robert fitzgerald, phd

Our chapter "Using social software to support digital learning communities in higher education" will be published in February 2009 in The Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. This book examines the impact of new technologies and explores how social software and developing community ontologies are challenging the way we operate in a connected, distributed, and increasingly performative space.

We are getting quite a bit of interest in our sms work in Cambodia using FrontlineSMS. Ken Banks has written about it in Cambodian farmers turn to their phone, MobileActive.org in Frontline SMS Review and Internet & Democracy Project at Harvard University in Frontline SMS Launches New Version, Continues to Foster Change. In late November 2008 we presented our ideas to the Northwest Agricutural Marketing Association (Battambang, Cambodia) for the development of a sms-based field communications and information system (full presentation). More.

Following on from the success of the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education, held in Canberra, Australia, 29-31 January 2008, we are hereby inviting conference participants and other scholars to contribute to an edited book on imaginative education.

In the last few months we have had chapters published in the following new Information Science Reference books from IGI Global.

From the Canberra Times (16 March 2008), an interview I did talking about social software in education with specific reference to students as co-designers and the importance of network literacy.

My chapter "Advancing Professional Learning With Collaborative Technologies" has just been published in the Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration, Edited By: Lawrence A. Tomei, Robert Morris University, USA.

The publishers say...

"As more and more universities, schools, and corporate training organizations develop technology plans to ensure technology will directly benefit learning and achievement, the demand is increasing for an all-inclusive, authoritative reference source on the infusion of technology into curriculums worldwide. The Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration amasses a comprehensive resource of concepts, methodologies, models, architectures, applications, enabling technologies, and best practices for integrating technology into the curriculum at all levels of education. Compiling over 150 articles from the world’s leading experts on information technology, this authoritative reference strives to supply innovative research aimed at improving academic achievement, teaching and learning, and the application of technology in schools and training environments."

The March 2008 edition the Carrick Institute's, Carrick Communique, carries an article on our Digital Learning Communities project. The article covers some of the key findings that are emerging from our project. You can download the PDF document (4MB) here.

Stephen Barrass and I have just had our paper, Social Software: Piloting MyToons As A Digital Learning Community For Teaching New Media, accepted for Edmedia 2008 to be held in Vienna, Austria later this year. The abstract follows:

This paper describes a pilot project using the MyToons.com animation social networking site to teach a New Media unit at the University of Canberra in 2007. MyToons, modeled on MySpace and other popular social software sites, has additional characteristics that focus on the construction of social identity and peer networking. The location of MyToons in the public space beyond the classroom embeds the students in an authentic community of practice, with exemplars, technical support, and opportunities to network and showcase their creativity and productions. In this study we reflect on the process of integrating MyToons into the unit syllabus, and the results from an evaluation survey of the students. This analysis confirms the importance of usability and sociability for the creation of an online community of practice for peer learning.

I have just upgraded to Drupal 6.1 though I am still waiting for a decent WYSIWYG editor for this version. I must admit that while I think Drupal is great for database-driven websites, I am stuggling with it a bit as a personal publishing platform and still regualarly consider hosting Wordpress myself or making the leap to fully hosted solution from James Farmer and the team at Edublogs.

News from IERG...
The 6th. Conference on Imagination and Education was held in Canberra, Australia from Jan. 29th. To Jan. 31st. 2008. Participants came from more than a dozen countries. It was a lively and excellent event. Sean Blenkinsop, Tannis Calder, Kieran Egan, Mark Fettes, Kathryn Ricketts, Kym Stewart, and Jean Warburton came from the IERG at SFU. The Dean of Education at SFU, Dr. Paul Shaker also attended, and graciously introduced Kieran Egan’s talk.The conference theme was "Imaginative practice, imaginative inquiry" and it aimed to connect a cross-section of educators and administrators from elementary & high schools, universities, professional organizations and work-place settings in a dialogue and exploration of imaginative and creative ways of teaching, learning and conducting educational inquiry.Miranda Armstrong, long a user of IERG ideas in Australia, gave one of the most generally appreciated talks. Sean Blenkinsop, Tannis Calder, Mark Fettes, and Kym Stewart each gave well-attended and appreciated talks. Kathryn Ricketts led a significant group in a dance workshop. Noel Gogh and Bernie Neville, from LaTrobe University, were also prominent speakers. The organizers of the conference were IERG’s long-time and valued associate Thomas Neilson and Robert Fitzgerald seen here. After the conference a group gathered at the University of Canberra to discuss future steps for IERG-Australia and began the tasks involved in seeking grants and setting the new group on its feet.

