FLOSSE Posse

First Monday is probably the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. Since its start in 1996 I have been a reader of the journal. In the First Monday’s archives there are several articles that really have shaped my thinking on the Internet and the Web.

The current volume (Volume 14, Number 2 – 2 February 2009) that was just published comes with an article I wrote with my colleagues, Tere Vadén and Juha Suoranta.

I would love to hear your comments on the article on this blog or somewhere else. Let me know, thanks!

The article is here:

Learning in and with an open wiki project: Wikiversity’s potential in global capacity building

Abstract

There is a chance that Wikiversity will become the Internet’s free university just as Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia on the Internet. The building of an educational entity demands considering a number of philosophical and practical questions such as pedagogy and organization. In this paper we will address some of these, starting by introducing several earlier approaches and ideas related to wikis’ potential for education. We continue by presenting three commonly used metaphors of learning: acquisition, participation and knowledge creation. Then we will present the main principles of two existing alternative educational approaches: free adult education and free school movement. To test these educational approaches and practices on Wikiversity and increase our understanding of the possibilities of this initiative, in the spring of 2008 we implemented an experimental course in Wikiversity. We conclude with several recommendations essentially advocating for Wikiversity and the use of wikis in education. However, more than just presenting our opinions, as authors we aim to make an educated — traditionally and in the wiki way — contribution to the international discussion about the future of education for all in the digital era.

Media Lab Helsinki demo day is a one day event taking place twice a year – every autumn and spring, in the end of the semester. During the demo day the students and faculty are presenting some of their projects done during the semester. Demo day is as old traditions as the Lab, found in 1993.

Long time before the “unconference boom” the demo day has been its own kind of unconference with 5-10 minutes lighting talks / Pecha Kucha and try it yourself booths.

I couldn’t make it this year to the demo day, because of traveling. The program looks interesting. It looks that the projects that were presented can be categorized to be art, product design, cultural heritage, activism, games etc. The technology trends seems to be physical computing, gesture interfaces, electronics, sensory data, mobiles, etc. What is also characteristic in many of the projects is the design methodology used: most of the projects are strongly relying on the co-design and participatory design approaches. Media Lab Helsinki is on the side of the people.

I put up here seven project I must take a closer look when back in Helsinki:

(1) Clip Kino Helsinki – self-organizing screening events of short video clips and documentaries found online.

The “movement” has an interesting pedagogical statement:

“This is ‘direct action’ media literacy: What media is online? Who is watching it? What does it mean to them, and indeed to you? Where does the video clip come from? How was it produced and distributed? Has it inspired copies, remixes or derivatives? The activity can be a practical and critical education of intellectual property (IP) issues and the emerging configurations of public-private space.

(2) ‘ShapeShifting’ media software

ShapeShifting is a package of tools designed to produce new forms of storytelling that broadband will enable. The tools were developed within a series of experimental productions.

“If theatres have plays, books have novels and television has programmes – what does broadband have? What is the new storytelling for broadband?”

(3) Krutdurken educational game.

The Krutdurken game is a combination of history lesson and strategy war game taking place in the context of the Finnish War (1908-1909). I am rather critical about the “edutaiment” idea, all in all – there are too few good examples. I also think that engaging computer game can be used for educational purposes but a game should not be designed to be primary “educational”.

There are many examples of computer games that can be used in education. The SIMs and the Civilization are the most obvious examples of these. So, one should not design the game to be “educational” but one may design the game to be “serious”. When the game is serious it can be educational, too.

A Danish company called Serious Games is doing exactly this. They have very interesting two games out: Global Conflicts: Palestine and Global Conflicts: Latin America.(Link via Petri Lankoski)

In the case of Krutdurken it looks that the “educational aims” have overtook the game design objectives. This is common, especially when the client is more interested in education and less on gaming. I assume this has been the case with the Krutdurken game, too. The client was The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS). However, kudos for the SLS for doing the project.

