Learning via the Social Web

Learning via the Social Web John Breslin Digital Enterprise Research Institute National University of Ireland, Galway [email_address] http://www.johnbreslin.com/ Conversations on Teaching and Learning Seminars 30 th April 2008

A little bit about myself! 1998: Forum* on the Irish Games Network 2000: boards.ie Ltd. Formed 2004: Researcher at DERI, NUI Galway 2008: 10 th Anniversary* Hello, World! 1990: VMS MAP.COM

A move from the Web to a “Social Web”
The New Yorker, 1993
“ On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
The New Yorker, 2005
“ 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
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 Amazon
Discussion postings Blogs
Bookmarks del.icio.us
Photos Flickr
Music Last.fm
Movies Netflix
Events Upcoming.org
Places Dopplr
Products Microsoft Aura
Articles Wikipedia

Flickr, share your photos

SlideShare for presentations

The social bookmarking service del.icio.us

All Consuming, what have you read today?

Upcoming event listings and meetups

Dopplr for managing travel, tracking friends abroad

You can even share your favourite walks…

… and find others with like musical interests

TouristR for travel destination stories and info

Blogging: a phenomenon for a new generation?
Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2004

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)

The state of the “blogosphere”
Source: Technorati (March 2003 to March 2007)

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. We’ll 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

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)

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

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

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
For students:
Reflective writing or study journals
Knowledge management
Submission and review of assignments
Dialogue for group work
Share course-related resources

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
* 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 University’s 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
* 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

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

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

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

How do I get them?
Can play on your PC even if you don’t 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

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. C4’s 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)

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/

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-in-podcasting-the-traditional-classroom/print/
http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

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
CELT’s Iain MacLaren on podcasting in education:
http://ollscoil.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcasting-in-higher-education.html
Educational podcasts:
http://www.uccinteractive.tv/test/new/podcasts/index.html
http://itunes.stanford.edu/ and http://web.mit.edu/ist/podcasts/

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

Podcasting in Ireland
Bernie Goldbach’s podcast from the Tipperary Institute:
http://www.podcasting.ie/
Brian Greene’s Irish podcasting news:
http://www.doop.ie/podcasting_news/
Irish podcast directory:
http://www.podcastingireland.ie/
RTÉ’s R1 podcasts:
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/
Irish Emigrant podcasts:
http://www.emigrant.ie/podcast.htm
Irish podcasting representative body:
http://podireland.org/

We all live in a social network…
… of friends, family, workmates, fellow students, acquaintances, etc.

Friend of a friend, or “dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean leí”
Theory that anybody is connected to everybody else (on average) by no more than six degrees of separation
Everyone’s connected…

The Erdős number
Number of links required to connect scholars to Erdős via co-authorship of papers
Erdős wrote 1500+ papers with 507 co-authors
Jerry Grossman’s site allows mathematicians to compute their Erdős numbers:
http://www.oakland.edu/enp/
Connecting path lengths, among mathematicians only:
The average is 4.65
The maximum is 13
Paul Erdős (1913-1996)

The Kevin Bacon game
Boxed version of the game
Invented by three Albright College students in 1994:
Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, Mike Ginelly
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/

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

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 that’s just in the top 10…
Alexa rankings:
#6: MySpace
#7: orkut
#8: Facebook
#10: hi5
#16: Friendster
#95: Bebo
#142: LinkedIn

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

Other niche SNSs
Age:
Multiply (seniors and settled); Boomj (baby boomers); Rezoom
Country of origin:
Silicon India
Gender:
CaféMom; 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)
* 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 organisation’s own walls
Efficient way to mine for in-house 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

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.”

Elgg, social networking software for education

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

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

Unreal-powered EduFrag for chemistry education

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

Outside Trinity College Dublin

Doug Engelbart event in first and second lives

An issue with the Social Web
Need interesting objects to draw you back to keep on using social networking services
* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Object-Centered Sociality”, Reboot 7

Many social networking services can be boring… * 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 don’t just connect to each other. They connect through a shared object.”
* 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
* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Why Some Social Networks Work…”

… can connect us to other people
Video annotations
Chats
Photos
Micro-blogs
OSN profiles
Bookmarks
…
Everything we make and do…

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

Questions and answers
?

Learning via the Social Web

by John Breslin on Apr 29, 2008

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

Learning via the Social Web — Presentation Transcript