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

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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

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

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

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http://farm3.static.flickr.com

New York c 1920

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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

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http://thescholasticdiary.wordpress.com

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

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

It certainly needs inspiration...

http://www.zimbio.comCelebration

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One tribe or many?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

Connection

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Online, En masse

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com

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Postural echo =Identification

http://ww

w.leifjeffers.com

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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

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“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

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“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

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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

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Survival of the fittest

content

Flickrites and Facebookers

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

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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

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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

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

social mores and values (storytelling)

• = Tribal identity• = Social networks

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

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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/

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Smart Mobs

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu

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“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

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Cognition

Communication

Cooperation

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3 key human interaction characteristics...

Cooperation

Communication

Cognition

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Blog

Social Network

... and web tools that facilitate them

Wiki

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Digital Natives?

http://tatango.com

What do younger learners expect?

http://socialenterpriseambassadors.org.uk

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anytime

personalised

anyplacehttp://ithalas.com

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We are family

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http://pro.corbis.com

Wii are family!

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http://wiifitnessdepot.com

Personalisation of learning means ensuring that individual differences are

acknowledged

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You are your own ‘VLE’

Services Tools

Formats Content

Channels Networks

Aggregation

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PLEs, PLNs and PWs

Personal Learning Network

Personal Web

PersonalLearning

Environment

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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)

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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

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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

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Filtering/Selecting

http://fotosa.ru

‘Transliteracy’

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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

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Social tagging

http://1.bp.blogspot.com

Taxonomies are defined by the community

Folksonomies define a community cc

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“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

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@timbuckteeth cc S

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Presentation of self in cyberspace

... the performance of the self

(Goffman)

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

Self broadcasting

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

http://www.classcaster.org

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Managing identity

nameimages

netiquettereputation

avatar interaction

privacy

personal dataidentity

legacy

reputationname

privacy

images

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interaction

imagesavatarlanguage

language

Managing identity

nameimages

netiquettereputation

avatar interaction

privacy

personal dataidentity

legacy

reputationname

privacy

images

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interaction

http://i.dailymail.co.uk

Competition

http://www.twilightblue.eu

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Cooperation

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

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Cooperation

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

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

Collaboration

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... and it’s often self organised

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How do we get people to collaborate?

http://media1.break.com/

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Space integration

Community spacePersonal space

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Wiki blog integration

Reflective spaceCollaborative space

Blog Wiki

Community spacePersonal space

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Wiki blog integration

Reflective spaceCollaborative space

Blog Wiki

Negotiation of meaningCo-construction of knowledge

Community spacePersonal space

Proximal Development Professional ID

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Wiki blog integration

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)

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

– Don Tapscott

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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

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http://www.pestproducts.com

RhizomesDeleuze & Guattari

Anarchy of the Web

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

interpretation.”

Rhizomatic learning

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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.”

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

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“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/

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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

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‘Glocalization’

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

http://www.dancinghearts.org

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Thank you!

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

E: [email protected]: 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 [email protected] University of Plymouth, United Kingdom

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

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