Chapter 5: Prosumers

In Chapter 5, Tapscott & Williams explore the changing relationship between producers and consumers, which is one of the fundamental structures in modern, open economies. Thus, any change in the way producers and consumers interact and relate to each other marks a significant change in the way society works.

Under the old hierarchical structures, producers would produce goods and services to be consumed by consumers. The producers, of course, would try very hard to produce goods and services that customers would be willing to pay for. They would monitor their customers and business trends to determine what the market wanted, and then they would create those goods and services and try to sell them. Though the successful business tried very hard to attend to its customers and the market, there was always a deep division between the producer and the consumer. The producer used its capital (money, equipment, people, and processes) to invent, design, build, and market those goods and services that it thought people would buy. The consumers used their capital (money and credit) to buy, or not buy, the goods and services that producers offered. The roles were well-defined and complimented each other, but seldom bled into each other.

Now the roles are beginning to bleed into each other as consumers are wanting a piece of the action in production. They want to be producers as well as consumers, or prosumers. Many producers, accustomed to control over the goods and services that they produce and put on the market, are uncomfortable with this shift in roles.

So why do consumers want to be producers? In short, because they can. Tapscott & Williams mention two forces that enable consumers to become prosumers:

1. consumer use of "the Web as a stage to create prosumer communities" (128), &
2. producer realization that they can "tap the insights of lead users [to] gain competitive advantage" and to learn "where the mainstream market is headed" (128).

I want to add a third force: low-cost, powerful tools that give the average consumer access to the means of production. In the past, the average person did not have the capital (the expertise, people, factories, and money) required to produce and market most goods and services, but modern computer, networks, and other tools allow consumers to create their own stuff, and they like it.

Now with a computer and some audio software, prosumers can record their own music, sample the music of others, and mashup new music. Prosumers can write blogs that can reach hundreds, thousands, even millions of people around the world, a capability once reserved for only large, rich media companies. With relatively inexpensive cameras and computers, prosumers can create photographs & movies to share with a select community or with a world-wide audience. Prosumers can use an inexpensive electronics toolkit and free Linux software to crack open their iPods, iPhones, and PlayStations to create a new, enhanced product that does what they want, and then they can share their techniques with their online communities around the world. As Tapscott & Williams say, "This new generation of prosumers treats the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This new way of learning and interacting means they will treat the world as a stage for their own innovation" (127).

Some questions:

1. What goods or services does GCSU offer its consumers?
2. In what ways are teachers producers and students consumers, especially in the traditional sense of producers & consumers?
3. How can you as a student become a prosumer of your education?
4. What tools do you have available to help you produce the things you learn?
5. What insights into the educational marketplace can GCSU gain from its leading students?
6. How can GCSU use these insights to attract more and better leading students and then involve those talented students as prosumers?
7. How does the student as a prosumer change the traditional relationship between students and teachers? students and school?
8. Would you really want to be a prosumer, or is it easier to just remain a consumer of education?
   

Bibliography Tool

I'm not sure the EasyBib website actually fits into the Web 2.0 category, but it seems to offer a fine service for free: creating bibliographies in either MLA or APA style.

If you are like me, then you find the details of bibliographies to be a tedious exercise in suffering. Well, suffer no more. Visit www.easybib.com and create massive, voluminous bibliographies that will impress even the most erudite professor.

Chapter 4: Ideagoras

In this chapter, Tapscott & Williams explore the second of "seven new models of mass collaboration that are successfully challenging traditional business designs" (12): ideagoras. Ideagoras are those collectives of interested people that develop on the Internet to address problems. Of course, Tapscott & Williams are focusing on business problems, but there is no reason why ideagoras could not also address government, university, church, social, and family problems.

Ideagoras are beginning to prove that "a large, diverse network of talent will solve well-defined problems faster and more efficiently than an internal R&D group" (99), and "increasingly, [companies] should assume the best people reside outside [the] corporate walls" (100). Bottomline: companies are learning that they cannot, nor should they even try to, hire enough expertise to address all their problems and research issues. It is cheaper and more effective to use the huge group of experts accessible on the Internet to address the issues that your internal experts define for your organization.

So, some questions:

1. Can ideagoras work in the university?
2. In some ways, have universities always functioned as ideagoras?
3. Can a class function as an ideagora for the individual students in a class?
4. Do you currently have a class that you could set-up an ideagora for?
5. What kinds of problems can a class ideagora address for students?
6. Can you think of an ideagora for this class?
7. What might work against a class ideagora?
8. What tools does it take to make an ideagora work?
9. How important is defining the problem for helping an ideagora work?
   

