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Social software: learning and socializing in networks
José Mota josecmota@gmail.comUniversidade Aberta (PT)Laboratório de Educação a Distância (LEaD)I. C-learning: learning with others
In an effort to understand how the new emerging forms of collaboration can be profitedand enhanced, Martin Owen and other researchers at FutureLab (06-2006) have published, inthe
Open Education
series, a comprehensive report on the inter-relationship between twofundamental tendencies which, in their view, are shaping educational technology. On the onehand, in the field of education, the emphasis to go beyond the mere acquisition of knowledgeand information and aim at developing the resources and skills necessary for lifelong learning.On the other hand, in the field of technology, the proliferation of technologies that allow for thecreation of resources and communities in which individuals get together to learn, collaborateand build knowledge.The authors see, in the intersection of these tendencies, a possible migration from e-learning to what they call c-learning. Whatever designation is adopted – community learning,communicative learning or collaborative learning – the fact is that learning is based on a social process (Owen et al., 06-2006).According toJay Lemke(2002), quoted by these authors (op. cit.), the reengineering of education entails an analysis of the forms by which we learn “naturally” in today’s world:
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reading a book or browsing the Web in search of information
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asking a friend or an expert to explain us something
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experimenting something and trying to draw conclusions from it
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gathering a group to try to find the answer for something or to achieve something
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observing how others do something and trying to do it ourselves
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exploring new territories, either alone or with others
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talking to other people
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writing and making diagrams, drawings, movies, music, multimedia
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inventing new things and ideas on our own
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comparing different ideas and experiences
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asking why? how? In what other way?
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all these forms in different combinationsIn one way or another, all these aspects require an involvement with other people, be itthrough dialogue, or through the interaction with the ways in which they translated their thoughts and perspectives into diverse media. From this point of view, learning is a rich,
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diversified process of encounters and experiences, since, as Lemke puts it, “it takes a village toeducate a child” (Lemke 2002, quoted by Owen et al., 06-2006: 11).The tools that support and facilitate communication and interaction in a social contextare called
social software
, a term which, according to Owen et al. (op. cit.), was coined in 2002 by Clay Shirky, a writer and teacher interested in the social implications of Internet technology.In its simple definition, the expression designates “software that supports group interaction”(Shirky 2003, quoted by Owen et al., 06-2006: 12).Besides focusing on the learning forms that are surfacing, resulting from an emphasison the part of organizations and educators on the creation of knowledge, collaboration and practice as core objectives, we also have to try to identify the ways in which the introduction of digital technologies enables new approaches to learning and social interaction (Owen et al., 06-2006), at a time when young people are developing new habits and a new culture
.The authors highlight some subjects that they feel are more relevant in the social andcultural changes taking place, namely:
1. Creativity
– with consumers becoming producers, in very easy ways, this criticalculture of consumption and remix blurs the line between consumption and production.
2. Attention
– the massive, continuous flow of information from different sources provokes a state of mental dispersion that Linda Stone (2005; quoted by Owen et al., 10-2006)labeled
continuous partial attention
. This mental state seems to derive from an “always on”connectivity and present itself in various forms, like, for example, the communicationhappening among members of a technically competent audience, typical of technicalconferences, through chat, instant messaging or blogs (the back channel), which extends andenhances the presentation being delivered (the fore channel).
3. Space
– it is easy to accept the idea of virtual meeting places in the web culture.After all, people think of being online as being “somewhere”, in a space (a site, for example).Furthermore, our perception of “space” is changing, as these pervasive technologies overlay our physical space with augmented reality.
4. Identity
– there are two key issues in how the adoption of digitally rich practices mayhave an impact in our perception of identity: the construction of identity through theconsumption and production of digital media and the interaction between our real identity andour virtual identity.To a certain extent, this notion of bringing together our identities and actions in thevirtual world and in the physical world (we use this formulation because, in our view, it is moreadequate than the one used by Owen, since what goes on in the virtual world is also very much“real”), is one of the central aspects in
A Nomad’s Guide to Learning and Social Software
,written by Ulises Mejias (10-2005).
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The authors designate this “new culture” as “cyberculture”, but we think that cyberculture and digital culture haveolder and deeper roots, embeded in the DNA of the Internet itself and the World Wide Web. For a brief overview of the concept of “cyberculture” see Aelan Biruar Arumpac (2006). A Research Paper on Cyberculture and VirtualPolitics.
Asia Culture Forum 2006
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Reflecting upon the role of social software in the new models of learning and social participation, Mejias considers that, besides permitting the connection of learners to resourcesand among themselves in new ways, the true potential of these tools lies in their capacity toenable an understanding of the best ways to integrate our online and offline social experiences.To hold up to their nature and name, social software should be able to bring together andarticulate the individuals’ everyday social practices, which include the interaction with othersonline but also with other people with no access to these technologies.
II. The complementarity between the physical and the virtual world
The relationship between technologies and learning has not always been productive or led to innovation. Often, the adoption of new technologies in education has resulted in thereproduction of old methods and formulae, now applied with new tools, but changing nothingsubstantial. However, the true motivation for using new tools, the thing that makes their adoption an interesting and compelling challenge, is to question the pedagogical principlesunderlying the educational models, in order to produce significant changes.According to Mejias (2005), the models of learning based on social software canfacilitate the evolution from
learning about
, in the words of Brown & Duguid (2000), to
learning to be
, or, in a formulation that the author considers to have a more deleuzianconnotation, to
learning as becoming
.Social software might, then, have a positive impact on pedagogy, by instilling a desireto connect to the world as a whole and not just to the social parts that exist online.In a comment
on the page where Stephen Downes has available his
Goups vs Networks
presentation (29-09-2006), Mejias refers to a 2001 article by Barry Wellman titled
Little Boxes,Glocalization, and Networked Individualism
, as a good introduction to the matters concerningforms of socialization and the way in which they have been changing due to technology. As amatter of fact, Wellman’s text constitutes an interesting common basis for the issues referred to by Owen et al. and Mejias that we dealt with above. In this article, Wellman (2001) analyseshow human communities evolved from
densely-knit “Little Boxes” (densely-knit, linking people door-to-door) to“Glocalized”
networks (sparsely knit but with clusters, linking households bothlocally and globally) to “Networked Individualism” (sparsely-knit, linking individuals with little regard to space)
(from the abstract).
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“
Glocalization” is a neologism meaning the combination of intense local and extensive global interaction
. (BarryWellman, 2001: 3)
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