danah boyd: Q&A Session

The following is a blog-best-effort transcript of danah boyd in Brisbane on the 6th August 2007. This is not a verbatim transcript.

This blog post, and Flickr images by Nick Hodge are licensed under the Creative Commons License:

1. Where are geeks/freaks/queers now?

  • gay men still on friendster
  • tribe.net / myspace for “freaks”
  • geeks whatever is the coolest newest thing. twitter etc.
  • segmentation: US split based on class lines; danah mentioned media taking the wrong perspective of her recent postings
  • world where the culture is of celebrity to get out of current “class”
  • in AU, split more on age

2. where are those who are not online?

  • 93% US teenagers have internet access (of various speeds/feeds/modes)
  • 7% know what it is, but are restricted (eg: evangelicals in US)
  • the digital divide is method of access (school/library only)
    • hyperconnected, basic, (and a few others)
    • evidence that with connectivity, digital society has reduced young gay suicide
    • (danah noted: doing ethnographic studies, worried about kids with no friends, online or offline)
    • hanging around with friends is important; SNS is US/English based vs. mobile culture (nb: mobile phones now advertised with myspace logo in AU on the weekend)

3. Virtual Worlds

  • immersive virtual worlds such as WoW, gamer sites: another place to hang out with friends (more WoW than SL)
  • Second Life: educators watching educators watching educators…
  • SNS when kids use it for fun
  • “is this technology something general users use?”

4. Libraries in myspace, OK?

  • most teens know that you exist
  • when non-profits/politicians/etc are there, but they need to converse, not just be there. need to digitally shake hands
  • some people in the SNS will use the link as a marker

 

    5. Addicted to MSN/WoW (what to do with kids “addicted”)

  • online is a place to interact with friends, and avoid schoolwork. this has been common for many generations where homework existed
  • WoW/MSN is hanging out with their friends
  • more worrying are those who have no friends
  • problem deeper than “the technology” if there is no communication and understanding
  • question on how society acts in the “digital street” to look out for kids who need help.

6/7. SNS, use within schools?

  •  works when teachers respond online, not just “appear”
  • remember, SNS is for fun/friends. not school work
  • engage in the conversation, don’t be judgemental.
  • worst thing is forcing “deception” where kids create shadow indentities – are we forcing kids to do this?

 

8. Generation “Y” in the workplace

  • lifestages; online vs offline; and use of SNS changes when life interferes
  • mobile; out and about greater importance with professionals who are not at their desks
  • email is NOT social; its work. it’s hell. spam, parents, corporate emails etc
  • IM is the new email. more important than email. Phone is a jarring interruption

 

9. Property/ IP holding back?

  • remix generation; kids mixing pointers (URLs) rather than base content
  • ownership is interesting in a world where copying is easy

 

10. education: in schools, cyberbullying etc == ban on access to SNS

  • kids route around censorship; proxies, etc. ask them how they do it
  • mobiles change the ground rules
  • teachers must push back

 

11. future of SNS?

  • mobile
  • 10 years all this will be natural and therefore calmed down
  • embrace the new digital publics.

danah boyd: Generation MySpace

eduausem2007 004

The following is a blog-best-effort transcript of danah boyd in Brisbane on the 6th August 2007. This is not a verbatim transcript.

This blog post, and Flickr images by Nick Hodge are licensed under the Creative Commons License:

 

10:00am start. Rec’d tag, http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/feed/

new policies, 68yo PM use youtube.com to announce policies (nb: cheaper than full advertisements, but same commentary = cheap). Software alone doesn’t fix stuff. its about good teachers (true)

explosing of flickr,myspace,facebook,youtube: self publishing: live work and learn?

Intro danah boyd: expert on social networks. yahoo, tribe, google. online identities, communities, how people represent themselves online and to each other.

Generation MySpace

History of social networking, why big, interesting

Why youth are using these sites

education: thinking about, how used and applied.

