Common Knowledge

The Media ?!?

Well, sometimes it seems like the official observers of our world just don't get it.  Wired is doing a series on the Web and education this week.  Today's offering focused on 'Social Networks" for students.  For some reason, they served up mostly irrelevant choices.  "Friendster"?  "LinkedIn"?  I won't criticize those businesses but they are not for students.  I easily forgive them overlooking Carmun -- we're little (at least for now) -- but how about music related sites like PureVolume or Xianz a Christian themed social net.  Both aim for the student demo and both take a unique approach compared to MySpace or Facebook.  If the article had come from Time magazine -- maybe, but from Wired, all I can say is shame on them for not sharing with people the wonderful diversity of stuff that is out there for students.

Whither the institution?

Mary Madden with the Pew Internet and American Life project posted some interesting thoughts about the role of the library in the new digital era.  As her very last words, she declares the new library should be "Made of People".  What a profound statement this is!  As much time as I spend online, I find the opportunity to be in a public space, be it a restaurant, store, or library absolutely thrilling -- why because it is "made of people".  One of the points of the presentation is that the Internet can help fill libraries with people.  I couldn't agree more, but where I probably diverge is on the approach.  More and more, I find physical institutions trying to innovate services on their own as a way of drawing people in.  This just creates little islands that may go unnoticed.  I think a better way is to open up the institution -- in this case -- library catalogues, electronic resources, etc. for others to create services around-- as I have said before regarding online academic databases.  The whole promise of the Internet is to tap into the creativity of the masses -- not to have to rely on your own.  When you open yourself up like this, interesting things will happen.  As a point of correlation, Peter Suber recently quoted the results of a study  Assessment of the impact of an open-URL link resolver that shows opening up proprietary databases to Internet based localization drives increased usage. Openess doesn't weaken institutions -- it reinvigorates them.

Primal Foment

I had the good fortune a couple of weeks ago to stumble across two online communities, Classroom 2.0 and Library 2.0, where there are some really interesting conversations going on about the implications of Web technologies in education and information management.  This kind of activity feels so reminiscent to me of the best things about the Internet 1.0 era.  At the beginning of that period, a variety of broad based tools emerged, message boards, Web content, search, etc.  As those broad tools gained mass adoption, people with vertical specialization (personal finance, news, lifestyle, ...) found ways to customize those broad tools and deploy them to great effect within their verticals.  The conversations going on in these communities are the exciting tip of the Iceberg, as we find a way to do the same in the Web 2.0 for education.  For a great example of the foment, check out this terrific article by Elyssa Kroski in Choice Magazine (you will have to register to see it).  While its great for its designed purpose of helping library professionals understand the new developments on the Web, I'd recommend you give it to anyone who wants to, but does not yet, get all the fuss about Web 2.0.

Alternate Universe

A week or so ago I posted some early thoughts about the power of the masses to innovate in academic contexts.  For those interested, I spend a some more time on the argument in a new blog at the Huffington Post.

Is the tide turning?

I noticed this morning that Jstor has launched a Facebook widget -- to which I say -- Rock and Roll!  I am glad they are experimenting, but what I wish they would really do is totally embrace the Web and create open APIs for mashups etc.   Open APIs don't mean you lose control of your content -- they just make it easier for people who have the rights to benefit from it.  Let's hope this is the beginning of bigger and better things.

Very cool

Ran across another new entrant in the online education game -- Grockit.  Apparently started as way to deliver GMAT prep courses on the cheap -- they are in the process of morphing into Massive Multi-Player Online Learning.  Hard to know what that means, but  as a real academic geek, I know I wield clever ripostes as well as I do my assault rifle on Halo  ;)  From what I can tell, they are putting people in the center of the process just like we do at Carmun which makes loads of sense.  Can't wait to learn more.

Bridging Communities of Interest

Mark Glaser over at the PBS Blog Mediashift posted late last week about the emergence of "Open Universities" incluidng Wikiversity and iTunes U and their ability to replace traditional "university learning" with a lower cost alternative.  Not surprisingly to me, Mark thinks things have a long way to go.  Education works best when it is a very emotional process, i.e., when there is emotional content associated with the information transfer. Reading about cabinet-making, for example, can never produce the same emotional impact as watching a craftsperson transform wood, as if almost by magic, into something useful and beautiful. Those emotional sensations become like rudders as the apprentice tries the trade himself -- by recalling how he felt when he saw the magic happen, the apprentice can better sense when he is right and when he is not.  At least for now, the Internet will always be a supplement to this process -- Facebook doesn't replace real friendship it makes it richer.  The Internet probably can't replace the teacher student relationship -- but it can help.  For example,  where universities or even departments can seem like islands, the Web has the power to build bridges across those islands to free information flow and dialog.  This in and of itself is something worth getting excited about.

YES!!!!

I have been meaning to get to this all week, but I found out on Peter Brantley's blog about the new project from the Internet Archive, called the Open Library.  You can read about it in their own words here, but, in short, they would like to create a single, central, and most importantly, OPEN (both as to use and to contribution), repository of data on all the books in the world.  This is exactly where things need to go.  The current Balkanized state of library information creates a real impediment to the open flow of ideas.  While some organizations like the OCLC have made efforts to open up use of their catalogs, they are still trying to stay in control of how and by whom the data gets used.  I am rooting for this project to succeed and more importantly, I am incredibly hopeful that they will be truly open and allow others to Mash-up what they produce.  At Carmun, such a resource would be tremendously helpful to our vision to allow people to create and share collections and network to each other based on their research and intellectual interests.  So, I say, "Way to go!"

The Network Effect

Like a bare-knuckle pugilist, David Thornburg blasted all the excitement in the blogosphere about Web 2.0, and especially Education 2.0 this past Friday by claiming there is nothing new under the sun.  Putting aside the helpfulness of using a screed as a corrective to other screeds, Thornburg's fundamental premise is worth addressing.  Many of the so-called Web 2.0 technologies, (message boards, personal Web page creation, alerts, etc.) have been around for a long time, many of them pre-Web, as Thornburg points out.  But, what Thornburg misses is impact that the adoption of these technologies has had on their potential.  Exponentially more people are using peer to peer information sharing technologies than ten, or even 5, years ago.  The network effect created by this adoption has had, not just a quantitative, but a qualitative impact on their value.  From my perspective, the evolution of "Web 2.0" technologies over the last few years in and of itself would be worth a good deal of excitement.   But, without a doubt the power of network effect certainly means that we are in a different era with an enormous amount of potential -- and that is something worth heralding. 

No monopoly on good ideas

Harold Jarche's recently posted some interesting thoughts about the differences between Social Media sites and LMS.  To me, though, the fundamental issue has to do with innovation.  One of the fundamental premises of LMSs (or other ERP systems for that matter) is managing access privileges.  Professors have certain rights to modify or work within the LMS, administrators (deans, registrars, etc.) have other rights, and students still others.  While there are benefits to the approach, it has a major shortcoming in that it inhibits innovation.  LMSs make the traditional and yet fallacious assumption that the person that has a particular job will always have the best ideas about that job.  As, Eric Von Hippel has demonstrated lots of great ideas come from the fringe, from out of the blue.  Because of their rigid privilege structure, LMS can't cope with this.  Moreover the fringe ideas are often half-baked or worse.  To sort the good from the bad takes a village, as they say.  Because LMSs are modelled for moving communication vertically up and down a hierarchy they make it difficult for the right kind of community to form.  As education should be all about innovation, the future of educational software will look more like a network of social media apps and than a monolithic ERP system.