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Janet Hawtin : Weblog

  • Edublog awards

    Posted: November 23rd, 2008, 10:17pm GMT

    2008 Nominations

    1. Best individual blogKat Jungnickel http://studioincite.com/makingwifi/
      2. Best group blog Chris Harvey http://superuser.com.au/planettalo/

    3. Best new blog
    Sean Nash http://nashworld.edublogs.org/

    4. Best resource sharing blog
    Stephen Downes http://downes.ca

    5. Most influential blog post
    Michael Wesch http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=179
    6. Best teacher blog Michael Doyle http://doyle-scienceteach.blogspot.com/

    7. Best librarian / library blog
    Judy OConnell http://heyjude.wordpress.com/

    8. Best educational tech support blog
    Artichoke http://artichoke.typepad.com/artichoke/

    9. Best elearning / corporate education blog
    Laurel Papworth http://silkcharm.blogspot.com/

    10. Best educational use of audio
    Gardner Campbell http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/
    11. Best educational use of video / visual Jim Groom http://bavatuesdays.com/

    12. Best educational wiki
    Wikiversity http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

    13. Best educational use of a social networking serviceKerry Johnson,  @kerryank  across a range of services.

    14. Best educational use of a virtual worldJokaydia  ====And this one is not a nom, just a wave =)There are some good geeky blogs out there too if you're looking for technical information.This is my Kim Hawtin about community wireless: http://www.air-stream.org.au/blog/adhoc 

  • CCK08 Barbara Dieu on Jimmy Wales: Participation v control

    Posted: November 12th, 2008, 4:04pm GMT

    Barbara Dieu:

    "As Jimbo mentioned at some point, the challenge does not really come from the technology itself, which is continuously being improved to facilitate connections, networking and working together. The real obstacles to an open culture of collaboration are deeply imbued economic/social/educational processes, practices and the need to control,  which hamper these conversations and the possibility of exchange and sharing."

  • CCK08 Collapse of context v addressable, persistent, intimate expression.

    Posted: November 11th, 2008, 11:53pm GMT

    I think our habits of candour and intimacy are changing in response to the internet because it functions like a one way mirror.

    I think we still imagine a specific kind of audience for our writing, participation, or media online, but the mechanics of technology networks and the persistence of our works in public searchable space mean that the audience can be a changing thing, access over time, shifting context due to linking to the item from different related materials, and scale of response to something we have posted online are all a part of how the audience can shift, and can shift the meaning of what we have contributed.

    I feel like this is different because it feels more like a fluid collective presence than the kind of interactions we have offline. Online audience is also more likely to happen between people who have never met
    ie the correspondence itself has to carry all the meaning.

    i am self conscious about writing openly it feels like a kind of persistent live to air broadcast.
    Wesch's video of so many people taking up the meme and all doing a dance at their computers is an example of what I mean. Each dancer was contributing something frank and personal, they were all intimate moments sent to an infinite audience or no audience at all.

    For me there is a kind of directness in reading text online which shorts out for me if i read something and then the author is not online or not alive: It changes the mutability or 'in the round' ness of the text i am reading.

    Offline cultural participation in our cities is also in a changing state. A graffiti group participated in the Adelaide Fringe Arts Festival. We made throwies at a workshop which were LEDs strapped to magnets
    which you could attach to buildings to make a sign or shape. Kids and children-at-heart made them and put them around the city, meanwhile in Perth a graffiti artist was arrested.

    There is also something timeless about posting something to the web -something said once can reverberate long after a person has had a change of heart or mind. That can be expensive for future prospects because there is no division between the private person and the employable citizen in open web search.

    During the recent NZ election both parties tried to trash each others' reputations by making
    something unhelpful rank as the top link which appeared when you googled for their name.

    This would take a considerable effort so was not a small trivial mischief - they must have spent a fair bit of money or time on it. In a context like that the kinds of things which are 'close' can be very loud and some kind of impersonal or unfriendly.

    There is another aspect of intimacy which is changing and that is the tension between apparently addressing a known f2f audience and presentation where the comments are being twittered or live blogged. The presenter may not be aware of their context in this way either.

    Some face-to-face meetings are traditionally private and handled with few participants, employer, employee meetings, challenging meetings where we might be trying to negotiate for an agreed outcome or commitment between people present. These kinds of events may be diluted by the kind of partial inattention which can happen when someone'has their thoughts elsewhere' when is it important to have the audience known. How does that kind of intimacy differ? Is it still important?