Social network site: 6degress: 1997, flittered away

Hundreds emerged for many

Networked publics: publics in a networked society. eg: parks, civic places. SNS online publics.

usenet first of the networked publics; first hierarchy. geeky space. eg: comp.lang.perl. create networked publics. interests outside computer stuff.

social norms; in hierarchy, talk related. rec.pets.cats.  Ruptured by spam, not geeks.

alt.tastless invade rec.pets.cats >> attack; spoilers: Harry Potter. ruining social expectations of another group.

people fled usenet to mailing lists (yahoo! groups) mailing lists have moderators, kick people off. vouching via email address. not as public as usenet. what are the rules?

web=? community, conversation, commerce?? tech boom, crash. things got worked out.

rethinking through on blogosphere based people, based on “friends” — who are you friends, audience is. not on common interest, about people.

different narratives on web2. companies use as label. is it technology? business? make us feel better of the crash.

web2 is about reorganising the web around people, friends.

friendster; earliest days of web2. web geek make greater than match.com; better version. more purposeful.

3 key earlier adopter domains: self-describes geeks/freaks (eg: burning man) / queers. They thought it was their site. 20-30 somethings, not working, jobs clicking on the web. negotiatiing the narrative of friends. concept of play.

technology reflects the values of the creators: deep desire on friendster to get as many friends as possible. someone become icons – burning man, ali g (blogger culture). friending them to make them bigger. more fake characters. harvard university. jesus with a baseball bat. artistic : salt and pepper, love letters. people didn’t have jobs.

friendster: whack-a-mole, rid of popularity game, fake characters. kill the fun. technical difficulties: outside US, friendster still around.

myspace: people who friendster didn’t want. kicked off friendster, rock bands — onto myspace.com. no kicking off. features around music; indi rock music – appeals to young crowds. 21+ indi band followers, down the ages. 18yo 16yo 14yo. ignore younger because they don’t SNS.

Cool in LA region, worked down. teenagers where there as a place to hang out. If you are not on myspace you don’t exist (late 2005) everywhere else in the world, mobile phone.

myspace US == mobile phone outside.

55% online us teens 12-17 have a profile; 70% girlds 15-17. using to hang out with friends they see every day.

social networks,. not meeting people, its communicating to your network.

profiles: unique URLs, age/sex/location. made up as its fun.

friends list: public list of people I care about, and I hope care about me and listen to me.

wall/testimonial: conversation to the (wall ==write all) friends

myspace: copy+paste, make it loud and obnoxious. like the bedroom. same feeling, personal expression of self. who is the audience. remix culture, says who you are.

SNS where people hang out. shooting the shit, dealing with status. done in different environments (park, malls) for many years. friends to gather in a larger collection.

properties online different to physical space. in 20s, the pub. hung out, came together. have important values.

what properties: 4 key

persistence: what you say sticks around. ephermeral publics, vs. for ever.

searchability: where are the teenages. searchable. all sorts of audiences, parents, teachers, bosses.

replicability: copy-paste, original/modified? teenage breakups online. gets out of he said/she said game. eg: IM text into blog. who got the final say. delete someone as friend. not being in control. bullying. 3 way calling, bullying example

invisible audiences: assumptions, education, context: visible audience. no idea who is recording, and where it will go. context: adjust what we are saying based on context. society instructs us. to break the rules, we’ve got to know them. mediated environments control how we converse.

teenagers: invisible audiences, social scripts. how to speak to the unknowns. generation growing up and dealing with stuff that only celebrities and famous people had to deal with. everyone is famous for 15 people. myspace. Top 8 passive/aggressive social acceptance.

performing to people you know, this is how it will effect you.

high schools: age segregation from 1930s. deeply culturally embedded in the US. mentors friends 2 yrs around their age. No good reason to interact with people older than you.

US, other english speaking world: age segregation.

US, children are locked in doors. hypercontrolled. few places to chill. fear of abduction. communities don’t exist in suburbia. no places to hang out. primary socialisation, at homes. parents regulate; parents are responsible. tension between teenages and adults. kids locked down.

