I have to admit: I’ve never been a big fan of Dave Eggers. Planks of jealousy, I suppose– hard not to be jealous of his juggernaut ride to fame, positive critical reception as a genius author, brilliant and beautiful wife, and the general perception that he is cooler than all the rest of us combined– reinforced with a thick paste McSweeney’s cliquishness and and my annoyance at his barefoot appearance on some C-SPAN BookTV panel. Puhleeeze. But this speech genuinely moved me. Not only is the 826 Valencia project simple and amazing, but the obviously nervous Eggers was endearing, even earnest. I feel guilty at my smallness when it comes to Eggers and how it has colored my feelings about his writing and other work when he demonstrates the passion and sincerity I sorely need to cultivate in myself!

[corrected to fix an attribution and insert a missing quote]

In a rare moment of stellar alignment, George Siemens and Stephen Downes apparently have found agreement in dispensing with the term "collective intelligence" and substituting "connective intelligence." I guess I’m sympathetic, as far as it goes, but I’m disturbed with the way both seem willing to dispense with the necessities to for groups and collaboratives to exist at all in favor of what I can only see absolute individuality.

George says, in an illogical and undemonstrated blanket assertion^*:

Collective intelligence results in an over-writing of individual identity.

I don’t see why… in part because I don’t think the difference between “over-writing an individual identity” and “making a decision other than what the individual would choose” is purely semantic.

Meanwhile, Stephen notes:

It’s not that I ‘put the individual first’ or any such thing; it’s not a competition. It’s just that, for the whole to produce maximally reliable knowledge, the individuals must be as enabled and empowered as possible, which precludes subsuming themselves to a ‘will of the majority’ or some such thing.

I submit you can fairly rephrase that as saying:

I’m not saying I support absolute individuality in decisions, but I’m ruling out adhering to decisions made by the majority.

You can’t have it both ways. Of course, insofar as one is willing to eschew belonging to groups and collaboratives– and there is a lot of room in that space– then you can rule out decisions made by the majority. Let individuals each do what they will and what happens happens by virtue of the marketplace of ideas, etc. Fine. In the end you end up having to step outside the frame, so to speak, to create a new frame called "action" and consider that the collective and you have to live with the only consensus being emergent and incidental.

But for groups or collaboratives to exist at all, there has to be room for the possibility of group action and decisions that go against– or in a different direction from– some of its members. You can use the rhetorical tactic of giving it a label that is unattractive (subsuming, buckling under, giving in) or you can cast it as a side-effect of being in a community where the membership should provide more net benefits than losses, but it’s a distinction without a difference in the world I live in, where membership in some groups, collectives and collaboratives is not just necessary for pragmatic purposes, but also because they provide some value for the compromise of not having complete individual autonomy. 

And, in fact, what I know of the theory of collective intelligence already supports what George and Stephen are talking about here regarding individual identity and network effects as opposed to Borg-like groupthink– it’s a distinction Pierre Levy makes again and again in his book Collective Intelligence right from the introduction to the epilogue.

Not that I’m without sympathy, as I noted at the start. Another aspect of the world I live in (both politically and academically) is that it’s unlikely to tilt too far toward ultimate (unbridled, absolute) individuality, so perhaps pretending that the inherent self-contradiction in supporting something less than absolute individuality while also giving up group actions other than complete consensus makes sense is a worthwhile corrective.

^*note: with lack of a qualifier the statement is illogical because if it were true, then there could be no individuality within collectives which not only has the drawback that collectives thus couldn’t, by definition, exist, but also defies individual observations we can all make… and probably have; undemonstrated because, well, it’s logically impossible. Not demonstrating an impossibility isn’t as much of a knock as it sounds…

Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net : From Trickle to Torrent:

While you and I may agree that pursuing our passions in school is a worthy goal, I’d bet a significant number of educators, parents, community members do not.

And just as importantly: many students do not. As I think about the new semester commencing in a few hours and what I hope to do better and differently, I am struck by how hard it is to convince students that I am serious when I tell them that I want them to work on all of the tasks in class with their own interests at heart. A large part of learning is about doing new and unfamiliar things, but those things are best done in the context of something they are passionate about. Something they love or hate or, if they are lucky, love and hate. It’s not about agreeing with me or choosing from some “safe” list of topics… and it definitely isn’t about pleasing me except in the sense that I derive my greatest pleasure when students discover their confident voice as a participating, recognized part of their own network of peers, fans, sympathizers and questioners.

And that’s just the first step… establishing a tiny bit of trust, a small sheltered place in an environment that generally (at best) pays only lip service to creativity and authentic personal participation. Then the work begins for student and teacher both, trying to cram years worth of what should have been taught but most often wasn’t, and unlearn years of doctrine that shouldn’t have been taught but were. It’s “All Summer in a Day”, the education version.

The sucking sound that emanates from the conference rooms and labs where many faculty development and training efforts takes place can originate from a variety of sources, but the most obvious comes from politically driven administration that doesn’t understand the nature of the world that faculty will be working in– and thus what is really needed to succeed in transforming the teaching and learning experience– and who remain ultimately more concerned with their departments, unit, or organization fiscal bottom line on paper than the reality of the education that is happening there.

