The benefits of teaching yourself go beyond the skill you just learned: You underscore your own responsibility for your [...]]]> Some great points from Steve Buttry on why journalists need to take over their own professional training rather than wait for their employers to do it for them.

The benefits of teaching yourself go beyond the skill you just learned: You underscore your own responsibility for your professional growth; you are less intimidated the next time you encounter a new tool or technique you know you should learn; lessons stick better when you learn by doing.

I’ve been fascinated by the ideas behind networked learning and how they feed into networks and communities of practice – I agree with Steve it is about taking over our own development and for me the key to do this is engaging with others working in your field.

A few years back I did a bit of research looking at how practitioners can use social media and at that point conversations tended to focus on blogs, RSS readers vs Twitter and social bookmarking tools like Delicious.

Obviously a lot has changed since then (including all the problems with Delicious and the massive rise in people using Twitter) but I’d be really interested to hear from lecturers and journalists (or those who are both) about how they keep in touch with all the changes around them and if their organisation is able to offer the kind of support they need.

And Steve’s point about mindset is an important one for me – I try to work with my students to help them develop this kind of approach, a tool may go down or become paywalled tomorrow (remember SproutBuilder anyone?) but the ability to play, learn and investigate is vital.

I’ll quote Mr Buttry again with a great parting shot for journos from the full guest post he wrote

Pursue learning opportunities as persistently as you pursued your toughest story.

 

Rather than a rucksack full of tools, [...]]]> Ever since I’ve been involved with the ideas of online/digital/data (delete as appropriate) journalism – I’ve been using the metaphor of Batman’s utility belt as a way of thinking about a journalist’s skillet and how it can evolve over time.

Rather than a rucksack full of tools, the Caped Crusader was able to easily change items in and out of his belt pouches to solve the issue at hand.

The constant debates about the skills required to operate in a mediasphere that has rapidly change and will continue to do so for some time to come (unless the departures of Simon Waldman and Will Lewis should have all of us involved in paid journalism worried) have brought me back to this idea.

A while ago some 79 people kindly helped answer a mini survey around this core idea of what skills journalists need. I posted up quick graphs of the responses in a Flickr set, but haven’t had a chance to get to grips with the full responses… yet. (If you fancy getting in on the act, I’ve not closed the survey.)

But one question I asked was: how important do you feel programming and development are?

Colombia set to manufacture robo-journalists

Not really – in case you hadn’t heard, Colombia have created a joint masters programme allowing journalists to develop computer science
skills. It will be interesting to see what they get out of this five-semester course which has some pretty interesting potential.

But how much of these kinds of skills are enough, or too much? Or should it be about enough coding to understand?

My own view is based around experiences gleaned during my master’s degree in elearning technologies with the computing department at Portsmouth University.

During the course we had to learn: some JavaScript, HTML (I tried to be a smart arse and went for XHTML to make my life a bit easier), CSS, Flash, learn about the issues behind interface design and usability, issues with accessibility, educational theory, syllabus design, content design/delivery options, psychology and project management.

I worked out quite quickly that developing takes me a very long time – although I do enjoy it. (Disclaimer: I sat down in 1981 with a BBC Model B, a portable TV for a monitor and what turned out to be a very buggy book on games programming in Basic – and gave up after typing up some 2,000 lines of code that didn’t run, because I didn’t know anyone in my hometown who could help).

I quickly swapped the focus of my studies from building things (which was fun, interesting and useful) to using open source tools and plug-and-play sites powerd by dataportability – and how these can foster learning communities and networks of practice.

On a day-to-day basis though, it is more the understanding of the basic principles that I’ve found useful. And I wonder, given the tight deadlines in MSM newsrooms, whether this is more realistic?

Recently I’ve got a bit of pup combined with the HTML and CSS, which help me unpick some WordPress theme issues.

I’ve started learning some MYSQL, Ruby (a twitter chat with Joanna Geary and James Ball about learning Ruby were something that got me going there), a play with Django (inspired by Adrian Holovaty and Aron Pilhofer) and I’ve downloaded the iPhone development SDK and been having a look at the ITunesU course from Stanford.

