Great Wiki Article by Brian Lamb

From EDUCAUSE REVIEW | September/October 2004,�Volume 39, Number 5, thanks to Stephen Downes.

It’s risky to talk about wikis as if they’re all the same. In practice, the term wiki (derived from the Hawaiian word for “quick”) is applied to a diverse set of systems, features, approaches, and projects. Even dedicated wikiheads engage in perpetual arguments about what constitutes true wikiness. But some fundamental principles (usually) apply.

• Anyone can change anything. Wikis are quick because the processes of reading and editing are combined. The signature of a wiki is a link at the bottom of the page reading “Edit text of this page” or something similar. Clicking that link produces the page’s hypertext markup, allowing instant revisions. Authoring software, permissions, or passwords are typically not required.
  
• Wikis use simplified hypertext markup. Wikis have their own markup language that essentially strips HTML down to its simplest elements. New users need to learn a few formatting tags, but only a few. Most wiki tags significantly streamline and simplify their tasks. For instance, the minimum HTML code needed to create a named hyperlink to EDUCAUSE Review online, EDUCAUSE Review, would be rendered in a wiki within square brackets. The result, [http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/EDUCAUSE Review], saves a minimum of twelve keystrokes and is significantly easier to remember. Raw URLs typically require no markup tags at all to be rendered live on a wiki page.
  
• WikiPageTitlesAreMashedTogether. Wiki page titles often eschew spaces to allow for quick page creation and automatic, markup-free links between pages within (and sometimes across) wiki systems. Linking to related pages is easy, which promotes promiscuous interlinking among wiki pages.
  
• Content is ego-less, time-less, and never finished. Anonymity is not required but is common. With open editing, a page can have multiple contributors, and notions of page “authorship” and “ownership” can be radically altered. Content “cloning” across wikis—sometimes referred to in non-wiki circles as “plagiarism”—is often acceptable. (This attitude toward authorship can make citations for articles such as this one a tricky exercise.) Unlike weblogs, wiki pages are rarely organized by chronology; instead they are organized by context, by links in and links out, and by whatever categories or concepts emerge in the authoring process. And for the most part, wikis are in a constant state of flux. Entries are often unpolished, and creators may deliberately leave gaps open, hoping that somebody else will come along to fill them in.

Mopsos - Knowledge sharing litteracy

Martin Dugage does a nice review of Jamie S. Walters' Dismantling a Culture of Knowledge-Hoarding . Walters suggests that knowledge hoarding is a cultural issue. Dugage suggests it is also a practice issue:

"If people don't share what they know, it's not only because they are better off keeping it to themselves, but also simply because they don't know how to. Knowledge sharing can be an extremely cumbersome and time-consuming process both from the giving and the taking perspective. It needs methods and tools that must be learned at three levels in the company:

1- at the sponsoring level, top managers must understand how they must walk the talk themselves
2- at the program governance level, managers must understand the social dynamics of knowledge sharing communities, especially CoPs, be genuinely interested in learning more about social networking technology, and stop focusing exclusively on challenging new ideas with business cases and ROIs
3- at the giver/taker level, people must adopt new forms of communication and behavior, and sometimes even learn again some basic writing techniques such as the three level writing of journalists (catchy title, summary, and extended text)."

A pal told me last weekend, culture eats strategy for lunch. This reminds me that practice eats culture for lunch. Or is it that practice embodies culture? I think it's the latter, even though the former sounds cooler. ;-)

wordcircle - Free collaborative learning software

wordcircle:

"Welcome to wordcircle, a collaborative learning community for teachers, students and those looking to create and conduct online web courses. Wordcircle is commercial free and available at no cost."

It is great to see more free software. Working in the NPO/NGO sector, this is critical. Now if I only had more time to test the software. And yes, this lead also came from Stephen. He's on a roll this week.

One more from Downes: Principles of Resource Sharing

Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~:

"Self-organizing systems occur when local factors at the decision-making level form global systems. We look at them, and assume there must be a hierrchy - that the queen bee or the queen ant is making the decisions. But what is happening is that each member makes decisions independently, and information is shared. This also happens in physics, when there is a form shift, say, from liquid or solid. The 'decisions' are made at the molecular level, and once one molecule shifts, it quickly spreads to all the other molecules.

In online communities, individuals may feel they don't have that much influence, but one person making a decision may influence a much larger group.

There are lots of solutions to any given problem. We tend to assume there is one best solution, but - Herbert Simon - there are many solutions, depending on various factors, such as cost, for example.

Small world networks happen naturally. Watts again. It's a lot of individuals that are hooked together, and there are some hubs. This is the six degrees of separation concept. These networks are 'scale free' - they can grow essentially without limitation. They make resource sharing very effective.

If you look at online groups, because the membership is so high, there's a pretty good chance that people will have the resource that you want. It's basically 100% - if you have 100 people or more, if the resource exists, you can get it."

