Web 2.0 Tools, Networks and Community (Individuals vs. Collective)

Nancy just created a post out of an article and presentation that I had linked to before: Full Circle Online Interaction Blog: Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?

This is an interesting piece that made me think about the new landscape created by Web 2.0 tools. Traditional online community mechanisms (email lists, groups) are joined by a wide variety of publishing mechanisms (blogs, social bookmarking, wikis, flickr, etc.) not to mention linking and commenting on other folks content. This forms a big network of people linked first through content and eventually directly (in person or via social networking). Nancy raises the question of the fact that traditional online communities were bounded by the tool and the new big network is not contained within the tool.

In re-reading the article, I jumped pretty quickly to her comment that the three forms of blog-based communities (one blog, boundaried, topic centric) there are many other forms. Her comment:

New tools which allow a person to ‘carry’ their identity across a variety of online platforms and create their own personal networks suggest that our static ideas of blogs, wikis and forums will be outdated by the idea of a personal network and information cloud, that we shape and which is shaped by those we include in our network. This suggests we are redefining community.

and

Many have written about the definitions of online community (White 2005). The key indicator for us is that community is present when individual and collective identity begins to be expressed; when we care about who said what, not just the what; when relationship is part of the dynamic and links are no longer the only currency of exchange (Packwood 2005).

What's really interesting to me is that I'm finding in a web 2.0 world where I share content via Blogger - I actually have found much more of a direct connection to other individuals. I met Brent Shlenker through his blog and invited him to be on a panel. And I've met many other people through blogging. And, I've found that I get to know them better through their blogs than I ever have through online discussion groups, e.g., TrDev.

And, I don't believe that this connection effect will stop with blogging. I have met other people through LinkedIn and illumio by being on either side of requests. By the way, illumio is a fantastic idea. It's now open publicly and I would encourage you to give it a try. Something like this is definitely in your future.

While I've not personally done much of this, finding other individuals through content also occurs through the use of tools such as del.icio.us (links), 43Things (goals), wikipedia (topics), flickr (images), mySpace (bands), etc. Each of these generate similar stories of meeting other people through the content. In fact, if you think of my online identity as being the collection of blog posts, del.icio.us links, flickr images, 43Things goals, LinkedIn contacts, etc., you have a pretty good idea of me as an individual and that promotes individual connection.

At the same time, I would definitely emphasize that while these provide good mechanisms for meeting other individuals, the "community center" is somewhat non-existant in this world. There is definitely a feeling of loss for those of us who are used to groups with members. Who are the people in my network? In a group, it's clear the membership. In a blog network, it's not at all clear and it's quite fluid.

I've seen several ways to combat this feeling of loss within the network and most of them are based on establishing a list of members or other related bloggers. Blog rolls are probably the most common. Other examples are closed lists, e.g., Web 2.0 Workgroup and Enterprise Irregulars or open lists kept on Wikis. There are a few Yahoo Groups aimed at establishing a community for bloggers.

Another approach that we've taken on the Learning Circuits Blog is to post a question each month that allow a natural list of bloggers to emerge who contribute their answers to the question. This has had an interesting effect of establishing closer ties within the blogger network.

Nancy's article is definitely worth reading and after re-reading it, I've become more convinced that in a time of Know-Who and Know-Where being the most important, these Web 2.0 tools form an incredibly important part of how we'll establish our network in the future.

TechKnowledge in Las Vegas

I'll be doing several sessions at TechKnowledge in Las Vegas at the end of January. The sessions are on the use of Blogs and Social Bookmarking as part of Personal and Group Learning.

If you are going to the conference, let me know. It's always nice to meet in person.

I just saw a post by Jay Cross that discusses possible discounts to TK2007 hotels.

Rise of the Prosumer

Found via Donald Clark - Strategy + Business interview of Alvin Toffler author of Future Shock around his new book Revolutionary Wealth. While the focus is on the impact on economics, the discusssion of the rise of the "prosumer" is very interesting. It goes right along with the questions around eLearning 1.3 and eLearning 2.0 where some content creation is pushed to the SME and the end-user.

Biases that eLearning 2.0 Faces (or What We Are Up Against)

Saw a post in the eLearningAll group that expresses a lot of the biases that exist in the world of eLearning around eLearning 2.0 approaches:

Before you "optimize eLearning" through the use of Wikis, Blogs, PodCasts, video feeds, IMs, XML, SOAP, AJAX, and other "new"/"improved" methods, it is really important to understand:

1. How can these "optimize eLearning"
2. How will you manage them
3. How will you measure success
4. How you will add the next "hot" technology
5. How will you prevent the system from becoming a garbage repository

that is first overwhelmed with everyone wanting to post their latest thoughts on the lint residing in their bellies and then is ignored because the only content it has is people's musings on belly lint?

Wikis: Will you have a librarian organizing posted content and verifying that it is correct? How will you limit posting access so you don't get some whacko (like me) uploading incorrect, opinionated, and possibly insulting content?

Blogs: How will you take the word "I" out of people's postings (e.g, "This is my first experience posting a blog, and I am really thrilled to death about it") That is, how will you make the blog content useful as an instructional element. If you go to the Brandon-Hall network, you'll be amazed how many postings are of this character.

