digital tribes and the social web

Digital Tribes and the Social Web:

How Web 2.0 will Transform Learning in

Higher Education

Steve WheelerUniversity of Plymouth

Engaging the Digital Generation Conference: University of Middlesex, London, 29 June 2010

Digital Tribes and the Social Web:

How Web 2.0 will Transform Learning in

Higher Education

Steve WheelerUniversity of Plymouth

http://www.sessionmagazine.com/

In the available time....

• Transformative learning• Inspiration in learning• The Tribal Web (Web 2.0)• Social Web tools• Personalised Learning• Digital literacies

http://farm3.static.flickr.com

New York c 1920

Transformation

Does education need transformation?

Source: Chambers English Dictionary

"In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad."

~ Nietzsche

http://thescholasticdiary.wordpress.com

“For the first time we are preparing students for a future we cannot clearly describe.” – David Warlick cc

http://communications.nottingham.ac.uk/podcasts/

It certainly needs inspiration...

http://www.zimbio.comCelebration

One tribe or many?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

Connection

Online, En masse

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com

Postural echo =Identification

http://ww

w.leifjeffers.com

Tribal nature of new media

“New media ... have made our world into a single unit... The world is now like a continually sounding tribal drum. Media point us away from individual man and toward tribal man.”

~ Marshall McLuhan (1960)metapedia.com

“Twitter and blogs ... contribute an entirely new dimension of what it means to be a part of a tribe. The real power of tribes has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with people.”

Internet tribes

“A tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate.”

“The internet eliminates geography. This means that there are now more tribes: smaller tribes, influential tribes, and tribes that could never have existed before.” ~ Seth Godin

http://nedgrace.files.wordpress.com

Tribes

Digital tribes and virtual clans

There is one digital tribe ... But there are may subsets of this large digital tribe – what we can term ‘virtual clans’.

- Wheeler (2009)

Wikipedians(Deletionism + Exclusionism) /Inclusionism =

Darwikinism

Source: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Darwikinism

Survival of the fittest

content

Flickrites and Facebookers

http://www.travel-images.com http://www.coal-is-dirty.com

Human activities are mediated by culturally established instruments such as tools and language.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

http://www.phillwebb.net cc S

Mind tools

http://www.phillwebb.net

Totems

It is easier to project your feelings of awe towards a totem than something as complex as the tribe.

~ Emile Durkheim

Digital Totems?• Gathering places• Rituals and rules• Celebration and fun• Transmission of customs,

social mores and values (storytelling)

• = Tribal identity• = Social networks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbwalsh/3412625028/Source: Wheeler (2009) Digital Tribes

Digital Totems

For digital tribes ... their totems are their social networking tools within the World Wide Web.

http://www.faqs.org Source: Wheeler (2009) Digital Tribes

“We simply have too much information and we can’t make sense of it all. It changes too quickly”.

~ George Siemens

comets.iastate.edu

Source: www.connectivism.ca/

Smart Mobs

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu

“Smart Mobs consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other. [They can] cooperate in ways never before possible.”

Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

The ‘Thumb Tribe’ – one thumb signalling

Flash mobs

http://idirekt.cz

The power of txting to organise collective action

Cognition

Communication

Cooperation

3 key human interaction characteristics...

Cooperation

Communication

Cognition

Social Network

... and web tools that facilitate them

Digital Natives?

http://tatango.com

What do younger learners expect?

http://socialenterpriseambassadors.org.uk

anytime

personalised

anyplacehttp://ithalas.com

We are family

http://pro.corbis.com

Wii are family!

http://wiifitnessdepot.com

Personalisation of learning means ensuring that individual differences are

acknowledged

You are your own ‘VLE’

Services Tools

Formats Content

Channels Networks

Aggregation

PLEs, PLNs and PWs

Personal Learning Network

Personal Web

PersonalLearning

Environment

Digital cultural capital – Membership of the Tribe

“Where digital communication has fractured the tyranny of distance and computers have become pervasive and ubiquitous, identification through digital mediation has become the new cultural capital”.

