Facebook

The goal of this blog is to help to create an online learning environment and my specific purpose is to use such a system to help people learn English. In the summer, I proposed a model for the environment that used Ning’s social network sitting on top of Facebook with content to be developed by teachers and learners and a user-interface that used Adobe’s cool new AIR technology. Facebook was my choice for the base of the system because people know it and use it. Simple. But, as many people have pointed out, Facebook is a more or less closed system. To open-source believers, this is poison. Period. But to content developers, like myself, as long as a system is powerful and easy to use and popular, I don’t really care that it is closed.

However, as I suffer using the bloated and dumb Vista operating system on my laptop, I’m often reminded that being tied into a big system is not such a good idea when the big system has gone dumb. (Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau used to joke about how it was difficult being a Canadian next to the USA because it was like being a mouse, sleeping next to an elephant.)

Anil Dash’s words made a lot of sense, when, on October 9th, he warned that the proprietary nature of Facebook was running counter to web logic:

Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch asked the obvious question:

So how long does Facebook have before it melts into the Web?

Now we know the answer to Schonfeld’s question: less than one month because, on November 1st, Google announced OpenSocial. The announcment is causing a storm among web commentators and experts but what does it mean to content developers?

First, what is OpenSocial? Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb describes it this way:

OpenSocial is a hugely ambitious project that would tie together Google, MySpace and numerous other social networking platforms in a common environment that application publishers could publish widgets to with one set of code.

So for content developers, it becomes a ‘write once’ situation, after which they gain access to a huge variety of interesting additional functionality. Nice. Facebook has the same possible extension of capability, of course, but it is always within a Facebook-world. OpenSocial is different because there is a standard and accessible application programming interface. Kirkpatrick wonders about the devil in the details and asks , ‘How open?’, but Marc Andreessen, who was a huge fan of Facebook, likes OpenSocial and his company, Ning, has already joined the initiative; he describes the development in this way:

In a nutshell, OpenSocial is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

“Containers” — social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and…

“Apps” — applications that want to be embedded within containers — for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

This is the exact same concept as the Facebook platform, with two huge differences:

With the Facebook platform, only Facebook itself can be a “container” — “apps” can only run within Facebook itself. In contrast, with Open Social, any social network can be an Open Social container and allow Open Social apps to run within it.

With the Facebook platform, app developers build to Facebook-proprietary languages and APIs such as FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) — those languages and APIs don’t work anywhere other than Facebook — and then the apps can only run within Facebook. In contrast, with Open Social, app developers can build to standard HTML and Javascript, and their apps can then run in any Open Social container.

If you recall how I previously described the Facebook platform as “a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry”, you’ll understand why I think OpenSocial is the next big leap forward! OpenSocial takes the Facebook platform concept and provides an open standard approach that can be used by the entire web. OpenSocial is an open way for everyone to do what Facebook has done…

If you have a web site today, and you want to turn your web site into an OpenSocial app, that’s perhaps even easier than “porting” a Facebook app. Just take your current HTML and Javascript front-end pages and create a version of those pages that use the Open Social API. QED.

Andreesenn says it’s even a good thing for Facebook because the key at this stage is market development and “Open Social will definitely help fuel market expansion, which is in everyone’s interest, including Facebook’s.”

The thing that will make the market grow is content, of course. Most users want some kind of service from the web and the capability to connect with other people in order to use that service and content. It’s content and connection that makes a social network compelling. The ‘winner’ will be the social network or collection of networks that makes it easier for content to be developed.

Schonfeld of TechCrunch - who, you remember, was watching the Facebook ice melting in the warm web-sea - is aware that all the talk of underlying system software isn’t what users respond to:

No actual consumers have changed their social networking habits because of OpenSocial. Facebook still has all the momentum with consumers (and, thus, with the developers who want to reach them). It can afford to wait and see how this whole OpenSocial thing plays out.

It just cannot wait too long before deciding its next move.

He’s right on both counts but the time factor with the web can be scarily fast. The guys at Hitwise, a site that counts how many people are using the various social networks, were not so thrilled by OpenSocial on Day One because, according to their count, FB’s user-base was 5 times bigger than all the networks that had signed up to OpenSocial. Their post the following day was titled, ‘What a difference a day makes’: the OpenSocial grouping had grown to be 5 times larger than Facebook!

But, remember the experienced voice of Andreessen who is telling us all that most web users are signed on to NO social networks, presumably because they can’t find the content there that makes the effort worth their while. Another veteran analyst, Marc Eisenberg, urged everyone to calm down but called the release of OpenSocial, ‘a nice transitional moment.’

