Simon Grant of CETIS

Social software is good for learning if, and only if, the society of learners is, or can be persuaded to be, positive towards learning. But what if you’re a teenager in a peer group in which learning is uncool? Perhaps we need software that expressly excludes the peer group?

I was at a meeting in Birkbeck, London, November 18th, called “Workshop on Personalised Technologies for Lifelong Learning”, which included outcomes (I missed) from the MyPlan project - generally to do with e-portfolio systems, lifelong learning, etc. In the general discussion, “Next Generation Environments for Lifelong Learning”, it was Andrew Ravenscroft (who manages the fascinating InterLoc) who came out with the phrase “antisocial software”, but I thought is was so apt, even though a bit extreme, that it needs popularising.

There’s enough of a serious point there to be well worth thinking about carefully. The general assumption that social software is a potential positive force for learning (among those keen on social software) needs challenging, not because is isn’t often true, but because it isn’t true always. Rather, you have to start by thinking about what the social group norms and values are. It has been said that in some school environments, achievement is a serious handicap to social success in the peer group. Surely, in these environments, it is not a good idea to use social software for learning, in the sense of doing learning in a group which involves all the peer group by default.

Instead, learning ideally needs to be done out of the view of the peer group, or in a setting where the peer group social norms and values do not apply. One way of doing this for traditional classroom learning is to introduce strong behaviour rules that are very different from behaviour outside the classroom. This approach would be the one proposed by various “old school” teachers, and there are books which I remember from teacher training days where these approaches are promulgated. Another way of doing this, which could also now be thought of as traditional, is through a more personalised approach, where learners work on their own worksheets. But for e-learning in these environments, what is needed is to separate the learning experience from the social group, not link it.

Of course, learning software that works that way would not really be “antisocial”, and this for two reasons. Firstly, one could have social software with varying degrees of privacy. Learners could use the more openly social facilities with the peer group, and private ones with teachers. Indeed, learners actually interested in learning might benefit from support in their interactions in the peer group. Secondly, social software with these capabilities could help learners find those other minority individuals who also want to learn, and smaller groups could be formed, outside the view of the majority.

A wider point relates to other things of interest to me, particularly about the multiplicity of personality. Teenagers in particular have different “personas”, or whatever you want to call this phenomenon of behaving in different ways in different contexts, and being embarrassed if behaviour displaying the values from one context slips through into the other. E-portfolio tools, as I will be describing in my book, could be used to help young learners to recognise the differences between the different contexts they find themselves in, and to adapt their personality differently in those different contexts.

To end with a much wider-reaching question, could we use anti-social software, not only in schools, to subvert social norms which do not value learning, but also perhaps as an aid to subversion in an organisation where the peer culture has turned against really effective work, or a country being ruled by a force which is fundamentally against democratic and accountable government?

You’ve probably noticed for quite a while that many of us now apply considerable caution at being invited to join a new list, a new forum, a new network, a new way of interacting, or anything similar. Not surprising, I agree. But until now I didn’t have a good formulation of why. I’ve just read a message from a colleague, bemoaning - well that would be too strong a word, but you can guess what I mean and he meant - the lack of activity on a forum that he set up for us a while back. Even when it was being set up, as well as wishing him well, I had a sneaking feeling that there were already too many.

If you know my ideas at all, you will probably know that I’ve been developing ideas on multiplicity of personality/persona/whatever-you-like-to-call-it. Particularly the idea that a set of values attaches to a particular context of value, and in each one of these we usually manage to achieve one or more clear roles, a certain consistency of behaviour, and of personal values. This is the sort of context like “family”, “work”, “club”, except that each person has their own, probably different, list of the value contexts which they distinguish.

And you may have read about another related key idea for the future: that portfolio-like tools could well help us both recognise and manage the information and values relevant to these contexts, contributing to a process of ethical development, to the benefit of individuals and society.

But you are less likely to know about my PhD work, which was more about the cognitive contexts of complex tasks. We can manage a complex task by dividing it up into a set of contexts, in each of which we have a certain appropriate set of rules for action (small-scale behaviour), prompted and fed by a corresponding set of information that is relevant to those rule.

If we think back to the very old days before the Web, when Usenet News seemed to be mainly for technical folk, it was apparent that one newsgroup seemed appropriate for each distinct and separate topic; or maybe task. It was when life on the Net became a little more complex and less easily separable, that I started to think that it would be nicer if we could have fewer newsgroups, but more choices to filter within them. That kind of system still hasn’t become widespread - or at least not that I can tell. I’m still expected to join many different lists, many of which overlap.

Or at least, it has come to pass in a strange way: through blogs. A blog is no longer written in a particular group, but available to anyone, who then filter it: usually only on the person of the writer, but sometimes on the tags which are associated with each post. And I’ll stick with the idea that it is strange, because when writing a blog, I feel disconnected; I cannot be sure of who the audience is. Thus, I am not sure of the values that I want to display or put forward. Perhaps blogs only really work for people with complete integrity?

I’m going around this the long way, but I feel the need for the circuit. If we want to be comfortable with a non-universal value set, we need the security of a known group, where values can be observed, sensed, and acted on. Where those who don’t share the values stand out, and preferably get out. But on the other hand, we want to separate discussions where the topic is of interest to different sets of people.