(4) Zipiko – broadcast your intentions

Zipiko is a service to share your plans with your friends with mobile phones. The people behind the the Zipiko talk about “intention broadcasting”. I like the concept. I assume the experience where you are planning to do something but finally do not do it, because you do not find company to join you, is in some level universal. At least it often happens to me. Would broadcasting my intentions to my whole social network be a solution to this? Maybe – this is what Zipiko people think.

“Intention Broadcasting is the process of sharing your plans and intentions via mobile and IT systems. It has similarities to status messaging but with the emphasis on the future.”

When looking and thinking the Zipiko from the point of view of learning I see it as a potential tool to enhance informal learning among people who have large and heterogeneous social networks. In this kind of network, with the help of ZIpiko you could organize meetings with people from whom you could learn something and for whom you may teach something. Having a large and heterogeneous social network is then another issue. To have this one must have tolerance, understanding and openness to difference cultures, sub-cultures and life-styles. All different – all equal.

(5) Rope as Mind Mapping

This project does not have anything yet online but the description of it is very interesting. I would love to try this in learning context. Let’s see.

“Rope is a prototype of a gesture based mind mapping tool. It tries to improve the convenience of other tools which exist today. It could also be used for bookmarking, video/photo collections, script writing.

(6) Nokia . Expand – a mobile school communication device for children in developing regions of the world

Nokia . Expand is another project without web presence, yet. The fact that they do not yet have anything online makes it even more interesting. I have been meeting several times with Anna Keune, the designer strongly involved in the project, and know that they have some great ideas. I hope they are recycling some of these ideas too:

(Critical) history of ICT in education – and where we are heading? – June 23, 2005

Mobile phones for learning – September 01, 2005

Wlan device for school children – January 19, 2007

Deschooling society with free phone calls – Skype on your mobile phone – February 13, 2007

The Edu-Mobile: GSM/GPRS, radio, e-book/wiki/blog reader/writer, USB – June 18, 2007

Thank you OLPC – Maybe now we may start to talk about education again – January 14, 2008

Handheld Learning Solution – January 15, 2008

OLPC, personal computer, web browser and connectivity – May 06, 2008

(7) Co-designing Media Lab

This is a real “eating one’s own dog food” project. In Media Lab we keep on talking about co-design and participatory design. The project is aiming to re-design our physical facilities with a help of video cameras and Fusion platform – a P2P collaborative video editing tool.

I can’t wait to see how the Lab will be when I am back in Helsinki.

A friend, Mikko Mäkelä, came up with an idea of new Olympic sport. It would be called “Peace Walk”. In it five representatives from each nation would walk 20 kilometers and have a chat about what ever they want to talk about: politics, religion, everyday life issues, etc. It could be a great counter weight for the commercialism of the Olympics and could open up discussion on topics that are not today discussed openly in the Olympics. No winners, just interesting discussion.

I love the idea, but would like to add in it some more “education” and “media” thinking. First of all, I would call the sport “Knowledge Building Olympics” or “Knowledge Building Walk”. I assume you all know what is knowledge building. The actual sport would be the same 20 kilometers walking with discussion, but more focused topics and documentation for further use online.

The themes of the discussions could be the articles of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To make it knowledge building some technology should be used to capture the discourse for further development. Each participant would have a microphone attached to them and a camera would follow all the participants all the time. The viewers of the event could choose who or what discussion they follow and later one could watch the discussions from the recordings available online. The online community could transcribe the discussions, translate them, make sub-titles, categorize them and discuss more about them.

So, what could we get out of this? I think it could bring discussion on the world most crucial topics in to the global media – among the Olympics. All major new channels would report what kind of ideas the participants have present during the walk. The event would be in the news, because it would be part of the Olympics. Would it be really that wrong to use Olympics to get attention on these issues? I don’t think so.

If you haven’t seen this, you should. International Philosophy: Deutschland – Giechenland.

I have tried to keep this blog free from “funny blog posts”. This is an exception.

I got the link to the video from my boss. I guess he sent it to me because I just returned from a seven-month visit to California.