Of course FB is busy adding lots of good stuff to their service: an ad network that will generate income for content developers and ways for content creators to very easily build Facebook applications. All good stuff.

But, it’s not a battle, it’s a war and Google is active on many fronts that Facebook can only dream of: there’s rumoured to be a Google Operating System in the works and a GooglePhone, or at least some GoogleThing that will bring all things Google – including the OpenSocial stuff – to mobile devices. And Google has the money to keep going. Another potential plus: Google’s potential social networking partners are more powerful than FB in their respective turfs. Mashable recently quoted a study:

… there are actually more social networking users (as measured by unique visitors) in Asia-Pacific (where Friendster leads) and Europe (where Bebo leads) than in North America.

Of course, Microsoft has invested in Facebook, and MS has the money and the world-reach that’s required. However a crucial point was made by Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet

The software business model is being replaced by the online advertising model.

Microsoft was built on the former and remains so; Google lives and breathes the latter.

Meanwhile…there are 5,000 content developers who will make all this software engineering stuff of interest to real people. So the decisive question may be: Who understands content developers better: Microsoft/Facebook or Google/OpenSocial?

“But answer came there none…” as Lewis Carroll said. The full poem is worth reading because it brilliantly describes the devouring of little ones.

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In the latest issue of Innovate, Stephen Downes uses the Archbishop of Canterbury to pry open Facebook and explain what’s really going on. (Nobody but Downes would have tastes so catholic and insight so witty.) Among other things, the article shows how lively the Innovate journal can be;  Innovate has been around for a few years and its archive is full of fresh thinking and valuable research about tech and teaching – nothing is off-limits. My TESOL instructors fainted at the mention of technology more modern than a cassette deck but Innovate keeps exploring clever stuff such as how cellphones might be used to teach. It’s about time they looked at Facebook and Downes offers perceptive insights.

Facebook is a frenzy, of course, and the attention becomes self-sustaining in different ways; big means money to the business writers; big means yesterday or tainted to the geeks. Downes slows things down and invests some time explaining exactly how the social network functions; he urges anyone designing an educational application to make the same serious effort to understand Facebook. And goes a step further:

“…the nature and popularity of Facebook itself challenges the idea of what an educational application should look like.”

The challenge is usually missed, even by the sharp guys and girls. Andy Carvin at PBS Teachers recently wrote about his own Facebook life and demonstarted genuine familiarity with the network and all the new applications that have been recently added:

…on my Facebook page I use apps that import summaries of my blog posts, my latest videos, text messages I’ve sent using Twitter, and my latest photos from Flickr.

For us Twitter-virgins, that sounds pretty wild.

Carvin covers some of the 4,000 new applications that ride on top of Facebook – it’s these apps, and the fact that membership is now open to everybody and not just university kids, that caused Facebook to become one of the most popular sites on the web. But Carvin complains with among the thousands and thousands of software gizmos, there are no real education apps. He doesn’t want to give up:

“There may be some hope, though. This fall, Stanford is offering a course on Facebook apps…”

Downes may not be among those who are shouting ‘hooray!’ because he believes Facebook is based on a different idea. In describing the social network, he shows clearly that Facebook was originally designed, not to carry content, but to connect college students into networks of friends. The new ‘open-to-everyone’ Facebook is still set up that way: networking first, content second – and second, in this case, can mean very trivial.

This is the point where Downes brings in the good Archbishop, Rowan Williams. Last year Williams was speaking in China about the nature of college life and he made the point that there is, in every society, a group of people who run things. In order to do so, they need to understand a wide set of interests and one of the efficient ways of doing this is to have networks of friends. The powerful need to learn how to make these networks. Williams is trying to be frank about what he calls the “profoundly political element in the university” (something his Chinese audience would know already) but, I think its fair to say, he sugar-coats it in a British mum/Anglican archbishop way; he calls what happens at college a “culture of converstaion” – kinda like university is one long afternoon of tea with the don.

Downes uses Williams’ notion of university life to reveal something cardinal about Facebook: FB is a social network in the same way that a university is a place where certain people learn to network. If that is true then Facebook is not failing to bring educational content to the world; rather, Facebook is succeeding at being the essence of the university: a place where (and here the cliché seems apt) who you know is more important than what you know.

