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If you know me, you know that my blogging, up to recently, has been sporadic at best. Like many others I struggled not only with finding my voice but, also with figuring out the point of it all. What did I have to say that was worth reading? Who would want to read it? With many other people out there much smarter than me already blogging about the things I would blog about why should I bother? What purpose would it serve? Me? Others?

Recently I made the commitment to have another go at blogging partly spurred on by a book I'm reading on economics, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson. Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, talks about the economics of a world in which virtually anything is available and how within this ubiquitous availability there seems to be a market for everything. What Anderson found in his research is that the distribution curve virtually never drops to zero no matter how much content is out there. And it keeps being added. Someone, somewhere, out there is interested. 

Now writing a blog for a single reader does seem pointless. But what if this reader was interested enough in what I had to say to want to hire me to do some work? And what if they were in a position to do so? Now, with virtually no overhead and only an investment of time, I have a consulting opportunity. It gets interesting. And what if another person becomes interested and this leads to another opportunity, say a publication or speaking engagement? It begins to add up. Think about it. If maintaining a blog only leads to one connection a year what does that look like over the course of your career? Pretty good, huh?

I found some compelling evidence for incorporating social media into higher education in an unlikely source: a book about politics. The book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, & the Future of American Politics, puts forth the argument that, roughly, ever four decades we undergo a major political makeover. Incumbents are overwhelming ushered out and a new majority party is placed in charge. Naturally, this grassroots uprising is driven by a new generation coming of age. And interestingly enough, each generation leverages the new technology of its time to drive the change. For example, Generation Xers leveraged television as a primary source of information in a way that their Baby Boomer parents used radio.

The authors, Morley Winograd & Michael Hais, lay out in great detail how the current generation, the millennials, leveraged internet-based communication technology to drive the latest major political shift culminating with the election of Barack Obama.

But what does this have to do with higher education? The answer to this lies in where Millennials are going for information and how they make decisions and act upon that information. For example, in their report of the 2006 election the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that Millennials are twice as likely to use the net to get political information. The report goes on to suggest that within the next several election cycles the net will become the source of political news. (Rainie & Horrigan 2007). Even when they turn to traditional broadcast sites, such as television programs, they are accessing them online whenever possible. The authors point out how Barack Obama's appearance on ESPN Monday Night Football became a YouTube sensation.

Millennials also rely heavily upon each other to find out what's happening. Of particular note are the "Influentials", those individuals whose opinions matter to a lot of others. Winograd & Hais detail how the Democratic Party leveraged the opinions of the Influentials to spur the Millennials into action. This was done through friending in MySpace and Facebook, which had an exponential effect on membership growth. Participants were invited to check out interactive web spaces where you could help shape the platform or get a widget that you could drop into your own web space.  Participants were encouraged to create multimedia testimonials and place them on YouTube. And offered other ways to get involved with the campaign. The result was an energized block of voters that generated a lot of buzz around the candidates. Additionally, record amounts of campaign contributions were received via internet participation, not through large donations but through the contributions of a large amount of people.

The increase in access to broadband is going to further enhance the ability of Millinnials to seek out their preferences via the internet. It is incumbent upon us to make sure that we are available where they are from recruitment through graduation.

This is a video response to Cole's second question concerning community.

My colleagues and I have been grappling with the idea of what it means to be a literate person in the new millennium.  The discussion began in the fall and has carried through the Digital Commons tailgate and the latest All-ID meeting. It's been an interesting and lively discussion in part because we're all coming at it from different perspectives and are arriving at an understanding that is multifaceted to say the least. What follows is an attempt at organizing my thoughts into a coherent understanding of what I think of when I think of 21st literacy.

Digital Literacy is an understanding of how we communicate in the 21st century where conversations are very likely to take place in multimodal formats using personal, mobile devices in conjunction with collaborative webs tools. The definition of digital literacy is similar to the definition of literacy as designated by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),  which states, "'Literacy' is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." The shift occurs at the end where "printed and written materials"" are replaced or supplanted by multimedia formats such as video, audio and images used in conjunction with text in an electronic format. So a definition of digital literacy could be "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use multimedia materials in varying contexts.

Being digitally literate requires the ability to both consume and create information using digital media, both hardware and software.  Hardware items include computers but, perhaps more importantly, personal mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and iPods and other MP3 players. Hardware items also encompass the means of transporting data such as mobile broadband networks and bandwidth limitations. Due to their cost and improvements in the user-interface and application capabilities, personal mobile devices are quickly becoming the preferred communication platform. Software primarily refers to the collaborative web-based tools that are, for the most part, free and require no installation of an application or drivers on the part of the user.