How Social is Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

Stephen Downes is blogging from the ITI conference in Logan, Utah. There are some great captures from presentations about the social and technical aspects of distributed learning. I really enjoyed his post about Paul Kirschner's keynote address, "How Social is Computer Supported Collaborative Learning: Do Off-task Interactions Exist?" I would like to know more about how Kirshner defined off task interactions. I tend to see them as productive "affordances." I think he does too, thus he does not classify them as off topic, but I wasn't sure from the notes. Here is a snippet. Read the whole thing.

"Interaction and community does not occur, either in physical space or online, merely because a space is provided. Rather, what is created a set of affordances - possibilities for interaction - and these need to be understood within a social and cultural context. This social aspect of learning is as important as the cognitive, or content based, aspect, and interactions establishing a social or cultural connection - usually dismissed as off-topic - as as important as interactions having to do with content.

Another post that I reallly enjoyed was Principles of Resource Sharing by Erin Brewer.

Self-organizing systems occur when local factors at the decision-making level form global systems. We look at them, and assume there must be a hierrchy - that the queen bee or the queen ant is making the decisions. But what is happening is that each member makes decisions independently, and information is shared. This also happens in physics, when there is a form shift, say, from liquid or solid. The 'decisions' are made at the molecular level, and once one molecule shifts, it quickly spreads to all the other molecules.

In online communities, individuals may feel they don't have that much influence, but one person making a decision may influence a much larger group.

There are lots of solutions to any given problem. We tend to assume there is one best solution, but - Herbert Simon - there are many solutions, depending on various factors, such as cost, for example.

Small world networks happen naturally. Watts again. It's a lot of individuals that are hooked together, and there are some hubs. This is the six degrees of separation concept. These networks are 'scale free' - they can grow essentially without limitation. They make resource sharing very effective.

If you look at online groups, because the membership is so high, there's a pretty good chance that people will have the resource that you want. It's basically 100% - if you have 100 people or more, if the resource exists, you can get it.

Small but VERY aggravated note. Blogger keeps losing posts. I worked on this one, hit post and it never loaded. All I was able to recover was the first draft, not the final. This is happening more and more. Time to send email to blogger!

APQC's Knowledge Management Blog

Farida Hasanali is currently focusing on communities of practice. APQC's Knowledge Management Blog. He has talked so far about leadership and community activities. Borrowing a term from IMD professor and researcher Martha Mazinevski, events are a manifestation of a community's heart beat. Farida shares some views -- many of which align with my experience, but I continue to cringe at the assumption that starting F2F is the best way to go. I continue to observe that communities which are primarily distributed do more in the distributed environment if they start there, then get their first impressions validated at a F2F.

Reinvigorate - Time Zone Referrer Map

I was playing around with Reinvigorate's stats and found this one, looking at the time zone origin of hits on my site today.

Junkyard Sports� The Book by Bernie DeKoven

My online pal Bernie DeKoven (of DeepFun fame) has a new book: Junkyard Sports� The Book:

"For those familiar with the 'Cooperative Sports' or 'New Games' movements this is not a new message. What is new is the idea of getting participants to design new games that they can then enjoy playing and adapting as they go. The idea of adapting popular sports provides a handy short cut - and appeals to the subversive in us all.
Because Junkyard Sports encourages players' own creativity, the process described in the opening pages could lead to hundreds of new games. Just in case they don't, you will find that most of the book is dedicated to describing ready-made and ready-to-play games - 77 games in all. These are called 'demonstration' games. This active initiation into Junkyard Sports inspires participants to create and try out their own games."

More play!

Appreciative Inquiry Virtual Conference

Next month I'll be volunteering at the Second International Appreciative Inquiry Conference to help weave together the F2F and online components. I wanted to make sure everyone interested in AI but unable to go to Miami knows about the fabulous virtual conference the AI team has put together.

Appreciative Inquiry Consulting LLC is committed to making Appreciative Inquiry accessible to people around the globe. We are pleased to invite you to the ONLINE version of our Second International Conference, where you can participate both in real time AND on your own time before, during and after the Miami conference. Designed to integrate with the live conference, the online and face-to-face conferences will be held concurrently and the online doors will remain open after the Miami conference is over.

Your experience will include:

• Live chats with on-line hosts, participants and presenters
  
• On-demand video and audio streaming of the key plenary sessions(Discovery, Dream, Design, Destiny)
  
• On-demand streaming Application Roundtable sessions telling stories of AI in real-world situations
  
• Threaded discussions to contribute your perspective on a variety of topics and themes that correspond to the Miami conference agenda and those that emerge from the online dialogue
  
• Digital photo galleries of Miami conference events…and the opportunity to share your own photos and drawings
  
• Live weblogs from on-site reporters...including the ability for you to share perspectives and ask questions
  
• Access to the conference environment for two months—one month prior to the face-to-face event and one month after so you can take full advantage of all the online conference has to offer

Fast Company | Time [Zone] Travelers

I found this article interesting as it reflects the reality I am seeing
with my clients and my work. The agility to work globally, interculturally,
cross platform is a key skill. Online facilitation is part of it -- there
are little threads all through this article. Take a peek.Time [Zone] Travelers:

"After a dozen years and five previous Olympic Games, Philipps and Atos understand more about what it takes to succeed as a global business than most companies that boast about being 'borderless enterprises.' Collaborating across time zones, geographical distances, and cultural chasms is second nature to Atos. It's just the air that Philipps and his colleagues breathe. That kind of global fluidity -- rising above the jet lag and language differences to make things happen -- is quickly emerging as an essential (but rare) competitive edge.
[snip]

Global all-stars like Atos, GE Healthcare Technologies, and Plantronics, the world's largest maker of telephone headsets, aren't global merely because they're chasing low-cost labor, or even because they're trying to gain entry to new and fast-growing foreign markets. Instead, they're building webs of talent across the world so that they can design better products, solve problems faster, gain more control over manufacturing, and benefit from creative people no matter which countries' passports they carry."

