blackboard or Angel, is that it's disembodied, that students have no sense of place with online classes. Even with the most well designed class in a CMS or elsewhere, be it blog or wiki or open source spaces like Moodle, students interact with a "desktop" of some sort rather than a room or a landscape.

Yes, they do interact with others through discussion boards or chat, but again, there's no sense of place as we have with brick and mortar campuses and classrooms.

Can social networks improve that sense of place? Well, I plan to deal more with that question later, especially when exploring Second Life. But the other aspect of the issue of using social networks in education is that expressed through the metaphor that became quite popular in the last few months, that of the creepy treehouse.

Here's a definition from Jared Stein:

"A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids" and "Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards."

In online education or with the use of online technology in the classroom, a creepy treehouse would be when the professor or institution tries to coopt social networks or tools that students already use on their own time. So if a professor requires students to "friend" him or her in Facebook, that would be considered for many a creepy treehouse. If an institution or CMS presents closed, locked down versions of web 2.0 services found on the web, such as blogging or a wiki in Angel, rather than using such naturally online, then that could be a creepy treehouse. Many seem to find Blackboard to exude creepy treehouseness, but that's to be expected since it's the Microsoft of CMS's.

The concern has been that many educators are beginning to proclaim creepy treehouseness as an excuse to avoid using web 2.0 tools/applications with students, sort of a luddite backlash.

Therefore, Michael Staton came up with the metaphor of the "functional mall." In a mall, young people, old people, middle aged and children all coexist and participate in the activities of a mall. They may use it differently, and at times they may interact with those in other age groups, but often not. He suggests that social networks operate more in this manner, especially as they mature and seek to expand their audiences, as Facebook is doing, to include every age group. Thus, social networks can accommodate learning groups, such as online classes, in ways that are not so creepy treehouse-like.

The key seems to be to use Facebook or social networking in a way that is not required but as another way to communicate. As one instructor notes, "What I tried to do was not to make it just something to study, but to make it something practical so I tried to incorporate as much communication technology in the course as possible." The same article presents research from the Pew Internet that suggests why using Facebook can be beneficial: "Teachers 'are able to leverage a tool students already use instead of asking them to learn how to use a separate application.'"

Web 2.0 categories

I've found several attempts to categorize web 2.0 applications. Some are interesting but unmanageable, such as 50+ categories found at Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Others seem to leave out quite a bit, such as that found at ReadWebWrite:

Blogging (briefly includes wikis)
Podcasting
Media sharing
Social networks

And some seem to include services that seem web 1.0ish or antithetical to many of the open principles of web 2.0, such as the listing of classroom management software at Hubpages.

So here's how I plan to categorize and explore more closely web 2.0 applications in the next couple weeks. It seems inclusive enough to my viewpoint, however warped that might be:

Aggregators--combining several processes onto one web page, including mashups.
Examples: iGoogle, Pageflakes, Netvibes

Media sharing--photo, video and audio presentation.
Examples: Flickr, Youtube, podcasting

Social networks/virtual environments--places online where people socialize, converse, work together. I considered separating these two, but they seem to serve similar purposes. I may change if I find the distinctions clearer.
Examples: Facebook, Myspace, Second Life

Collaborative/social publishing--primarily the sharing and editing of text.
Examples: blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, wikis


These seem both manageable and inclusive.

By the way, the html editor in Blogger really sucks--it does squirrelly things when you try to edit. I had to paste a a plain text version into the "Edit Html" tab and then reformat to make things look decent here.

Social Learning

Twelve years ago, when I was first approached to develop a FY Comp class for online delivery, I agreed on one condition: that it could be as interactive--between students and between instructor and students--as a f2f class. I was assured that such would be the case, and generally administration and techs have been cooperative, though our campus has been rather cool and even hostile at times toward the use of synchronous components, such as chat or MOOs.

The reason I was so adamant about interaction is because I could see with my very limited experience, that an online class could easily--and often is--a glorified correspondence course, where students read stuff on the web, take tests or write papers that they submit to instructors, and go on their merry way.

And a good number of students would like it that way. In one of my first online classes, a student wrote a paper on the social component of learning in online classes, defending its value. She interviewed several students, and most agreed. However, one did not. She said, that interaction is great, but it's time consuming, and if she had a choice, she'd rather avoid the interaction and simply write/turn in papers to the instructor.

I'm not knocking correspondence courses. For some students, they work fine. There are times in my educational experience where I would have rather gone the quick and dirty way of read/write--take a test/get a grade. But over the years I've found that interaction between engaged students and with the instructor makes for a much richer, memorable educational experience that allows one to learn more, but more importantly to learn more deeply, to develop the critical chops one needs to, in essence, become an expert.

I realize for many college profs, I'm proclaiming a blinding flash of the obvious. But the social nature of learning is paramount to the value of exploring Web 2.0 since as we looked at earlier, one of the foundational tenets of the shift is that of social networking.