From the Imaginative Education Research Group

"You are now leaving Flatland. Why we need imagination in education" is a short article written by IERG Australian Associates, Drs. Robert Fitzgerald and Thomas Nielsen and their PhD student, Bronwen Haralambous.

The article is an introduction to the importance of imagination and emotional engagement in Education. Referencing a variety of sources such as Ken Wilber, brain reseachers Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux, as well as Rudolf Steiner and Patti Lather, this article touches on the sound reasoning behind re-visioning education with imagination and emotional engagement as cornerstones of the educational enterprise.

This article was first published in Professional Educator, Australia's national quarterly education magazine for educators across all state, Catholic and independent schools. Reproduced with kind permission. Subscribe by visiting http://www.acer.edu.au/profed/order.html. To view the table of contents for this issue (vol 6, no. 4 October 2007), go to: http://www.acer.edu.au/profed

It also introduces readers to the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education which will be taking place in Canberra Australia thanks to the hard work of authors Robert Fitzgerald, Thomas Nielsen and our coordinator, Teresa Martin.

We are finalising submissions for the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education to be held 29-31 January in Canberra next year. To date we have over 110 submissions and the program promises to be varied and stimulating. Once we are through the review process submissions will be available via our online conference system. This system has been developed by the folk at UBC & SFU as part of the Public Knowledge Project which...

"is a federally funded research initiative at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University on the west coast of Canada. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and conferences. Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems increase access to knowledge, improve management, and reduce publishing costs. See Software & Services for demos, downloads, and information about these systems."

Writing in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Professor Robert Jensen from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, reports on a project in Southern India where fishermen and wholesalers are using mobile phones to address limitations in the market information system. From his economic analysis of data collected over a five year period he concludes that the use of mobile phones worked to reduce price dispersion and increase fisherman's profits. In his paper he reinforces the idea that access to timely information is vital to the effective operation of markets and the benefits can be seen for both producers and traders. The abstract of "The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector" follows:

"When information is limited or costly, agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage. Excess price dispersion across markets can arise, and goods may not be allocated efficiently. In this setting, information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare. Between 1997 and 2001, mobile phone service was introduced throughout Kerala, a state in India with a large fishing industry. Using microlevel survey data, we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion, the complete elimination of waste, and near-perfect adherence to the Law of One Price. Both consumer and producer welfare increased."

James Steele is doing some really interesting stuff getting Google Maps to his GPS using MacGPS Pro. Check out his recent posting Google Maps to your GPS via MacGPS Pro. Google offers examples of ways to personalise their maps. James is also working with us on the Carrick Project.

Jen Millea from education.au recently picked up Yoni Ryan's paper, Do you Youtube? Wanna come to MySpace? Yoni is on our Carrick Project team and presented this keynote at the FYHE Conference, QUT Brisbane, 4-6 July. In this paper Yoni says:

The explosion of subscriptions to social networking sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook leads us as educators to some fundamental questions abou the purpose and nature of university education, issues which have been ignored in the last decade as Western governments, along with vice-chancellors, have trumpeted the economic, utilitarian and vocational benefits of a university education. Such sites may be designated 'social' in nature, and in one sense they are. But they also direct attention to the individual, as the centre of a virtual 'exclusive' group. What does it mean to an education system notionally geared to the 'class' as a group, to inclusivity as a goal of education, and to the notion of tolerance of difference as a result of exposure to the class? Should we be encouraging the display of self that social networks allow as a healthy way of forging identity in a world characterised by increasingly undifferentiated and global 'selves'?