Anyone who takes part in faculty development and training efforts knows that even a solid week devoted to eight-hour sessions with nightly homework assignments is barely enough time to scratch the surfaces of learning technologies well enough to attempt to use them productively, much less to instill community practices and take a serious look at transforming our methods and pedagogical approach to take into account the benefits that the technology affords in the first place. And most of the time we don’t get a week or two of full days. Instead we get one day, or a half-day, or a few scattered sessions across an academic term, often during some other larger event that is dividing our attention as educator and participant alike.

As it stands, this model is broken. I keep participating in it because despite being broken it is better than nothing, and I– like the faculty– am desperate for any chance to learn more, improve practice, and engage with my colleagues. And many people have become very good at squeezing every bit of nectar from this very old and dried out fruit. We have an obligation to transform our models for faculty development that is no less strong than our obligation to transform teaching, and arguably stronger: out of working faculty development many more new teaching practices will emerge.

The lowest-hanging fruit in the constellation of problems with our current approach is that of treating faculty development like application training. We all know that’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope, which is why we all have our pet slogans: “It’s the teach, not the tech; It’s learning about learning not about technology; We put education first,” etc. But returning to my oft-stated position that the difference between training and education is that a significant part of education comes about as a product of social agency in the learning environment (while training engages the social aspects little if at all), I maintain that we have to go further. If we have limited time and money then we need to forget the tools and teach the community.

There’s no clearer sign that the Clue Train has departed without an administrator on board than seeing that person force faculty development efforts into the direction of “Boot Camps” and “Train the Trainer” activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Jenkins recently posted an informal introduction to game studies with some great resources for people who are interested in learning more about the field. Those already interested might find something new there as well.

While you are there, the long series on “Gender and Fan Culture” (it sure would be nice if his blog had tags or categories) that has made up most of his recent output has some fascinating interviews. I can’t help but think that many of the attributes that characterize “fandom” are the same things we try to instill and hope to see in our students. If you look at the fan activities around a particular piece of popular media it looks a lot like a learning community, and the activities of those fans is an awful lot like collaborative, constructive learning and creation. This is just an embryonic thought that others have probably already written about.

In Technophilia, Virtual Communities and the World of Ends Dave Pollard brings up some interesting and real issues about the emerging communities facilitated by and wrapped up in social networks. But the most salient aspects of his argument are hogtied by fundamental fallacies.

First, the idea that “real community” is something different from “virtual community” based on the idea that in the former we are consumers and producers and the economy is driven by monetary interactions while in the latter we are just “people” doesn’t cohere. A more accurate way to look at it would be that communities are formed around advantages and benefits (gains) and these gains are at the heart of both kinds of community. In fact, there really isn’t a different kind of community at work in social networks as much as there is an artificial distinction– that can be useful– posed by manipulating the lens and differentiating between different kinds of similar benefits.

Second, the idea of the “natural”– which has a lot of resonance for me, not least because I have deep-seated conflicts about technology–can’t exclude technology as part of the natural world. Technology and nature are not opposite. Since the invention of the wheel, the lever, the first stick that was sharpened… technology is part of our natural world. Our “real” and “natural” communities, even the most physically place-based and earthy, all have integrated technology even if that integration comes in the shape that those communities take (and the contortions that they undergo) to avoid particular, ubiquitous technologies.

What we should be concerned with is not advancing the ill-conceived and mostly received ideas of competitive dualities like real and virtual communities and that which is natural and that which is technological… we should focus on how the integration of that natural human phenomenon called technology is integrated more and less painfully– and at lesser and greater cost (and I mean cost of all kinds here, not just specifically monetary) into our communities and how the resulting changes in community affect (by extending, damaging, enlarging, limiting, etc) how we live.

A real map of the strange territory that is online community:

[via D'arcy]

Clay takes up the sense-making cause with News of Wikipedia’s Death Greatly Exaggerated. It’s really not that complicated: while Wikipedia has been and remains “open” for editing, it is not open in the sense that it is wholly open to anyone with no rules. There have always been rules and guidelines governing Wikipedia. To its credit, Wikipedia has worked diligently on making most of those explicit. Even at the most fundamental level, the rules must be there or else there would be no guarantee that Wikipedia would be an encyclopedia like resource from one day to the next!

Free is as free does– and allows in others– just like free speech. Nicholas Carr, on the other hand, has simply created a fantastical strawman and set rhetorical fire to it. Lots of smoke, a little light, but not much insight. At least he recognizes his fantasy in the followup.

Mr. Carr should spend some time actually participating inside the community to see how it all actually works. Because in the end, the Wikipedia works and that should matter a great deal. It is by far the most open system of editing and publication I’ve ever seen (note that it is a system, so it has to have some form of structure and organization). Even the “locked” pages demand just a free registration for editing– and even then the balance of the community rules the day, not the administrator. As one who has been directly involved in the process of trying to delete pages (and protect others from being deleted), the whole process comes down to the community, not the administrators alone.

With the two big on-site events at CDE over comes the task of trying to put together some of the sustainability mechanisms needed to keep the communities functioning. It would be nice if these were tasks to be accomplished during a lull of some kind in activities, but there has been no rest this past few years! At this moment I can’t think of a time when things might slow down until next March…

I’ll document here the simple things we are working on to keep the community together. Nothing particularly novel– shared tagging, aggregation, etc– but perhaps useful nonetheless!