Found through Cloudworks, this Prezi makes a lot of sense. Trying out embed code



Good to find that academics behave as residents nowadays. Frankly I used to think that some of them had a brief to study the web but were not all that engaged with it.

This post could become a story for OhmyNews about the recent LCC Futures conference and the e-book. Last year there were reservations about the e-book but it was seen as inevitable. This year the e-book has definitely arrived. James Fraser spoke about book design, mostly for print, but pointed out that e-books are widely used in publishing for storing the text of several titles at once. Chris Linford claimed it was the illustrations and graphic aspects of books that gives them value and encourages sharing. Ian Lacey suggested that new e-book readers should have a screen for the cover graphic so that people knew what was being read.

There will be more about the conference in the story for Ohmynews. I am working through a video record and hope to put something on YouTube before the story is publshed. Critques of the e-book included that it when web connected it allowed too many chances to link to something else so lacked the structure of a printed book but also that the early devices are like the early web, without the social networking and the associated potential for learning.

Most of this post is about some theory that seems to relate, found through following Cloudworks and Grainne Conole on Twitter. I am beginning to understand why Cloudworks is effective and how it has been designed. Extract slightly edited from

Conole, G., & Culver, J. The design of Cloudworks: Applying social networking practice to foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs. Computers & Education (2009),

Cloudworks has been developed building on two theoretical perspectives: the notion of social objects and the concept of ‘design for sociality’. There is not space in this paper to go into detail, Conole and Culver (in press) provide a more detailed description on the theoretical underpinnings for the Cloudworks site; key aspects of this are summarised here. Engeström (2005, 2007), drawing on the work of Knorr-Cetina (see for example Knorr-Cetina in Schatzki, 2001), argues for the need to adopt an approach to social networking based on ‘object orientated sociality’ and defines the notion of social objects : The term ’social networking’ makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. . .

He contends that the definition of a social network as ‘a map of the relationships between people’ is inadequate.
The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re not; social networks consist of people who are connected
by a shared object.
He argues that this distinction can be used as a basis for understanding why some social networks are successful whilst others fail. Successful social networking sites built around social objects include Flickr (photos), del.icio.us (bookmarks/urls), YouTube (video clips) and Slideshare (presentations). He puts forward object-orientated sociality as a mechanism for helping us to identify new objects that might be used as the basis for developing new social networking services. He argues that in education the primary social object is content and that
the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction that occurs around the content.

Knorr-Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. Schatzki (Ed.), The practice turn in contemporary theory. London: Routledge.

Something similar could happen with books or documents through sites such a Scribd or Mendeley. Books are not as advanced as music or video but this idea of "object orientated sociality" is helpful in thinking about how books can develop online. some of the problems from the LCC conference may seem to have been addressed in a year or so.

I think the Experimentality year is launched about now but nothing yet on Twitter for #experimentality . Maybe there is another tag.

Google blogsearch finds my own querying and a blog from Sweden -
Pernilla Severson's Blog (Just another WordPress.com weblog)

I have tried a rough Google translation of another post

Now we have concerns about moving pictures in digital media
August 21, 2009 by pernillaseverson

Moving image and digital media = true in Malmo and the surrounding area. Media Meeting Malmö has long stimulated the development. Moving Media Southern Sweden is a powerful weapon in the cluster shape and Moving Media City is a future center for media development.

In the middle of all this was created MEDEA

http://www.mah.se/Forskning/varforskning/Program/MEDEA-Collaborative-Media-Initiative/

with a base at Malmo University, targeting new media and co-production - and - user-driven innovation.

I will be over two and a half years grub around in this context by exploring the knowledge of university-industry relations. A highly interesting question to trim about what happens when the manufacture innovation meets user innovation in the Moving Image in Digital Media

see http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

How do the various actors in the user-driven innovation? Crash or synergy? If users can develop a better product than the corporate product developer, where do we do? And what do the academics in the game for? Users can operate without the relationship with one than others? And how do we view the phenomenon as the weekend's Canada Social Web Camp?

http://www.swedensocialwebcamp.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is the interaction that I will not just ask or read about, but also staging and testing. See you.

