During the last 15 years I must have attend close to 200 conferences (more than 10 conferences per year). The variety of them is remarkable: from international governmental organization’s massive gatherings of thousands of delegates, like UN’s WSIS to small, free, open space conference’s, like the Recent Changes Camp.

Almost exactly three years a go I wrote on this blog about the raise of New Kind of Conferences (July 11, 2006) and recently Teemu Arina, one of the original Flosse Posse people (actually he found this site), have a new project focusing on use of social technologies to run better events. I really hope Bantora will be successful. It is needed.

I like conferences and I like traveling, although I try to minimize it nowadays (they say they need me at home and office, too. That is nice). For me conferences are – first of all – places for Bohmian Dialogue in a wider philosophical meaning, not as a dogmatic technique. David Bohm writes:

“‘Dialogue’ comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means ‘the word’, or in our case we would think of the ‘meaning of the word’. And dia means ‘through’ – it doesn’t mean ‘two’. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of dialogue is present. The picture or image that this derivation suggests is stream of meaning following through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which may emerge some new understanding. It’s something new, which may not have been the starting point at all. It’s something creative. And this shared meaning is the ‘glue’ or ‘cement’ that holds people and societies together.”(Bohm 1996)

I do not go conferences to “access knowledge”, to network or to make new contacts. All this happens in there, too, but that is a side effect of the dialogue. I go conferences to dip into the “stream of meaning”, to “emerge some new understanding”, to be part of “something creative”.

6:38 AM May 28th (the time stamp must be some “Twitter”time-zone) I found myself sitting in a huge lecture room that was 10 meters from another lecture room where people were giving talks about research methods. I was supposed to follow the talks from a video projection broadcasted from one full lecture room to another. The situation was absurd. I had travel 4 hours to come and sit in a lecture room watching video from room next to.

The very same day my colleagues were organizing another conference back in Helsinki with the title Emerging Media Practices and Environments. This conference took place in a TV-studio and a video from three cameras with live directing was streamed online. When I noticed this on my laptop, I just couldn’t help taking my earphones and start to follow the other conference, taking place 400 kilometers from the lecture room I was sitting in.

To make the distance participation even more rich my clever colleagues were also having live reporting on Qaiku - a service I have described to be the IRC for middle age people (some people see it as Twitter-copy, though it is much more copying from Jaiku, that actually has very little common with Twitter). If you are interested in to see the reporting and discussion, here is an example. So, there I was watching high quality MP4 video stream and chatting with my colleagues about the presentations and asking presenters questions via Qaiku. It was a great experience with the “spirit of dialogue” in place.

So, is it time to say goodbye for conferences taking place in the real world? Couldn’t we just stream video presentations online and have same side-chat? Or even better, why don’t we all record presentations beforehand, post them on our own blogs and then have a chat session. Actually people are already doing this - watching online lectures together. I really like it.

So, why do we still organize conferences? - you may ask.

I ask: Did you read the beginning of this post?

In the beginning of this post I tried to explain, that the important thing is not the form of the conference - online, offline, in real world, in Second Life - but the spirit of the conference. The spirit of dialogue can be present or not.

Still, naturally certain forms support more dialogue than other. Psychologies and designers talk about affordances and patterns. These we should recognize and follow. Affordances and patterns for dialogue.

I am right now in Monterey, California attending the New Media Consortium’s conference starting tomorrow. It looks very promising. The organizers have made many great design decisions to enhance dialogue. In addition to the traditional tags, blogs and tweets the conference program on a paper is a notebook with ToDo-lists reminding people to do the online reporting and commenting of the sessions. Brilliant idea!

Internet/WWW has made remixing everyman’s right. Same time Internet/WWW has brought the idea of remixing to other types of media than audio. When the original meaning of remix “is an alternative version of a song, different from the original version” (Wikipedia), today remix can be a mixture of video clips, text and images, several images, applications and widgets with content, etc.

In Internet/WWW everything can me mixed with everything by everyone. That is simply the nature of the medium. Seriously.

