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Notes from the the Working Session on Open Social Learning, organized by UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning and held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 30th, 2009. More notes on this event: uocunescoosl.

Open Social Learning in Spain. Clarifying Concepts
Dolors Reig

Dolors Reig. Photo by Carlos Albaladejo

Traditional e-Learning: everything preset, all paths settled. The evolution has then been, from the web to the social web, and from the social web to the personal web (Nova Spivack).

New ideas that shape the social web:

• Intercreativity
• Collective intelligence
• Smart mobs
• Wisdom of the crowds
• Architecture of participation
• Sharism

Open Social Learning

• Digital natives: It’s problable, though, that the so-called digital natives they actually are “hanging out” online (danah boyd). Thus, the digital knowledge might not be that high within digital natives as we should expect.
• Connectivism: the Internet is so shaped to learning because it works as we do, we learn as networks, learning happens when connections are created, the ability to learn is more important than knowing, etc.
• Social learning: if markets are conversations (Cluetrain Manifesto), education and learning are also conversations, the prosumers and active students being the main characters of this era and peer-to-peer being the best way to acquire information and knowledge. From the “I think therefore I am” to the “we participate, therefore we are” (Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0).
• Informal Learning: Jay Cross states that 70-90% of corporate learning is informal. We have to enable this informal learning so that it can happen.
• e-Learning 2.0
• Generative Learning
• Communities of Learning
• Constructivism
• Edupunk

Creativity: We should be focusing in what motivates people (à la Maslow): that’s why social networking sites are so successful.

Autonomous learning: what really drives knowledge is the process, not the output.

Universal, free and democratic learning (Soumitra Dutta).

Minimally invasive education, taking the example of Sugata Mitra.

Lifelong learning, immersive learning, non-stop learning, ubiquitous learning.

An active role that is required to remix. At its turn, remixing asks for multiliteracies.

Metaverses: Augmented reality, lifelogging, etc.

Changes of roles: the student is not passive, but a participant. The teacher is a facilitator, a curator. And the information becomes a perpetual beta.

Technology becomes too a very important part of the equation: open APIs or all technologies that enable sindication (XML/RSS, Atom, etc.) are true drivers of this change.

Main conclusions

• A web simple to use
• People, collectives, interests, tags, twines, groups
• Real time web
• “If we know the exact cost, the exact agenda of a project, it is probable that it is based on an obsolete technology” (Joseph Gavin, Jr.)

In all this landscape, the e-Portfolio is very relevant, as it perfectly fits with and represents the digital persona. And, complementing to this, e-competences are the necessary tools to get on with digital life.

Q&A

Begoña Gros: We have to make an effort to link the newest technologies and applications with learning or education, and not separating them as if they belonged to different spheres. A: Agreed. Indeed, as we increasingly happen to know more and more uses of the Internet, people shift from “bad” practices (online gambling, porn, etc.) towards “good” practices (learning, communicating with peers, etc.).

Jesús Martínez: Teachers need to learn so that they keep being up-to-date and can keep on teaching. We should accelerate the process of change, of adaptation, or re-learning. A: One of the direst problems is not only that people don’t know, but that people (e.g. teachers) do not know that they do not know.

Working Session on Open Social Learning

If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

Notes from the the Working Session on Open Social Learning, organized by UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning and held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 30th, 2009. More notes on this event: uocunescoosl.

Open Social Learning en España: Diagnosis and Perspective
Rubén Díaz

Rubén Díaz. Photo by Carlos Albaladejo

Expanded education: Search for new ways of education that embed and adapt social and communicational processes that the Internet made possible.

Education can take place at every moment, in every place. Inside and outside the walls of the academic institution.

We can virtually access all the information that the whole World generates (and has generated), but: Will we have the need for that much information? (Nam June Paik, 1977). And we need to take control over the technologies that make possible the access to all that information and apply them to, for instance, Education (Noam Chomsky, 1998). Education is not, is being (Paulo Freire). Nobody knows it all, everyone knows something, all the knowledge lays on the whole humankind (Pierre Lévy). Today, the voice you speak with could not be your own voice (DJ Spooky).

Margaret Meads (Culture and Compromise) stresses the fact of the non-linearity of knowledge and how we are stuck to the books. Jesús Martín Barbero states the importance of oral and visual culture nowadays (i.e. cyberculture) in opposition with the traditional written culture of education during the last centuries.

