School Of Everything September 3, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, Microjobs, Long Tail, edublog , add a commentLast night at Channel 4 in Horseferry Road, London The School of Everything launched. I’d heard about school of everything from various places over the past year, and gathered the idea is to encourage informal learning about subjects that people wish to learn more about, rather than agendas to promote qualifications and assessment. So people with a need to learn can be put in touch with people who have some knowledge or skills to share, so it’s a matching service.
Upon arrival at the school of everything homepage, you are greeted with the simple slogan in large bold type “Learn more”
and then you get the chance to either sign up as a person, or as a teacher.
Within the UK, this might provide a vibrant alternative for all sorts of learning which are no longer covered by the run down local authorities’ adult education sectors. The school of everything also has ambitions to become a well populated international website on the global startups scene.
Learning by Doing - interview part 5 August 30, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Action Research, Wiki , add a commentContinuing the interview with Cormac Lawler, in which we begin to address the nature of “learning by doing” as it relates to distributed projects, and wiki in particular.
Cormac Lawler:
About changing of groups’ structure over time, I think my own domain (Wikiversity) is showing an increasingly strong tension along the lines of making Wikiversity a place of ‘blue-sky’ or experimental learning versus an alignment to known pedagogical forms. See Wikiversity_talk:Learning_resources#the_wiki_way.3F and below for some discursive material on this topic. It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity.
Andy Roberts asks:
Reading that discussion again on the Wikiversity page, it strikes me that both sides of the tension referred to are in fact agreed upon working within the same framework. The dispute, if I’m not mistaken is over the nature and quality of the learning resources which are to be accumulated in the Wikiversity. Neither side appears to be questioning the basic model of education based on learning from supplied content. The references to ‘experimental’ forms seem to remain within experimental forms of content provision, without questioning that preconception. Despite the claim that
“Wikiversity has adopted a “learn by doing” model for education”
the doing appears to consist entirely of editing pages to create more resources.
Do you think a bias towards conventional content based learning is built in to the wiki way?
C:
It’s a fascinating question - and I think you’re right that it is to a large extent. However - and this is more on the basis of knowing the involved people, rather than on what is on the page I linked to previously - I think that there has always been a strong desire to take a broad look at educational activity, and what role a wiki can play in that process. For example, some of the “content” produced on a wiki can be a record of a discussion where someone asks a question, and people respond with answers, suggestions, and/or questions of their own. Some of the content on Wikiversity has been explicitly initiated and developed as a debate - eg en.wikiversity.org/wiki/War_and_Iran. I don’t know if that conforms to your view of conventional content creation?
However, this “learning by doing” is a tricky concept - and I’ve been
pushing JWSchmidt, the originator of this concept in Wikiversity, to be more
explicit in explaining to me and the community what he thinks it might mean
in practice - and in detail. So far, I’ve found the concept as applied to
Wikiversity to be infuriatingly opaque - and I can see that others do too.
It’s something that I’ve always wanted to clarify on Wikiversity - what do
we mean by learning by doing, how can someone be guided through or motivated
to begin in such a model, and what kinds of educational experiences can we
anticipate, so as to scaffold learners if, whenever, and however
appropriate?
A:
How might other learning processes be facilitated through Wikiversity? I’m thinking of the newer emerging learning models such as connectivism, which would place the emphasis on the network between people and the community above content. This might require additional tools to the document based wiki, but needn’t be entirely separate.
C:
I agree - and we’ve been discussing tools to facilitate just such initiatives on a centralised page: Wikiversity:Technical_needs including the SocialProfile extension www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialProfile. We already have a ’sandbox server’ to experiment with different tools - but to actually get extensions and other innovations approved on a relatively small Wikimedia wiki is difficult when in the shadow of Wikipedia. However, with community mobilisation, and more developers’ resources at our disposal (a software developer hiring was just announced yesterday, and there may very well be more) - we should continue to build on the mediawiki platform to see what it can offer in the world of connected, collaborative learning.
I see we’ve forked into a discussion of Wikiversity - and it’s very welcome! - but I also very much wanted this discussion to focus on action research and issues that we’ve both experienced in an online AR context. I think I’ll leave this to my next mail. 
Cheers,
Cormac
Earlier posts in this series:
- DARnet-interview-part 1
- DARnet interview part two
- Part 3: Questions About Wikiversity
- Part 4: Wikiversity and Wikipedia
August Rain and The Harvest August 19, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : UK , add a commentWith the August bank holiday weekend coming up soon, the end of summer looms large ahead and I for one shall be welcoming it with open arms. Just a few years ago at this time of year I would have been sitting in a tent in a field somewhere like North Wales enjoying the outdoor life but for the past two years the traditional holiday month of August has been a washout and it has been just as well to stay at home and get some work done.