    Is it unrealistic to assume traditional characteristics of intimacy in any digital context when the pixels and
    bytes travel openly and can be simply replicated and sent on?

  • CCK08 Safe, Connectivist, Open Participative, Addressable, Intimate, Facing Death.

    Posted: November 11th, 2008, 10:15pm GMT

    One of these words is a challenge to the others.

    These opportunities feel like vital aspects of our ability to learn as a modern, connected, responsive and responsible society. But our systems for learning and our governments are risk averse. They are choosing systemic, universal, centrally scoped solutions for making the internet safe, for making school safe.

    Surely there must be a way to engage in learning and in developing skills to keep ourselves safe which  do not cost us the vitality of our opportunities to learn, share and be heard as participants in this emergent networked culture.

    Much of the interesting potential of the internet is found in being able to connect with other people, to follow a meme and find people who share your thinking and questioning, and to be able to respond honestly and as best we are able to the challenges which arise out of these journeys.

    These powerful opportunities risk being trumped by the governance of our infrastructure.
    There must be a way to move forward with a sense of due care and positive engagement, not just by  learners but also by the systems and communities which enable them.

     

  • No filter tshirt

    Posted: October 31st, 2008, 7:13pm GMT
    buy unique gifts at Zazzle

  • In the real world

    Posted: August 25th, 2008, 10:38am GMT
    The world is sometimes a fearful place. I am sometimes struck dumb because my mind is out of gamut for the questions it poses. With a world mapped in black and white it is hard to express amber and not have someone think I am meaning some kind of sad grey.   This is why I have been thinking about ternary systems. The idea that I could actually define a place which did not map to 1normal or 0epicfail.
    Some kind of constructive starting point for an alternative learning journey.
      Donna Williams has written some interesting work on system forfeiture:   All individuals with autism find (consciously or subconsciously) their own adaptations to their pervasive developmental disorder. That is, they will find their own way of managing the relationship or non-relationship between their various systems and how they operate in interaction with "the world." This means that, for example, someone whose systems are not sufficiently integrated may ignore all emotional signals but can accumulate and process factual information in an unemotive, purely logical way. It may mean that auditory processing is "switched off" while visual or tactile processing is "switched on." It may mean that auditory comprehension is "switched on" but the processing of all "body messages" (such as need to use the toilet, hunger,cold, etc.) are put "on hold." It may mean that someone with difficulty holding awareness of two things at the same time, such as internal and external may switch awareness to one or the other but be unable to make sense of or interact at a functional level when required by the environment to use both internal and external awareness at the same time. These combinations of "systems forfeiting" are almost infinitely variable but help minimize "overload" (and its behavioral consequences).   These combinations of systems forfeiting are also almost unimaginable to people without autism, in whom systems of functioning have a reasonable degree of working integration. This inability, on the part of experts (who don't have autism) to imagine (and thereby plan out how to work with successfully) this manageable (autistic) state of disarray can lead to (among other things) two unfortunate circumstances for FC: (a) use of inappropriate testing techniques that are based on misinformed premises and faulty assumptions and (b) misinformed assumptions (and proclamations) of how things work or don't work that undermine credibility.   I am sometimes caught in loops.

    Sometimes this is like sliding into a daydream and waking up to realise I am staring. This can happen with men, old people, women, horses, trees, whatever. Awestruck at life.

    Sometimes it is a matter of looking someone in the face but visualising them at ages 5 through 80, with resolution which is too intense or impolite.

    Sometimes my self is backgrounded and my eyes follow my fears. I care about the impact of my actions on others.
    I am sensitive to how it feels for others when I get it wrong. This unfortunately makes a feedback loop where the fear has its own gravity and I will stare at someone's irregular teeth, at a mark, a wart or anything else which I am afraid of getting tripped by. I can be fearful of beauty because I can be tripped on it.Mostly I it is the fear of others that I am afraid of.
    When this happens my self will be found running around inside my head frantically looking for the reset button.

    I realise that these things are not usual.
    I sometimes look down or away from people if I am feeling whelmed.
    It is a way of being careful of other people when I am feeling unsure of myself.
    I need better strategies than that, and I am working on them, but for today that is roughly where I am at.