Already some time ago Heny Jenkins wrote an article Learning by remixing. Jenkins writes how children have recently become much more producers of media than ever before. Today a majority of children make some media to the Web: write blogs, do digital images, videos, sounds, games. In all this activity remixing content from different sources plays an important role. When remembering that almost everything we teach today in schools - from the results of science to humanities - are results of lending and referring to, as well as appropriation and transformation of earlier works – we should actually encourage our children to remix. Do we?

Behind the expanding enthusiasm of creating is the enabling technology: the nature of Internet/WWW (it is made for remixing) and the nature of digital commodity. As a material “digital stuff” is so flexible that you can make out of it whatever you want. You can shape it, carve it, glue it, add in it, color it and add in it other pieces of digital stuff – remix it. And yes you may share it.

If the enabling technology has been the factor that opened the flow of creativity doesn’t it mean that being creative is pretty inborn quality of us humans?

Doesn’t all this means that our creativity has been blocked?

Why? By whom?

I am right now listening my 4-year old playing with her 5-year old friend in a room next to. They are on their way to Africa. They have some jewels with them to protect them in their trip. They also have magic juice to get similar kind of forces Pippi Longstocking has. The trip is long and sailing all they way to Africa can be hard. It is actually so long that now they decided to take some of the magic juice to have the skill of flying. When flying over the sea they see an island where is Moomins home. They stop by to say hello for them. Then it is time to continue the trip.

The play continues and evolves freely. Everything is possible. Free play is beautiful example of ultimate remixing.

In my daughter’s kindergarten children do play. I have the feeling that the whole place is build around the idea of free play. They actually have research groups and they do some progressive inquiry. This year they have investigated “change”. Still, if children are playing the way I just heard them playing in here, I am pretty sure the teachers will understand its value, connections to “change” and will not disturb them.

What happens when children go to school? Do they loose playing? Unfortunately, very often they do. When they do not play they hardly have a chance to remix.

Today I went to see a pretty absurd theater play that was another example of ultimate remixing. The play Sudenmorsian (The Wolf’s Bride) is written by Aino Kailas , Finnish - Estonian author who lived in the early 1900’s. The play is a mixture of 19-century “romanticism”, “call of the wild” (Jack London) with a werewolf and some Finno-Ugrian story-telling tradition with strong Estonian spice, resistance of civilization and religion, as well as emancipation of women. Already as such it is a quite a package. On top of this in this particular case the style of the performance was traditional Japanese noh - “a major form of classic Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century”.

What a remix.

How much do they have theater in schools?

Not much. And when they do, it is often far from a free play.

Please, bring free theater to schools. Let’s remix in a real world, too.

We organise the SIRTEL’09 workshop for the 3rd time this year! It’s about social media and learning resources in a large sense (e.g. educational resources, other learners, experts, tutors) and how they can facilitate teaching and learning tasks.

Check out:

* the whole SIRTEL’09 call at: http://celstec.org/sirtel
* Background write-ups on Flosse from last years:
We use people to find content. We use content to find people and
Workshop to brainstorm an Amazon.com or a Flikr for learning purposes

RATIONALE

Learning and teaching resource are available on the Web - both in terms of digital learning content and people resources (e.g. other learners, experts, tutors). They can be used to facilitate teaching and learning tasks. The remaining challenge is to develop, deploy and evaluate Social information retrieval (SIR) methods, techniques and systems that provide learners and teachers with guidance in potentially overwhelming variety of choices.

The aim of the SIRTEL’09 workshop is to look onward beyond recent achievements to discuss specific topics, emerging research issues, new trends and endeavors in SIR for TEL. The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to present, and more importantly, to discuss the current status of research in SIR and TEL and its implications for science and teaching.

sirtel09

In the Media Lab Helsinki we are this week presenting and evaluating the Master thesis works of the spring graduates. Our two MA programs are relatively selective (we take about 20% of the applicants) and small (22 and 8 students). The small number of students makes it possible to have an event where our MA candidates are resenting and “defending” their thesis for evaluators and general public.