The real summer of course invariably takes place in June and early July and this year was no exception so why are the school children, parents, students and education workers forced to take their annual rest time in August, the damp chilly fag-end of the season? Well legend has it that it all goes back to a time when the youth of nation were required on the land to help with bringing in the harvest. I was even involved in that particular agricultural tradition myself as a lad, picking up potatoes in the fields of Shortlanesend near Truro.
John Richards had a small mixed arable farm, a couple of old Massey Ferguson tractors, a hay barn and two daughters. So labour intensive was the work required at specific times of the year that small armies of child workers were recruited, happy to be exploited for a small pittance per hour in the name of doing some real, grownup work, passing the endless boring long days of summer and earning a bit of pocket money. In order to join in I had to cycle a small pushbike down the hill into town and steeply up the other side for a couple of miles just to get there. Upon arrival at the proper start time there was always a lot of waiting around to be done before you even knew what was happening. Some crucial piece of machinery would be waiting to come back from a neighbouring farm, or the key to the diesel pump shed had gone
missing, we were waiting for a field inspection or somesuch holdup. Eventually perhaps just before lunchtime we might actually get out onto the field and do some potato picking. The old red tractor chugged down the length of the field for once row at a time, pulling an attachment called a spinner which was like a big circular rake. It dug through the soil, scooped up the densely grown ripe potatoes and flung them up into the air. What happened to them next? They fell back onto the ground of course, and our job was to bend down and pick them up and put them into buckets. It was back breaking work in the summer sun, hour after hour. The buckets of potatoes were tipped into sacks, then the full sacks tied up with twisted wires and loaded onto a trailer. At the end of a good day, the trailer would be stacked full of half hundred weight sacks of good quality clean potatoes, but only if conditions were perfect. There was one thing that was guaranteed to scupper the whole process and that thing was rain.
A little bit of light rain and we would carry on harvesting the potatoes. Never mind if we all got a bit damp, it’s was Cornwall so we were used to that. A sudden shower and we’d take cover hoping it would pass over. If the shower eased up we’d be back out again, even if only for a quarter of an hour before it got worse. But once the serious , persistent rain started up that was it. You can’t harvest potatoes out from muddy fields, at least not with the equipment available to a small family farm in those days. If it rained overnight there would be no work the next morning, then maybe not for the next week if it kept up. Maybe even a fortnight! Eventually in a bad year the potatoes would be left in for so long after they were ready that they’d just rot in the soggy ground, abandoned until it was time to plough them back in again, a breeding ground for blight and other fungal diseases.
So there’s nothing new about rainy, washout weeks in August, that’s quite normal and yet so often we feel cheated when the sun doesn’t shine endlessly through the summer season like in Portugal or the Mediterranean. Where does that expectation come from I wonder?
Cormac interview: Wikiversity and Wikipedia August 11, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Wiki , 1 comment so farAfter a bit of a gap, the two-way interview between Cormac Lawler and myself continues. This post continues the discussion about distributed action research and wikiversity from previous episodes:
Andy Roberts asked:
I’d be very interested to hear to what extent parts of Wikiversity have managed to break away from the idea of the “course”, the expert, and the content. If you have people transfering across from the Wikipedia culture then it’s going to cause problems, but you could always fork a minority project for the more revolutionary work if it seems to be getting defeated.
Cormac Lawler replies:
There’s a real challenge in allowing for different models of education to take place in the same space. As you point out (and as has JWSchmidt in the page I linked to), Wikipedians will inevitably bring a particular culture with them in the development of what they think Wikiversity to be. (Although I’d be hesitant to make a grand generalisation on that point.) So one of the major challenges Wikiversity faces is to allow different communities develop microcultures of learning that are appropriate for them. However this itself raises a challenge around whether a microcommunity might develop that has questionable practices (like, say, Nazi apologists - to take an extreme example) - and what then could be done in order to subject a community, resource or statement to educational critique - or indeed, whether someone could be banned or their resources deleted. This brings us to the heart of the question you asked of what this institution is and who it is intended to serve.
Some examples of ‘different’ types of learning projects/communities would include things like the reading groups and podcasting and filmmaking initiatives (both long in decline). I would also regard some of the research activities to be exploring different means of using wikis educationally - including my own, and the Bloom clock (a means of logging what plants are in bloom, but also of learning about plants). There is also a recent initiative to question ethical practices within Wikipedia, which is purportedly an action research initiative, but which seems to be running in different directions at once, including a fairly traditional one (which could well be the participants constraining themselves to conform to what *they think* Wikiversity is supposed to be, ie an educational content creation mechanism).