    I do apologise to anyone for whom I have been difficult. I have not had the understanding to be able to map what was going on until recently and it has taken me a while to start thinking about it in ways which might be useful for other people and for myself in terms of finding ways to be more integrated.

      

  • Diversity, skill and consequence

    Posted: June 11th, 2008, 5:04am GMT

    I have had many partners in conversation in writing these ideas.
    Special thanks to Donna Benjamin who thinks beyond the binary.

    ======================================================

    I have been working on a paper on 'foundations of innovation'.
    I have ended up with two sets of ideas. One around the original concept.
    One around the process of trying to describe it and to express it.

    1. Foundations of innovation 

    What is innovation?
    Many things to many people. In the context of education and schools it is useful to talk about innovation as the kind of learning a student might undertake which might be unique to their own journey. Perhaps it might be unprecedented in the context of that school or classroom. It might be something which is new for the teacher also. Perhaps it is a recombination of known domains, or a different kind of expression of those ideas. A new language? A new perspective? Inquisitive work.

    What is value?
    The opportunity space for innovation has a strong relationship to the kinds of value propositions which exist within a school context and beyond that context to the education sector, communities of parents and potential employers. What is valued within a school day, what is blurry, interesting and invaluable. What is in between? What is valued at the end of a school day, week, term, year, graduation? 

    Open tools and collaboration
    Open communities and the way that they collaborate and innovate have been a reference point for thinking about contexts where inquisitive work happens. The ideas in progress regarding education and open source software and also about collaboration are at wikiversity. Thanks to Mchua Alexanderhayes Cormaggio, Jtneill, Countrymike, Erkan Yilmaz and watiwara for their thoughts and contributions despite my wobbly wiki practice. I won't restate those ideas here, but beyond just using free open source software there is another opportunity.

    Open practice.. but I dont want to be an open source geek..
    It is possible to engage in the kind of practice which makes open code possible. It is possible to practice and to develop that kind of collaborative practice. Beyond participation in open source communities the skills required are useful in other contexts. The same kinds of skills are required in a wiki collaboration in any other context where different ideas meet and are worked through to find new outcomes; where there is not a predetermined right way indicated by an authoritative source, but instead are emergent truths discovered through shared practice. 

    Attributes of useful collaboration.
    In 'emergent' or collaborative spaces we need to use different social skills to make value.
    The core elements are that there is an explicit purpose, this makes it possible for participants to feel free to contribute both their individual perspectives and their more standards based, systemic or methodic work. Both can be useful and both are a part of collaborative practice. The systemic and unique flavours of contribution may be available from each participant and may be collected in the explicit purpose.
    The process must also be accessible. Participants should understand and be able to comment on the method for refining and working to the purpose. Participants who are able to choose which aspects of themselves are fit for purpose.

    Negotiation and winning
    This is the area where the interesting collaborative skills are required; the ability to negotiate for ideas in win win kinds of ways. There are techniques for developing these skills.
    Cheekily quoting Donna's facilitation and direction skills:

    • Facilitating productive harmony between creative and technical people involves getting them to appreciate what they have in common and acknowledge how they are different.
    • Plotting a path forward so everyone knows where a project is headed. It's about communication, and compromise. Effective group dynamics are the key to achieving productive collaboration.
    • Strategies to facilitate groups becoming functional teams, using tools such as the Myer Briggs Type Indicator, Six Thinking Hats, and applying flow and team formation theory. Seeing things from different perspectives. Trying different kinds of combinations of ideas to make a best fit for purpose solution regardless of the source of the ideas.

    Winning in context
    But, stepping back from techniques for collaborating on divergent work, in schools there are scoping factors which determine whether the collaborative work feels authentic and useful.

    • Some of these scoping ideas are the policies which have been developed to shape the school day.
    • Whether the activities are valuable in context of the daily practice and pulse of the school as a flow of people and time, and also, panning back to the experience of school as a journey,
    • whether the culture beyond the school day, the wider education sector, community and career context supports and recognises the kinds of thinking and participation, leadership and struggle which happen when people step beyond a known script to make something new.

    Geetha Narayaran's powerful ideas
    The policies which we use to map and make good learning space in a school based on industrial modelling do not necessarily serve us well in a context where we are interested in student centred learning or open communities of practice. Geetha Narayaran talked about this in her presentation about slowness and wholeness in learning.