“mum doesn’t let me out, so I am on myspace” — hang out on myspace

sexual predators: evidence shows not a real issue; teenagers: want to go somewhere their parents are not. (ref danah’s site)

teenagers: deception so not searchable. technology put in place to be really easy searched. comp.lang.perl vs alt.sex.bondage

privacy: having control over who has access to your data. those of have control of teenagers, leechers etc.

pretend like it doesn’t exist doesn’t work. How do we deal these kinds of publics.

education of youth: not how they learn about maths and history. how to deal with social works. they have a public life; with confidence, willingness to make mistakes.

mistake: ban these sites in english speaking. they are evil. we don’t understand them, so they are wrong. broad data doesn’t reflect this.

how do we rethink this. they are publics, different architectures. request to teachers: learn from the students. they can teach you unbelievable things. youth populated.

why is this important.

we want our youth to be civically engaged. to be civically engaged, need to be public.

US: civic life, age segregated: not a part of civic and political life.

must be socialised in the public life; not tranditional civic lecture, what is happening now. negotiating publics. only school/after school activities. why do people outside their school matter.

US young people written out of immigration protest: teen based a few days later, March 2006. walk to civic space. IM/phones. 15000 LAX alone. Adults covered: “skipping school”.

Must engage: they understood that their parents were going to get kicked out of the country.

Sep2006: newsfeed in facebook. in-SNS out-rage 700,000 college kids joined a group to make a statement; company 72 hours to implement a feature. Users say its unacceptable. newsfeeds stayed, by privacy added. political activity (ignored)

public/private: privacy doesn’t look the same anymore. education around this: rather than saying they are bad because they are public. one assumed youth had no public face/no public life. now they need to know what is public/private

companies questioning how we deal with this new public.

proposals: profile, how would you feel if? situational role playing on profiles. there is no write/wrong/easy/hard answer. what is the consequence of what you are doing (editor: I like this)

visual literacy to understand degrees

everyday space mirrored and magnified. some good/some bad. offline problems, online problems. a reflection.

digital street outreach. why are we looking online only for tagging/grafitti get kids into trouble?

why are we not helping kids in their online streets?

SNS are not good tools for educating. Politicians. not even doing a good jobs. not engaging.

Not used in the classroom; education around them.

Blogging good tools. public/private tensions. essay that everyone in class can see. how about everyone in the world. education paradigm. what is your audience.

Wikipedia. US/AU ban it. its terrible. its bad. teens told its bad, but they using it? why are we not using this in schools for public knowledge.

Israeli/Palestinian conflict; wikipedia; thinking about different views and voices. Talk: page, history. who is invested in this process. Educators understanding these technologies.

education students on who knowledge is produced. I am not hte only voice on this matter?

rethink what public life is about.

one is information, information access.

its about community and communciation.

socialising teens into adult life; education is more than what is a standard model.

 

 

 

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Jimmy Wales: Fireside Chat

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The following is a blog-best-effort transcript of Jimmy Wales in Melbourne on the 27th April 2007. This is not a verbatim transcript. This post is purely a transcript of the conversation, not the opinion of the author.

This blog post, and Flickr images are licensed under the Creative Commons License: Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

With Mark Pesce

Mark intros Jimmy again. Been a long day.

Casual conversation. Peer productions, peer questions.

Mark will ask 2 questions, then alternate.

Q: Getting over the hump of initial people

JW: 5-10 people make a wiki committed to coming in and checking up. Fee for entry is 5 committed people. eg: swahili language wikipedia; Sanjo from Tanzania. started on it. Wrote first 75 articles. Blogged+emailed. slowly built a community. Taken off. Past 1000 article threshold. One person passionate. Doing the social stuff.

Successful wiki greater than the content, its all the social phenomenon that’s important.

Its leadership, and persistence. Leadership: phrase : servant leadership, idea, lead the community not by general Command+control; following the community. Role in coaching, guiding.

Another example, wikia: furry. About subculture of furry about people who like to dress like animals. More of them than you can imagine. Furry wiki started quickly, within first first month (greenreaper). First month 100 editor. 30-40 regulars. 5-10 admins, Whole community in the world. (editor: now I’m scared). Needed a place to make it happen. (editor: more evangelism for wikia)

Thank you for not email around word documents, do it in a wiki.