I may never be good at any of these, but I’m certainly interested to see how they work.

But Tony Hirst, browser-bashing guru from the Open University (amongst many other things), believes that learning to write for frameworks is not always a good thing – as there are already tools and ways of working that will allow journalists to put ideas together using existing tools.  Have a look at his post on Programming not coding…

He’s done some really interesting work in this area – using googledocs spreadsheets for housing/mashing data, linking rss feeds into Yahoopipes and Many eyes wikified to name just a few – here’s a link to the audio and presenttaion he did at the first news:rewired event.

And it is an interesting thought – does everyone need to know everything?

The simple answer is no – but what do we learn?

There’s a really good post from Aron Pilhofer on different frameworks, and how who you talk to will influence what response you get (sounds obvious but read Aron’s post and you’ll see what I mean and why it is still in line with my utility belt metaphor).

Things journalists can should learn from developers

One of the key things I took from my course was some underpinning ideas of developing objects, content, sites etc. I’ve been reading up around Agile development and the Lean business framework as a result. And not being afraid to try things, and get them wrong – now that is an expensive luxury in journalism, but in the right context it is vital (Health warning: obviously not in a story which contains the risk of defamation!!).

And in one of the slew of interesting posts coming in through my twitter feed I found that Martin Belam, information architect over at the Guardian, has been talking about this very issue regarding how journalists think and what they can get from understanding some ideas behind programming.

And he makes this very interesting point about the attitude towards sharing space/knowledge:

“Contrast that with the statement issued on behalf of some sports journalists in Scotland galled at having to sit near ‘bloggers’. Instead, tell a web developer that a bunch of journalists are interested in learning code, and it seems that the most likely reaction is “Yay! How can I help?”.”

The guerrilla approach

I’m guessing that refers to Rubyinthepub – a kind of self-help group (although given my masters I’d rather say learning network or network of practice) that came out of a conversation between Joanna Geary and James Ball on Twitter.

It’s a very simple idea – journalist goes to a pub with a laptop, some beer and a friendly developer. Lo and behold, instant informal learning sessions.

And it’s this kind of approach to journalism (and learning [read continuous professional development if you are an educator]) that I find so encouraging.

So where from here?

We’ll have to wait and see – and to an extent I think it depends on how you perceive journalism (in both its paid and unpaid forms) and what the journalist perceives their role to be.

Colombia’s course sounds pretty interesting, but on a smaller scale most of us who teach journalism are looking at some of the interesting and innovative solutions around at the mo.

But just in case you think development knowledge is not for you, have a think about these examples:

• Interested in data/computer-assisted reporting?  Maybe a bit of SPSS and Ruby would taste good with your Access or Excel. Or go the googledocs mash-up route for some very tasty visualisation fun.
• Part of a hyperlocal team? How about hacking a WordPress install or even using Everyblock code (DJANGO) to create your own scraper site?
• Understand usability and accessibility? Then just maybe you can think about how your content is delivered and consumed and adjust your design and writing accordingly (and proper ALT tags help massively here).
• Got a basic idea of how (if) the iPad works? Then you can start looking at the business models arguments and see where that takes you.

But there is a simple underpinning concept for me – what is the best tool for the job?

Shark repellent or batarang - your choice?

After all, you may be able to use a batarang to chin a shark – or you could just scare it off with your shark repellent bat spray.

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After talking to both of them we’re going to be using Googledocs to share their thoughts and allow me to review what they are up to.

One of them is already using googlechat with [...]]]> This year I’m working with two different students as their dissertation supervisor. One is a postgrad and the other an undergrad.

After talking to both of them we’re going to be using Googledocs to share their thoughts and allow me to review what they are up to.

One of them is already using googlechat with me to do interim session and problem solving chats, coupled with the face to face timetabled work.

So far I’m finding it invaluable.

Although aimed at schools Parliament.uk says the site will be open to everyone and uses:

…rarely seen footage of the House of Commons giving players a real feel for [...]]]>

John Bercow, speaker of the House of Commons, was set to launch an online game for young people to understand the workings of Parliament.