    Yes but what is really valued?
    There is a disconnect between the kinds of value which student centred pedagogy suggests and the line of sight of the wider education system. This means that management of space(OH&S), information(copyright), activities(learning for testing), time(timetable), costs, insurance are defined in ways which are about management of risk. If there is a line ball decision between learning opportunities and reducing risks the risks proposition is likely to win. This means there is always a threat of being out of bounds in doing work which is innovative or unprecedented. In this kind of context it is not surprising that it is difficult to encourage new thinking and practice. 

    This is specifically aggravated in contexts where the line ball decision is expressed in a one size fits all from a central system rather than from the line of sight in the classroom which might involve an appreciation of the student, the fit for purpose of the learning opportunity, and dialogue with parents regarding trying new things.

    Science, computing, creativity, innovation.
    There is a correlation between a culture of inquisitiveness and sharing, and the kind of thinking which makes science, maths, technology, innovation, art, strategic thinking possible. ie We are likely to be trading efficient processing and measurement of students-as-product for the ability to make room for innovative thinking and the ability to value diversity and creative inquisitive minds.

    School is currently largely structured as an efficient mechanism for sorting students and also for encouraging habits which fit well with industrial models of work. Compliance, working to rule, delivering to tests, responding with correct answers. These are still useful skills. But they are not the only skills. There are other things we need to practice if we are interested in developing inquisitive minds. If we are interested in being a country where innovation, science and collaboration are a part of our culture.

    Balancing economies of scale with room to move
    Tolerances for variable time, space, doubt, mess, mistakes, tangential thinking are difficult to manage at scale. With technology also becoming a part of the picture we are managing the scale and complexity of our education system through keeping the structures and results predictable and defined from a centralised perspective. This provides a reliable context for both students and teachers.

    Complexity and diversity
    Working in experimental ways with students is likely to be more complex. Some students themselves may be more comfortable with a structure which has a known path. It is sometimes nice to know what the target is and to aim for it. There probably needs to be a balance between doing things in ways which are predictable for kinds of learning which does cover a predictable journey, or for students for whom that mode is most useful. There also need to be other ways to be valuable and to learn.

    This creative stuff is a waste of time it wont get me into ......
    School offers a range of experiences as prerequisites for higher learning and working life.
    Some employers are starting to recognise student participation in open source and collaborative practice as an indicator of useful workplace skills. Which kinds of experimental or student centred learning are of interest to which students? How can students tell in advance about the kinds of outcomes which will or *will not* be expected. How is creative work expressed and valued in higher education or industry, how might the techniques which apply out of school be used within a school setting to make this facet of learning. How does creative work evolve when it is made for its own sake as an enjoyable process without assessment? What are the motivators in that context? Is it core learning if it is of personal value?

    Cultural exchange
    Much of the interesting scope in open collaboration happens when it is possible to share ideas with people who share your niche interest. Speaking in languages to students internationally who are exchanging learning from another culture is a vibrant and exciting possibility. The ability to engage in this kind of open practice is challenged by the risks of interacting with people who are outside of the local education system.

    I feel that rethinking the model of education will enable us to develop new strategies for these kinds of situations by including parents, students, teachers and the partners who participate online in the shared responsibility for the learning context. Use spaces which are loggable and generate safety through support.

    People v government
    The habit in our public information spaces is to look at education as an inert industrial system.
    Participants both within the model and people who engage with it from a more maverick counterpoint perspective, commonly define themselves in a kind of yin yang around ideas which relate to the idea of the school as an industrial structure and individuality and freedoms as ungovernable counterpoints to systemic control. There is truth in those positions but there is also a kind of stasis. The people who are charged with being responsible are more defensive and the people who identify with expression and liberty see publically funded works as target practice. The infrastructure is our own. The public both within and without the system need more interesting dialogue and different ways to work together.

    With us or agin us
    Part of that process is shifting new participants from a perspective where they believe that being an individual in an open context requires that they kick until they have right of way. This kind of energy is very loud in our wider communities. It comes to us in the ways that trade, war, television, and politics are often expressed. With us or against us binary thinking.

    Edupunk

    I appreciate that the idea of edupunk emerges from the online experience of free speech and participation which is an expression of life and passion and which contrasts with the ways we are currently scoping education. The maverick or rescuer is a role which is particularly powerful in Australian culture, honoring the underdog is an explicit part of our psyche. 