Q: This trip, in South Africa and India. First world and third world country schools. Wikipedia and Education> what is it becoming in the 21st Century

JW: is a traditionalist in the manner of schooling. Kids using computers, technology, peer learning: extremely valuable: teacher-student relationship: 1:1 There is something special: technology NOT competing with teachers. Free up time for teachers. Standing in front of a classroom doing your own video: you can be replaced.

In many universities: huge 300 people lecture sessions: not valuable; get most entertaining professor: teacher value is 1:1 real time diagnostic assessment. Sit down with an individual, not mass classroom. Routine learning done in other ways.

Daughter embarrassed him Cambodia/Kampuchea 6 years old. Spinning the world around. Home schooling. Individualized instruction. (editor: hurump from audience)

Q: Andrew Wilson: Managing Fire in Vic Gov’t Use of technology in a multiple-stakeholder world.

JW: remove the tight hierarchy; wiki is more than just the software; its the social side. Removal of voting for editorial decisions. Getting people from diverse backgrounds and choices, listening to all people, 70/30 voting ignores 100% of the 30%’s input. That’s not good.

Must be broad community support.

JW: Watch the old movie, 12 angry men, premise: murder trial. Set in Jury room. Beginning from nearly all convict; then picking apart each of the individual arguments. By the end of the film, vote to acquit.

When a wiki is working well, and healthy, process/group : one person can change the world. Wiki a great tool for structuring how the argument is placed. Forums = flame war, wiki is much more collaborative. Consensus document needs to survive: need to find something that all agree on.

Q: Mark, rebuilt copyright regime rebuilt from scratch

US, copyright law, by default everything you write is under copyright. Now essentially universal. Done just before the internet became “big”. Now you have to do more stuff to make something into the public domain.

Think of the lots of stuff that they don’t care about copyright; it is by default. The hampers our ability to share. Can be done casually with a statement.

JW: let’s have regime where there is no default copyright.

Some people have moral rights/economic rights to retain copyright.

How long should it last? Copyright has extended to absurd lengths. Not driven my organsiation, done by movie industry. Long life IP assets. JW’s view is “it doesn’t care”. So, Disney = 200 years that’s fine; collateral damage in other spheres.

Now, its one size fits all. Recent AU ruling copyright of a design of a boat was functional not artistic. Different act for design protection (from newspaper article). Good idea: multiple options. Beneficial for software: life+90 years?? reasonable. Software author? Life of the computer. Economic life of software less than 90 years; Old version of Excel into the free software movement to make it better.

After a short of period of time, re-register and small fee – lets many things fall into public domain by default. Many pieces that are economically feasible; eg: put into wiki world.

Current process is arduous, tracking down the rights.

JW: Patents: Software patents are a bad idea. No opinion of drug industry. In software industry, patents are defensive rather than offensive. Patents on the web restricted to 6 months. (editor: JW’s opening bid on time, that’s all) Patents are a real threat to wikipedia vs. copyright. With patents, violation: not sure if you are violating it (submarine patent). Interesting political issue

Q: APRA: Opinion. 3-4 Tb of server on songs. From teenagers. Is it a mute point in regards to copyright as the younger generation.

What is fair use? JW has no opinion on how music performers are paid, distributed.

JW buys from iTunes. Technology is going to make sharing easy; “cassette tapes and video” is going to kill companies. Record and timeshift, has been fought against by content creation industry.

DRM is a stupid idea, cf: Steve Jobs, Publishing Company. Getting in the way of ease of use for users.

Q: Mark; everyone will be famous for 15Mb. Bio-page, has something he doesn’t want. JW dinged for editing own page. We can edit our own page, community will fix. Too much truth?

JW: biographies of living people is the toughest question. cf; Queen Victoria, she’s dead so she doesn’t care about her wikipedia entry.

So, how do we deal with biographies of living people? Thoughtful manner, sensitivity. Talk page vs. yell at you.

Not everyone is about whitewashing page. Solution is to become a more open, public person about your life. Famous people, certain things are known – narratives grow around these stories, but only a part of the real story.