Recently I was looking for examples of the work I have done over the years around the application of computer and internet technologies to education. From 1990-2004, I regularly taught a core first-year subject to teacher education students on the application and integration of technology to education. In the early 90's this unit was "Computers in Education" and introduced students to computer software (e.g. both productivity and curriculum software) and required them to consider ways of integrating specific applications into their classroom teaching. Common assignment tasks involved students evaluating computer software and developing (and teaching a model lesson) that integrated a particular piece of software into a subject area. There was the obligatory Logo work all of which I enjoyed even if the students didn't always share my enthusiasm.

As the internet began to develop that core unit developed into "Information Technology and The Classroom". Around about 1993 (my precise memory fails me here) I had the opportunity to upgrade our Campus' small Apple IIe network with 20 brand spanking new Mac LCIIs. Later in 1994 I added a GatorBox, a Mac webserver (http://signadou.acu.edu.au) and with AppleTalk had a lovely little internet-connected network. Anyway, the point of my story is that looking for examples of this work in my CD collection proved fruitless so I thought I'd give the internet archive a go. The archive was a bit patchy but I found a couple of records from Dec 23, 1996, Jan 10, 1997 and Apr 12, 1997. Delving deeper I found my old unit PTE101 Information Technology and the Classroom. I plan to write more about this particular unit and the changes (or not as the case may be) I see between what is taught to first-year's today, but I must admit reading through it I thought we did some good things with those students back then.

I have just registered with Talkr, a service that provides text-to-speech and podcast functionality for blogs.

"Talkr provides a service that allows you to listen to your favorite text-only news sources rather than read them. If you can point us to an RSS or Atom feed (a machine-readable version of your favorite blog or news source) we will convert that feed from text to speech. Talkr can also provide you with a podcast of your favorite news sources. This means that you can plug your MP3 player into your home computer once a day and Talkr will provide you with hours of audio content with no additional work on your part. Talkr will keep tabs on your feeds and send audio to your computer as those audio files become available." 

Here is an audio example of one of my recent blog posts. The link to Podcast (RSS feed) for my blog can be found here

The beginning of 2008 will see a noteworthy event held in Australia for the first time. The Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG) at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and IERG associates at the University of Canberra are hosting the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education. The conference aims to stimulate discussion of imaginative education and its applications in all sites of learning, and to ensure that educational experiences are imaginatively engaging for both teachers and learners. The work of the IERG (and others) can be seen as part of a growing swell of interest in imagination and the way in which it influences creative and emotionally engaging education. In the last fifteen years brain research has confirmed the importance of engaging affective domains in learners (e.g. Damasio 2003; LeDoux 1996), showing that to do so increases levels of attention, retention and enjoyment in the act of learning. Research into how our brain works has also shown that emotional engagement is closely related to images and the imagination (see LeDoux 1996). When we imagine, the part of the brain associated with emotions, the amygdala, is activated together with the cortex of the brain (where logical processes mainly take place). In other words, if we engage students’ imagination, we engage their affective domains, resulting in a more enjoyable and memorable learning journey.

One of the keynote-speakers at the 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education, the Canadian Professor of Education, Kieran Egan, also sees imaginative education as a means of engaging children emotionally in learning. Egan’s work, perhaps best exemplified in The Educated Mind (1997), has become a noticeable contender in effecting a paradigm shift in education that supports the recent developments in brain research. Rationality is not simply a set of computing skills; the mind works as a whole, and its whole includes our bodies and our emotions and imaginations. (Egan 2005, p.100) Egan builds on the philosophical premise that children learn more deeply and more profoundly through interacting with what they can imagine. He grounds his theoretical approach with practical ‘cognitive tools’ such as the use of story-telling, metaphor, binary opposites, jokes and humour, and association with heroes, etc. – mental and culturally inherited tools which become progressively more sophisticated as the child develops. As such, Egan provides a conceptual framework for understanding imaginative education as both a philosophically and methodologically very different approach to education than has been seen so far.

