Me, We and Everyone: navigating the spaces between individuals, groups and networks

EdMedia
Me, We and Everyone: navigating the spaces between individuals, groups and networks

Nancy WhiteFull Circle Associateshttp://www.fullcirc.com

The proliferation of internet based tools has expanded what it means to "be together" with others for learning, work and pleasure. How do we, as learners, educators and designers decide when to focus on the individual, the group or the wider network? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? How does our choice inform our selection of tools and methods? And what about all the gray area "in between" each of these? We'll explore how we might navigate these spaces and play with a few heuristics you can take back with you.

discusspolldiscusshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/yersinia/2439823650/

StoryImplicationsPractices

Once upon a time

Writing a book

Developing a social media workshop

Building social media capacity

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sveinhal/2201546999/

Story 1 Digital Habitats book. It started with Etienne writing a very useful report reviewing software developed for and/or used by communities of practice in 2001. As the technology market proliferated, he needed to do an update, but the complexity suggested he bring in some collaborators. John and I joined in, but in the end, the work reflected not just our work, but the knowledge that flowed to us from our networks. This was a small effort, thus our roles as individuals, as a group of authors and as actors in wider networks emerged organically.

Story2 ICT4Dev in Education. Sunday morning after the rooster that lives outside of the condo we were renting in Punalu'u woke me up at 4:30 am, I was reading twitter and saw a link to a blog post by http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/why-we-need-more-not-fewer-ict4d-pilot-projects-in-education Michael Trucano of the Wold Bank. He wrote about pilot projects and the complexity of moving to scale in ICT for Education in Development. Since I work mostly in international development, I thought, hm, this is a great story for our time together today. You see, I don't work directly in education which most if not all of you do, and frankly, I want to share what I've learned authentically. So why not from my sector? Looking at Michael's blog post, I immediately saw the very point I wanted to raise here. Many of my clients are looking to scale their work, to sustain it
What if we explored the issue from a me/we/network perspective instead of simply talking about scale? What role would me/we/network play in scaling educational initiatives in an international development context? So, you might ask, what is this me/we/network thing she is going on about?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecstaticist/2918198742/in/set-72157603453505459/Go Solo?It starts with me - each of us as individual actors and learners in the world. How do we learn? What motivates us? And when are we best served as independent actors?

Fly with the flock?http://www.flickr.com/photos/27126314@N03/2956992219/The next stage along the continuum and I stress that this is a continuum is the we - bounded groups with an explicit shared purpose. As we move from me to we, the purpose may be emergent, fuzzy and we may just be creating the boundaries of the group. But for today, I'll focus mainly on formed, explicit groups.

Roam the network?http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavog/9708628/Finally, at the other end of the continuum which I now think of as a circle, by the way, instead of a linear continuum, is the network. This is the network that we can now visualize and participate in more than any other time in human history because of technology. This is the new part of the game when we think about learning, because network participation is no longer constrained as it was by time and distance for many of us. (Not for all of us... we'll come back to that)

Tech + Social:

Technology has fundamentally changed how we can be together

Many: NetworksWe: CommunitiesMe: the IndividualPersonal
identity, interest & trajectoryBounded
membership; group identity, shared interest, human centeredBoundaryless; fuzzy, intersecting interests, object centered sociality (Engestrm)So let's do a little comparing and contrasting of this circular continuum. You can be clear when we talk about the individual, me. We can be clear when we have bounded communities with clear establishment of in/out membership. We can also have communities with fuzzy boundaries, which may even be networks. If there was a subliminal sign flashing across this slide, it would be saying IDENTITY. identity shows up differently across this continuumand identity can be linked to purpose and boundaries.http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why_some_social.html (Social-material networks)

Many: NetworksWe: CommunitiesMe: the IndividualSelf, identity, consciousness, confidence level, risk tolerance, styles, emotion Distinct power/trust dynamics, shared forward movement or strong blocking, stasis, attention to maintenance, language Flows around blocks, less cohesion, distributed power/trust, changeYou can be clear when we talk about the individual, me. We can be clear when we have bounded communities with clear establishment of in/out membership. We can also have communities with fuzzy boundaries, which may even be networks.

These different boundaries influence the power dynamics that occur between people. It influences processes of leadership and other roles. It defines levels of trust and privacy which are not always closely linked as we move to the network level.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Clay Shirky on CNN with Fareed Zakaria .. Iran and social media impacts, seems like an intelligent discussionShirky .. "Is there interconnectivity and can you send something" .. it's the ecosystem's pull here Shirky .. "as much the redistribution of content as the distribution of cell phones"jonhusband "a dynamic 2-way flow of power & authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility & results, enabled by interconnected people & technology

By the way, thanks to THE NETWORK!

@Cosmocat

@band

@BlancheMaynard

@gshirley

@jonhusband

@trucano

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmilles/2772265449/

Many: NetworksWe: CommunitiesMe: the IndividualIndividual access, personal learning environments Classes, informal learning cohorts, conferences, clubsFacebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia,etcFinally, the tools we use can vary across the continuum. We'll talk a bit more about this later.