Jimmy Wales want to sail around the world. He has an interest in it. Not on his wikipedia.

Wikipedia is powerful of google.

Others are so “over” the internet: they don’t care. More and more articles, less and less famous people.

Discussion now is what level of notability for wikipedia entry.

There are biography guidelines. danah boyd huge impact on her field. cf. being notable for being on Foxnews vs. academic work. Watching the debate on seeing if you should be deleted.

Worse than finding your are unimportant; but also talk about deletion. Mechanism for blanking from external view.

Categories are problematic. Tag there or not. Nuance in text, cannot in category. Criminals for instance. Who should be there or not? Politician caught driving DUI. Some will categorise as criminal. Its binary on/off. Tricky. Categories are provocative.

Q: Mark, pleasure to spend a week with JW. JW, Brian Balendorf, Tim Berners-Lee: low ego people. Ego beat out of you?

JW: early incident in wikipedia in Spanish; dispute over impression JW was going to put advertising in Wikipedia. Opponents were tricking people. JW overly combative. Violated the first rule of wikipedia, assume good faith. Need to explain yourself.

Don’t have an argument with someone for the point of the argument, but in a different

Brian: introduced to Richard Branson as “the person who freed the internet from Microsoft”, JW says its true.

In open source world, win vs. right.

Cannot be a boss and be a jerk. Companies won’t survive. With high level people, they can be jerks, and the employees will survive. With volunteers its different; you have to be as nice as possible.

Jimmy Wales: Panel Discussion

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del.icio.us search for all blog posts from Jimmy’s Trip

The following is a blog-best-effort transcript of Jimmy Wales in Melbourne on the 27th April 2007. This is not a verbatim transcript.

This blog post, and Flickr images are licensed under the Creative Commons License:


Creative Commons License

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

After-lunch Panel Discussion

Gary introduces Mark Pesce: VRML. Author 5 books, “How Technology is Transforming our Age”

Also on New Inventors, 2003-2006 AFTRS.

Mark: The Inconvenience of Truth: Mark Twain quote in relation

Peer data, with peer data.

Lots of ways of generating knowledge

21st century: what’s you know become who do you trust

Systems of knowledge generation: compare and contrast the outcomes.

Simple word: kangaroo: wikipedia, first para clear and concise. Taxonomist, zoologist. Gold standard. Wikipedia’s authoritative voice is collaborative. Wrong fix it, look at history, look for bad data. Distributed authority.

Britannica: second paragraph, go online to buy full license. 72 hours of going online: servers collapsed based on demand: higher bandwidth, servers etc. 1999 – consistently lost money in 1999. Behind a wall, $6.99/month – not a distributed authority. Elites control access to the editing of data.

Other ways to do peer production. Citizendium (sp?), attempting to contact Mark. Attempting to differentiate. Seems like a community of recognised experts. Its out there and interesting.

“After the flood” : stated neutrality of wikipedia was socialist secularist claptrap: wikipedia, conservapedia. Trustworthy encyclopedia. Origins section based on creation science. Process of production same as wikipedia, but outcome is different. Truth, justice and beauty does not come from just sharing.

Uncyclopedia; (lots of LOL) Friggen Hugh Mouse == kangaroo. Themes that show up, its funny. Wikia purchased it. Another kind of knowledge/peer production. Comedy. Cool.

Medicine, can’t leave it up to mere mortals. Top Headlines example. LOL (missed screen) Peer produced medicine. April Fools example. http://whoissick.org/ peer produced epidemiology  Who is reporting sick in google maps.  Where is this one going. Really interesting 🙂

“All knowing is doing, and all doing is knowing.”

Education is changing massively due to knowledge, not just the pure IT.

Knowledge > Elites know knowledge is power, and it subverts the hierarchy. Special interests are also in play. Knowledge sharing, and free stuff gets stronger: cries of elites and special interests.

21st century: war as forces tug against each other.