There's an excellent article that summarizes effectively the social nature of learning on the web by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, "Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail and Learning 2.0." One of the ways that they differentiate between Web 1.0 and 2.0 is that 1.0 was more conducive to the Cartesian view of education--transferring knowledge from teacher to learner--while 2.0 is more conducive to the social view of learning: gaining understanding through interaction with others. Here's a graphic the authors present to show the difference:

The authors present a clear, simple definition of social learning: "our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning." They also present some research done at Harvard done by Richard J. Light that concluded, "One of the strongest determinants of students' success in higher education--more important than the details of their instructors' teaching styles--was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than student who worked on their own."

Of course, the value of social constructivist learning has been part of composition theory for many years, especially noted in the seminal article by James Berlin, "Contemporary composition: The major pedagogical theories."  And again, to suggest that social learning did not take place in web 1.0 is obviously untrue, as I noted above with my own experience.

However, the current development of web use, this "new" version, clearly has developed services and tools that make social learning richer and deeper.

At least, that's what I'm hoping to find as I continue to explore.

Web 2.0 in Education

The differentiations between web 1.0 and 2.0 have been primarily focused on business--how to capitalize on the evolution of the web, taking advantage of social networks and prosumers (a conflation of producer/consumers, or active consumers who participate in production--See Toffler's Third Wave page 5 or the ubiquitous Wikipedia discussion on the term).

However, web 2.0 has also glommed onto the imaginations of educators and related terms like e-learning 2.0, education 2.0, scholarship 2.0 and so on have proliferated. Much discussion of the second coming of education, and especially online education, reverberates with evangelical fervor claiming a new millennium of empowerment for learners.

Of course, we heard much the same in web 1.0 concerning online learning, virtual courses and degrees--"go to class in your slippers," "short on time? Take an online course" were found even on LCC's schedule books in the first semesters when online courses were offered. Obviously, we found problems with overselling online courses--some students were not ready, nor were some faculty, for the intensive, solitary work of online education. And doing so on dial-up, when sometimes AltaVista Forum or Blackboard would take ten minutes to download and uploading files took hours of fasting and praying--well, it was not for the faint of heart!!!!!!

So as we delve more into what web 2.0 education, especially online learning, looks like, we need to keep in mind that some of what we look at will be wild-eyed fervor. I will try to sort out the evangelical tropes from the realistic down-in-the-dirt potential of web 2.0 applications and approaches. However, if I begin to rave uncontrollably, just slap me!

Chrome comic book

Here's a comic/graphic novel description of the development of Chrome: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/. The beginning description between how browsers were used ten years ago (static web pages) and today (dynamic interaction, audio, video), though simplistic, highlight the shift described as Web 2.0.

So in other words, the idea behind designing Chrome is to start from scratch to design a browser for users in our more interactive virtual world, a Web 2.0 browser.

Chrome

Quick note on my initial tooling around Google's new browser, Chrome.

First off, very fast. Opens about three times faster than Firefox 3, which is quite a bit faster than 2. Granted, I have a good number of plug-ins with Firefox that slows it down, but still. And it's quite quick in opening pages.

Love the movable tabs. You can click on drag a tab to a different position, or to its own window, and back. 

Also, has a task manager for the browser--you can look at the RAM usage for each tab, and close a tab if it freezes up, without shutting down the whole browser. As my son, Jonathan, points out, very much like an OS rather than a browser.

I also like the one window for address and search. Very clean.

Very impressive for a beta.

Definitions and criticism

So Web 2.0, what is it? In one sentence, Web 2.0 is the fruition of interactivity and production online, where the focus or the foundation of online work and play is social production, rather than individual information gathering. As I mentioned in my rationale, it's a term coined by Tim O'Reilly to describe a shift he was seeing in Internet usage, one that he as an entrepreneur wanted (and still wants) to profit from.

One way to differentiate between Web 1.0 and 2.0 that O'Reilly presents in his article "What is Web 2.0" is a list of programs/services that contrast with each other between the two versions of the web. Here are a few examples:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0
Ofoto --> Flickr
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
content management systems --> wikis

The basic difference between the two being much more interaction between users in Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0.

One singular example that just clicked for me in the last week is the difference between bookmarking or "adding to favorites" and social bookmarking. Since the browser became available in the mid nineties, we've been able to bookmark web sites to recall later by clicking on the necessary toolbar or button. But they only worked on one computer. If you were at another computer, you couldn't access your bookmarks.

Today, with services like delicious, you can upload bookmarks that are accessible by any computer and can easily be shared with other users.


Here's an image of memes in O'Reilly's article that helped me keep straight the concept:

Some criticize the term and concept, with concerns about the over commercialization of social websites, leading to a lack of "unmarketed space," the exploitation of labor, and the hype surrounding the idea that Web 2.0 is something radically different from Web 1.0, as Tim Berners-Lee, one of the pioneers of the Internet denies. No doubt the criticisms have merit--certainly most any Web 2.0 application can find its antecedents in Web 1.0. However, isn't that the case in any versioning? Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 have many of the same features, but the latter takes the browser to a new level. Might the same be said of Web 2.0? Let's look at a rather longish passage from Kevin Kelly's "We Are the Web":

How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan.

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs, appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers - all wrapped up in an interactive index that really works.