Although aimed at schools Parliament.uk says the site will be open to everyone and uses:

…rarely seen footage of the House of Commons giving players a real feel for what it’s like to walk the corridors of power. Several MPs from a variety of political parties were interviewed and feature in the game to provide advice to users and help steer them through the various political dilemmas they face in a very busy parliamentary week.

Players get to decide how to work during their day and keep voters and party – while dealing with lobbyists, ministers and the press.

Aside from the obvious snide gags about what that means they can claim for while playing the game, serious gaming is a great way of learning about a new topic.

Be interested to play this and see what it is like.

One thing I’m very clear on is how much I learn from the brilliant people [...]]]>

Twitter Friends network map

One of the things that has made me think about my course project is how to measure what I’m trying to look at: informal learning in social networking services.

One thing I’m very clear on is how much I learn from the brilliant people in my Twitter network. So how can I try to assess and measure what is going on around me?

The basic methodology for my research is to do a case study of a number of users by carrying out a content analysis over a period of time and then map these to the user intention categories outlined in Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities:

• Daily Chatter
• Conversations
• Sharing information/URLs
• Reporting news

I’ve sub divided these categries to try to assess what they are about.

Great, so that gives me content analysis of what is happening with this group of users, but doesn’t offer any idea of whether there is an opportunity for learning to take place.

My tutor Terry King switched me on to George Siemens and his work on Connectivism (and through him I got into the work of all the fab people who were talking about edupunk a while ago), so the idea from my end is to try to map the tweets on to the connectivist model.

This should give me some interesting data to have a look at.

One brilliant thing I have found, and will be testing in a pilot of the coding sheet and service, is using Googledocs forms to create a coding sheet. The thing I love about it is all the responses are poured into a spreadsheet as soon as the reply happens. And given this can be downloaded as an excel file means it is a pretty powerful tool to use.

I’ll blog about the results of that when I’ve finished it.

Then I think a spot of surveying to get some idea of what other people think, and whether my perceptions about Twitter as a great place for informal learning are being shared by others.

And I’m starting to wonder about the number of people who could use respond to a googledocs survey – could be an interesting way forward.

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Been reading a lot about Communities of Practice recently and thinking I’m not quite looking at the right thing – particularly as Wenger and Lave are talking about communities within the same organisation. But one thing that has struck me [...]]]>

Been reading a lot about Communities of Practice recently and thinking I’m not quite looking at the right thing – particularly as Wenger and Lave are talking about communities within the same organisation. But one thing that has struck me in what I have been reading is this quote:

It is life itself that is the main learning event. Schools, classrooms, and training sessions still have a role to play in this vision, but they have to be in the service of the learning that happens in the world.

Etiene Wenger

Some of the most useful things I’ve picked up in my life haven’t been in the classroom, but from outside it. – from teachers, colleagues and former colleagues, friends and passing acquaintances. This kind of informal learning is vital to what we do.

So what happens when we want to learn about our job – or practice as I suppose I should be saying – but we are already tapping our in-house communities?

The answer is, obviously, turn outside. Once we’d have to go to conferences or union/local professional body meetings.

In the age of online networks we become part of an online or virtual community.

Question of semantics

But can what I’m looking at be considered a community – even in the online sense?

Community often invokes the idea of relationships – Gemeinschaft is one definition used. But some of the interactions I’m interested in happen between people who will probably never ever meet each other.

One argument is this could be a community of interest, or again community of practice – but what I’m thinking doesn’t fit in with what I’ve been reading of Wenger and Lave’s work.

Brown and Duguid, on the other hand, suggest that what is happening here is a network of practice.

In their book The Social Life of  Information they define networks of practice as:

networks that link people to others whom they may never get to know, but who work on similar practices.

Ok, now I feel I’m getting somewhere. They go on to add that networks of practice:

• Share practice and knowledge
• Usually have indirect links
• Members don’t interact with one another directly to any significant degree

They further say:
Collectively such social systems don’t take action and produce little knowledge. They can, though, share information relating to the members’ common practices quite efficiently.