Panel intro:

Jimmy Wales, Martin Wildes, Sarah Phillips, Randal Strong, Rodney Sparkes, James Farmer, Daniel Ingerson, Derek Whitehead

Daniel: education is a social thing. Chicago: effect of moving schools on students. 25 people that moved to better schools didn’t do better: the desire (passion) to do better was critical. Students today: how do we turn that engagement into better education, how do we get the systems to understand that? Personalised learning vs. standardised testing. Over next 10 years: exploding of what information is recorded: processes of learning, not just the end result. Looking at what students are doing, which will change assessment. First elements of the web where R/W. Concern of control an issue in Syd. Highlights quote form Jimmy: accountability not gatekeeping. Daniel is producing s/w to do this.

Martin Wildes: superclubsplus. MIT, all academic content delivered free online. Why MIT? Quality of education experience is between the students + lecturers. Its the passion! The enthusiasm!

Content controlled by 6-12 yo children (by+for) in a UK site. (missed site) Gives children a voice, and something to say. Trends toward to user generated content: peer to peer participative approach. Intuitive media working with this. Even actuaries are thinking about user generated content.

Challenge: power communities for young children: integrity, extend learning. Legitimise these into our institutions, K-12 and

Derek Whitehead: Swinburne Univ; Derek here as copyright officer and librarian. Librarians like wikipedia? yes and no. lots to love. well organised current accessible widely know. Not all librarians like wikipedia, lack of authority, volatility (eg defintion) Librarians are ambivalent about information democracy. Dichotomy. Every has the right to information, but must get order and control into the situation (LOL) Life is google’d (google can be used as any part of speech). Whole web as the reference source. Google search on the web, take the first. Wikipedia is way more QA’d than the first/random google search. Before, once “just ask mum”.  Google is about the same, Wikipedia is better as its community controlled. Wikipedia is what all Librarians have been looking for.

Rodney Sparkes: eworks: vocation education/TAFE sector. Wide range of styles and types: included those with limited skills for self-directed learning. 70% are part-time and mature age works. Untapped potential in the peer to peer world. Capacity to self-directed learning is going to be toughest challenge. Immediate impact in the area of teaching: Peer to Peer impact on teachers will be greatest impact and keeping teaching quality high. Takes the informal approach into al little more formal. Translating skills into the online environments is critical. Learning objects. Making content available to others. How to incent contributors to make them add knowledge.

How do we ensure everyone has learning skills? Smartest people are the wealthier people. Technology is everywhere; how to we create economic models for community rights. Is teaching in the 21st century illegal due to recent Digital Laws. How about our culture knowledge. Writing is not the only way: digital storytelling: peer to peer model: video+sound etc. Value of culture of knowledge is appreciated.

Randall Strong: Multimedia Victoria: Education, how do gov’t policy people think: dejavu to 1993/1994. Network ICT’d disrupting technology: web2 is the next disruptive technology. 1990s we under estimated impacts. This time, the gov cannot underestimate the impact. Now want Victoria into secondlife now. Opportunity: web2 open innovation platform for the country. Exploit the other 99% of the knowledge in the world for local use; effect journalism. Digital TV: make it, now watch it. DESTRA “‘yooph’ generated TV”. Teacher generated content; student generated content from/for kids. Web2 disruption to drive productivity. Threats: experimentation; that has to happen again in the economy. Basic ADSL will not drive this in AU. Converged networks need Symmetry to Write. Deeper fibre into the economy. Vic EDU fibre to the school. Gov’t will react to excesses, Youtubes: why, werribee example. US Congress; throttle $ to schools who use web2. 1994 now excess: billion people are already using it. Internet measured and monitored, will happen quicker. MMVic is thinking through this stuff.

James Farmer: Edublogs and The Age,  pissed. Drunk. Intoxicated. On the knowledge. Gorging on information, binge knowledging. Don’t abuse the knowledge. 100 years ago, rote learning, information transfer. Since then, research, John Dewey etc. Old skool schooling don’t work. Conversation and interaction are better. Forget modes of teaching, just jump on the knowledge. Just follow the IT. ICT. (C for communication is silent). Content, content, content. Challenge is to get over the orgy of knowledge to add social side. JF sick of learning objects, wikis, podcasts…. less can be more!