Knowledge is delocalized. Everyone’s interested in education, and everyone’s capable of learning.

Learning takes place when solving problems by going through them using creativity. But how and why are people creative? And how can the environment negatively affect the learning environment? Is the actual educational system a learning environment that fosters creativity?

The learning environment is the source of knowledge. Active and collaborative learning environments enable learning by doing. We need to disclose communication channels so that motivation happens. We need to develop a pedagogy of the question. We are used to a pedagogy of the answer, where the teacher answers questions that the students never put (Paulo Freire).

We have to move towards the educommunication, avoiding the education of silence. Oriented self-education, expanded education. Expanded education is the communicative link between memory and remix to build the self from the world we speak from.

An adult assimilates:

• 20% of information heard
• 30% of observed
• 50% of observed and listened
• 70% of expressed by oneself
• 90% of elaborated by oneself

Experience: Platoniq’s Bank of Common Knowledge in the 3000 viviendas de Sevilla.

Q&A

Enric Senabre: What about expanded assessment? A: The problem is not only assessment, but the whole system. And we should begin with youngsters and schools, and later on with the University.

Q: what about beyond formal education? A: At Zemos98 we schedule a yearly Festival, where different people can meet different kinds of knowledge.

Silvia Bravo: If all these approaches and technologies are so evidently good, why aren’t they more pervasive? Where are we failing? A: The blame is maybe on the moral majority of the mainstream, the socioeconomic system where education is business. A second aspect is contextualization: how to use technology to work locally.

Working Session on Open Social Learning

If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

Notes from the the Working Session on Open Social Learning, organized by UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning and held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 30th, 2009. More notes on this event: uocunescoosl.

Open Social Learning?
Marc Alier

Open Learning: We use to define problems so that some structured learning outcomes happen, but problems do not usually have unique solutions, as life. If we open education, we have to be aware that problems and solutions have to be open too.

Social Learning: If we do not do nothing as a society, we do not learn as a group. The interesting thing is to participate and be engaged within the community. Social Learning is learning as a group. But it is also about learning how to be social, is about education training people to socialize and, at the same time, to define the society as is: education shapes society.

Learn in Community: Moodle as the flagship of community learning. Related with hacker ethics: passion for what you do; freedom; value and social recognition; information and knowledge accessibility; activism; social commitment.

Marc Alier. Photo by Enric Senabre Hidalgo

Open, social and hacker ethics lead us to Learning in community by doing and sharing openly.

When students are given control begin to feel confident on what they do. And things happen. People self-organize; new “solutions” or “answers” to pre-established problems/questions arise; and new knowledge emerges.

Some examples:

• Work on specific subjects but without constraints, being the output a collaborative text on a wiki + a presentation. Students take divergent directions from what one would expect, but with high quality output and high engagement.
• Collaborative (massive: circa 30 students) project management subject where the whole classroom defines a single project. Rules? Only traceability of work. Students would use all kind of web 2.0 applications to distribute roles and tasks, to schedule milestones, to distribute workload, etc. The teacher then becomes a mentor whose “sole” work is to monitor and guide the autonomous work of the students.

To be able to perform such a monitoring activity, the software needs to be prepared to do that monitoring. Tracing is a must and interoperability between applications another need so that different tools can be integrated and used during the learning (and teaching) process.

Q&A

Ismael Peña-López: what competences need teachers to become “open social learning monitors or mentors”? A: First step is accepting that the outcomes of open collaborative work is an open and unexpected outcome. And this is not a competence but an attitude. Once the teacher gives control away, they will bring in technology: the teacher does not need the technology to give it to the students, but to follow (and catch up with) them. The attitude is the key: what outcomes are you renouncing to in exchange of implication and satisfaction?

Dolors Reig: How to monitor? How to evaluate? How to make quantify performance? A: The important thing in technology is how you are going to evaluate, and then design the software. If the evaluation model is clear, technology should not be an issue… provided it is free software and you can edit its code and add new features.

Ismael Peña-López: Can we really always renounce to part of our syllabus, of our planned content? A: Are exams a real way to assess learning? Or are we teaching students to pass exams? If we want to transform the society we don’t need knowledge, we need abilities and competences. We need not to teach knowledge but to teach how to acquire new knowledge and to have a critical attitude towards the knowledge we reach.