Note: if you want to know more about the upcoming 6th International Conference on Imagination and Education: “Imaginative Theory, Imaginative Practice”, to be held in Australia for the first time from Tuesday 29th January to Thursday 31th January, at the Rydges Hotel by the Lake, Canberra, please visit http://imaginativeeducation.org/conferences

REFERENCES

Damasio, A. R. (2003). Looking for Spinoza : Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. London: Harcourt.

Egan, K (1997). The Educated Mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Egan, K. (2005). An Imaginative Approach to Teaching. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass A Wiley Company.

LeDoux, J.E. (1996). The Emotional Brain. New York, Simon and Schuster.

Our social software survey is now available. We are asking academics and students from UC, QUT and RMIT to help us find out more about the ways they are using social software and web2.0 technologies. The link to the survey is: http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=697518

Here is the current picture of our SMS project in Cambodia.

Email, for better and worse (mostly worse), is still the main corporate form of communication but as a dialogue/collaboration tool, it has serious limitations. While an email discussion list can sometimes work well the reality is most people use it as a broadcast medium, limiting dialogue and collaboration. Threaded discussions usually work to fragment discussion to a point where the real "gems" of exchange get buried in the forum never to see the light of day again. In addition, a combination of the email tools we have available, and the average user's skill level, means that we generally don't process email very well. Think about how overwhelming your InBox can be a times or how difficult it can be to find a specific email message. Sure, Gmail, has provided us with some neat functionality, but most of these apps are way ahead of what most corporations, and certainly, almost all universities deploy. Blogging is often identified as part of the new Web2.0 environment and Tim O’Rielly offers a good introduction. As example, in the past we would put up a web page with links (Web1.0) now we have regularly updated blogs with one-click publishing (Web2.0). I use both a blog (as part of Drupal ) as a medium for people to learn a little more about me and my academic work. With the impending RQF (Research Quality Framework) that is attempting to assess the quality and impact of research in Australia, the more your work is "out there" the better. Having a blog presence helps me promote myself, share my work, works as a professional notepad and offers the opportunity for others to comment and give feedback - though the tyranny of spam is making this increasingly difficult.

In my views blogs are:

• Better than email for many things - as I have already mentioned, email is getting to the point where it is almost unmanageable in the modern organisation. We get far too much it and we have very poor tools for organising and retrieving this data.
• Timely – I'm in control and I don’t have to wait for someone else to update a webpage
• Personal – I write to share my views on a range of topics and I can choose to share some aspects of my “person”
• More interactive than a static webpage – selected users can post comments.
• Push and Pull - accessible in a variety of ways – users can visit the blog site or choose to subscribe to my syndicated RSS feed or email feed.

I recently started to look for a few examples of how the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is using a blog within their organisation. In the Academy we have:

• Michael M. Crow, Arizona State University President (http://www.michaelcrow.net/ )
• Mark A. Emmert President of the University of Washington (http://depts.washington.edu/presblog/ )
• Robert L. Caret, President of Towson University in Towson (http://presidentcaret.org/)
• Quest University Canada - President David Strangway (http://strangway.blogspot.com/)
• Patricia A. McGuire, President, Trinity (http://www.trinitydc.edu/about/president/)

In Business:

• Jonathan Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sun Microsystems (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/)
• Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International (http://www.blogs.marriott.com/)
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM (http://www.irvingwb.com )
• Richard Edelman, President & CEO, Edelman (http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/)
• Karen Christensen, CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group (http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog/)

A good article to read about whether the CEO should actually bog can be found at : http://www.adweek.com/aw/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003559583

Seth Godin alerts us to the dangers of the CEO’s blog. He says that blogs work best when they are based on: Candor, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness and Controversy & Utility. I share his view that these are not qualities found in all CEOs.