Brown and Duguid believe that new information technologies “are well suited to support, develop and even strengthen… networks of practice. The growing reciprocity available on the the Net, while probably underused at the moment (bearing in mind they copy I’ve got was written in 2000), is helping people separated by space maintain their dense interrelations.”

So, back to Twitter then

My Twitter network can be broken down into a number of smaller networks, two of which are practice based: journalism and e-learning.

These networks do share practice and knowledge. But we do have direct links, and the ability to talk directly to each other, and there is a significant amount of interaction among various members of the networks on a very informal basis – kind of like being in a kitchen at a party. And like the kitchen party it isn’t considered rude to join in with other people’s chats.

I’d argue that tools like Twitter allow this reciprocity that was missing under Web 1.0, which in turn allow these interrelations to develop.

It does allow sharing of knowledge and I’d argue, at least in the case of people like @paulbradshaw, the generation of knowledge. But yes, this efficient sharing of information is crucial.

Admittedly Twitter is just one part of our online environment, just one tool that allows us to share, generate, discuss and reflect on the changes happening around us. But it is an interesting tool for a community/network to use to talk in both the professional and personal domain, and can be used to notify of developments using links – before we even get onto the idea of micro-reflection on events.

And as well as being able to share what we develop from our personal news environment or personal learning environment, the definition depends on which of my networks you come from, with our wider offline communities of practice – those of us who use social tools are often keen to meet each other.

Interestingly the strength of the interaction and its immediacy does mean that it doesn’t feel awkward when we meet in World 1.0 – for example I’d never met @adders, @shanerichmond or @foodiesarah offline until recently, but what was really our first meeting was actually just another way for us to carry on our chats.

So maybe, we are in the process of building some kind of community of practice that spans the online and offline worlds, spans company and (in some cases) national borders and allows us to talk and share with those who are interested in the same fields of practice as ourselves. Maybe it gives us a social life where we can share and learn while reflecting and sharing jokes (this means you @jemimakiss) during our normal life. Try explaining that one to your boss.

Not bad in 140 characters really.

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I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and find it a really useful place to hang out – mostly because of the easy access to such an interesting network of people [...]]]> I’ve been thinking more about my project and have sorted out what I’m going to be looking at.

I’ve been on Twitter for a while now and find it a really useful place to hang out – mostly because of the easy access to such an interesting network of people (that means you if you’ve come here from twitter).

I’ve been learning a lot in a number of fields – my network consists of journalists, elearning types, developers and just plain interesting folks – and this kind of informal learning where the network shares information and ideas really interests me.

One of the key issues for me is a how a group of like-minded professionals (or people with a shared interest) can use a web 2.0 service to share developments and use Twitter as part of a personal learning network. So that, in a nutshell, is what I’m interested in.

As a journalism trainer, I’m obviously interested in how this can be used by journalists (although as an elearning type I’m also interested in this area too). But I’m going to do a case study based around journalists.

I’ve spoken to a couple of people and asked if they mind being part of a case study (they kindly said yes!) and I’ll be contacting some more in the near future.

And in the meantime I’m doing the reading on communities, learning, communities of practice and more!

Just attended my first group supervision session in Second Life, a very strange session which left me wanting to get to grips with the virtual world a little bit more.

Not sure I’m a big fan yet, but I [...]]]>

Just attended my first group supervision session in Second Life, a very strange session which left me wanting to get to grips with the virtual world a little bit more.

Not sure I’m a big fan yet, but I can see the possibilities of doing lectures for distance courses in Second Life – there’s a video to come of the University of Portsmouth’s island and one of the lecture theatres that has been built there.

One of the oddest things was that I’m on a course with people I’ve never actually met – although we have seen each other through vid chat – so the idea of their avatars didn’t seem overly weird.

Their names were odd and one of our group was a blue monster (he of the long blue dangly tail in the pic) – he is a school teacher and let his students design the avatar themselves, a very brave thing to do and quite cool too. I developed avatar envy, that’s my back you can see in the image.