If you didn’t know it yet we are involved in this “education business” here in Helsinki. We are running this Media Lab. It is a department at the University. We are luky to have a chance to work with creative people – students, designers, artists and researchers. We are doing pretty ok. I am happy to be back here. Almost feel like at home.

I have learned to like many things in US and especially in California (*. Ultimate freedom of speech is obviously one of them. On a meta level this video is about it. George Carlin’s points are relevant largely in the whole western world. The question is why people in the audience are laughing? Is anyone listening?

*) There are also many things in US that are simply impossible for me to understand, but so are there in every country – especially in Finland.

It must have been in 2005 in Pretoria when I first time met Erik Möller, a Wikimedian, who is nowadays working full time for the Wikimedia Foundation. We were both invited to a conference in South Africa to talk about open source tools for teaching and learning. I don’t even remember what did I talk in there, but I remember Erik’s talk about Wikipedia, Mediawiki engine and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Erik’s talk in 2005 was nothing special in content wise, but his passion and love on Wikipedia and his confidence of its importance had a great impact on me. Earlier same year I was in India and got a change to listen and chat a bit with Jimmy Wales – the founder of Wikipedia (and an Internet celebrity). Jimmy is a great speaker. He also loves the Wikipedia project and of course knows how great it is. Probably the most interesting character of these Wikimedian folks is anyway their real commitment to the “community”. In South Africa Erik ran away from the conference to meet the local Wikimedians, whereas in India Jimmy sometimes looked busier to find WLAN and to chat (on IRC) with the online wikimedians than paying attention on the conference taking place around him.

I am just about leaving to Wikimania 2008 – the annual “conference” of the Wikimedians. It’s an interesting event. It’s a conference and gathering of different kind of people with one common interest – “free knowledge”. What makes it really interesting is that people coming there are not really “like-minded”, as it often is in scientific conferences. In Wikimania people really have very different backgrounds and ideas. There will be people from all the continents, most likely believers of all the major religions of the world, with different political ideas and ideologies, high school students and university professors, rich and not that rich. In that sense it is better than the United Nations. But like I said, the people coming to Wikimania share one common interest: “free knowledge”.

After Wikimedia I am traveling to Helsinki. The first half of the year I have been focusing on writing in sunny Northern California, and a bit of jumping between Bogota and Palo Alto. I am really thankful for all the people who made this possible. I am, anway, very happy to return the Eurolandia and Helsinki.

In Helsinki there are two upcoming events related to the idea of “free knowledge”. The Open Research Swarm of Finland is going to have a summer meet up on August 8th. The third Konfabulaari (my favourit confernce in Finland beside the ITK) of the University of Helsinki will take place on October 8th. Konfabulaari is an unconference focusing on social media in Universities. The Konfabulaari wiki is now open for you to build the program of the event. I’ll do my best to make it to both events. They are free and everyone is welcome.

In September – early October (Oct 1—Oct 4) I will make a short trip back to US, to attend the PDC08: Participatory Design Conference. I will present there my paper “Software as Hypothesis: Research-Based Design Methodology”. On November 12-13 I will be in Barcelona giving a talk at the UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning’s 5th International Seminar. These are confirmed.

Other interesting conferences for this year, of which I am yet not exactly sure if I will make it, are the EC-TEL 08: 3rd European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning, 16. – 19. September in Maastricht, The Netherlands; and ICCCE 2008: the 16th International Conference on Computers in Education, 27. – 31. October i nTaipei, Taiwan. This year I have been working in the program committees of these conferences.

Still, in Helsinki we are planning with colleagues from the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics and Nokia Research Centre a seminar series with the theme “mobile Internet”. I am not yet sure about the exact dates, form or web presence of the events. This activity, like almost everything in a coming next two years in my work, is related to Aalto University. Aalto University is a new university uniting my University, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the previously mentioned Universities under one roof. It’s very interesting to see what will come out when we have the science and engineering, business and management, and art and design, all in one place. A riot? A better world? We will see.