- Wheeler (2009)

http://www.coreideas.com.au/

Digital literacies

• Social networking• Transliteracy• Privacy maintenance• Identity management• Creating content• Organising content• Reusing/repurposing content• Filtering and selecting• Self presenting

http://www.mopocket.com/

Media provide selected access to the world rather than direct access to it.

Source: Buckingham, D. (2003) Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. cc

Filtering/Selecting

http://fotosa.ru

‘Transliteracy’

010The ability to read,

write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality, through handwriting to digital social networks.

Image source: unknown

“Delicious is like a virtual fieldtrip through a library built by the recommendations of others.”

– Chris Sessums

Social tagging

http://1.bp.blogspot.com

Taxonomies are defined by the community

Folksonomies define a community cc

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal” - Pablo Picasso

Reuse as an art form

Source: Martin Weller: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk

http://blog.leniwiener.com

@timbuckteeth cc S

Presentation of self in cyberspace

... the performance of the self

(Goffman)

Citizen journalism ... That’s what’s happening....

Self broadcasting

... Podcasting, video sharing, webcasting, slidecasting...

http://www.classcaster.org

Managing identity

nameimages

netiquettereputation

avatar interaction

privacy

personal dataidentity

legacy

reputationname

privacy

images

interaction

imagesavatarlanguage

language

Managing identity

nameimages

netiquettereputation

avatar interaction

privacy

personal dataidentity

legacy

reputationname

privacy

images

interaction

http://i.dailymail.co.uk

Competition

http://www.twilightblue.eu

Cooperation

http://sites.google.com/site/dragonsrunningclubsale

Cooperation

http://sites.google.com/site/dragonsrunningclubsale

http://www.green-me.co.uk

Collaboration

... and it’s often self organised

How do we get people to collaborate?

http://media1.break.com/

Space integration

Community spacePersonal space

Wiki blog integration

Reflective spaceCollaborative space

Blog Wiki

Reflective spaceCollaborative space

Blog Wiki

Negotiation of meaningCo-construction of knowledge

Proximal Development Professional ID

Who I am What I know

Blog Wiki

ReflectionSelf expression

(Brescia & Miller, 2006)

Creative writingCritical thinking

Meta cognitive processesSocio cognitive processes

(Gleaves et al, 2007)

Sharing/exchangingEditing/modifying

(Tu et al, 2008)

“It's not what you know that counts anymore. It's what you can learn.”

– Don Tapscott

http://www.nationalpost.com

Connections

Making connections

In connectivism, learning involves creating connections and developing a network. It is

a theory for the digital age drawing upon chaos, emergent properties, and self

organised learning.

(It’s not what you know but who you know)

Source: Wikipedia

http://www.pestproducts.com

RhizomesDeleuze & Guattari

Anarchy of the Web

“...multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and

interpretation.”

Rhizomatic learning

http://archbold-station.org

Rhizomatic learning

“A rhizomatic plant has no centre and no defined

boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-

independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing

and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits

of its habitat.”

Source: Cormier, D. (2008) http://davecormier.com/edblog/

“In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, [and is] a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.”

Source: Cormier, D. (2008) http://davecormier.com/edblog/

Rhizomatic learning

“Web2.0 is about glocalization .... making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible. […] It is about new network structures that emerge out of global and local structures”

- danah boydhttp://www.baoye.net

‘Glocalization’

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate. - John Dewey

http://www.dancinghearts.org

Thank you!

E: swheeler@plymouth.ac.ukB: steve-wheeler.blogspot.comT: @timbuckteeth

http://www.sessionmagazine.com/

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK:

International Licence.

Steve Wheeler swheeler@plymouth.ac.uk University of Plymouth, United Kingdom

Habitus

• Bourdieu: Habitus is a method of intentionally discerning and practicing a new habit

• Deleuze: Habitus denotes a self-organising system or "abstract machine" functioning on the plane of immanence

digital tribes and the social web

digital generation

2008cc steve

cc steve wheeler

steve wheeler

digital tribeshttp

social web

digital tribes

transform

Education

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