Poll: Where are you currently aiming your efforts?From a teaching/learning perspective?From a technology perspective?From a process and/or facilitation perspective?

Part 2: Why does this matter?

Assess and discern

Design across the continuum

Shift across the continuum

implications

http://www.flickr.com/photos/senseiste/505590139/

becoming conscious

Purpose:
why might we care about this?ACTION!Employ-
mentEcon-
omicsBias for practice and action beyond reflection and analysis
Networked worldEmployment patterns (connecting students' learning with the network within which they will apply that learning)Economic situation

What is one area in your work were more attention to the continuum of me, we and the network might support your purpose?

So what do we DO?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/01steven/2131672995/

Togetherness SeparatenessInteracting PublishingIndividual Group Network

The idea of polarities that show up in group interactions. Tensions that we can learn to creatively leverage, rather than trying to resolve. Because resolution is usually impossible! Nor is it desirable. It is about noticing where a community is and what it needs at that moment along a polarity, and using tools and processes to move them to that desired point at that moment in time.Sliders as we think about how we pick, design and deploy technology, what sort of intentionality do we want with respect to these tensions? More importantly, how do we use them as ways to track our community or network's health, make adjustments in both technology and practice.For example, the elements of time and space present a challenge for communities. Forming a community requires more than one transient conversation or having the same job title in completely different settings. The kind of learning that communities of practice strive for requires a sustained process of mutual engagement, and if mutual engagement is the key to learning, separation in time and space can make community difficult. How can a community sustain an experience of togetherness across the boundaries of time and space? How can members experience togetherness through shared activities if they cannot be together face-to-face? How can the togetherness of a few members (a small meeting, a conversation) become an experience the whole community shares?

Members of a community of practice need to interact with each other as well as produce and share artifacts such as documents, tools, and links to resources. Sharing artifacts without interacting can inhibit the ability to negotiate the meaning of what is being shared. Interacting without producing artifacts can limit the extent and impact of learning. Indeed, the theory of communities of practice views learning together as involving the interplay of two fundamental processes of meaning making: Members engage directly in activities, interactions, conversations, reflections, and other forms of personal participation in the learning of the community; members produce physical and conceptual artifactswords, tools, concepts, methods, stories, documents, and other forms of reificationthat reflect their shared experience and around which they organize their participation. (Literally, reification means making into an object.) Meaningful learning in a community requires both processes to be present. Sometimes one may dominate the other. They may not always be complementary to each other. The challenge of this polarity is how successfully communities cycle between the two.

Technology provides so many new ways to interact and publish while supporting the interplay of participation and reification that it can profoundly change the experience of learning together. Technology enables new kinds of interactions, activities, and access to other people. It also provides new ways to produce, share, and organize the results of being together through documents, media files, and other artifacts. Most important, it affords new ways to combine participation and reification. For instance, by providing a web-based whiteboard for a conversation, we are supporting new forms of co-authorship where we casually mix words, images and sounds with each other. Technology also pushes the boundaries of both interacting and publishing for a community. It makes it easier for the work of a community to be opened up to the larger world. It can allow a community to decide whether to publish artifacts and invite comments publicly or to hold them within the private boundaries of the community.

One role of technology is to help manage the complexities of community life and individual participation. Technology can make the community visible in new ways through directories, maps of member locations, participation statistics, and graphic representations of the health of the community. It can provide tools for individuals to filter information to fit their needs, to locate others, to find connections, to know when and where important activities are taking place, and to gather the news feeds from their various communities in one place. In fact, multi-membership is becoming so prevalent that tools to manage the group/individual polarity are becoming an increasingly central contribution of technology.

me/we/network time & spaceTOGETHERNESS SEPARATENESS

Technology creates community time that defies schedules and time zones, and communal spaces that do not depend on physical location. One obvious appeal of technology is its variety of solutions for dealing with time and space to achieve continuity and togetherness: to hold a meeting at a distance, to converse across time zones, to make a recording of a teleconference available, to include people who cannot be physically present, to send a request or a file, or to be up-to-date on an interesting project. In a community version of time shifting and even space shifting, togetherness happens in a variety of formats that enable participation anytime, anywhere. Practice issues: Community profiles as patterns of togetherness. How do we learn best. Respect the time of each member. Front or back channel, what problems to bring to the whole group.

Networks demand less profiles of togetherness and instead need visibility of nodes for discovery. Social network mapping can be a tool to help nuture nodes. The practice of network weaving can build new social connections.

Individual control of the connecting tools or software can give an individual some level of control at their solo level.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldcafe/227358678/INTERACTING PUBLISHINGIndividuals want control over their interaction and perhaps ownership over their publication.