If this is so #experimentality should find something else soon.

I have done a Scribd version of the reference list on Mendeley

learn9 references from Mendeley October 2009

Not sure who is using Scribd. The Mendeley audience has more academics I guess. But the Scribd approach has more access to PDF.

Getting more involved in Cloudworks



more on this later. The video explains what a cloud is so I am thinking more about the Deming cycle as something to offer.

The Book is Going , now part of the learn9 blog.

I am losing track of how often I am repeating myself. Could be confusion, may be some integration between the different blogs I write on. Mostly on the blogs for drupa and IPEX I have speculated that Adobe Classic is coming to an end and that Adobe(FLSH) is the best way to think about where they are heading. This week is even more so, so much so that I think I should have concluded something a while ago.

Adobe MAX is just in California, with web links. They have reduced most real space appearances outside the USA. I don't think they were at Print09 in Chicago, not with much of a spend anyway. The announcements so far are about using the same version of Flash on a desktop or mobile device, improved video streaming and adding more Flash to Livecycle as well as PDF. No announcements at all about PDF or EPUB and e-books. So I think the classic Adobe products around Postscript and PDF are no longer considered to be worth promoting. Hard copy books are not that interesting but a Portfolio in Acrobat now uses Flash to add video and animation to PDF.

Meanwhile I have been following the online discussion on the Networked Learning Conference website. This is the first time i have had the sense of real content being exchanged. Previous online discussion has been quite limited. There will be a series of "hot seats", weeks in which someone will undertake to respond to most questions. Last week Caroline Haythornthwaite covered "Learning in Social Networks and Networked Learning" to start things off. Chris Jones raised a question about resources such as books and how they should be shown as part of a network. They do not have the interactive features of individuals in a group. I realised this is a way to explain the changes in publishing methods through use of sites such as Scribd and Mendeley. More on this later. I need to find out more about the theory of networks. Most of the people on this site assume some prior knowledge so I am not crashing in as much as I might. I do try to push the use of graphics and YouTube links. There is now a sandpit to try this out. So far I think the site is designed mostly for text and mostly the academics are quite happy with this.

So plenty of disruption to come if Adobe have any sense at all in where they concentrate promotion. I do not think the book will vanish, just be part of a wider form of communication that is mostly based online. Later in October there will be a Futures Conference at the London College of Communication. More on this later.

By the way, if the PDF scene is not worth promoting it could mean that the margins will start to drop. There has not yet been an Elements take on Acrobat similar to the Photoshop and Premiere. Why not forget about the Flash elements and just do an affordable software for working with PDF. There are various alternatives but an Adobe approach to this could be interesting.

"Organizational Learning" is doing well as a topic on Mendeley. Hope this continues. "Learning Organizations" turned out to be quite rare and hard to evidence.

Click for slightly larger version.

The public listing looks a lot better now. I had got confused between online and desktop. moving between folders seems easier on desktop.

So the URL is

http://www.mendeley.com/collections/39798/learn9/

Future paper to combine my previous ones and other finds.

Testing out Mendeley. I have found that logging on takes me to the recent papers that other people look at.



Reasonable overlap with my interests in learning / quality. Also leads to some content, enough to think about.

Nonaka paper is linked to a file on Drive D wherever that is. Book widely available though I can't get past the section on western knowledge. Eisenhardt no link but presumably connects with paractice. "Organizational learning" from Jstor has a first page online and it seems Exeter College is connected to Jstor so I will check this out. may need to sign on for a course. Exeter UK that is. Knowledge of the Firm has a fair bit of text. Could be economics I think. Theory of the firm as I remember. Deming book is called the New Economics but this is rarely explained.

So far this is working well. From a science base to management science there is plenty of scope to relate to learning. I have added these papers to my own library but am not sure how to put them in the learn9 list.