What are the characteristics of Digital Conversations? Instead of a one-way conversation that was primarily text based, new conversations now take place that combine multiple modes of communication including movies, images, audio, and text. These conversations involve participants who are actively involved in the information creation and response process where they build upon or interpret each other. People respond to each other by taking the original content, interpreting it,  and then creating a new meaning and making it available for additional review and interpretation. These conversations tend to take place in open forums where anyone can participate. Social networks are then formed around people with similar interests.

As educators we need to understand the interrelationships between user-hardware-software that enable this type of conversation to take place. This involves an understanding of both the hardware, in particular the trend of hardware to become smaller, more personal, and handle increasing amounts of computing power, as well as the web-based software applications that enable multi-modal kinds of conversations. We also need to begin to shift perspective from a conversation being organized around a single application to an network organized around the interest of its members.

This video blog was done in response to Cole Camplese's video posting asking, "How do you define community?" For me, the definition of what makes a community has not changed from the one anthropologists have been using for over a hundred years. That is, a community is a collection of individuals who are held together by common interests and proximity. Well, at least the first part of that statement has not changed. But what has changed is the notion of proximity.




Originally proximity meant geography. In order to be a member of a community you had to reside close enough to one another to experience the sense of intimacy required that transforms a collective into a community. Over time advances in travel and communication technologies allowed us to expand our notions of space and time. For example, I can travel by car or plane to meet with other members of my community. Or we could write letters and talk on the phone and sustain that sense of being connected.

Then the world wide web came along and, in some sense, obliterated the constraints of space and time. It's immediacy gratifies us. It makes it possible for me to feel just as close with other members of my community who are spread around the globe as I feel with the people my office adjoins.

For me, the big takeaway from the NMC conference was the crystilization of this thought: Images, both still and moving, are fast becoming our primary means of communication. You see this phenomenon in higher education where multi media projects are not only commonly accepted as demonstration of learning by instructors but instructors are getting in on the act themselves. Witness some of the  incredible work of Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography project. Or the work by our own faculty and students. In fact, many universities are rolling out digital media centers to support the work of students and instructors.  We see this in popular culture where "conversations" take place via the mashing-up of video clips, music, and images as people build on one another's creations and post them to places like YouTube. At the symposium, Lessig talked about digital media as the preferred means of communications amongst the young digital natives and the pressure this brings to bear on the copyright laws, which were written for another age.

I saw an excellent demonstration of this in a pre-conference workshop by Beth Harris and Steve Zucker from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Using image and video collaboration tools, (this example uses Cozimo but they also used other tools), they built a shared understanding of various works of art with their students by annotating the image in real time (both synchronously and asynchronously).


What struck me was how the image went from being talked about to being worked on. And it wasn't so much the tools they were using but how they were using them to communicate. In many examples throughout the conference  an image or a video was the primary vehicle of communication. This was true regardless of whether the conversation was started by the students or the instructor. And regardless of whether the work was an original creation or an existing piece. The next layer of communication could be described as microblogging, short declarative sentences and interrogative questions whether done directly on the piece or using another medium such as Twitter. It was not until the third layer of communication where "traditional" expanded text-based narrative kicked in. At this stage of the conversation text was used for reflection, expanded narration, and for summary. This could be in the format of a term paper but more often as a blog post. And sometimes delivered via audio. In fact it is not uncommon  for the entire conversation to take place within the first and second levels with students building on each others work in response to one another.



This of course raises several challenges. If this is the way of communication, how do we build an educational infrastructure that supports it? Questions of tools, their availability, bandwidth, an education all need to be addressed. How do we aggregate content spread out over several mediums. Many of which our in the public realm and could, theoretically, disappear at any moment in time. How can this content be archived in a way that is meaningful and retrievable? How do we evaluate student contribution and measure learning in a collaborative environment?

We've begun addressing these questions but there is still much work to be done.

Since arriving at Princeton on Tuesday I've had the opportunity to participate in several different events (a couple of workshops, a reception, a plenary address and a presentation. And I've noticed a common theme bubbling up from all of them. That is, we are all fundamentally story tellers.

I was all set to write my latest essay, Small Pieces Loosely Swained, when I cam across Michael Wesch's posts  discussing something he refers to as the "Digital Database of the Mundane." Loosely defined this database is the aggregation of our movements on the web. (I highly recommend reading his posts on this here and here.) In his posts Wesch talks about the unintentional trail of information we leave behind as we maneuver around the web. And how easy some technologies make it to aggregate this information. Specifically, he mentions radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and two-dimensional (2D) barcodes.