    But I think we need a shift from the system, its victims and rescuers (Karpman).
    To something where we all take responsibility for ourselves, for our impact on others, and for doing useful things. (Thanks Joan Russell)

    Beyond the binary
    I agree with Donna that either or solutions are not the only truth possible.
    Open collaborative communities find common purpose through negotiation.
    They develop their ettiquette, habits and culture through negotiation.
    Some of those negotiations are around the best kinds of systems and open standards to comply with in order for the work to have long term and broadbased value. Agreed systems are still important even in open practice. Sometimes the negotiations are around more subtle and personal and transient aspects of participation and value. Sometimes it is about fun and friendship in the process; about trust and what it feels like to be a part of the conversation.

    If we are each both system and individual
    It is possible to share responsibility as a community. It often involves contention, especially in stages where there are lots of new participants who are learning the ropes.

    I can win some things. Our team progress is important.
    Using more adaptive frameworks which help us all to share responsibility for our learning and impact on others through that process is the journey we need to make in order to make effective open practice a skills based answer to the challenges and risks we face, and enable a shift from the closed fence based and externally effected management of risks and opportunities.

    Teflon systems and negotiating with trains
    I appreciate that often negotiation of freedom is subsumed by the sheer mass and momentum of education as a social engine and flow of people and resources; as a system under law; as part of an economic rationalist economics. But I feel that we need to step out of the traditional roles and experiment in partnership with students, parents and the wider community to make a different pattern.

    Some questions
    What choices can students make?
    What happens if we re-examine copyright and look for new ways to make value?
    How do students learn to express constructive collaborative power and voice?
    What happens if some students are wikipedia bureaucrats who have developed excellent skills through practice. Can we value and build on those skills? Can we learn from them? Do they want to mix school and wiki life?
    What happens if there are community languages and ideas which might be useful to hear in Australian schools? Indigenous languages? The ways that the mix of cultures makes us who we are.
    What happens if school architecture is renegotiated?
    What happens if parents teachers and students work together with mentors and other students overseas to make the internet a tool for bridging understandings and making friendships in other nations?
    Can we be patient and work through the questions and find other ways?

    If yes then how?
    If we have a preference for 'yes' in terms of making opportunity, how do we shift our 'blame' conversations so that we let go of the provider consumer division.
    Is it possible for us as Australian citizens to understand public infrastructure as a powerful mechanism which supports our diffuse interests and to find the aspects of it which are useful and to partner with it.
    Is it possible for those of us who work in the sector to find ways to make a commonly valued step forward from diffuse opinion? How do we refine those skills and processes?

    What if gov is more meshy
    These pieces of infrastructure are the tools we have for making things 'in the public interest'.
    The popular dialogue around them is very polar partly because the role of government is not fashionable in an economic rationalist dialogue. There has been a reduction in the real value and practice and the clarity of purpose around government and public practice. I feel that there is a revival through the kinds of commitment that the current government is contributing to try and deliver on their goals. To invest in infrastructure, community capacity. These are useful things. Our public mechanics need to be healthy and supported to be useful in maintaining open standards and infrastructure for open practice. For helping us negotiate a complex society.

    Honesty regarding scope and intent
    If these ideas are too hard then we need to at least be aware of the shapes of the patterns we are making and to be honest and authentic about what we intend and what we effect with the choices we make around risk and value. We need to accept the consequences of those choices for our ability to manage diversity and innovation.

    ==== 

    2. Sharing these ideas
    So all of that is the first part.  The concept.
    The second part of the learning through this process is that I am struggling to express these ideas in ways which feel useful for other people. I have found it tricky to negotiate well. I realise this is a supreme irony, but I am happy to recognise that I am a work in progress. That even with some experience in collaboration I am finding it hard to read the cues or to be clear about what my purpose is, where it might overlap for others, where it might be divergent. Where divergence is just fine. Thanks to the wikiversity people for patience..

    This is what I am learning as a part of my trying to do something new. To think something new, and to share it and try and make it useful. I value the opportunity to make these mistakes and hopefully to learn from them.
    To work towards being a useful collaborator and to seek out people with similar goals and practices.

    I think the contention is worth the potential shift in model as I think it does provide us with the foundations for innovation, but also for open participative communities and cross cultural dialogue.
    We need the skills to be able to hear diverse perspectives and to negotiate with those perspectives in ways which take into account the consequences of our choices. As a global ecology. As a global society. How we share leadership and how we negotiate different kinds of winning.

