Life Long Learning

Having just become familiar with the term “taste neighbours” and after exploring and comparing two social databases www.thinktag.org and www.twine.com I am wondering whether there is also the concept of taste tags. Does anyone use this to describe the ontological structures that arise from online knowledge sharing?

Thinktag is a database that allows users to upload items and share them within a dedicated private or public channel or across platform. The commenting and linking functions allow discourse to develop around shared items that can range from books (one click ISBN upload), video, links, images, files.

Twine a similar platform with a much wider international membership is also fully compatible with other web 2.0 applications such as Twitter, Facebook or Digg.

Thinktag as the name conveys centres around social tagging and allows tags to be manually inserted, updated and edited by registered users, comments i.e. “replies” to inserted item comments and memorabilia also carry tags allowing label on-going dialogues. Twine, even with its recently updated interface does not have this option.  Twine has an automatic tagging feature which will generate interconnected concepts. When I uploaded a video of how to paint Mona Lisa in MS Paint and tagged it Mona Lisa, Paint and clicked saved the community tag box immediately inserted “Microsoft” – fair enough this is straighforward conceptualized connection. What about other patterns and relationships?

Apart from Common Tags what other standards exist? It appears that a lot is based on markup language RDF, OWL, the techonology that enables computers to interpret the data that is then shared. This techonolgy also “understands” the what things are in relation to other things. So will an “apple” tag be referring to Gwyneth Paltrow’s bay, to Apple Inc, the fruit or the Beatles record label?

And how exactly does this system work and what sort of tagging standards exist?  How aware of them are we and how do they influence search, inter-connectivity and flow of ideas?  These are just some of the questions that I am pondering for Module 2 (of my Master in Multimediatà per L’e- learning coordinated by Roberto Marigliano at Rome 3 University) has led me to explore the current evolutions in the semantic connections and social tagging . In  considering how social database contribute or help with personal information overload I will also try to research more fully how automatic subject metadata creation works across languages and cultures. What steps do we need to take as educators to analyze and create environments which move beyond the collective sharing of items towards the cooperative construction of meaningful items and debates?

 On the blog post Why I Migrated to Twine, the author feels the semantic garden that Twine interacts  with “uses machine learning & 300,000 taxonomic categories of the Wikipedia for reference” whereas from my experience of Thinktag (mainly on the Parlare le immagini channel for Roberto Maragliano’s book) tags are entirely “user-generated”. This allows for far greater creativity and personalization but also risks being extremely dispersive and unstructured for meaningful connections in content discovery and sharing.

On the Digital Gaming EVO session I am also enrolled on we are talking about online gaming and how this can increase learner interest and motivation?

One participant, Joel, metioned that his daughter plays a game that ends in “dead babies” and this reminded me of something I heard on the BBC Digital Planet Technology podcast in Dec 2006 (they seem to have removed it now so am I allowed to share the mp3 here -see podcast below ) It was about Persuasive Gaming and I was wondering if anyone has experience of these for language learning. The ones they described where about Darfur is Dying available free and how the game is based on trying to get water for your family and Peace Maker simulating the role of Palestinian and Israeli Presidents to find new solutions. (BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5153694.stm )
Interesting?

Although the argument is these games don’t change the world and they can also trivialize a serious problem, can’t they? But the question is are they maybe a little more ethical and help get away from promoting dead babies, what do you think? I thought Joel’s comment on getting learners to write about how they feel is really good system for opening debate – The debate can be serious and maybe the way to visualize even serious problems sometimes for young learners is to make them accessible to teens in “their” language, to tap into their way of thinking and then encourage discussion on world famine, or Israeli-Palestinian issues and even on how the game has simplified the problem.

Let’s take the Darfur one as an example:

Is it better for learners to be involved simply in creating conflictual environments (World of Warcrafts does have these elements, doesn’t it? ) or trying to resolve conflicts in an oversimplified environment? A difficult question to ask but often the key to making people wake up to the reality is to find a channel that they can tune into, surely?

If playing a game also allows room for discussion on how learners feel and exposes to some of the questions say for example:

• How did the conflict start?
• What is the government doing?
• What has happened to the civilians?
• How many have died?
• What happened to the peace deal?
• Is anyone trying to stop the fighting?
• What can be done?

and room to explore the answers then I would argue that an oversimplification is helpful.

Given that not all young people know what is happening in Darfur then I would argue it’s better to help them find out. We can start with a game, if that is appropriate, and then follow on with a more serious debate on the issues of “getting water for your family”. Comparing contexts, raising awareness, discussing issues and opinions can help open doors. Not all learners will immediately respond to a New York Times article or an abridged UN report or section on Famine in our coursebooks so if technology can lead us to understand that Darfur is Genocide we can stop and help us take action to stop it then yes, let’s remember Darfur is Dying – find out more and maybe also read and create blog spaces where we can express views and explore new ones? 

Sir Ken Robinson’s talk is not only hilarious but touches on many crucial points about education!