Jesús Martínez: How do we cope with competition (in education and in society at large)? With inertias? A: The educational system is at stake, so inertias can be broken down in pieces if this is the general will or the general trend.

Working Session on Open Social Learning

If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

The next 5th Internet, Law and Political Science Congress has been scheduled for 6th and 7th July 2009. Organized by the School of Law and Political Science at the Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain), the event has evolved into an interesting forum where it is highlighted what’s happening nowadays in the fields of law and cyberlaw, intellectual property rights, privacy, data protection, freedom, political engagement, politics 2.0, empowerment, etc.

Aimed to both researchers and practitioners, during the four editions that we’ve been running the congress, we’ve had here people the like of Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey, Eben Moglen, Helen Margetts, Lillian Edwards, Yves Poullet, Erick Iriarte, Stephano Rodota or Benjamin Barber, among others.

The main topic this year is social networking sites (SNSs, in a broad sense). We want to have sessions were at least two speakers present opposite points of view (pros and cons). The programme (almost closed, though some changes might apply) is as follows:

• Keynote speech with James Grimmelmann, providing an analysis of the law and policy of privacy on social network sites, and an evaluation of some possible policy interventions.
• Session 1: Social Networking Sites and Individual rights, privacy, intellectual property rights, image rights, intimacy…,
  chaired by Raquel Xalabarder and featuring Jane Ginsburg, Antoni Roig and Alain Strowel.
• Session 2: Data protection and SNSs,
  chaired by Mònica Vilasau and featuring Franck Dumortier, Esther Mitjans and Maya Nieto
• Session 3: Access to public information and SNS
  chaired by Ismael Peña-López and featuring José Manuel Alonso, Jordi Graells, and one/two more speaker(s) TBC.
• Session 4: Policies for a secure Internet,
  chaired by Agustí Cerrillo and featuring Salvador Soriano Maldonado and Nacho Alamillo.
• Session 5: Public participation and SNSs,
  chaired by Ana Sofía Cardenal and featuring Rachel Gibson (TBC), José Antonio Donaire and Ricard Espelt.

Daithí Mac Sithigh will be the official reporter of the event, providing, at the end of each day, a summary of the main subjects dealt in that day’s sessions.

More information

• Official website: http://www.uoc.edu/symposia/idp2009/engl/index.html
• Dates: 6th and 7th July 2009
• Venue: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Rambla de Catalunya, 6, Barcelona, Spain
• The event is free.
• Official tags: idp2009 and idp
• Liveblogging at: Lexferenda and ICTlogy
• Event in Facebook (Spanish)
• Event in Facebook (English)
• Notes and videos from the 4th Internet, Law and Political Science Congress (2008)
• Notes from the 3rd Internet, Law and Political Science Congress (2007)

Live notes at the eResearch seminar by Antonio Lafuente (CSIC) and Ismael Peña-López (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) entitled e-Research: oportunidades y desafíos para las ciencias sociales (e-Research: opportunities and challenges for social sciences). Citilab, Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona), Spain, May 14th, 2009.

See also e-research tag.

Open Science and expanded authority
Antonio Lafuente

Open Science

What is open science? Can science not be open? Are we the product of the scientific revolution or is it the scientific revolution a product of the modern era?

The scientific revolution during the XVII and XVIII centuries was not about a dire change in methodology, but opening the process and results of science, making them public and transparent, opening knowledge to many. And it does seem now that we’re revisiting that era again, threatened by the menace of a closure of science.

During these centuries, a new character appears in science: the fact. And, with it, quantification and measurement of phenomena. But then the possibility appears too to register and appropriate knowledge through intellectual property rights. This leads to a process of privatization of knowledge (and universities…).

Threatening knowledge

We live in a Damoclesian era (Moran), scared masses are easier to lead/manage.

On the one hand, there are increasingly powerful lobbying activities that include positioning “experts” in supposedly independent scientific committees, with manifest conflict of interests. Neutrality, thus, is at stake.

Second, secrecy is a growing practice of which there’s evidence to be dragging the efficiency of the practice of science.

The crisis of peer review, affecting the “market” of scientific reputation, which, at its turn, affects tenures, prizes, grants… and indeed most policy-making and decision-taking depends on expertise and reputation.