This is, of course, very time consuming and expensive. After the first day with seven presentations and following discussion I am sure that it is worth of the investment. It is “quality assurance”, but much more it is an event of sharing and caring. And why would sharing and caring be important in education? It pays off as quality. It is not only assuring quality: it itself produces quality results.

Sharing in the case of education (and science) of course means that everyone’s work will help other people working in a same field, doing studies or research from some topic close. Seminars, presentations, conferences, journals, coffee breaks, lunches and dinners …and final thesis presentations are all there for one reason: to share.

To be honest, what it comes to “web publishing” we are not “very good” in it in the Media Lab. For instance we do not webcast the final thesis presentations. One may claim this to be a paradox and totally contradicted to the idea of “sharing”. I don’t think so.

I have some pedagogical reasons to keep some discussions - if not private - open only for people who care to come over physically (the events are open for public). The request of physical present is related to caring. By being present you physically communicate that you care. You show with the most powerful methods of communication – presence and touch (we shake hands, hug, some people even kiss each other) - that you care, that you are part of the community.

Now one may ask what about people who can’t come? What about people who live outside Helsinki? Why they can’t participate from distance - via Internet?

The problems related to communicate the caring is one reason. The other reason is respect of people’s sensitiveness and limitations. Some people are simply not great “public speakers” or may be afraid of “large audiences” or “recordings of their performances”. Some other people may suffer from stuttering, speech defects, or have problems with language in general. Especially when our community is multi-cultural and most people are communicating with a foreign language this is a real issue. Keeping events open but limited for people who care to come we respect the people and their diversity.

Among the people who care to come over physically we may assume that they will get enough contextual information to make a right interpretation about the people’s “weaknesses”.

The caring aspect of education is not discussed that much. The “emotional intelligence” and “emotional learning” are not new ideas. From some part these are related to caring. Showing caring of someone is always emotional. It means that there is a connection that makes it a community.

Caring in quality education is manifested as tough but fair critique and praises when deserved. Neither of them - critique or praises - should attack the person. The value of the person is not questioned. It is untouchable. It is sacred.

“You gotta love everybody, make ‘em feel good about themselves”

Last week I went to the Interactive Technology in Education 2009 (ITK) – conference. It really is a remarkable event that has took place in Finland already for 20 years: in a country of 5 million people, more than 1500 education technology experts get together every year for three days to share. My first time in ITK was probably in 1995.

In the ITK 09 Antti Hautamäki launched the term “bio-pedagogy” (in Finnish; biologinen pedagogiikka). Bio-pedagogy is learning with straight manipulation of the human biology and cognitive enhancement with chemicals, artificial stimulation, genetics etc. All drugs and medication with an effect to our neural system and neurotransmitter is not “bio-pedagogy”.

Nootropics are nothing new. Taking nootropics is not bio-pedagogy. When it is organized and planned it becomes bio-pedagogy. When taking the smart drugs becomes the central strategy used for learning purposes we may call it pedagogy.

What about all other kind of “drugs” and stimulants? What about coffee and tea?

I drink coffee. Sometimes I even take painkillers and melatonin. Coffee I definitely drink to learn. Not to be more awake, but to talk with people (lets go for coffee), but also to have a break alone – to think, to slow-down. When I share and think and think and share I learn - slowly. Painkiller and melatonin I take to fix things (I know some sports and meditation would do the same job - sometimes I am just lazy).

The small pieces in the Web are difficult to boost. I can make my brain to work faster but does it have any effect on the small pieces in the Web? Yes, it may make me blog and twitter faster, but does these “fast rants” have any real impact to the intelligence of the Web? I doubt.

Like human learning, also changes to the intelligence of the Web require time. Ideas in the Web take time to mature, to become thoughtful. Here are some new small pieces to the Web to help it:

These slides are from the Estonian e-learning conference, some weeks ago. A great even, too. there is also video from my talk. I also talk in it about the new Aalto University.

Last week I also made some comments about the Finnish Information Society for the Finnish National Broadcasting Company. The radio program is in Finnish.