Using Google Docs

I have been slow in introducing the class to Google Docs, so here's a nice little video to rectify that oversight:

As with most Google tools, you already have access to Google Docs because you have a gMail account. You can access most all Google online tools by logging in with your gMail username and password.

Check out Google Docs because we will start using it in class. Which means that if you have a laptop, then please bring it to class. Thanks.

Why Don't People Comment?

So, why don't people post comments to this blog? I really want to know, so tell me.

Wikinomics: Chapter 3

In Chapter 3, Tapscott & Williams clarify what they mean by peer production and peering (a new verb, I guess). We might start this post with a short video about peer production in the Commons:

Tapscott & Williams use a quote from IBM's Joel Cawley to summarize the need for open source peer production: "Having gone through the journey, we are comfortable with open source and all the things connected to it. We see open source as part of the kit bag of strategy now. We understand that if you don't do it your competitors will. And then where will you be" (96)?

Why peer production? Is this some liberal, hippie fantasy love-in where we all hold hands, sing folk songs, and collapse in mutual respect for diversity? Not according to our authors. Actually, it seems to come down to pretty hard-nosed economics. Tapscott & Williams say that peer produced products such as Wikipedia, Linux, and Facebook prove that "thousands of dispersed volunteers can create fast, fluid, and innovative projects that outperform those of the largest and best-financed enterprises" (65). "Peer production is emerging as an alternative model of production that can harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than traditional firms" (66). "In its purest form, it is a way of producing goods and services that relies entirely on self-organizing, egalitarian communities of individuals who come together voluntarily to produce a shared outcome" (67). Peer production, then, is a new tool (not the only tool and not always the best tool) that can provide amazing value for those who learn how to use it.

Peer production is not new. It's been around for thousands of years, since we humans first started congregating in little villages to protect ourselves against the cold, the bigger animals, and the neanderthals. IBM has always used peer production, even when it was a command-and-control hierarchy: it hired bright, like-minded people and asked them to work together to produce valuable goods and services that IBM could sell. Colleges and universities have always asked scholars to work together to produce new knowledge for the benefit of society, and sometimes for the benefit of business and military.

So what's new about peer production? Well, we now have an information infrastructure (the Internet) that allows us to connect millions of people from across the globe into one functioning and productive community capable of addressing a common project. Before the Internet, even IBM (a technologically advanced organization) was limited in the number of people that it could bring together at any given time by the slow, grinding weight of bureaucracy and the limits of travel across space and time. Before the cheap, instant communication of the Internet, connecting and coordinating that many people was just too costly. Now, it's doable, and people are doing it.

Second, in addition to cheap, interactive communications, the Internet also provides cheap, interactive tools for production. If you are reading this blog, then you have access to tools of production that in the past were available only to Henry Ford or Bill Gates. Today, Vicki Davis of Camilla, Georgia, can reach an audience around the world with her blog, Cool Cat Teacher. Thirty years ago, reaching a world-wide audience took a massive organization such as The New York Times with its huge human, economic, and industrial capital.

But doesn't wide-open, free-based peer production undermine private enterprise? Tapscott & Williams suggest no: "Economists and business leaders have frequently argued that what goes into the commons takes away from the mouths of private enterprise. Of course, a growing number now realize that this is nonsense. Without the commons there could be no private enterprise" (91). They add: "Profiting from peer production communities … requires companies to recognize and seize opportunities to build new products and services on top of vibrant open ecosystems–ecosystems where new value is always being created for a variety of ends and motivations" (93).

To strengthen our willingness to participate in open peer production of the commons, we are developing the legal structures for supporting peer communities and their work. Visit the Creative Commons website, or just watch this video:


Okay, some questions:

1. What common biases work against peer production? For instance, when we suggested a peer produced note-taking wiki earlier in the blog, lots of us didn't trust the idea. Why?
2. What peer production communities have you found useful or productive?
3. What tools are you finding useful in connecting to and collaborating with peer communities?
4. Other than note-taking wikis, what kinds of peer production communities can you see developing at GCSU?
5. What value might these communities add to GCSU? to your student colleagues? to your professors? to you?
6. What do you do that would not be enriched by connecting to a peer collaboration community?
7. On the Net, who is your peer?
   

Building On-line Learning Communities

As you know, I'm personally exploring Web 2.0 with you. I recognize that I need a new theoretical approach to teaching and learning (pedagogy) if I am to make serious use of Web 2.0 in my classes.

