Here are just a few items for consideration when thinking about the use of social software (such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, photo-sharing services, social bookmarking and annotation services) that I’ve come across or thought about:

What new challenges and barriers does the use of social software create, or what challenges and barriers does the use of social software reinforce?

I’ve written about this topic in terms of Zeno’s Paradox; social interaction, collaborative work, and the community-based emergent categorization practice of tagging are all important and useful literacies to develop, and may allow for greater access and participation. With tagging there are even quite a few interesting articles about the more cognitive aspects of the practice (e.g., Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain and A cognitive analysis of tagging). But there is the potential in collaborative environments for individuals’ weaknesses to be reinforced; as Drs. Eide write in Commenting on Commentary: Interdisciplinary People vs. Teams?,

Many of the most successful innovative personalities are quite lopsided in their cognitive and social abilities. In fact, sometimes very smart people can make big mistakes by diluting their native talents by brooding and working too hard on their weaknesses rather than devoting themselves to their strengths.

In a collaborative environment, there is the danger that the failure of an individual to effectively participate will go unnoticed as those around him or her essentially pick up the slack. This can reinforce this individual’s feelings of low self-worth, breeding more failure. Members of the social network and an educator/moderator should be on the lookout for such scenarios and encourage every individual to contribute so that their strengths are accentuated and to value each and every contribution. It’s not an easy thing to do.

On a slightly more technical note, many of the social software and services utilize a technology called Ajax; while it is very useful for most people, it should be noted that when implemented incorrectly, Ajax poses an access problem for those learners who are blind or have reduced vision and use screen readers.

Again, I am certainly not advocating that we should disregard social software and the affordances such technology brings to the learning table; I am just posing questions to think about when planning and utilizing social software for learning.

Does the use of social software connect back to the learners’ experiences and “real-world” environment (and yours)?

Largely through this blog, I am hoping to encourage educators to think about the implications of the educational process — a concept that is often left out of the discussion of schooling, learning, and pedagogy. More often than not, the discussion ends at “Learners need to know things” or “Learners need to know how to do things” without taking the next step of asking why. What social, political, and cultural implications are triggered by schooling and learning for both the learner and for society as a whole?

Ulises Mejias asks many of these questions and responds with his idea of a pedagogy of nearness. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, he posits that social software is a way to foster praxis. He describes praxis as an emerging and evolving “prescription for action,” formed by the confluence of reflection, interaction, and action. Interaction by itself, or even interaction and reflection, falls short in this framework. Furthermore, praxis keeps with the idea of nearness, that is, the relevant and imminent; activities within this framework include the idea that there can be communications about and communications with (ideas, causes, concepts) on a variety of levels: the personal, local, and global.

As Ulises writes in A Nomad’s Guide to Learning and Social Software,

…The challenge for social software users is to contribute to a social cause in a way that enhances and aligns with—not disrupts or fragmentizes—other forms of activism.

Ensuring that the benefits of social software reach all circles of society will require that we focus not on the virtuality of social interactions, but on their reality. For a long time we have lived with the misconception that what we do online is virtual, and that since virtuality is a lesser form of reality (or a higher form, depending on who you ask), the consequences of our actions there have little to do with the ‘real’ world…. Nearness, in the sense I am using it, does not refer to spatial and temporal distance, but to immanence: the desire for connection and understanding, the nomad’s learning as becoming.

Does the use of social software the encourage the development of depth of thinking, knowing, and becoming in addition to breadth?

Avant-garde theater director Richard Foreman laments in The Pancake People, Or, The Gods Are Pounding My Head,

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available”. A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become “pancake people”—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

As young, impressionable, and forgetful as I am, a member of Generation X who remembers a world without the Internet and instant access and communications as well as a participant in and product of the “Information Age,” straddling nostalgia and prospection, these sentences strike a chord.

Connectivism is a theory which has spread far and wide across the educational blogosphere. The basis of connectivism, in short, is that learning can occur across people and networks and is the process of drawing connections between nodes. Far be it from me to deny that such skills and literacies are important, and the emerging nature of technology is making such practices ever more vital.

But is the idea that “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe,” or that there are joys in shallow thinking the only way to conceptualize learning in the information age? Could there exist both breadth and depth? I am of the opinion that the two are not mutually exclusive, nor is it a “friend or foe” situation. As educators, we need to develop the skills to be able to recognize the affordances and drawbacks of both and to develop activities which encourage the development of both ways of thinking. We need both the cathedral and the bazaar.

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And that — after three days of on-again, off-again writing, punctuated by the necessities of real life with family — are my two cents. I hope that I’ve presented some questions to think about and to foster discussion, dialogue, and practice.

How much respect can you have for something you refuse to criticize?