It’s like children playing with melting water in a sunny spring day. They dick little tracks to help the spring.

The Finnish Wikiversity - called in Finnish “Wikiopisto” - was just given its own domain under the http://www.wikiversity.org. The Finnish Wikiversity is now the tenth “official” Wikiversity in the world. You can now found us from here http://fi.wikiversity.org.

In Finland, having your “own university” feels right now so good. Why?

We are in a middle of a University reform, that is basically changing everything in our current higher education system. The website of the Finnish Ministry of Education writes about the reform:

The Finnish Universities Act is under reform. The draft law will further extend the autonomy of universities by giving them an independent legal personality, either as public corporations or as foundations under private law. At the same time, the universities’ management and decision-making system will be reformed.

The Government is planning to submit its proposal for a new Universities Act to Parliament in the spring of 2009. If passed, the new law will replace the Universities Act of 1997.

The network of universities and institutions for higher education is also changing. For example universities of Joensuu and Kuopio have formed the University of Eastern Finland whereas the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics and University of Art and Design have together founded Aalto University. This will increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Objectives and key impacts

The reform will facilitate operation in an international environment. Its purpose is for universities to be better able to:

• react to changes in the operational environment
• diversify their funding base
• compete for international research funding
• cooperate with foreign universities and research institutes
• allocate resources to top-level research and their strategic focus areas
• ensure the quality and effectiveness of their research and teaching
• strengthen their role within the system of innovation

Wikiversity is not a research university - at least not today. Still from the objective and main key impacts of the Finnish University reform, I would like to point out a few things in which the Wikiversity has a huge potential to do very well. These are:

• react to changes in the operational environment
• diversify its funding base
• cooperate with foreign universities and research institutes
• ensure the quality and effectiveness of its “teaching” (or learning taking place in there)
• strengthen its role in innovation

So, let’s have our “own University”. Please, start editing!

And if you are interested in to know, I am not against the university reform. I am reformist.

I also think, that it is a great privilege to be part of the reform. It’s going to be interesting to see if we will succeed. We are serious and doing our best.

If we will fail, I think I can always do something else. Like write HTML. There is always place for quality HTML 2.0 - I am really good in it.

In a global scale, I see that Wikiversity can be a great change agent in online learning. It may - and should - have also some impact to the “old university” system. Well, this is already another story that was reported before.

We will soon be part of a new University in Finland, called Aalto University.

“Aalto University is created through a merger between the Helsinki School of Economics, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology.”

The name Aalto is making references to Alvar and Aino Aalto, a Finnish architect and designer couple. Actually, people keep on forgetting Aino in here, though she was definitely a better designers (maybe even a better architect) than her husband.

For many years I have had on my wall of my office a print of a telegram Alvar Aalto sent in 1958 for the Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities and Social Science, John Burchard.

The main point of the short message is that he is not willing to write about the philosophy of his architecture but rather think that his pieces of work are able to do the job better than any words. Finally, he is willing to make a strong and bold statement:

“… the enemy number one today is modern formalism, non traditional, where inhuman elements are dominating. True architecture, the real thing, is only where man stands in center.”

The telegram is available in the MIT’s online archives.

Now when building the new University we should listen carefully Alvar (and Aino) and their attitude. Maybe even learn something from them. My main points:

• Should we do art, design and media or philosophy of art?
• Should we put people in the center?

If you ask me, my opinion is that the right answer to the first questions is that we should do both. Answer to the second question? We should - always.

It was again Andrea who led me to think. This time the starting point was the reference she made to Amartya Sen’s capability thinking in economics.

Lately I have become more aware of my sometimes rather weird way of making connections between different ideas, having a train of thoughts. What is weird is that these chains clearly and completely make sense for me, and I often think this is the case with others, too. I seriously believe that people will get them without me explaining them anyhow.