Toogle Image Search

Toogle Image Search: "The most comprehensive image buggery on the web."

Try "chocolate"!

[via David Weinberger]

The New York Times: Internet Bullies

This NYTimes (free registration required) article is garnering quite a bit of attention. Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar:

"The episode reflects one of many ways that the technology lubricating the social lives of teenagers is amplifying standard adolescent cruelty. No longer confined to school grounds or daytime hours, 'cyberbullies' are pursuing their quarries into their own bedrooms. Tools like e-mail messages and Web logs enable the harassment to be both less obvious to adults and more publicly humiliating, as gossip, put-downs and embarrassing pictures are circulated among a wide audience of peers with a few clicks.

The technology, which allows its users to inflict pain without being forced to see its effect, also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness. Psychologists say the distance between bully and victim on the Internet is leading to an unprecedented - and often unintentional - degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills.

What seems most important to pay attention to is the comment about how this bullying flies under adults' radar and less visibility of the effect of the work OF the bully by the bully. I see this dynamic show up in adult interaction as well, but usually with much less or little intent to do harm. But the individual experience on the receiving end can be devasting, particularly if it happened in a public online space or was rapidly forwarded among email networks.
It's like you may survive the earthquake, but the aftershocks get you -- to the core.

First Monday: E–learning and language change

E–learning and language change — Observations, tendencies and reflections by Henrik Hansson and Sylvia van de Bunt–Kokhuis

This paper discusses the globalization of e–learning, changes in languages as an effect of distance technologies and the lingua franca of modern times, English, and its effects on other languages. Hybrid languages such as Spanglish (Spanish English) and Swenglish (Swedish English) emerges as an effect of the increasing interaction between non–English languages and the dominant English language. The need for speed and efficiency in communication and the adaptation to new technology changes language dramatically as is observed in chat and SMS–mediated communication. The complexity of modern human communication is discussed with a historical perspective — the old modes of communication can now be used via Internet but this transfer changes their characteristics.

Creating a Learning Culture - New Book

Creating a Learning Culture, edited by Marcia Conner, is out. I have a few friends and colleagues with essays in this book -- it looks interesting. (I have to read a few on the stack before I can buy more.) Has anyone read it yet? Comments? From the PR:

Creating a Learning Culture features insightful essays from industry observers and revealing case studies of prominent corporations. Each chapter revolves around creating an environment where learning takes place each day, all day—fundamentally changing the way we think about how, what, and when we learn, and how we can apply learning to practice. Three sections address key aspects of learning culture: the modern business context and the importance of learning at every juncture; the organic and adaptive approaches organizational leaders can take to design enduring success; and the expanding role of individuals within organizations and the implications for business leaders, educators, technologists, and learners. Identifying the steps companies must take to remain competitive for years to come, this book explains how learning strategies applied to all aspects of every job can provide swift returns and lasting results.

Contributors include: Douglas K. Smith (Foreword); John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon Gray (Introduction); Harlan Cleveland; William M. Snyder and Etienne Wenger; Eileen Clegg and Clark N. Quinn; Karen Kocher; Mitch Ratcliffe; David Grebow; Laurie Bassi, Karen L. McGraw, and Dan McMurrer; Edgar H. Schein; Rob Cross, Lisa Abrams and Andrew Parker; Wendy L. Coles; Marc J. Rosenberg; Dori Digenti; Brook Manville; Brenda Wilkins; Gunnar Brückner; Garry O. Ridge; Cliff Figallo; Marcia L. Conner and James G. Clawson (Afterword)

Evaluating Collaborative Policymaking

National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation: "New Report on Evaluating Collaborative Policymaking Processes

...the Center for Collaborative Policy just released a Hewlett-funded report called 'Is Devolution Democratic? Assessing Collaborative Environmental Management.' The report proposes a normative framework for evaluating the democratic merits of collaborative policymaking processes in terms of six criteria: inclusiveness, representativeness, procedural fairness, lawfulness, deliberativeness, and empowerment. The framework is then applied to random sample of 76 watershed-based stakeholder partnerships in California and Washington State. You can download the report at www.csus.edu/ccp/publications.htm."

Blogger Fallout

I was at a 5 day meeting and had little time to blog. But I clipped a bunch of things in "draft" mode for when I returned. This evening, as I went to edit, everything is gone from yesterday and today. Poof! As if I could remember what I had snagged. Oi vey. I am not a happy blogger.

That said, I probably have 30 things in draft mode I could use. But it was TODAY'S stuff I wanted. Pout pout.