However, having said this, I’m still slightly disappointed in the breadth of initiatives on Wikiversity that seek to challenge, expand or break the mould of more traditional models. I still think that this process needs more time, but I had hoped for more examples of what was possible at this stage, two years into its autonomous development. However, of course, I regard myself as very much culpable in this respect!
Andy again:
Ten years ago you could find out just about anything by tracking down
the right bulletin board or newsgroup, asking a carefully explained
question, and coming back later to view responses or ask a
supplementary. Within a few days you’d have the best the net could
come up with. Now we have Google search, with all its limitations and
gaming, and google scholar for some of the hidden internet, but you
can still usually track down the author of particularly pertinent
idea, find out their online presence with a bit of luck and chance a
speculative email. So the backbone infrastructure of having
connections between devices all over the world will always find a way
to serve people who know a little bit about how to seek and connect,
no matter what infrastructure is built on top of it all, and I’m still
pretty optimistic about that regardless of whether we lose some
battles along the way such as net neutrality or the health of the
regime in charge of Wikipedia.
Yes, and for the health of the “regime”, see the ethical questioning project I linked to above (which generated quite a bit of unease and hostility in its beginning, and which may itself have ethical questions around it). I think you’re right to say that people will be able to find someone else to ask questions of - but it does seem to favour people who, as you say, already “know a little bit” about how to do so. I’d like to also help people who start from a lower base of social confidence or net-savviness - and this might partly be addressed through network, connectivist initiatives you mentioned in your subsequent mail. I think I’ll answer that one now, separately.
Cheers,
Cormac
Twitter lists gathered on a wiki blog or forum August 2, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : blogs and community, web2.0, tools, Wiki , 3commentsAs the use of twitter continues to spread despite the restricted service and downtime, a commonplace event for communities is to start compiling lists of links to each other’s twitter accounts. These are handy for anybody who hasn’t already built up their network because you can quickly add a bunch of people who are all involved in the same interest or practice. Acting as a kind of jump start into twitter for groups, it feels like a community indicator of some sort.
If the community is based mainly on a web forum or email list then it can start with a message from one member who is a twitter enthusiast, that turns into a long thread with the same message re-quoted and a new line added at the bottom. That’s not ideal, but it works for a while and builds up a volume of attention to the activity.
Over on one bloggers’ forum we tried compiling the list of member’s twitter links and putting it into a new service called “dropio” where anybody could upload new files and links, but that service proved problematic.
When the same process broke out at E-mint, a community for online facilitators, ‘community managers’ and moderators it wasn’t long before somebody - Ed Mitchell - said “Definitely a wiki job, this one” and so here we have the ….
E-mint twitter list on DARwiki
The advantage of having the twitter list on a wiki is that you can link to what will be always the latest version and that members can easily add themselves or make corrections.
If it’s a person-centric or blog-centric community such as Darren Rowse’s pro-blogger readers, the twitter list is gathered from the comments left on an invitation post and then published on the blog.
If the community is forming in a friendfeed room then there’s probably no need to compile a twitter list at all because the aggregator sort of does that automatically in that each member’s tweets are in their own streams and twitter links in their services page - which stands in as a profile page on friendfeed.
What other formats and processes have you seen out there for gathering twitter lists?
London Bloggers new venue, competition and pubs July 29, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : london bloggers, London , 2commentsI’m looking forward to the London Bloggers meetup tonight at a new venue near Blackfriars Bridge. Organiser Andy Bargery says there will be “plenty of space and cracking views over the Thames” which sounds good.
With it being a larger venue, I noticed on the meetup site that there are still two places left at the time of writing, which would be unusual this close to the event normally. So the London bloggers group is slowly developing into an enjoyably friendly and interesting regular event, with occasional sponsorship, some presentations and now even a competion with a great prize. It’s a trip on an Airship no less., something I’ve always fancied but unfortunately the deadline has passed - doh!
Actually one of the reasons I missed the date was because entry to the London Bloggers competition was by writing about your local pub and why it’s so good. Where I happen to live, all the local pubs are pretty dire right now so it’s hard to find inspiration on that particular topic. Local pubs are an important community resource in smaller towns, village and city centres as well but in London they tend to be more like retail outlets which happen to sell some drinks or else shabby old buildings with few customers where the manager is just keeping things ticking over. So we tend to have to get on a bus or train to visit a pub which we’d want to be in and that actually sells something we want to drink, and if you’ve taken transport to go out of your own borough then that hardly counts as local does it.