RFIDs are data chips that can be implanted in most anything. Some are active meaning they transmit data, such as the ones shipping companies use to track packages. While others are passive. They do not transmit data but rather are read by something like a scanner. For example, my neighbors had one implanted into their pet boxer, Roxy. If she ever gets lost any vet with a scanner can pull up her contact information. 2D barcodes are barcodes that store information both horizontally and vertically. Thus they are able to contain a lot more detail than uni-dimensional barcodes. For example, I could have a digital identification card attached to all or selected movements on the web that contains demographic information about me that can easily be transferred and read by other parties. It is technologies like these that make possible the idea of having a 'digital wallet' where all our pertinent information is stored and encrypted to be used for things as mundane as renewing you library books online to purchasing expensive gifts. But that's a topic for another post to come.

Getting back to Wesch, he's an anthropologist at Kansas who along with his students are  exploring the digital trails we leave behind in a new and exciting field called digital ethnography. The genesis of this field of study comes from Sandy Pentland and the MIT Media Laboratory. In 2005 Nathan Eagle and Pentland published a study in Reality Mining. Reality Mining is the ability to identify social patterns of individuals and groups by tracking the ways in which they access and use information. Including the context in which they are doing it. Pentland and Eagle used Blue Tooth enabled mobile phones to monitor the activity of about 100 MIT students and professors. From this data they were able to create a model of the research subjects social networks and use the model to predict where the subjects would meet with other members of their network on any given day of the week. Read their paper here.

This has powerful implications for those of us interested in studying the digital neighborhoods of our students to understand how to better connect with them. Digital Neighborhoods, as defined by me, are the personal spaces we create on the web through the aggregation of hyperlinks. Where proximity is determined by each individuals unique and ever-changing interests. The more I am interested in something the 'closer' is will be in relation to me digitally. In other words, if I like something I make it easy for me to access either through bookmarks or links from my own pages. With reality mining I can not only study where we go and how we present ourselves on the web we I can also now see physically where we're doing this and anticipate the outcomes of the interaction. Reality mining adds another layer that we can study further blurring the line between our web selves and our terrestrial selves. In fact it may obliterate it.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my digital neighborhood. The premise behind the post was that the line between my digital self and my terrestrial self had become blurred to the point of non-existence. They are all pieces of the same 'me' that I put forth. As a result of this self-revelation I became more cognizant of the multiple pieces of myself that I put forward in whatever realm (see My Multiple Selves). Jim Phelps wrote an excellent response to my digital neighborhood post asking how we as educators can leverage this concept to reach our students (see Digital Neighborhoods - Guiding Design). Jim suggests that, "we need to think about our users’ current digital neighborhoods and how we can integrate our new applications and services into those neighborhoods." I agree with Jim. Distance on the web is determined by links and the closer you are to your clientèle the better. For us that means being where our students are.

This also got me thinking about what it looks like on the other side. I manage the Technology Learning Assistant program (TLA) at University Park. This is a program designed to match up kids (both undergrad and graduate students) who want real world consulting experience with faculty who desire to integrate technology into their teaching repertoire. These kids are in a unique position of still being, well, kids while also trying to strategically prepare themselves for entering the workforce. So how do they manage their digital identity? How do they manage their multiple selves so they can be kids with their friends but young adults to prospective employers? After all, most employers "Google" people they're thinking of hiring.

To help them along I'm thinking of incorporating a digital identity management component into the TLA program. My hope is to help these kids discover a sense of purpose in at least part of their web presence.  To give them an idea of when and how to be kids and when it is a good idea to put forth a more, for lack of a better word, "serious" presence. For example, Facebook is a powerful social networking service where the vibe is casual and friendly. There all all sorts of fun and quirky apps you can drop into your profile and share with your friends. But there are also professional social applications out there, such as Linkedin, where the goal is to build a professional network of contacts. And through these contacts you can land a job,  make  deals, share advice, etc.  I'm thinking of encouraging the students establish a presence on Linkedin as part of their e-portfolio.

But there is also the need to educate these kids on managing their "kid" presence. To help them understand that space and distance on the web are entirely different animals than they are in the terrestrial world. I think most of us get this in theory but practicing it is another thing. For example, the part of the 'self' a TLA displays while working with a client is a distinctly different than the self she will display hanging out with friends. And that's how it should be. We understand how to act appropriately in each scenario and since these situations are naturally distinct, separated by both time and distance, the world runs smooth. However, the laws of time and space on the web don't operate like that.

Once an individual is 'found' on the web then practically everything about them that exists there is only a click or two away. Sure I may put a link to my Linkedin profile on my CV and strategically decide to leave my Facebook address off but, unless I lock it down, will that stop a potential employer from finding me there? Hardly. Plus who wants to lock down any social application? The inherent beauty built into them is the ability to find and be found. That's where the fun (and the power of it all) is.