It’s important to follow through, of course, because if you stop at ‘who you know’, it becomes a very cynical view. Downes has always been a believer in the notion that ‘education’ takes place as much outside the classroom as within it – perhaps even more outside. This is especially true, Downes has argued, when we communicate using various technologies, hard and soft. This seems accurate to me; I’ve always learned more arguing with fellow students than listening to lectures. So it might be more accurate to say that who you know is a critically important variable in determining what you know.

What Downes accomplishes in the Innovate article is to properly position Facebook historically and ideologically in the university, a place where privileged people learn to connect. FB was successful within the university setting because it facilitated those connections, facilitated learning how to network. It became a kind of new school for the old boys’ network: the zone of privileged development (with apologies to Vygotsky).

Downes’ subtle probe of Facebook brings a couple of questions to mind:

1. What happens now that FB has grown beyond the zone of privilieged development? It began life as a kind of training school for no-risk networking but it’s now out here in the real world with us non-Eloi. We don’t have plans to run the world but we still want to network – at least we want to make friends and do interesting things. Perhaps being friends with other Morlocks is inherently dull and the ‘browse and snooze’ factor will fade Facebook’s glossy lustre. Or, conversely, perhaps low-power networking has its own virtues and vitalities. I think the issue for Facebook’s future is not what apps are most popular but what networks are most interesting. And why. More research required.

2. For those of us interested in using Facebook to support a learning environment, the key question is this: How can we fuse interesting content into the networking process? If FB is a ‘zone of privileged development’, then I am far more interested in the possible development than in the much ballyhooed privilege. A few demos of Facebook-life that make interesting content shine because real people are turning the crank seems to me to fit the notion of development and provide the antidote to ‘browse and snooze’.

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        matthew paul

I like to stop every month and review, try to distil my thinking in the hope that, as the months go by, I’ll be able to focus more precisely on how to build a better learning environment.

A month ago, Review #1 made 4 key points:

1. Any learning environment needs to handle multiple literacies: text, image, video, sound and their various mixes.
2. We need to keep in mind Downes’ list of required characteristics: open, diverse, autonomous, connected.
3. We will talk a lot about the material of media – code, video, blogs, links – and the content of media – lesson plans, articles, video clips, podcasts – but the effect of the web will influence the success of any online learning environment. The effect is the social psychology created by millions of people using a medium. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the effect of the web is.
4. Learning English is critically important for a lot of people in the world.

The second month began with my first proposed plan. I based it in Facebook despite the fact that FB is not open. Why? The obvious reason is FB’s popularity and familiarity to millions of potential learners. The second reason is that I believe Facebook will have to open up – and there are signs of that happening already. In addition to opening up, one more thing has to happen if FB is to be the base: some kind of advertising revenue sharing system needs to be developed for applications inside Facebook. There are things happening in this area as well.

Ning’s decision to create a FB app is very promising because it helps to solve a bunch of technical and user-interface issues. In addition, we can expect Ning to keep on top of all future UI developments such as Adobe’s AIR, which I think will be necessary by the time an initial learning environment is delivered.

My summary of the system forecast goes like this:

1. Facebook/Ning looks good for now as a base. FB will open up and will figure out some ad revenue sharing system in the next year.
2. AIR will be integrated in the same time and allow better UI and database integration.
3. Basic system ready by end of 2008 - just add users and content.

Wikipedia was also studied because it is a valuable learning resource and it is an inspiration for open content system builders. Content, as design guru John Thackara has recently reminded us, is “something you do - not something you are given by a person in a black T-shirt.” Wiki shows how to open up the creation of content to users. Any learning environment must figure out how to do the same.

Iteration is the key: work in fast cycles that continuously improve based on user commentary. Not trivial, as the programmers like to say. Still, a learning environment can already be envisioned; I’ll use learning English because that is my area of interest. Here goes:

1. FB base, with Ning on top
2. Adobe Air for better UI
3. Service is free, ad-supported through a GoogleAd type system
4. English language content licensed from language providers; redesigned for web interactivity, with styles both trad and innovative
5. Interactive features include:
   

   • » Video chat & conferencing
   • » Blogs with inline tags
   • » Online whiteboards

6. Teachers available or not; if present, they function in ways determined by them and students, both traditional classroom style or other innovations
7. Assessment tools custom developed
8. Revenue sharing with teachers and community content developers

Similar content/ learning systems could and will be developed for any area of interest. Of course, it won’t happen quite like this but this is the second turn and there will several thousand more turns to follow.