Often in the blogosphere it seems that new ideas and practices are touted, celebrated, embraced, and sometimes even followed with a very short — or even non-existent — period of reflection and criticism. Peter Ford refers to this phenomenon as the “edu-blogging echo chamber.” To critique something, when done without malicious intent, is a call for an extended dialogue; it seems like that can only help bring about that open exchange of ideas in order to better the world at large.

George Siemens of the Connectivismtivism blog — almost always thought provoking — just posted an item entitled “The Joys of Shallow Thinking….” The idea behind this post is to move the skills of, as one commenter puts it, “scanning and gisting” into a primary position in the learning sphere. Will Richardson, who seems to have an overall positive view of “shallow thinking,” writes,

I’ve started to feel guilty about the way I read these days. My wife gives me grief because I don’t spend as much time with books as I used to. And in some ways I miss that.

The Knowledging across life’s curriculum blog refers to a techno-determinism aspect of connectivism. I would agree with this analysis; posts proclaiming the joys of shallowness of thought would seem to support this. To remind us all that the Internet may not be ushering an age of new ways of interacting, communicating, and doing things, “…only about 10 percent connectivisme on the planet are familiar with the Internet and what it can do,” according to Taking the Internet to the People by Tony Salvador and John Sherry, two ethnographers for Intel. These two scientists describe stories people in developing countries when introduced the Internet solving immediate and necessary problems, often for their personal and economic well-being. They do not have the luxury — or the need — of scanning and gisting. They are not participating in shallow thinking; they are deeply, fully immersed, learning and doing for their own benefit, the benefit of their family, or of their community.

Instead of designing instruction (which we assume will lead to learning), we should be focusing on designing ecologies in which learners can forage for knowledge, information, and derive meaning. [...] An ecology is dynamic, rich, and continually evolving. The entire system reacts to changes – internal or external. An ecology gives the learner control – allowing her to acquire and explore areas based on self-selected objectives. The designer of the ecology may still include learning objectives, but they will be implicit rather than explicit.

Once again, I find it hard to disagree in theory with the sentiment. I wonder if “designing” a learning ecology, however, is the proper term. John Seely Brown, who I would give credit for coming up with the term and concept in a learning context, similarly discusses ecologies in terms of design.

It seems that ecologies, learning or otherwise, exist whether or not educators design them. The idea of “designing” an ecology, to me, seems like it still imbues educators with power — not necessarily the same kind of obviously explicit power inherent in a didactic classroom setting (at least to astute obsevers), yet magistral nonetheless. In some ways, the very subtle and nuanced power structure in a “designed” ecology may be more dangerous.

If, as educators, we are to start thinking about learning ecologies, it seems that the role we assume should be to recognize and participate in these ecologies and act as attractors, borrowing from dynamic systems lingo. Rather than “design,” educators should be up to the task of fostering and encouraging connections and especially recognizing the possibility of new possibilities as the process unfolds.

Another potential pitfalls of a “designed” ecology, and this is a perspective I have adopted just after reading Education and Event: Thinking Radical Pedagogy in the Era of Standardization by Daniel Cho and Tyson Lewis, is that there is a danger of expecting “truth” (whatever that means) to be contained within the system. They argue, successfully in my mind, that educators and learners should agree to together seek out “truth” in the world, thereby transforming it. A “designed” learning ecology could be seen as a “Practice Field” while a fully participatory learning ecology with educators as attractors could be seen as a “Community of Practice” (the Practice Field/Community of Practice distincition I hope to discuss in a future post).

Perhaps this whole semantic and wholly academic argument is based on the fact that as an American I’m touchy about the intersection of “design” and “ecologies” because of our national intelligent design debate….

• Accountability claims to be about equity.
• Constructivism, with an emphasis on creative and flexible thinking in novel situations, claims to prepare learners for the new economy.
• Accountability and constructivism are two sides of the same coin where those without the “basic skills” (often the same ones without power, resources, and money) are locked in an endless cycle of high-stakes tests, while those with (often the same ones with power, resources, and money) succeed. The status quo is successfully maintained.
• Educators need to learn to recognize the “horizon of the event” (via Alain Badiou), the possibility of new possibilities, to break the cycle and encourage a path of self-actualization and empowerment.

Drawing on the idea of Freirean dialogue, the authors posit that “truth” is not found within the teacher-student relationship, as both the accountability movement (teacher imparts truth to students) and constructivism (truth is co-constructed by teacher and students), but students and teachers must agree to seek truth out in the world and by doing so, transform the world.

I close with the authors’ last sentence:

…We must rehabilitate the revolutionary kernel found within the old cliché “I am a student of life”: insofar as being a student is to pursue truths in the world, and so the openness of being a student is living out the possibility of new possibilities.