  • Filters v language and cheating v economies online

    Posted: January 3rd, 2008, 10:26am GMT

    This post is from an email thread about filtering and the ways that people work around them.

    For an example in action visit an online MMORPG like Runescape which
    has a strong word based filter on in game chat.

    [runescape.com]
    (You can create a free account but expect to go through a tutorial
    before finding yourself in a space where people are speaking.
    Saturated name space is also an interesting culture shaping factor.)

    The language used to communicate in those kinds of spaces includes
    game item shorthand, sms shorthand and rewangled language designed for
    expression in the negative spaces between the filtered words.

    The filter in this space also ignores whitespace so normal sentences
    can be blocked because the combinations of 2 words makes something
    which gets *****. This does change how people speak/write in those
    spaces. People are also more adept at enterpreting ***.

    It is a game going through interesting times at the moment due to
    people trading game items or accounts for real money. The game company
    is responding by locking down the game economy which is having
    interesting impact on the community/play.

    Changing from a supply demand based economy to a defined value economy
    will be an interesting social and economic experience for the kids in
    the western countries where the game is hosted.

    Watching virtual spaces become more integrated with wider economics
    makes me want to ask questions about how societies would like to
    define their economies in online contexts and what these kinds of
    decisions contribute in shaping our wider cultural interactions.

    Watching what is effectively a stockmarket crash in a game is
    interesting, but thinking about how virtual spaces shape economic
    thinking into the future is the related wider set of questions.

    Those who create the rules of the game in online spaces do not
    participate in governance based on social or national interests except
    in as far as they want to retain good subscriptions. This game has
    previously banned large numbers of players for cheating by using auto
    accounts or breaking game rules. They are pretty strong on shaping the
    character of the space.

    Kids have grown up watching the rules change around the economies they
    participate in.
    The rules are perhaps more changeable and transient. Their civic role
    is more as a subscriber than a voter or particpant. Perhaps these
    experiences contribute to future/current adult ideas about what is
    economically interesting or possible and where control of economies
    happen.

    Economies which are contained within bubble of a single company's
    choices are an interesting phenomenon. Snow Crash was an exploration
    of these ideas some years before we could practice it. Games answering
    the challenge of free and open participation with restrictive social
    controls are an interesting phenomenon. Watching the same choices in
    play in our wider community makes me wonder what other strategies we
    are not trying (online, offline or in games) which might help us model
    free and responsible online communities.

    Interesting times

  • Community, quality and POV

    Posted: September 9th, 2007, 1:34am GMT

    There are a range of conversations currently happening around ideas of community and quality. I feel these conversations are also about POV point of view.

    Stephen Downes posted a blog post and note to facebook about starting an online journal.
    The quotes in this post are from that post from Downes.

    ".. I think that when people talk about 'peer reviewed publications' they have a point, and that point is, that a piece of writing is not merely popular, but also, respected and recognized by a particular academic community.
    We need such mechanisms because there is too much to read, too much even in narrowly defined disciplines. And there is no particular mechanism for identifying that which is important within a particular discipline. The popularity-based systems, like Slashdot and Digg, cater to certain communities, sure, but tend, eventually, to what we might call a scholarship of the middle - no particular discipline, no particular level of quality, no particular virtue."

    Slippy from Utah State has been working on something similar.
    Artichoke is talking about quality in student blog posts and comments.
    The folks at educationau are working on similar thoughts although they dont describe it as a journal, the thinking is similar but the goal is more to make the edu sector community conversations more visible to the communities which make them rather than making a specific publication.
    Peter Shanks has been doing related work on his unwrapping subjects and Training O2

    Outside of the education sector similar conversations happen in other situations.

    Conversations around trying to control for quality often happen where a project has developed sufficient 'value gravity' for people to want to be disruptive in the space and for others to want to protect it or a certain way of approaching it.

    When a project is small/new people feel they have the freedom to choose to engage in the systems relevant to furthering the goals of the project and also to contribute their individual ity in a constructive fashion.

    As projects become bigger the project attracts interest from more people who wish to further the purpose in different ways and also from people who disagree with its choices or purposes. Often the projects face choices around controlling who can participate or who is more credible. Any of the free negotiation spaces face this kind of challenge.