PodCasts: Will you have professional announcers recording things, or will you subject your audience to amateur, scratchy, poorly organized rantings? How will you ensure accessibility both in terms of iPod ownership and ADA?

Other technologies: Do you understand the implications of these mechanisms?

Have you thought about just creating good content that the audience might be interested in reading and referencing?

Al Moser
ReadyGo

In fairness to Al, he is generally one of the more forward thinking people out there. Wow, a long way to go. Or maybe people out there share his opinions and biases - of course, you don't see it expressed much.

The Real Challenge around Informal Learning

The Real Challenge around Informal Learning

Over the last few days I’ve had a blog conversation with Stephen Downes around what is informal learning:

• The Form of Informal – 2
• More on the Form of Informal
• The Form of Informal
• The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?)

This led me through a trail of posts Definitions of informal learning; Formal or informal - does it matter - its all learning; and
non-formal learning: mapping the conceptual terrain. a consultation report.

The last paper talks about a myriad of ways that informal learning has been defined and it's led me to conclude that I should give up on finding any definition of informal learning. Instead, I've taken away something very important:

Informal learning is like pornography

I’ll know it when I see it.

However, I do want to revisit why I care in the first place and two struggles that I still have.

First, there's a struggle with the nature of trying to support informal learning. In a recent post about this same topic, Harold Jarche talks about “the bias against informal learning” in the corporate world.

I can understand Harold's concern, but I also see a bias the opposite direciton. I’m struggling to understand what’s inside the box of informal learning and how we can better support it (with technology). The bias I see is that the moment you try to provide guidance or support, then it feels like you are going against the spirit of being informal. Julliette White tells us – “The degree of informality of learning is the degree to which you haven’t been told what to do.”

But let’s take the job aid as an example. Prior to the creation of the job aid, the way people learned how to do the job was having someone else show them. The job ended up being done a bunch of different ways, many that were less efficient. We create a job aid that takes the previously very much informal learning and now has certainly made it more formal by telling people how to do that job. We will likely have some level of push to get adoption anywhere from to pointing people to the availability of the job aid to mandating its use. We’ve certainly made it less informal. And if we did mandate the use of the job aid, we’ve gone to the dark-side that is formal (gasp).

So, my first struggle is how I can simultaneously support informal learning (making it slightly more formal) without losing valuable properties of informal learning? Is there a contradiction here? Are there safe and unsafe ways to do this?

The second struggle and what I see as the real challenge around informal learning is that I believe there’s incredible potential here to provide support, structure, environment in ways that derive tremendous value. Jay cross points out we spend 90% of our learning budget on the 20% of learning that is formal. The other 80% (informal) gets much less attention.

My day-to-day job as a person who ultimately creates technology solutions that support human performance is to:

• Understand the performance objectives
• Understand the human performance that can achieve these objectives
• Where appropriate create technology support for that human performance

I believe that inside the other 80% there are some places and people that do a really good job, lots of interesting practices, great stuff, but it’s scattered. And there’s lots of inefficiency and ineffectiveness. One of the reasons that I’m so passionate about eLearning 2.0 and topics like Personal and Group Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools, is that we are just now beginning to understand some of these areas and how technology can support them.

As I pointed out in Past Year, Present Challenges, PredictionsI see one of my biggest personal challenges is to start to understand what’s inside the box that people refer to as informal learning and figure out where and how technology can be an effective support.

Any thoughts or ideas on where to find a list of 500 kinds of informal learning would be much appreciated? That's probably a better use of time than trying to understand definitions.

Something Everyone Should Do

The Learning Circuits Blog Question for December already is getting some really great posts. Finally, after two months of writing questions that elicited at least a few responses of "that's the wrong question" - I think Dave Lee and I came up with a pretty good set of questions. Sure, maybe they are still wrong, but

The exercise itself is literally something everyone should do.

It's a bit like a fall planning cycle, but for yourself. Read a couple of the posts so far. For example, take a look at Karl Kapp's post. One comment to help entice you from his post:

I think the field is a drift. We aren’t sure what our foundational models are, we don’t know if they are effective, we have few publicized alternatives and we have new technology thrown at us at break-neck speed. We need to figure something out.

And then carve out 30-60 minutes to think through the questions:

What will you remember most about 2006?
What are the biggest challenges for you/us as we head into 2007?
What are your predictions for 2007?

It's definitely worth it as a personal exercise.

Lower Value of Online Degree Programs?

The post: eLearning Technology: Online Programs that Offer Training in eLearning? has provided some interesting results around online programs - and a really interesting question:

How do employers view online degree programs? If you are going to spend the money and time upgrading your skills, you want to make sure the employer will recognize them.

I am very curious what other people think about this. I personally hire mostly folks with undergraduate degrees and mostly they are technical. I look at the individual first and foremost - but that said - I definitely am looking for an undergraduate degree from an in-person program first and foremost. For graduate programs, I probably have less of a bias and I would value an online graduate degree from a bigger name higher than an in-person from a local, lesser name program. That said, I still would value the in-person higher than the online for the same university. Given my passion around distance learning, it's a bit weird to admit this bias. But, I wonder if this isn't shared and that people should be aware of it?

What do you think?