So, please, someone out there who is writing code, here is a request for the kind of forum where I can join with other people who share my values in a large group, but where everyone only gets to see posts on the topics that interest them.

And I’m still going to be reluctant to join new forums of any kind.

I went to this joint LLN meeting in Sheffield (2008-07-03) because there were several people, and several topics, that I wanted to keep up or catch up with. The meeting fulfilled that and more.

Roger Clark talked about current GMSA work (Pathways and Advance), and about the need for well defined standards and interfaces. Mark Stubbs talked about XCRI, and how the recently started European initiative, Metadata for Learning Opportunities (MLO) has adopted a basic structure reflecting XCRI. If I understood correctly, he is to join the DCSF Information Standards Board. Selwyn Lloyd reviewed ioNetworks. They are all doing important work which I want to keep up with, and as they are very busy, this kind of meeting is useful to keep track of the general picture. Kirstie Coolin, another valued portfolio interoperability colleague, talked about e-portfolio pilot work in the LEAP AHEAD LLN, covering Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, which was new to me.

I took the opportunity also to catch up with Lisa Gray and Stuart Wood (recently appointed developer at Nottingham) about our current portfolio interoperability prototyping work.

After a very pleasant and unhurried lunch, we split into workshop discussions, and I went to probably the largest, related to e-portfolios. A very interesting idea bubbled up here: that none of the e-portfolio tools are ideal for all the different purposes of e-portfolios ranging from assessment management to PDP, and that perhaps the way forward would be to use more than one tool. Of course, this lifts portfolio interoperability into the limelight - people seemed to concur on this.  Rather than being a nice-to-have optional extra, interoperability will become a vital enabler to reusing the same information across these different systems. Perhaps also now, interoperability with student record systems, other e-admin systems, and VLEs will become recognised as an equal part of this overall move toward allowing the learner-controlled sharing and reuse of all personal-related information. Sharing between e-portfolio systems and e-admin systems is not so different from sharing information between e-portfolio systems with different purposes. No one system will use the complete range of portfolio information, but in a Web 2.0 world where there are surprising new uses for old information, as much as reasonably possible should be made available for use by other systems.

The networking brought two new contacts with significant interests. Colin Wilkinson is the Employer Engagement Co-ordinator for the North East Higher Skills Network, and has a strongly overlapping interest in the represention of skills. He intends to work with GMSA, and also perhaps us in CETIS in this area, which could be very promising in several ways. Ann Hughes, Becta’s Head of Efficiency and Productivity, is interested in lowering the barriers for information between schools, HE and FE. She told me that in the UK the SIF is now thought of as the “Systems Interoperability Framework”. They need guidance towards positive and fruitful avenues of development, and I think we can help them.

When we saw the initial announcement, it looked like a good thing to go to, as it overlaps areas of keen interest. So Helen, Scott and I had written the paper - Social portfolios supporting professional identity - and Helen and I went along to the one-day conference in Newcastle organised by Medev. It was a good day.

Why, then, have I been hesitating to write a blog entry about it? The usual good lot of people were there, including a pleasing number of those I didn’t know. The proceedings were printed admirably. The food, the arrangements, were all very good. Even our paper went down well (OK, actually it was the presentation, not the paper, which had some, what shall we say, interesting content). There was some very stimulating discussion around that.

And I’m sure it was very interesting and useful to many. But to me, the interest and use was in the networking, which one can’t really blog about so easily, as it is much more personal. The presentations were all worthy, but perhaps one may be forgiven for not remembering much that stood out as being different from the many other portfolio conferences that some of us have been to.

I saw this article on the BBC and knew instantly that this would be significant for our Portfolio interoperability community. But how significant? The most helpful blogposts that I saw to begin with were

• Seb Schmoller put me on to
• Marc Andreessen who has also done
• a followup on the same topic

Then I was thinking who to else would be most in a position to comment, and I thought of

• Ben Werdmuller of Curverider (and Elgg of course)
• who has also posted on Curverider’s blog - more technically perhaps

I hope these links are helpful to people.

The official API is here, along with much other information including a video.

More recently, our Scott Wilson has added his informed reflections.

I don’t know, but I thought I’d give it a try… see Technorati Profile.
You can add my blog to your Technorati Favorites

Well, lo and behold! While folks are discussing folksonomies on the METADATA list, the official conference wiki page has this

cetis-2006-conference

If you want to tag an item for a particular session, use one of these:

cetis-2006-conference-media
cetis-2006-conference-games
cetis-2006-conference-portfolios
cetis-2006-conference-accreditation
cetis-2006-conference-ple
cetis-2006-conference-architecture
cetis-2006-conference-institutions
cetis-2006-conference-unthinkable

Very nice example, if I may say so, of, not quite a controlled vocabulary, but the best kind of sort-of “guidance” vocabulary. This is the kind of thing we need if folksonomic tags are going to work better than the critics of Clay Shirky fear.

Welcome to Blogs.cetis.ac.uk it says. Thanks to Sam for getting this working. I hope this will be my first serious venture into blogging. I’ve always had certain reservations about the blog as format and as tool. I think this is partly because I’ve never felt that writing something with a totally undefined audience really makes much sense. But here, we have the CETIS team as audience, at least. That’s good!