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This is part 2 of a discussion of a possible learning environment based on Facebook. Part 1 is here. A larger diagram is available in a separate browser window here.

• Does such a system exist?

Kinda. The University of Wales has put their components into a Facebook app. I’m not sure what’s there. No Ning. Obviously no AIR, which has only just been released; I have no idea what plans FB and Ning have for the use of AIR. That’s a big issue because we want a better user-interface and AIR can supply it. If you have a FB account, you can check out MyNewport here.

The state of content development for any such learning environment depends on the subject but I think it’s safe to say that content is undeveloped. My interest is in ESL/EFL and there’s a ton of some kind of content on the web: Dave’s ESL, the language publishing companies, hundreds of individual language teachers with blogs and sites and interesting new outfits focused on online learning of language such as Ecto and TalkBean and Dekita. But there’s a lot of work to be done to make better content fit into better delivery systems. (More on this in following weeks and months, of course.)

• What’s the timing for such a system?

It’ll take a year for AIR-type user-interface to appear in Ning and FB. Maybe longer.
It’ll take at least a year for content to be developed or re-developed. Maybe longer.
Let’s say 3 years in total, assuming some of us are on this right away.

• The Lobster Trap:

This is nasty. You can get your content into Facebook but can’t get it out. Not acceptable.

Solution?

» Get FB to change. Unlikely.
» Keep most content material in module format for use outside FB. Reasonable.
» Get Ning to help. Possible.
» Analyse what’s attractive about FB and develop it independently.

• What’s attractive about Facebook?

It’s really the awareness factor that Facebook brings to the table - the idea that if you do something on FB, your friends and colleagues can easily find out because they are already there or can get there in a jiffy.

The way that gets reported is in FB’s big numbers because a large number of subscribers means big business for FB and millions of Facebookers also appear to mean big business for whoever sets up shop on FB. Maybe.

The always interesting Bokardo has developed the social awareness theme for social networks and recently quoted Crysta Metcalf, an anthropologist working for Motorola. She stressed that social network development needs to focus on the way the technology facilitates the connection between people.

“…designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.”

So an alternative to FB would be a social network with superior awareness tools. Yes, the Learning Environment Application would start out with much smaller public awareness but it would grow faster if - a big if - it had some way to give users a better awareness of each other.

• The reliability of Facebook:

Is there a problem with FB getting swamped and having too much down time? Users will not necessarily blame FB but, instead, blame the application they are using. Meaning, us.

• The Money Issue:

We are content developers who believe that the next stage of web expansion will be based on a much larger and more consistent group of people around the planet wanting to do more stuff on the web than watching videos and telling their friends who their favourite new band is. Stuff like learning English.

Content will bring new users and it will keep them coming back. And when they are online, they will click ads which generate revenue for the site.

So far, so good. If we are part of Facebook, how do content generators get a share? How exactly does that work? Is there some kind of broker to facilitate it? Being a part of a social network in which we CANNOT get a share means that we have to charge for our service, which drastically restricts interest and uptake. Learning should be free. And if we get a share of the ad revenue that we help generate, it can be.

• What about the other social nets aimed at education?

» Elgg
» Ecto
» Dekita
» TalkBean

More on all of these interesting outfits in the coming weeks and months.

What follows are notes that correspond to each layer of the diagram. (To see a full-size diagram in a separate browser window, please click here.)

• Layer 1: Facebook - Discussed above.

• Layer 2: Ning:

Why do we need another layer on top of Facebook? Generally, Ning seems to me to have a lot of valuable experience. Marc Andreessen is one of the Ning founders and also a co-founder of the seminal Netscape. Recently Ning receive another round of big funding. You could argue that the best thing for Ning would be to focus on some sectors of the vast social networking world - like education - and own them.

• » Working in Ning means that their servers absorb the hit of a lot of learners hitting the system at the same time. Seems like the kind of problem you’d want to have - until it actually happens and your credibility goes out the window.
• » The strong tech capability at Ning should help with the future development of other layers such as AIR.

• Layer 3: This is the content.

We have to write it, find it, change it, develop it from scratch, test it, rewrite it… This may be the best reason to immediately use Facebook: so we start to learn what works and what doesn’t; so we start to profit in knowledge terms.
Content needs to be able to include user-generated content, of course. This is where the ‘lobster trap’ problem becomes critical. Users can write blogs, for instance, and because the blogs are open, the content can easily go in to FB. But because Facebook is a closed, proprietary system, any changes made while in FB may be unrecoverable from ‘outside’ - outside in this case is, you know, like the rest of the known world. Which may lead us to the next point…

We need to explore the modularity of any content.