Here is the latest course of thoughts:

Amartya Sen’s capability approach →

Capacity building (why not capability building?) →

Wikiversity’ s Potential In Global Capacity Building (and all the other open and free wiki-projects potential) →

National broadcasting companies role as enablers →

What all this mean for education and learning? →

Is the real issue anyway the time horizon? 65 years? 165 years? 1650 years? →

I do not play golf.

First Monday is probably the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. Since its start in 1996 I have been a reader of the journal. In the First Monday’s archives there are several articles that really have shaped my thinking on the Internet and the Web.

The current volume (Volume 14, Number 2 - 2 February 2009) that was just published comes with an article I wrote with my colleagues, Tere Vadén and Juha Suoranta.

I would love to hear your comments on the article on this blog or somewhere else. Let me know, thanks!

The article is here:

Learning in and with an open wiki project: Wikiversity’s potential in global capacity building

Abstract

There is a chance that Wikiversity will become the Internet’s free university just as Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia on the Internet. The building of an educational entity demands considering a number of philosophical and practical questions such as pedagogy and organization. In this paper we will address some of these, starting by introducing several earlier approaches and ideas related to wikis’ potential for education. We continue by presenting three commonly used metaphors of learning: acquisition, participation and knowledge creation. Then we will present the main principles of two existing alternative educational approaches: free adult education and free school movement. To test these educational approaches and practices on Wikiversity and increase our understanding of the possibilities of this initiative, in the spring of 2008 we implemented an experimental course in Wikiversity. We conclude with several recommendations essentially advocating for Wikiversity and the use of wikis in education. However, more than just presenting our opinions, as authors we aim to make an educated — traditionally and in the wiki way — contribution to the international discussion about the future of education for all in the digital era.

I just realized that in last five years I have not taught a single course without a blog and a wiki, except couple of courses were I have been asked (read:forced) to use the Moodle of the organization where I have been visiting.

This spring term I am teaching a course – or I actually call it study project – with the title: “New Media Concepts for WHO - Study Project Exploring New Media Concepts for WHO’s Health Action in Crises”.

For the project I set-up a Wordpress blog and a workspace in Google pages. The Google pages we are using like a private wiki. For me these tools are not just “tools”. The decision to use these tools is based on the pedagogy I am trying to implement in the study project. The pedagogy is one kind of implementation of some of the principles of project learning and problem-based learning. I call it “learning in a problem-based study project”-

Project learning principles are: (1) setting ‘the driving question’, (2) investigations, (3) products or artifacts, (4) learning communities, and (5) use of cognitive tools (Bluemenfeld et all. 1991). Through investigation in a community by using different kind of cognitive tools to work out their own artifacts students will construct their own cognitive models and learn key concepts and principles and to communicate their knowledge to others.

Problem-based learning is another pedagogical approach. It does not emphasis the project or artifact creations similar way as the project learning. However, in both of them problems, challenges, and questions are central. Also in problem-based learning the study groups are working in a small groups … well to solve the problems. The groups meet regularly and between the meetings they work independently to search for information needed to solve the problems.

Why then a blog and a wiki?

When you have done something many times, it easily happens that it becomes “tacit knowledge”. This is a well-known phenomenon in studies of expertise. Experts often know what to do, even if they are not able to explain why their practice is good.

To make tacit knowledge explicit one must do some reflection. Ask why? Yesterday I did and wrote to the blog of the study project:

Here is a short introduction to our online working and learning infrastructure.

This blog is naturally the hub of the study project. Reading the posts in the archives you can track back what has happen in the project.

In addition to the blog we have Collaboration Wiki for internal collaboration.

Simple. A blog and a wiki. I was today thinking the different roles of the blog and the wiki in the project.

The blog is definitely the place to communicate on everything - I mean on everything. Basically there shouldn’t be any topic we could not talk to each other in public – on the blog. The possible add-value of communicating everything in public is that someone that has a solution to our challenge may hear us and contact.

The wiki is not a space for communication in a common sense. It is a place to keep larger documents and files that are still under construction. This way it is a more a warehouse, workshop and garage than a meeting room (that is the blog). Actually the wiki could also be public and open for anyone to follow and even participate, but this time we decided to do it this way.