So rather than teaching my TLAs the mechanics of hiding or limiting information I'm seriously thinking about having discussions around etiquette. I want to help them understand that there really is no difference between the terrestrial and the web. That they don't exist as separate planes but have now combined to create a single expanded space.  Where we generally move so freely about and between without so much as a second thought. And that's great; it's liberating. But we need to be aware of the ramifications of this freedom of movement. Gone are the  days of hiding in plain site on the web.  If somebody, such as  a prospective employer wants to find you, they will.

I'm not preaching doom-and-gloom or prescribing self-censorship. Personally, when I self-censor I grind to a halt and all creativity dies on the vine. But I do find that by exercising a little self-discipline my creativity flourishes. Instead I'm thinking more along the lines of having a sense of decorum. There are ways to express all facets of your personality and them there are ways. And I am suggesting that one may be better than the other relative to your aspirations.

I first encountered the idea of working in a paperless office environment over ten years ago while working in the health care industry. I was part of a contract that offered Medicare supplement insurance and when the contract came up for bid in 1995 a new company took over. Part of this new company's vision for reducing operating costs was the implementation of a company Intranet where all our reference and training materials would be stored. I was part of the T&D department who was charged with implementing this.  And, quite honestly, it sounded like a great and timely idea. This was the time of boom in personal computing and the growth of the world wide web. Delivering and consuming information electronically seemed logical, economical, and practical. But a funny thing happened along the way to office of the future. The human element kicked in.

People began to look at paper in much the same way their grandparents viewed land during the great depression. Currency and capital were abstract concepts who derived their solve value from the trust or belief of the marketplace but land was permanent. It couldn't disappear because someone decided they didn't believe in it anymore. Flash forward fifty-odd years and workers had the similar reaction to paper. Paper was tactile. And documents on paper were official. You could wield a document. Use it as proof. Waive it in the air to make a point. And it wouldn't disappear if someone pulled the plug on the network. There was even some research that indicated the use of paper had increased as a result of the office of the future.
 
At some point in time, I don't recall a specific moment,  I resigned myself to the fact that I would always need paper and that I would work in a dual-medium environment. Until two weeks ago.

It was the week after the symposium and I was spent. For those charged with putting it on the symposium is really a nine to ten month event and those last six weeks leading up to it are frantic with activity. For me, I was pretty useless afterwards. Incapable of sustained periods of intellectual activity I decided I would clean my office.  If you haven't seen my office it can best be described as intimate. It is literally a converted storage closet. So economy of space is essential (Good thing I'm a minimalist at heart). And that's when it hit me. I was paperless.

Going through my filing cabinets I discovered I had not 'filed' anything in over a year. My weekly reports, vacation requests, projects, etc., were all online. Stored on one machine or another. On one of two external hard drives. And more and more in someone else's database (can you say Google docs?). I was able to recycle 95% of what remained. After all, do I still need that ANGEL 6.3 User Manual? (A 500+ page behemoth). We hadn't been on 6.3 for 2 years!

So I got to thinking, as I packed the Mixed Office Paper recycling bin, how I got to this point. What happened that made saving paper so superfluous? Once the Jell-O that was my mind began to firm back up it dawned on me that it wasn't so much one thin or event that brought me to this point. Rather it was several.

As electronic document creation and storage improved I was able to do more without the need of paper. We all become more comfortable working this way and 'trusting' that bits of data were just as tangible as sheets of paper. The initial promise of the company Intranet had come to fruition in it's promise of how information could be consumed. But it was more than that. I realized my need for paper had decreased because my use of it had become more specialized. Most of what I do now I do electronically. Whether it be on my laptop or even my cellphone. I've come to rely on the text feature of my phone so much I recently bought an env for the flip top keypad. I use paper mostly for very brief notes or scribbles that will grow into something more when I take them online. Because of that, the size of the paper I use has shrunk. My binder sized day planner has been replaced by a reporter's notebook. And it's not just my need for paper to capture the written word. Now the majority of my picture taking is done wit my camera phone on digital camera and again deposited online. And it's not just visual media. Not only have I moved all my music to non-tangible electronic formats. It's also how I buy it. A quick mental check leads me to think it's been two years since I bought a cd at a brick and mortar store and that was because someone had given me a gift card. My movie collection can't be far behind. This 'virtual mentality' has crept into other facets of my life where going digital isn't all that practical. I love books but I don't buy them like I used to. I rediscovered the public library when borrowing a book is much like downloading a file and when I'm finished with it I can return (read delete it). Now I buy only the books that I absolutely covet.

Yes, a funny thing happened on my way to becoming paperless. I became 'possession-less' or 'thing-less'. At least lesser. I became digital.