Members of a community of practice need to interact with each other as well as produce and share artifacts such as documents, tools, and links to resources. Sharing artifacts without interacting can inhibit the ability to negotiate the meaning of what is being shared. Interacting without producing artifacts can limit the extent and impact of learning. Indeed, the theory of communities of practice views learning together as involving the interplay of two fundamental processes of meaning making: Members engage directly in activities, interactions, conversations, reflections, and other forms of personal participation in the learning of the community; members produce physical and conceptual artifactswords, tools, concepts, methods, stories, documents, and other forms of reificationthat reflect their shared experience and around which they organize their participation. (Literally, reification means making into an object.) Meaningful learning in a community requires both processes to be present. Sometimes one may dominate the other. They may not always be complementary to each other. The challenge of this polarity is how successfully communities cycle between the two.

Networks provide individuals and communities a place to share out what they produce, access the products of others and in that process, remix, mashup and create newly both individually and collectively, but often outside the boundaries of communities, on edges where innovation can flourish while it might be stifled in a community.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldcafe/227358678/INTERACTING PUBLISHING

Technology provides so many new ways to interact and publish while supporting the interplay of participation and reification that it can profoundly change the experience of learning together. Technology enables new kinds of interactions, activities, and access to other people. It also provides new ways to produce, share, and organize the results of being together through documents, media files, and other artifacts. Most important, it affords new ways to combine participation and reification. For instance, by providing a web-based whiteboard for a conversation, we are supporting new forms of co-authorship where we casually mix words, images and sounds with each other. Technology also pushes the boundaries of both interacting and publishing for a community. It makes it easier for the work of a community to be opened up to the larger world. It can allow a community to decide whether to publish artifacts and invite comments publicly or to hold them within the private boundaries of the community.

How do we design it?

meetings

relationships

community cultivation

access to expertise

projects

context

individual participation

content
publishing

open-ended
conversationCommunity
activities
oriented to Base material from:
Digital Habitats: Stewarding technology for communities 2009 Wenger, White, and SmithIn our research of CoPs we noticed 9 general patterns of activities that characterized a communitys orientation. Most had a mix, but some were more prominent in every case. Image: Wenger, White and Smith, 2007

activities
oriented to

Community Name: KM4Dev
global knowledge sharing network

open-ended
conversation meetings projects access to expertise relationships context community cultivation individual participation content
publishingBase material from:
Digital Habitats: Stewarding technology for communities 2009 Wenger, White, and Smith

With only one meeting a year, large size and diversity, KM4Dev focuses on enabling individual participation.Community knowledge wiki, content management system to bring together resources. Email list is core of community activityOnce a year and only about 10% do/can participate.When funding allows. E.G. supporting ShareFairInformally via the email list by asking/answering questions. Relationships mostly via meetings and core group. Strongly external all resources public/shared.While everyone pays attention to the community, no centralized effortsKM4Dev (http://www.km4dev.org) is a global network of practitioners interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing in international development. Over 800 members are subscribed to the email list which had its origins in July 2000. It is both a well established but loosely bounded network that interacts primarily online, with once a year meetings that a small subset attend.

meetings relationships

community cultivation

access to expertise

projects

context

individual participation

content
publishing

open-ended
conversationactivities
oriented to Base material from:
Digital Habitats: Stewarding technology for communities 2009 Wenger, White, and Smith

Network

Group

Individual

Consider how each of these orientations might have a me, we, network implication

Designed for groups, experienced as individualsDoes not imply homogeneityMultimembershipAttentionScaleOne role of technology is to help manage the complexities of community life and individual participation. Technology can make the community visible in new ways through directories, maps of member locations, participation statistics, and graphic representations of the health of the community. It can provide tools for individuals to filter information to fit their needs, to locate others, to find connections, to know when and where important activities are taking place, and to gather the news feeds from their various communities in one place. In fact, multi-membership is becoming so prevalent that tools to manage the group/individual polarity are becoming an increasingly central contribution of technology.

What processes
might
we be using?
What roles?Process/Facilitation (including evaluation)

How do we enable people to

discover & appropriate useful technology

be in and use communities & networks (people)

express their identity

find and create content

usefully participate

? ? ?

community leaderstechnology stewards network weaversIndependent thinkers

Three roles that Ive been looking at are community leaders, network weavers and technology stewards. Community leaders are a more familiar role, helping defined groups achieve specific goals over a period of time. Helping may mean creating conditions, supporting the emergence of relationships or individual and/or group identity, managing, etc. Network weavers are a new role (See the work of June Holley et al at http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/) people who facilitate new connections and increase the quality of those connections. In between community leaders and network weavers are technology stewards they show up both in groups/communities AND networks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eriwst/2303608353/

What practices can you build on? What new practices might you introduce?

EpilogueResources:
onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com
me_we_networkwww.technologyforcommunities.com

Contact
Nancy White
nancyw at fullcirc dot comhttp:www.fullcirc.com
@NancyWhitehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/poagao/527259905/