Sarah Phillips, Deakin University: wikipedia for speech? Free encyclopedia is a noble idea. Essay topic to trivia questions. Answers don’t provide a basis of credible argument. Online vandalism. In an ideal world, people don’t cross check. PR student, in social media, PR people cannot edit in wikipedia. Peer produced learning should permit PR people from communications professional. Does this rule apply to the PR team at Wikipedia?

Q: Sarah; as PR practitioner, can I write an article?

Jimmy Wales: broader rules from community, conflict of interest editing. When you have a personal interest in this. Must identify openly, post in discussion page openly, present information on themselves.

Problem we have, PR unprofessionals who do exist out there. Come in mindlessly without openly saying who they are. Quite dangerous behaviour, and unethical for the PR community. Show the respect. Idea not a free-for-all; there are people on the other side who spent time.

Corporations may have entities who are paid and potentially not fair: but remember the community norms and values.

Q: Rodney: cf: News Ltd Purchase of Myspace.

JW: Myspace skeptic; Myspace too much advertising and spamming, core market like facebook.

Wikipedia is owned by a non-profit – so its not for sale. Content is (cc) anyway!

Q: (on podcast, survive death of universe). Ownership of Knowledge in Education domain. Information is not shared freely between educational institutions; actively discourage sharing as they are threats to each other. Sharing the source, won’t happen until (c) policies are solved.

Information is not open. Randall: information should be shared, not a formal policy. Gov’t can lead by example. Does Gov’t use (cc) model? Critical mass of user generated content.

Victoria, software IP; changed default model where IP resides: in the industry, gov’t should not be in the game of making and exploiting IP – commercial.

Growing band of people who will drive this.

Mark: peer produced drawing project. All the way to the AFTRS board to get approval for OS software.

James: slightly different in the university world.

Martin: the students will drive the university with their own learning networks in place. Students will continue their tools and networks already in place. Education is beyond the institution.

Mark: peer learning – pushed outside the school. Is the school the locus of learning in the 21st century?

Martin: UK experience, superclubsplus; social networking; 120,000 6-12 years of age. Learning in school, outside: logs engaging generating content + annotating, friends, primary outside school confines. Innovative teachers: any tool or technology. Creative and original ways.

Q: QLD fire+rescue: Jimmy a citizen of the world. Software design, social education/design.

Law Professor at Harvard. Tension between guards and prisoners, due to escape. Used a wiki to produce a neutral view of what happened. Both sides never agree, so wiki was used to find the source of the conflict.

In general, using social tools at a young age, to teach at a young age from TV. How to have a constructive conversation aimed at a mutually agreeable end. vs. TV is A vs B style to make the other side appear evil. (editor: need to create a Jimmy Wales – Microsoft healing wiki)

Q: Increasing comfort of use, downside on KPIs and measurement

Mark: distribute authority, you are distributing expertise. Distributed model of assessment.

Martin: expertise model is interesting. Expertise is about experience, not knowledge. Organisations to grow expertise need to provide the power of the community in development of the expertise, and distribute it around – including assessment.

Philosophically true: demonstrate competencies, not just what they remember.

James: competencies: pain with this word. Education system K-12+University, segment wheat from chaff. Nice comfortable society (class).  School – social aspects is rubbish with outdated assessment processes and large exams.

Rodney: employers decide in vocational side. Demonstrate in a work context (portfolio) Qualifications only one aspect.

Sarah: all assessment in this final term is work-oriented cf. exam. Term of learning for 3 hours of pressure. Into the community is far more beneficial in final exam.

Daniel: who is doing the assessment? Peers doing the assessment, shifts the power base to the community.

Q: Collaborative. University had a model more advanced than the students in a Master’s degree. Generational gap in learning styles.

Daniel: Doug Brown has a spectacular presentation on cultural change. Teachers vs. students perspective. Research – publication can be peer and self.

Rodney: are universities the best example of collaborative learning/peer learning.

(next: Fireside chat with Jimmy)