Now I know why. If you are interested in to follow how the study project is progressing, please, add the blog in your RSS-reader. There will be nice stuff.

Some 15 years ago I did some very basic studies on journalism. So, I know the basics: find a hook and catchy one-liners, use citations… etc. Still a journalists can surprise me - positively and negatively. This time positively.

In November I made a short trip to Barcelona to visit the Unversitat Oberta de Catalunya to take part in the UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning Seminar.

During the seminar I did three very fast interviews with my bad English, terrible Spanish and non-existing Catalan. One of them was for a broadcasting radio, one for some video online site and one for the University’s site. I haven’t come a cross with the radio or the video, but a friend sent me a link to the University site’s press room section with an interview with me.

It is a great interview, I think. The writer has brought up from my bubbling speaking style some great points. Here are my favorites and some explanations about them:

“The beauty of any wiki is that it is a flow of information. It is like a river: you can’t step into the same river twice in the same way you can’t step into the same wiki twice.”

I actually heard the metaphor about the impossibility to step in a same wiki twice some time ago from Tere Vadén. I think it is so well said that I have used it since then in number of occasions. The original “river wisdom” comes - according to Wikiquote - from a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus.

“… when it comes to learning, the teacher or mentor – or even the community itself – is taking a subjective point of view. There is no need for neutrality.”

Everybody who is familiar with the Wikipedia-politics will understand what I am trying to say with this. In Wikiversity one should not have “neutral point of view” -rule and for sure not any rule asking people not to publish original research (these are probably the most important rules in the Wikipedia). To make it possible not to have these rules in the Wikiversity we must have some other rules and practice in place. These will guarantee that the site will be a meaningful place for learning. For instance in the Wikiversity one should always be transparent with the “point of view” taken in the course – say it openly. To publish original research there should be a peer-review system in place.

“I’m not looking for what will happen in a year or two. I prefer to think about what will happen in five hundred years.”

I am serious about this, too. A year or two is of course an interesting time span, because our possibilities to be in place to see what then finally did happen are much greater than with a longer time span. However, the point we are looking for should always be at least over four generations. We should all plan our action by thinking how our grand grandchildren will live? Even 500 years is nothing. It is only about seven generations.

“The best thing with these new technologies, like wikis or blogs, is not that they exist but that they are opening us up to talk about what learning is. We would not have this kind of debate in the educational sector without them.”

This is a bit of paradox, but on the other hand very obvious thing to happen. In a way we are developing technology to improve our ability to learn. Same time the technology developed is challenging many of us to reconsider our conventional and common believes about teaching and learning. Good. It was about the time.

The interview in English, Spanish and Catalan are here:

Interview with Teemu Leinonen: If there is free knowledge available on the Web, it will make more sense for governments to invest in connectivity

Entrevista con Teemu Leinonen: Si hay conocimiento libre disponible en el web, tendrá más sentido que los gobiernos inviertan en conectividad

Entrevista amb Teemu Leinonen: Si hi ha coneixement lliure disponible al web, tindrà més sentit que els governs inverteixin en connectivitat

Tarmo Toikkanen, a colleague from our Learning Environments research group, just got from a press some copies of the book he co-authored with Eija Kalliala. The book is published by Finn Lectura publishing house.

With Tarmo we discussed that the book could actually be the world’s first book ever that is focusing primary on social media in education. With fast Amazon search I found out that there are number of books about social media and many other things (such as business) but not really any aiming to open what role social media plays in teaching, learning and education in general. I wonder if the book is the world’s first book about social media in education?

Tarmo told that they themselves questioned the idea of writing a traditional paper book about social media, but concluded that there is a need for a book. Majority of teachers - the main target group of the book - are still living largely in the web 1.0 world able to use email, learning management systems and simply search and browse the web. Learning about social media may simply not happen with the tools teacher do not know already. For this purpose teachers need a book.

Whatever the book is the world’s first book about social media in education, it is the first one in Finland and in Finnish. That we know.