This view is spookily godlike. You can switch your gaze of a spot in the world from map to satellite to 3-D just by clicking. Recall the past? It's there. Or listen to the daily complaints and travails of almost anyone who blogs (and doesn't everyone?). I doubt angels have a better view of humanity.

Why aren't we more amazed by this fullness? Kings of old would have gone to war to win such abilities. Only small children would have dreamed such a magic window could be real. I have reviewed the expectations of waking adults and wise experts, and I can affirm that this comprehensive wealth of material, available on demand and free of charge, was not in anyone's scenario. Ten years ago, anyone silly enough to trumpet the above list as a vision of the near future would have been confronted by the evidence: There wasn't enough money in all the investment firms in the entire world to fund such a cornucopia. The success of the Web at this scale was impossible.

Seems to me that this evolution of the web--from static web pages, documents and images in the mid 90s to the sharing and creating of information, art, ideas, opinions, and so on today presents the crux of the change. Again, I'm not saying much of the social interaction/production didn't take place in the 90s. Listservs, AOL IM, MOOs, AltaVista Forum (early course management software), Amazon and bulletin board reviews--all were vibrant a decade ago. But with the advent and spread of high speed Internet, low cost, powerful laptops and desktops, even cell phones, the interaction between users and production of services has exploded well beyond what most envisioned a decade ago.

And the whole argument concerning exploited labor--people doing stuff online for free rather than being paid to develop (see Scholz )--neglects to consider the drive to create that many hobbies or pastimes fulfill--knitting, woodworking, cooking, photography, painting. Sure, we need to keep an eye open for exploitation and the theft of work by large corporations. But it seems that most of the "free" work being done online is simply because people are having fun making stuff.

Schedule of activities

Here is the proposed schedule of activities I proposed in my sabbatical application.

Month 1: research Web 2.0 for educational purposes, sifting through the hype and the reality of the communities and applications currently being used.

Month 2: begin to explore Second Life, especially Angel Learning Island and other virtual campuses. Also, choose a few web 2.0 applications, such as Pageflakes or Netvibes, and explore more closely their value in college classes.

Month 3: create some assignments that could be used in online classes based on the research and exploration noted above.

Looks neat and tidy, doesn't it? Well, so does the "writing process" taught, especially this week, all across the nation in thousands of composition classes, presenting an orderly cause and effect set of tasks to compose an essay. Anyone who has spent any time writing learns right off, it ain't that neat. Writing is recursive, where we try some prewriting, then some drafting, then some more invention techniques, then throw it all away and start over, then freewriting, so on and so forth.

Such will take place with my research. While I will focus on the aspects of my work as described above, I expect to take(and already have taken!!!!!) many sidetrips, dropping out of research to play with web applications, dropping out of web applications to do some research, or sketch out a preliminary assignment.

I'll try to keep things looking orderly and sensible in this blog, but I look at the exploration as play, and like a child making mud pies, I expect things to get rather messy.

Sabbatical statement of purpose

Here is my statement of purpose that I used to explain/justify my sabbatical for the sabbatical committee (with a couple alterations):

In 1996, I went to the League of Innovations in Atlanta, Georgia. In visiting the vendors, I kept hearing the same thing over and over: “Well, six months ago we were working on this CD, but today, we’re redesigning to place it online.” It was clear that in publishing, education, indeed in much of modern society, the Internet exploded onto the scene and changed everything. And many had to scramble to catch up.

Lansing Community College was one of those institutions who scrambled, and with President’s Syke’s vision and full support for faculty to develop courses as fully interactive and rigorous as face-to-face (f2f) classes—and in one year—we started offering an online degree with the newly formed Virtual College in fall 1997, the first community college in Michigan to do so. With a desktop computer, dial-up connection, AltaVista Forum, Netscape Composer, some web space and email, I conducted the first WRIT 121: Composition I class online and have continued teaching online, whether with f2f, hybrid or fully online classes, ever since.

Much has changed in the last ten years—FrontPage, Angel, high speed Internet, Firefox, WIMBA—with my online classes, as well as the many others at LCC and at colleges across the nation. However, changes are taking place within the last few years that are beginning to leave many of us scrambling, again, to catch up: Web 2.0, a term coined under four years ago by Tim O’Reilly that comes to terms with the web as interactive communities rather than as a place for individuals to access information through their standalone PC. With blogs, Google, Wikipedia, Pageflakes, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Second Life and many other web applications and web communities, the Internet has become much more interactive and adaptive than anything we saw ten years ago.

Consequently, what I plan to do for my sabbatical is to explore the Web 2.0 world with the purpose of determining what and where (virtually) would enhance online learning for my classes. I’m particularly interested in finding ways to make online classes much more of a virtual world than we currently present through our two-dimensional course management software (CMS) platform, Angel, where class members have a place with visual and aural depth just as they do traditionally with a brick and mortar classroom.

I’m particularly interested in Second Life, a 3D virtual community where users have a physical presence through avatars that roam a virtual world much like a video game. Angel just last year rolled out their own Angel Learning Island in Second Life upon which educators can learn about, explore, and conduct online classes. And some colleges/universities have their own virtual institution in this virtual world, such as Ohio University, Case Western Reserve and Valencia Community College.