Quote of the day “If you are not prepared to be wrong, then you’ll never come up with anything original!”

3 D intelligence:

• diverse
• dynamic
• distinct

You can listen to the podcast here http://ted.streamguys.net/ted_robinson_k_2006.mp3
to hear more on the need to completely rethink education so that we can nurture and develop the creative capacities of those we are educating rather than educate them “out of creativity”.

How does this all tie in with this week’s blogging discussion?

Well in more twasy than one. Blogging can lead to new forms of creativity, a quick glance at some of our own learner’s blogs or the some of the projects on the Dekita exchange are enough to see great levels of creativity. Sir Robinson’s talk focuses on the unpredictability of the world in 2065 , or even in 5 years time and the extra capacities that our kids have. One really important part of writing in public spaces is also related to de-stigmatizing mistakes, with blogging we need to ensure learners aren’t frightened to be wrong so they can create and express themselves freely. Blogging can spark off something unpredictable and can trigger new original ideas. Education is about making learners comfortable and addressing a range of styles – we need to remember that while blogging might work for some it won’t for all. The sound, visual and (mouse/keypboard movement) that technology allows address some styles better than others….

Illya said that Patricia had suggested she post some of the questions from her blog to the YG so everyone could join in the discussion.

Her questions are:

1. How much of the wheel will need re-inventing? Is teaching for the 21^st
   century different than teaching before? Will we need to teach different skills?
   Will the others prevail?
2. How will we overcome the great fear we encounter when we try to get others to
   see that the world and the way our kids get information is changing? (is it
   really changing?)
3. Any more questions out there? Are there any answers?

Illya says “ I perhaps focus on teaching because learning is so vague – we really don’t know how and why certain things are learned and others are not. Maybe learning will also change.”

I have to admit that I was intrigued first by the questions (but didn’t have time to answer immediately) and secondly and more importantly I was intrigued to see these questions posted on our YG discussion list (prompted by moderator). This was a clear move away from the open aggregated space we have spent a few weeks setting up and back to the
closed forum type style of a yahoo group.(the somewhat different style of this
EVO session apparent to us all)

But before I had time to write to find out why or if there was indeed a reason, Bee stepped in with “Patricia and Illya, Thanks for putting up the questions. I think they are an excellent topic for discussion. However, there are also a number of readings to do and questions we have asked you to consider and reflect on for this week before you move into podcasting next week.”

I completely agree that this and all EVO sessions have to be carefully moderated and it’s up to Bee, Patricia, Graham, Nick etc to steer the dialogue and ensure participants aren’t overwhelmed. I take this opportunity to raise my hat to you all. I know (first hand) what sort of demands it takes and you are not only extremely committed and helpful but
such rich and wonderful people.

I was just a little puzzled by this “stalling” of the flow of ideas. OK it’s week 3 and slow time, open space and food for thought.

I must admit that I am behind with reading too, too busy comparing public OPMLing features and obviously like everyone tied up with f2f work – university end of semester
exams, so maybe all will be revealed soon when I finish my “homework” but in the meantime can I ask:

• Can we reply to Illya?
• Should we record our ideas in audio format?
• Or add just add text comments to Illya’s
  blog if we feel that’s appropriate?
• or Send a message to here
• or just simply wait …..
• will everyone be able to male the synchronous session?
  

On the subject of OPEN and CLOSED from last week and moving on to teaching styles this week I thought this illustrated a point and carries on from my own notes over the past few days?

• How does the flow of information change?
• Just how much of a group is created between commenters and how much overlap is
  there of generating similar info?

I can see in these few weeks there are central strands and a lot of experiential staged
learning. But if we are coming or were sort of prompted to come together to discuss main issues on the YG instead of (or as well as) on our blogs was this to draw more participants in?

• Would Illya’s questions sparked discussions elsewhere?
  
• Would that have been more dispersive but less intrusive?
  

We are all teachers and quite involved (time permitting) but with learners this is a real big issue.

• Were we cleverly slowed by Bee in order for discussion to be deeper and
  more participative later?
  
• Will this alienate some learning styles but guarantee
  that “lurkers” and “late comers” have a chance to come forward?

My personal feeling is that the range of tools for this EVO session are well thought out. Moderation communication on chat schedules, welcome messages is well served by YG, for a bank of easily accessible and updatable resources the wiki is great and for the creation of individual but connected and developing ideas and discussions our aggregated
blogs are wonderful.

So I would suggest I feel we should psot our responses direct to our own blogs or as comments to others’, to say in this case Illya’s great set of questions direct to her blog (as some have already) and those who are not ready to take part catch up later when they are. Is that what we are “supposed” to be doing? This is what I would encourage with learners so that those personal spaces can grow with a little moderator watering but without drying out the flow of ideas because there are other tasks to be achieved, or have I missed a point here?

Valentina

technorati tags:Teaching, Blogs, Learning, styles

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