The site of the book is here:

www.sosiaalinenmediaopetuksessa.fi

..and the blog here:

blogi.sosiaalinenmediaopetuksessa.fi

Congratulations Tarmo and Eija!

The word “design” can be understood as both a noun and a verb. As a noun design is the end-product: “the design”. When used as a verb (to design) it refers to process of thinking, problem solving and communicating.

Because of the growing impact of social media in our life we should redefine the term “media” similar way: consider it both a noun and a verb.

In his MA thesis Jussi Erkkola concluded (in Finnish, the following is my translation/summary) that social media is technology-related and structural process where individuals and groups are building shared meanings, through peer- and use-production, with help of content, communities and network technologies. Social media is also post-industrial phenomenon that is changing the industrial production and distribution structures and this way has an impact to society, economy and culture ( - Erkkola 2008 - ).

Meaning making. Hmm.. Interesting isn’t it?

Meaning making requires thinking, problem solving and communicating. All these are important in design, media and learning. Without media (natural language and speech are media, too) there isn’t communication. As meaning making is also in the core of learning, are design, media and learning actually all the same? No they are not, but they are related and play an important role in each other.

A successful design process is a learning process.

A successful learning process is a design process.

A successful participation in a social media is design and learning process.

Design, media and learning are always connected.

Tarmo has pointed out that something to be called social media it … well …. should be social. A blog is not a social media per se. It becomes social media only when the writer and his writings are participating in the blogsphere. If one is just writing his thought online without reading and commenting other people’s blogs he is simply replicating the convention of broadcasting media.

Same rule works with wikis as social media. If it is only you who write to the wiki it is not a social media. More writers mean that it is more social. When there are many voices a social and cultural issues become more important. The community starts to create social norms.

I find the role of design in learning and social media extremely interesting question. Many personal learning environment thinkers seem to feel that the design of learning should be fully in the hands of each individual. I am one of those people who think that some people may actually know what is good for some other people. Why is this?

Meaning making in most areas of life follows certain pattern. People who have taken the path know it. The smartest of them even know what might be wrong in it, and some of them have made the effort to fix it. Guiding someone means that you do the trip together, not that you give a person a map and tell how to do the trip, but to do the trip with the person.

Media Lab Helsinki demo day is a one day event taking place twice a year - every autumn and spring, in the end of the semester. During the demo day the students and faculty are presenting some of their projects done during the semester. Demo day is as old traditions as the Lab, found in 1993.

Long time before the “unconference boom” the demo day has been its own kind of unconference with 5-10 minutes lighting talks / Pecha Kucha and try it yourself booths.

I couldn’t make it this year to the demo day, because of traveling. The program looks interesting. It looks that the projects that were presented can be categorized to be art, product design, cultural heritage, activism, games etc. The technology trends seems to be physical computing, gesture interfaces, electronics, sensory data, mobiles, etc. What is also characteristic in many of the projects is the design methodology used: most of the projects are strongly relying on the co-design and participatory design approaches. Media Lab Helsinki is on the side of the people.

I put up here seven project I must take a closer look when back in Helsinki:

(1) Clip Kino Helsinki - self-organizing screening events of short video clips and documentaries found online.

The “movement” has an interesting pedagogical statement:

“This is ‘direct action’ media literacy: What media is online? Who is watching it? What does it mean to them, and indeed to you? Where does the video clip come from? How was it produced and distributed? Has it inspired copies, remixes or derivatives? The activity can be a practical and critical education of intellectual property (IP) issues and the emerging configurations of public-private space.

(2) ‘ShapeShifting’ media software

ShapeShifting is a package of tools designed to produce new forms of storytelling that broadband will enable. The tools were developed within a series of experimental productions.

“If theatres have plays, books have novels and television has programmes - what does broadband have? What is the new storytelling for broadband?”

(3) Krutdurken educational game.

The Krutdurken game is a combination of history lesson and strategy war game taking place in the context of the Finnish War (1908-1909). I am rather critical about the “edutaiment” idea, all in all - there are too few good examples. I also think that engaging computer game can be used for educational purposes but a game should not be designed to be primary “educational”.