I've come across some interesting ideas by a Canadian educator, Konrad Glogowski, especially his idea of classrooms as third places. Here's a presentation he gave that describes his approach to creating third places for learning:




It's a long presentation, but if you watched it all, then I think you'll see that we in this class have been intuitively following some of the guidelines for creating an inviting learning space. Well, at least I think it's inviting. Some of you may disagree, and if you do, then please blog about it. I need to hear from you.

Anyway, Glogowski follows the work of American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg in describing third places as:

• informal public places where people can gather & interact;
• places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, & happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home & work; &
• pubs, cafés, coffeehouses, piazzas, squares, etc.
  

I'll explore this concept of third places more as we go along, but for now a simple question: can a class become a third place, either on-line or in reality, or perhaps both? Why can't class be a coffeehouse, either in real life or in Second Life?

MUST READ: Blog Posting

Okay, this is a test. Just to make sure that you are all reading the blog and all know how to add a comment, I want ALL of you to add a comment to this post. Here's how:

1. Scroll to the bottom of this post, and click the Comments button.
2. On the Post a Comment page, click into the Leave your comment box, and type your name and class night. EX: Susan Doe - Tuesday
3. Choose an identity.
4. Click the Publish Your Comment button.

Done.

Let's see how long it takes for everyone to sign in. Somebody want to set up a wiki for bets? If you've set up Google Reader (as assigned), then you will be notified quickly of this post, and therefore, you will add your comment quickly. Otherwise … hmmm.

Constructing the Connecting Web

Let's return to the argument between Downes and Stager. In his critique of Web 2.0 proponents, Stager says, "There is no educational philosophy inspiring the development of the Web 2.0 tools or their use."

Downes says that Stager is wrong, and that the users of Web 2.0 in schools "adopt explicitly Constructivist theories to inform their design and development … [or] follow the Connectivist approach, as outlined by George Siemens." In short, Web 2.0 tools help students construct knowledge, rather than simply consume knowledge presented by teachers and textbooks, and they help students connect to a web of people and information within which to create and use that new knowledge.

But Downes goes on to rebut Stager by pointing out that talking of an "educational philosophy" is itself old-school, hierarchical, command-and-control thinking. Downes asks: "Why would we need a specifically educational theory? As though learning is some practice or discipline totally separate, totally unrelated, to the rest of our lives?"

So, scholars, what is your theory of learning (you've been doing it all your life, so you should know how it works) and how does Web 2.0 fit into or modify that theory? Can business tools work in a school? After all, pencils, paper, books, typewriters, and photocopy machines seem to work in school, though they were first invented for business. What do the constructivist and connectivist theories have to do with the way you are learning your course of study? Say you.

Deep Web, Deep Thought

Here's another tip that I picked up from a post on Cool Cat Teacher: learn to explore the deep web. It's about five hundred times larger than the surface web that Google and Yahoo explore and make available through their search engines.

What is the deep web? According to the InternetTutorials web site, it is the term used for all those sites on the Web that we can't search and view so easily or freely–sites such as dynamic databases, non-textual content (images, movies, etc.), and access-restricted content.

So how do we get to it? Not so easily, it seems, but the tutorials linked to above provide some tips. Check it out. Be aware.

Class Notes Wiki

OK, another great idea from Cool Cat Teacher–this time it's a wiki for keeping notes for your class. All of you take classes that require you to take notes of lectures and readings. So why not keep notes on a wiki which you and your classmates can collaborate on? Miss a class? Don't worry–others were there and got the notes. Couldn't keep up with a particularly thorny point? Someone else did, and they can add it to the wiki. Couldn't follow an unexpected turn in a classroom demonstration? Someone else got it. Just plain got something wrong? Someone else got it right. Go here to see an example of Viki Davis' notes on a class she's taking.

This is a great idea for a project: set up a note-taking wiki for another class that you are taking, and get your other classmates involved in building it and using it so that all of you will do better in the class. Invite the teacher to check in on it to correct errors or expand on particular points. They'll do that if they are really interested in your learning. Go for it.

Flu Flix Video

I just came across this from Vicki Davis' blog CoolCat Teacher. This could be a great project for a group of you to tackle, and it could make you YouTube famous. Keep in mind that you can ask people outside the class to be on your project group. So do you know someone who wants to make a 2 minute video? Here's the ticket. Go for it.

Changing Structures & Modes of Operation

I came across an interesting blog post by Stephen Downes, an educator from New Brunswick, Canada, that talks about the possible impact of Web 2.0 on contemporary education. I think he's worth our consideration in the class.

In this post, Downes is rebutting a complaint by blogger Gary Stager that the influence and impact of Web 2.0 technologies are little more than hype. First, Downes rebuts Stager's complaint that "Web 2.0 tools come out of corporate, not academic, cultures with very different motives." Stager suggests that these business or social tools don't have a place in education.