    Campaigns wikia was one where people were talking about presenting an issue, posting the for and against of those issues and negotiating possible forward ideas. Basically an opportunity for providing qualitative politics rather than quantitive political input. Other folks were interested in posting the campaign details of individual standing politicians. The representation of the existing politicians ended up being the function which  took over the function of the site in terms of realestate on the front page and overall structure. This was partly because people could agree on what to put on those pages, and partly because there are people paid to put that kind of information into public space.

    From the 'knowing what to put there' aspect, the issues pages struggled.
    Issues like gay marriage or digital rights attracted people who felt passionately about their perspectives and who did not have a stronger commitment to making something new out of politics. Negotiation is a skill and a choice that the wider purpose is as important as my pov. I found this hard too. And I think on both fronts Campaigns wikia struggled with the state of play that our community reached in terms of expecting to be able to participate constructively in negotiated projects with binary non-negotiable perspectives. People understood the freedom to participate, but did not value the constructive role of a diversity of perspectives  sufficiently to make the pages something which people could generate community energy and discourse around. Perhaps politics in abstract terms is the hardest nut to crack and politics in specific applied terms might be easier to unpick but basically I think we have 'work to do' here.

    Developing our skills in constructive pov are the skills which I feel we need to develop most in order to let go of fences as a means of ensuring quality. I think these skills are the skills we need to be able to employ if we want to get real data back into the decisions made on our behalf. In politics but also in education and in valuable projects generally.

    ISO standards for example. The ooxml process has struggled to keep the focus on negotiating the fit for purpose of the proposal. POV has been louder than purpose. The proposal does not resemble a standard proposal in many ways but the fast track process was seen as an opportunity to push it through. Standards processes will be important for open source and participative development. Important areas for us to develop skills in authentic negotiation of fit for purpose. This particular proposal has been I hope, a wake up call on that front.

    "That is not to discount the systems whereby content is selected and reified by the masses. I am a regular reader of such lists and they are a constant source of amazement and amusement. High quality content does get selected by the crowd, but not all of it, and not reliably within a certain discipline."

    The crowd are the authors. The crowd are also the audience. If a journal is a selection of specific members of the crowd, that is a choice you can make now. That is a choice we are all making now. Sometimes we choose people because their perspective will be innovative, sometimes because it is close to an important project or process, sometimes because it is a voice which takes time to listen to a broad range of inputs, sometimes because there is heart or wit or something more directly inspiring about the writing of the author. Some people write as a finished work, and some people write as a thread and comments naturally flow from it.

    We could probably do with a few ways to unpack the why of the choices of our peers, but these things can be learned perhaps. Tags are generally informal and personal ways of sharing information. Specific tags are also being used to map to specific materials or events.
    Sarah Hayman and Nick Lothian have been talking about the potential for flow between folksonomies and taxonomies for finding  and sorting information.

    "Historically, as I mentioned, content selection for academic materials has been by means of 'peer review'. The process varies across journals, but in its most typical instantiation, proceeds as follows: a writer submits a manuscript to an editor, who reads it. The editor, at his or her discretion, sends the manuscript to a small committee of reviewers. The reviewers rate the submission for appropriateness for publication. They will often recommend changes and improvements. A final version is drafted, and it is typeset and published."

    This also occurs with conference papers. These events are interesting because they are organised with the goal of attracting people interested in specific topics. Their fit for purpose is finding things which people will feel they have discovered through the event which they might not have experienced otherwise. If there is value and energy outside that event which is missed, other events are likely to occur which look at other voices. The choosing approach makes them a kind of broadcast media.

    Barcamps are an interesting flip for that kind of approach. They have open invitation with people coming to both listen and contribute something and there is no keynoting or important person loading on the voices present. Foo camps were the original form and were informal meetings between a closed list of invited people. They each have different kinds of value/challenge in terms of fences and quality, signal and noise. Business model.

    "But what constitutes 'being a paleontologist'? Traditionally, we have required some sort of certification. A person needs to become a PhD in paleontology. Then they need to be selected by an editor of a journal to sit on a review board. This qualifies them to review publications in paleontology."

    This is a pattern which suits broadcast media too. This is a means to identify who should be heard, what is authoritative. The costs of the processes are intended to be returned to the person by their exclusive access to voice. I would suggest that there is less commitment to these processes in contexts where peers are able to have effective voice in other ways.