• Layer 4: Ning-controlled internal data sources:

Any viable system requires all media and, as much as possible, material should be Creative Commons.

• » text: blogs such as WordPress as well as cool new onlin wordprocessors like Buzzword and inline comment tools like LineBuzz.
• » sound: Skype, Audacity, PodPress, etc.
• » pics: Flickr, etc.
• » video: the ubiquitous YouTube, Live Video Chat, etc.
• » cool collaborative tools such as interactive whiteboards like Vyew

• Layer 5: Content Management System: probably done by Ning

Everything should be taggable! What about sub-tags (inline)? From a teaching language perspective, it would be very cool to be able to tag parts of sentences or parts of podcasts in order to engage with just those aspects of learning. LineBuzz seems to do this but it’s pretty clumsy at this stage.

As mentioned above, we need a way to have better del.icio.us-style tag control for better awraeness. It is to be hoped that someone at Adobe or del.icio.us is working on an AIR-powered, del.icio.us style tag system that will enhance a user’s undertsanding of who is where doing what. Understanding that covers about 90% of what any teacher is going to demonstrate. A ‘teacher’ at the wheel of such a system would be a giant step toward a dynamic learning environment.

• Layer 6: UI

We need a better, more interactive user-interface. I would describe the Facebook UI as ‘preppy-grim’, only slightly better than the ‘trailer park’ feel of most MySpace pages. We need AIR.

• Layer 7: People: finally…

Learners:

• » They’re on FB, of course.
• » What language do they speak? In some countries they are on another system entirely: i.e. Naver in Korea.
• » Will Europe be gov’t-dominated?

Parents:

Hmmm…dunno what to say about parents except in many situations they are important. However, they become much less important on systems that are free. In these cases, students that would otherwise be asking for permission just happily charge ahead. Free is faster.

Teachers:

• » …are way behind
• » teachers of teachers are proudly ignorant of technology and, believe it not, encouage dis-interest.
• » at first, the teachers will come from outside institutions.
• » the interested teachers and professors within institutions need to be very careful they don’t get, what my mother would have called “too clever by half” - meaning, insisting that no system is valid except perfect systems. As politically left professors have proved for the past 50 years, once you’re on the payroll it’s easy to get lost.

• Layers 8, 9, 10, 11: Various Learning Events

Much more on these aspects of the system later. This is what actually happens and it will determine the success of any venture.

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I love my diagram! And it was a lot of fun to think it through; I hope you’ll take a moment to follow me through the layers, so to speak. But first a few quick remarks:

As the title of this post suggests, this is a wildly preliminary notion of how we might organize a learning emvironment. But ‘preliminary’ can happen very quickly on the web. In fact, educators are already doing this kind of thing with Facebook as the base: see MyNewport (requires a Facebook account to see it in action). Just as quickly, other educators are asking valid questions about the approach: see Graham Atwell. One of the sharpest tech blogger, Richard McManus, evaluates Facebook and sees value in using it but concludes:

But how open is Facebook, really? Turns out, not that much.

What we can say for sure at this stage is that Facebook-based learning environments will get done…and undone…and redone (if that’s a word.) The best practice along the way will be to carefully harvest the knowledge so when we do it over we can also do it better. Maybe on some other platform like Elgg.

Here’s a guide to what the layers mean:

1. Facebook Platform: programmable core / familiar location / automatically linked to many users
2. Ning: established social network / more user-interface control / server protection / organization of text, wikis, podcasts,videos,etc.
3. Links of external databases: the content of the system / includes user-generated content (e.g. Layer 11)
4. Internal data sources: text/sound/video stored within system (e.g. Layer 10) / probably controlled by Ning user interface
5. some kind of Content Management System: resource organizer / possibly done by Ning or a specialized resource organizer like Second Brain
6. User-interface: Adobe’s AIR advanced UI / not yet available in a system like this but…
7. People: learners/ instructors / site visitors / extraterrestrials
8. example Learning Event: incorporates all the above
9. example Assessment Event: allows Learner/Instructor to evaluate using all the above
10. example Learning Content Module: stored, accessible Learning Event / available from inside or outside system
11. User-generate/selected material: full range of text/sound/video developed by users/suppliers

Next week, in this Monday slot, I’ll go into more of my understanding of the issues and ask what we need to get that we don’t have from the various players involved.

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