A few questions/issues for the keen to CEO to consider include:

• Is blogging for just you, all senior managers, all staff?
• Who is the audience? Blogs 'want' to be free and therefore should be readable by all, off and on-campus.
• How often would/could you blog?
• The expectation is that your blog is authored by you

The Australian Blogging Conference will be hosted by the Legal and Regulatory Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation and the Queensland University of Technology on Friday 28 September in Brisbane, Australia. Some topics to be covered include:

• Why are blogs becoming so ubiquitous?

• What is unique about the Australian blogosphere?

Citizen Journalism

• Grassroots vs mainstream journalism?

• Video/photo citizen journalism?

• Is there any original reporting by citizen journalists?

• Who cares?

• Case Study: youdecide2007

Blogs and Education

• Why blog in education?

• Examples and reflections?

• Should academics blog?

Business and Corporate Blogging

Legal Issues

• What can I say without defaming someone?

• What can I take from other websites and blogs?

• Encounters with the Law (or the threat of it)

The Politics of Blogging

• Right, left or centre?

• Who cares?

• A politician's perspective

• Blogging the 2007 Federal Election

Researching Blogging

• What research methodologies can be used to research blogging?

Blogs, Creativity and Creative Commons

• What is Creative Commons?

• How can I use Creative Commons on my blog?

• Showcasing Creative Commons and blogging

Building a Better Blog

• Improving content

• Improving design

• Making money

• Podcasting and vodcasting

Concluding discussion

The future for blogging - what's next?

The future for your blog - promoting your blog and building traffic

For many of us the prospect of a Federal Election with its party political broadcasts and media spin has us reaching for the off-button. This is a time where broadcast media loses what limited capacity it has for nuanced communication and becomes a blunt instrument wielded by a few. There is no point escaping online either as John Howard and Kevin Rudd have just discovered the one:many potential of services such as YouTube. For many us the internet is about a different sort of attitude and approach that values participation and community enagagement. In this spirit I was interested to learn from my colleague, Axel Bruns, about his new project - youdecide2007.org. Quoting from the website this "...is a citizen journalism project which will offer a grassroots, electorate-by-electorate coverage of the 2007 Australian Federal Election...[and] ...will coordinate a service that allows ordinary Australians to report on the election from their own, local perspective, in a way that takes local issues into account." Using local folk as news "anchors" this project will give us insights to way citizen journalism might (or might not) work to engage individuals and their communities in issues that matter to them. Take a tour and sign-up...Australia Needs You!

CALL FOR PAPERS TT21C 2007 (Transformational Tools for the 21st Century) Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia Oct. 29~31, 2007 http://infosys.uow.edu.au/atul/events.php

Our symposium went very well with lots of comment and discussion. We played with the format of the session a bit and asked each presenter (Sebastian, Me, Kai, Scott, Brian & George) to only give a punchy 5-8 minute (instead of 15-20 min) overview of their work thereby giving us over an hour of free-flowing audience discussion. Brian has posted extensively about the symposium here, Kai posted notes here and George also commented with a few general reflections on the conference here.

I am leaving for Vancouver this Friday to attend Edmedia. We have a poster presentation on our Carrick project work, a paper on some work we did a few years ago on the use of integrated learning systems in Australian schools, and a really interesting symposium with a very international group of colleagues including George Siemens (University of Manitoba, Canada), Scott Wilson (CETIS, UK), Sebastian Fiedler (Centre for Social Innovation, Vienna), Brian Lamb (University of British Columbia, Canada) & Kai Pata (University of Tallinn, Estonia). I haven't actually met any of these folk before though I am certainly aware of their work. My contribution to the session is: "Beyond the LMS: What's the BIG idea?". More on this later.