    "And in other cases it is by choice, as no PhD programs exist in a new area of study or invention. This was the case, for example, in internet technology. It had to be built, first, before people could become experts in it, while the people who built it became experts by building it."

    Yes. Open source practices are more like this. The proof of quality is evident in the feel and focus of the community and project which has been generated. Perhaps it is easier to find these communities because the practice is visible and the quality is tangible in the sense of good effective code, but I do also see the same kinds of clarity or authority in the informal education networks online. It is true that some excellent folk are not so visible online and you have to work a bit harder to hear them and that people can function in specific threads online which means that we can miss the important conversations which are quite close by.

    "Members are selecting not only a submission, but also the person. This means that to a degree, the candidate's previous body of work will be assessed as well as the actual submission. The role is not of 'gatekeeping' but of recognition."

    This assumes a person is always right and authoritative. It assumes that people who sometimes write stuff which is not useful will not contribute something useful.
    It assumes that there is one purpose. I think the kinds of material which would be chosen in this way would be likely to be a median pick because youre looking for someone who usually writes in ways which agree with existing members. This is likely to build a 'school of thought' approach to the journal. There might be value in printing a school of thought publication.
    It would be something where the people in that group are prepared to invest their time in corrrecting/editing material and publishing it for their own purposes. People looking for that line of thought might be interested in that publication, but I think education and many fields are looking for a different kind of authority now and so thejournal might not get a bulk readership in the same way that traditional journals might have.

    We are looking for authority with regard to our own specific purposes and thinking. Context is important. So for me the interesting part of the process would be the method for finding people who are interested in starting a journal on issues I am interested in. I would like to collect the kinds of ideas that some people have been talking about and would be interested in seeing what else theyve been reading on a specific line of thought, if we agreed on material which contributed to that debate then we could publish a journal of that debate to date. This would not be a collection of reliable members but would be a collection of pivotal posts or thoughts on a specific line of thinking. They would produce different kinds of collections. I think there would likely be less language editing on this type of journal but that referencing to sources would still be important. For me this would be a nice way to capture some of the good things which happen in transient places like blog comments, and enable people to collaborate arround a purpose rather than a membership.

    "It is possible for a journal to become too much of a clique, for the members to select only each others' papers. If so, then the people who are being left out can found their own journal. Because nominations are public, it will be easily evident which journal is the most difficult to get into because of quality, and which are the most difficult to get into because of exclusivity."

    If the criteria are about finding people who usually write in ways you usually agree with then the resulting community will be looking for that kind of normalising characteristic. It will be a fence around a group of people who agree sufficently.

    If the collection is organised around defining a mix of perspectives on an issue and perhaps even on crafting some common ground between them as a part of the process then this is a piece of the kind of thinking process which I think we need to develop good skills in.

    Will this work? I think it will. It might not work for any particular journal - some journals may simply not attract readership because the writers admitted were not of a high quality, or because the members make poor choices, or because the subject area is simply not useful or inappropriate. It will take a certain amount of momentum to launch a journal, a momentum that can be gained only by having qualified people and quality ideas to begin with.

    Swap it around to distributed publishing thinking. A journal could be published to meet the reading needs of its authors. Its success will be based on whether the participants find enough value in the process to put the effort or $ in to producing an outcome. If that publication sells more copies then the participants get a greater return on their efforts.
    It is successful for different people at different stages of that process.

    Every time we make a fence around which voices are valid we are losing an opportunity to develop skills in crafting better collaboration and negotiated pov. We do need ways to capture perspectives in a more coherent and durable way which are representative of pivot points in our communities. The publishing functions of conferences are able to do this to some degree. Barcamps and foocamps have not really produced published outcomes at this stage. For materials which are explicitly focused this kind of Howard Rheingold Flashmob approach might be useful. For personal journeys it would be interesting to see these kinds of aggregations of specific learning journeys be able to be published as a single person's lulu book or to be able to view the reference paths of a range of people on a topic and to view their perspectives based on the sources they have looked at.

    I think a traditional journal approach is possibly missing some of the adaptability and diversity of content and purpose which people are able to employ now. Something with more of a themed mashup approach would be more interesting to read for me. 

  • Making and speaking

    Posted: August 30th, 2007, 8:06am GMT

    a thread in fabric
    irregular and woven
    system and journey
    context and choice
    sharing and comparing

    Designing the works we make as spaces for new minds, voices and hands.
    Legacy of freedom.

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