Endogamy of citation procedures creates a resonance where most articles state the same discoveries but rely, aggregately, in just a few of them. Thus, there is few practice and experimentation and most (vague) citation and repetition of preceding literature, reinforcing — instead of testing or refuting — ungrounded (or poorly grounded) discoveries.

The speed of times also plays havoc on the slow path that science needs.

Uncertainty — or risk, according to Ulrich Beck — also requires more open and collaborative science, as the complex is too difficult to handle by few scientist working together.

Examples of Open Science

Innocentive: a community “to broadcast problems”. Innocentive has put into practice disperse and multidisciplinary talent.

Scott Page: The Difference, with examples of “why 1+1 is not 2″, or how to join efforts in solving problems.

The US Patent System: Not only the system has to grant patents, but research the prior art of the submitted patent application. But the prior art is so huge, that it just cannot be tracked. To solve this, a peer-to-patent project has been created: when a patent is submitted, it is published and whoever is affected by it (i.e. has some prior rights to what the patent claims) can object to that new patent application.

Electrosensibilidad: 13,000,000 Europeans state being electrosensible, meaning that electrostatic waves disable people to work and even live comfortably. But this “disease” is not acknowledged as so. A citizen platform has been created continent wide to share knowledge in order to define the symptoms, the consequences and force governments to acknowledge this disease.

Open Access: is a claim from scientist to recover an image of people working for the common good. The idea is that all knowledge publicly funded should be made public — and not transferred to private hands by giving away intellectual property rights e.g. to publishers. Besides moral issues, open access pays back both economically and scientifically (in citations, publishing impact, etc.).

How can eResearch contribute to enhance Research?
Ismael Peña-López

Please see How can eResearch contribute to enhance Research?

Q & A

Adolfo Estalella: It is an acknowledged truth that most collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia, Linux) are run by minorities, though there might be a huge community around them. Is it a problem of values? or what? Antonio Lafuente: Yes, it is a matter of values. Another issue is that authority cannot be automatized and requires curation. In an open review system, there’ll be more transparency and less probability to trick. And technology can enable this. On the other hand, there are several evidences where multitudes can produce quality.

Adolfo Estallella: but, will everyone review everything they read? how can we engage readers of open content to review, without explicit incentives, e.g. the papers they read? Antonio Lafuente: Maybe we should acknowledge and accredit comments and reviews, so that there is an incentive making them.

If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Contemporaneous Culture Center of Barcelona) is organizing the Research and innovation in the cultural sphere conference (I+C+i in its abbreviation in Catalan) during the whole year 2009.

On March 31, 2009, there is a session belonging to the conference entitled I+C+i. Liberty, equality and P2P, chaired by Olivier Schulbaum and I, and imparted by Michel Bauwens.

I have been invited to provide a very brief framework about the subject, so that Bauwens can go straight to the core of the issue and deal with the revolutions that P2P can bring to the creation of culture, political and civic engagement and participation or the producing economy.

So, in 10 minutes I will present the main lines of the following statements:

• Digital tools have reduced marginal costs of transactions nearly to zero, making necessary a redefinition of concepts such as firm, group, distance, original & copy, send, time, etc.
• The most important commodity in the Information Society is information. It acts as input, output and capital at the same time and it is not scarce, but abundant. Value is not embedded in itself (as, say, food) but in being able to convert it into knowledge.
• P2P is free circulation of information, based on two assumptions: information is abundant (valueless) and transactions are costless.
• There is a huge potential in P2P to foster many advancements in society — way beyond file sharing — like government and politics (goverati, citizen mashups), education (casual and distributed education, deschooled society), science (open science, eScience, eResearch, grids) or production (design & fabs, networking), just to name a few.

Follow and participate

• March 31, 2009. CCCB (El Mirador), Montalegre, 5 – 08001 Barcelona.
• Live in streaming in Open Server
• Official hashtag: #leP2P
• Michel Bauwens @ Twitter: @mbauwens
• Platoniq @ Twitter: @platoniq
• Ismael Peña-López @ Twitter: @ictlogist
• I+C+i. Liberty, equality and P2P (part II)

More information

• The Political Economy of Peer Production, by Michel Bauwens
• La economía política de la Producción entre iguales, de Michel Bauwens
• P2P Foundation
• P2P Foundation (en Español)
• Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm, by Yochai Benkler

Thanks go to Oliver Schulbaum for always counting on me.

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