Downes disagrees. He says that "the division between the 'academic culture' and the 'corporate culture' misses the point. In fact, traditional academia and business share a great deal in common - structures, authorities, leaders, standards, scale, mass production, uniformity, and more. The 'school' is the perfect blend of academic and corporate culture, and as such, is everything you would expect; compartmentalized, rigid, authoritarian.

What Web 2.0 represents … is the rejection of that [compartmentalized, rigid, authoritarian structure], on both the corporate and the academic levels. 'Decentralizing decision-making' has the same essential logical structure as 'personalizing learning'. New types of collaboration (not 'teams') in the corporate world resemble new types of collaboration (not 'classes') in academia.

Yes, the edges are blurred. Yes, traditional corporations with vested hierarchies and old-school models of economics try to play in the Web 2.0 world. … And just so, some people in education who are still invested in the teacher-and-school model of learning try to present themselves as Web 2.0. … But proponents of traditionalism - cast in a guise like 'School 2.0' - should not be mistaken for what they are not."

Downes seems to be saying that in terms of structure, academic and corporate cultures are similar and that the new Web 2.0 technologies can change the mode of operation and structures of both academic and corporate cultures from command-and-control hierarchies to collaborative networks. We might say, then, that just as computers or typewriters or pen and paper have been useful technologies in both corporate and academic cultures, then Web 2.0 can be useful in both. And just as those earlier technologies changed the structures and modes of operation of both corporate and academic organizations, so will Web 2.0 technologies.

So, then, is Downes consistent with our text, Wikinomics, or would Tapscott & Williams disagree that Web 2.0 will change academic cultures as it is changing corporate cultures? What about other cultures–government, church, family, etc? Will Web 2.0 change those cultures as well? Which cultures will resist change the most? Which will change first? What happens to our traditional ideas of leadership when our cultures begin shifting from a command-and-control hierarchy to a collaborative network? Are you ready for this change? Is the world? Is it inevitable? Will we ever totally do away with hierarchical structures in the ways that we live and think? Is GCSU really moving toward a collaborative network structure, or is it just dabbling with some of the Web 2.0 technologies while keeping its command-and-control hierarchy?

Wikinomics: Chapter 2

Tapscott & Williams try to describe the convergence of three forces, the perfect storm, that led to the emergence of the collaborative web, or the Matrix:

1. Web 2.0: "The Internet is becoming a giant computer that everyone can program, providing a global infrastructure for creativity, participation, sharing, and self-organization" (37). Web 2.0 connects everyone to the widest possible audience (39), pools "the knowledge of millions of users in a self-organizing fashion" (41), creates public squares that empower everyone to participate and create (43), it "invites collaboration to design with open standards and open application programming interfaces that allow separate web sites to intermingle" (44), and "we are building this thing together" (45).
   
2. The Net Gen: "Rather than being passive recipients of mass consumer culture, the Net Gen spend time searching, reading, scrutinizing, authenticating, collaborating, and organizing. … They typically can't imagine a life where citizens didn't have the tools to constantly think critically, exchange views, challenge, authenticate, verify, or debunk" (47). Net Genners are into networking (48), into changing their world through their networks (50), into "designing, producing, and distributing products themselves" becoming prosumers (52), and into "highly collaborative and collegial work environments that balance work and life, and most of all, value fun" (54). You students are in the Net Gen generation. I'm a baby-boomer. Your generation is bigger and potentially far more powerful.
   
3. The Collaborative Economy: Which is the "outcome of two converging forces: a change in the deep structures of the corporation, as companies are forced to open up their walls and collaborate … and the rise of a truly global economy that demands and enables new kinds of economic cooperation (55).

Your authors conclude that "having largely mastered the productive challenges of our physical environment, we find ourselves confronting the opportunities of the cerebral environment, an increasingly virtual world of knowledge, media, and entertainment; a world girdled by information involving billions of connected individuals; a world where anyone can plug-and-play and where collaboration between diverse entities is the modus operandi of the day" (64).

I suspect that most of you have not looked at this video, so I'll post it again:



Now, some questions:

1. In what ways do you identify with Tapscott & Williams' definition of the Net Gen generation?
2. If they are correct about this generation, how are Net Genners likely to change GC&SU?
3. Will Web 2.0 change the manner in which GC&SU adds value to your education? to your degree? to your future?
4. How does a global economy change your prospects for a job? Check this article in the Christian Science Monitor about school kids using tutors from India. If we're outsourcing school tutors, what can we not outsource?