There are many examples of computer games that can be used in education. The SIMs and the Civilization are the most obvious examples of these. So, one should not design the game to be “educational” but one may design the game to be “serious”. When the game is serious it can be educational, too.

A Danish company called Serious Games is doing exactly this. They have very interesting two games out: Global Conflicts: Palestine and Global Conflicts: Latin America.(Link via Petri Lankoski)

In the case of Krutdurken it looks that the “educational aims” have overtook the game design objectives. This is common, especially when the client is more interested in education and less on gaming. I assume this has been the case with the Krutdurken game, too. The client was The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS). However, kudos for the SLS for doing the project.

(4) Zipiko – broadcast your intentions

Zipiko is a service to share your plans with your friends with mobile phones. The people behind the the Zipiko talk about “intention broadcasting”. I like the concept. I assume the experience where you are planning to do something but finally do not do it, because you do not find company to join you, is in some level universal. At least it often happens to me. Would broadcasting my intentions to my whole social network be a solution to this? Maybe - this is what Zipiko people think.

“Intention Broadcasting is the process of sharing your plans and intentions via mobile and IT systems. It has similarities to status messaging but with the emphasis on the future.”

When looking and thinking the Zipiko from the point of view of learning I see it as a potential tool to enhance informal learning among people who have large and heterogeneous social networks. In this kind of network, with the help of ZIpiko you could organize meetings with people from whom you could learn something and for whom you may teach something. Having a large and heterogeneous social network is then another issue. To have this one must have tolerance, understanding and openness to difference cultures, sub-cultures and life-styles. All different - all equal.

(5) Rope as Mind Mapping

This project does not have anything yet online but the description of it is very interesting. I would love to try this in learning context. Let’s see.

“Rope is a prototype of a gesture based mind mapping tool. It tries to improve the convenience of other tools which exist today. It could also be used for bookmarking, video/photo collections, script writing.

(6) Nokia . Expand - a mobile school communication device for children in developing regions of the world

Nokia . Expand is another project without web presence, yet. The fact that they do not yet have anything online makes it even more interesting. I have been meeting several times with Anna Keune, the designer strongly involved in the project, and know that they have some great ideas. I hope they are recycling some of these ideas too:

(Critical) history of ICT in education - and where we are heading? - June 23, 2005

Mobile phones for learning - September 01, 2005

Wlan device for school children - January 19, 2007

Deschooling society with free phone calls - Skype on your mobile phone - February 13, 2007

The Edu-Mobile: GSM/GPRS, radio, e-book/wiki/blog reader/writer, USB - June 18, 2007

Thank you OLPC - Maybe now we may start to talk about education again - January 14, 2008

Handheld Learning Solution - January 15, 2008

OLPC, personal computer, web browser and connectivity - May 06, 2008

(7) Co-designing Media Lab

This is a real “eating one’s own dog food” project. In Media Lab we keep on talking about co-design and participatory design. The project is aiming to re-design our physical facilities with a help of video cameras and Fusion platform - a P2P collaborative video editing tool.

I can’t wait to see how the Lab will be when I am back in Helsinki.

Have you used Wikipedia this year? I was asking this today in the UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar in Barcelona (Blog of the event).

Result: 100% positive. I have noticed that in last two years more and more people are “pretty well educated” on how Wikipedia works. Almost everyone see its’ value and quite many know how the articles are written, as well as what are “discussion” and “history”. Many people also understand that in the end of the article there are list of references and links and one many anytime check them, if feels that there is maybe something wrong with the article.

So, please, go and give some money for Wikipedia (and the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation). Wikipedians and Wikimedians - the community - is doing a great job and the Wikimedia Foundation is making it possible. Disclosure: I am in the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation, though they are not paying me anything (and have never, or will expect them to pay me). So, I am also giving.

Also, remember that it is not only Wikipedia. Its much more. Check out all the Wikimedia project.