It felt, at first, like a very posh IM session – but we soon got over that. Not sure I want to spend the time required to really get to grips with the environment, but we are going back for more.

Partiularly interesing is one of my group is going to be doing a build project for her assignment – something I’m really looking forward to seeing.

Been getting my Web 2.0 (f)utility belt together, because it is time to start working on the final research element of my elearning technologies course.

So far, my kit involves Zotero for storing articles ready for citation. The main problem is it isn’t web-based (and I’ve [...]]]>

To the research mobile

Been getting my Web 2.0 (f)utility belt together, because it is time to start working on the final research element of my elearning technologies course.

So far, my kit involves Zotero for storing articles ready for citation. The main problem is it isn’t web-based (and I’ve tried moving libraries between different machines before and it gets quite messy) – so I’m going to be using a new tag in my del.icio.us account – Msc08. I can then import that into Zotero and use the plugin to export the citation to my word processor, the excellent Neo Office (Open Office for Mac).

I’ve also set up a Twitter hashtag #msco8 to track any thoughts that crop up as I’m going around my daily life – one of the great things about Hashtags is it gives you the added advantage of a digital memory for Twitter, great things memes.

I also set up a tumblr log to keep track of a number of RSS feeds, at the moment just tracking edupunk as a general term. Not quite got it right yet as the Dapper RSS feed I created for a Flickr tag keeps returning empty values. I’ll have a crack at a Yahoo pipe next.

Question: web 2.0 + learning community=edupunk?

After reading about Edupunk via Stephen Downes, Jim Groom and Martin Weller I’m quite intrested in the idea of exploring how students can use Web 2.0 tools to support their own learning – PLE /Loosely-coupled teaching/ Edupunk.

The idea of choosing your own tools and even having some suggested by your tutor (thanks Emma and Terry) appeals to me greatly. The ability to form an ad hoc toolkit, with different tools for different jobs seems a logical way forward to me – because learning doesn’t happen in the classroom. That’s where ideas are presented, or even some would say constrained.

Community matters

The added advantage to using Web 2.0 tools is there is also the potential of support from a wider community that uses them – something I’m finding a lot with my social web weapons of choice. There are a lot of very generous people who are happy to share, and who are interested in engaging with things sent to them in return.

So – here we go: can a group of learners using Web 2.0 tools (I’m pretending Web 3.0 isn’t on the horizon at this early stage ;D) develop/become part of a learning network? Or am I looking at tools and ways of fostering a learning community, or even can I encourage my learners to become edupunks?

Not really the research question I’m looking at, but gives an idea of what I’m thinking at the moment.

Time to go and do that lit review.

Update: I’ve created a Mento category Msc08 which will feed del.icio.us in turn

Alison, who blogs over at Headlines and Deadlines, has taken a look at the cycle from gathering to publication and follow-up and comparing web 1.0 to web 2.0.

I had no idea when I started doing this how [...]]]> Spot of essential reading from Alison Gow for anyone interested in journalism, education or journalism education.

Alison, who blogs over at Headlines and Deadlines, has taken a look at the cycle from gathering to publication and follow-up and comparing web 1.0 to web 2.0.

I had no idea when I started doing this how thin the ‘old’ opportunities for investigating stories would look compared to the tools at our disposal now; it’s quite stark really. It drives home just how important mastering these tools is for journalists as our industry continues to develop and change.

Headlines and Deadlines

This is a quote you will see all over the place (Paul Bradshaw switched me on to this via his Twitter stream and he used this quote in his blog post) – because it is very astute. The Web 2.0 services Alison talks about are important tools that are vital to all sorts of people – you’ll see the same things being talked about in edupunk, eduwomble, PLE, loosely-coupled teaching.

Alison’s point is major – things have changed in a major way and educators need to understand we are getting the point. I’m in the middle of putting together resources on Web 2.0 for my students, so this has been a great little fillip for me.

If you don’t get why WEb 2.0 is such a big deal here’s a a video by Digital Ethnographer Dr. Michael Wesch.