Even if I’d decided to write about say the George at Wanstead, which was lovely and cool inside on the hottest day of the year and sells Westons Old Rosie and Organic Vintage ciders on draught, I’d have had to mention the funny group of old men who hang around on weekday afternoons, the Friday night meat market, the gauntlet of smokers crowding the entrance and the highly strained relations between bar and kitchen staff which ought to put you off eating anything that comes out of there.
Greenwich Naval College July 22, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : London , add a commentThe Naval College Buildings at Greenwich
Viewed from Island Gardens at the tip of the Isle of Dogs across the river, because the DLR train service to Cutty Sark was suffering from delays on Sunday. The buildings were designed by Sir Christopher Wren just as he was limbering up to build an even bigger dome on top of St Paul’s Cathederal.
The aim of our trip was to enjoy an evening cruise but that was cancelled too, never mind. Another surprise was to see a giant ferris wheel next to where the Cutty Sark is meant to be.
Eurostar Paris trains from London getting busier July 21, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : eurostar deals, Paris Breaks , 8comments
I used to wonder what would happen after the Eurostar Paris trains were diverted from the interim Waterloo International station to the new St Pancras and now we are beginning to see the answer. International commuters in their thousands are switching from short haul flights between the two capitals to the fast St Pancras service by Eurostar. Paris has of course been moved 20 minutes closer to London since November last year, but it’s also the higher price of aviation fuel which has driven people away from the troubled terminals at London’s airports. So the situation now on an early weekday morning is that the waiting areas at St Pancras station are chock a block with people heading to Paris in time for a full day’s worth of meetings.
The Times business observes:
The airline industry has been crushed by the price of kerosene and deserted by passengers fed up with delays. After decades of disappointment, false dawns and virtually bankrupt Channel Tunnels, we have finally arrived at the age of the train and the evidence is in the crowd at St Pancras.
Traffic growth on Eurostar increased by 21 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007, with growth in the second quarter supposedly at similar rates. So the combination of fuel prices, airport delays and the shaving of 20 minutes off the London-Paris Eurostar journey time has boosted income by 25 per cent according to The Times.
When the channel tunnel was first mooted in the 1980s, a lot of people were expecting a road tunnel they could drive through. More said they would be afraid to go into a long tunnel under the sea, and would stick with the ferries, though it was feared the ferry companies might be driven out of business by the new tunnel. The roll on roll off ferries from Dover are still running, providing cheap cross channel deals for slightly less urgent freight transport, but it’s the short hop airline routes between the south of England and the business cities in the North of France, Belgium and Holland which were always the main competiton for the Eurostar express trains, with their city centre to city centre advantage.
So the problem now is that the old award winning Waterloo terminal for Eurostar is closed while the new St Pancras Station is getting near to capacity already. So why didn’t they build it bigger or else plan to keep both running, giving travellers a choice between South and North London connection points for the Eurostar Paris trains?
I suppose the shortage of waiting areas at St Pancras might be eased when the Stratford International station comes into service, taking some of the strain for passengers heading for Paris breaks originating from East London and the City. I’ve heard it has already been built but can’t be opened because it’s in the middle of an Olympic Games 2012 building site.
If you’ve never been on a Eurostar Paris trip, here’s a longish video from youtube which gives a nice impression of what the journey is like.
Google Suggests a pre-emptive text search July 16, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Long Tail, video , 3commentsA short video to show how Google Suggest works and to imagine how this might change people’s behaviours if it gets deployed as the default search mode.
If I’m right and Google are seriously considering releasing this live then how big a change do you think it will mean and what are the implications for search engine results overall if Google Suggest slips into widespread use?
Wordpress as a Wiki July 15, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wordpress, Wiki , 13comments
Wordpress version 2.6 is now out on release and the video below shows some detail of the new revision control which gives authors some of the functionality of a Wiki on top of the most popular blogging platform.
From now on, a history of post versions is retained in the database together with the date stamp and author details, so that different versions can be compared and if necessary reverted. That’s one of the main essential features of a wiki taken care of. With self registration and a granular level of administrative privilege already built in, it should be possible to set up a Wordpress installation which is fairly open for public editing, just like a wiki. All that’s left to be added in order to give mediawiki a run for its money is a nice and simple way to link across between posts, by reviving the concept of CamelCase WikiText perhaps. Then there’s section editing, edit summaries and recent changes and the whole method of navigating from the post as published to the wysiwyg editor in the dashboard especially if this involves login along the way.
But the news is big because version 2.6 has just taken an enormous leap forward towards becoming something even more powerful. The idea of WordPress as a Wiki content management system is firmly on the agenda.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
