Hey James.

It’s easy to get caught in the ” I work for myself amd therefore I can be a tosser and get away with it” routine. Many of us are learning that RSS and pings and other automated response driven retorts are not a sufficient modality for expounding connections and dis-connections.

I’m sure your not falling foul of the first amendment nor do you rely on the second.

- I know I’ll get flamed for this, but the educational Web 2.0 community has little first-hand experience in social activism and scant knowledge of existing school reform literature….-

That is bullshit ….you know it and I know it but how can we tell who said what where and when and what does it actually matter ?

- Do you have the faintest idea about what social software is, about how it’s changing our dependence on information? -

At least , even if it’s contestable, it’s having a go.

I came across GNU Chris in SL the other day who gave me a script for SLpedia. There’s as much rubbish in it as any other histrionic that we may call cultural memory.

Lest we be remembered for that which we did not say. Give us some more stick. I can understand you better when your speaking from your heart and not your head.

It’s easy to get caught in the ” I work for myself amd therefore I can be a tosser and get away with it” routine. Many of us are learning that RSS and pings and other automated response driven retorts are not a sufficient modality for expounding connections and dis-connections.

I’m sure your not falling foul of the first amendment nor do you rely on the second.

> I know I’ll get flamed for this, but the educational Web 2.0 community has little first-hand experience in social activism and scant knowledge of existing school reform literature…. Do you have the faintest idea about what social software is, about how it’s changing our dependence on information?

As for James Farmer, I am quite certain he can choose his own objects of study, and doesn’t need me to tell him what to read. My point – quite frankly – is that I think it is very rude to just drop names and jargon on people and then slag them for not having read it.

To evaluate what is known as web2.0 rigorously requires an informed knowledge of the history of computing / educational computing going back, say, 40 years to include the work of Engelbart, Kay and others. Why do I say that? It seems to me that the work of these early pioneers has not been understood and in some important ways things have not developed a great deal since then, different pathways could have been taken, a lot of really good stuff became obscured through commercial interests, etc.

Papert’s work and “objects to think with” is central, not peripheral, to that history. That is one way in which Stager’s post could be used as an opportunity for further useful discussion. Although you did not use Stager’s post in this way specifically that was your general approach, to use his comments to promote your position in a thoughtful manner.

Does your comment here encourage James to do some heavy lifting of his own, to broaden his scope from a narrow web2.0 perspective, are you encouraging the view that participants of this community ought to do their own independent research? No, you seem to be saying something like “trust me, I’m the expert, I’ve done the work on Papert / Minsky”. Why do have one standard for yourself and a different standard for James?

You criticise Stager for not linking but then mention your research about Papert and Minsky without linking to it. I’m sure you’ll provide those links and we can continue the discussion then.

IMHO a bit part of the problem is that all he knows about Web 2.0 in education he has read from a few U.S. K12 bloggers – Warlick, Utect, etc.

This has left him terribly uninformed, because these bloggers rarely link outside their own group or discuss the much wider (and much more advanced) work taking place worldwide.

This appears to be an almost deliberate policy. I wrote a response on my Half an Hour blog that was not at all insulting to him, and he shows no sign of even having read it, nor that he ever will.

It appears to be willful ignorance, as though he has signed some contract, not to link to or refer to people outside that same old TechLearning crowd.

All very fine, but it leaves him in a position where – quite frankly – he deserves what he gets. You can site here and criticize Farmer because he wasn’t precise in his response – but from where I sit it’s one business (Stager & company) undercutting another’s business (Farmer’s) through inaccurate and ill-informed and misleading diatribes. And Farmer is perfectly justified in responding in kind.

If Stager wants to question the academics and research of Web 2.0 in learning, he is welcome to. I have been doing a lot of work in the field, and I have been linking to many more people who are doing serious academic work in the field.

Stager would never know that, reading Warlick and company, but that’s his problem.

The point is, we have been doing serious work for many years – so far as I can judge, for as long as Stager has. And we have, over time, achieved what is almost mainstream status. When we have major companies like Blackboard saying they are launching E-Learning 2.0 initiatives, we know we have crossed that chasm.

And if Stager and the rest looked at the work we’ve done, they’d see that it is rooted in the work of researchers like Papert and many others. I’ve discussed Papert numerous times in my blog. I have drawn a lot from him, especially with respect to the work he did with Minsky on connectionism.

My research of course sweeps much wider than that. As does that of the oher serious academics working in our field.

We all understand that not all practitioners in the field know all about all the research in the field. Quite frankly, there’s no particular reason why Farmer should know about ‘objects to think with’.

That’s why serious and experienced web writers put links in their articles when they refer to specific terminology. Writing a post without links is a sign that a person is writing outside his element, that he’s writing for paper. All very fine – but perhaps not the best foundation to proclaim oneself an expert on the web.

In any case, if you’re going to wrestle with a person about their background and research in a field, you should wrestle with the people who are dedicated academic researchers.

This is what Stager is not doing – and for that matter, what you’re not doing either, Bill. It’s easy to attack Farmer for research he hasn’t done. Why not pick someone who has done what someone else called ‘the heavy lifting’ and take them on for what they actually say, the positions they actually hold.

Criticizing Farmer for not knowing about ‘objects to think with’ is like criticizing me for never having managed 30,000 WPMU accounts. It’s attacking someone for not having deep knowledge in something that is outside their domain of expertise.

I think that the critics of Web 2.0 can expect more of the same unless thy make some effort to learn.

Web 2.0 advocates have been open and effusive in their theoretical work, their search, their best practices, and more. For example, you can, as an observer, literally watch the concept of the ‘PLE’ be assembled by the community, out there in the open.

Attacking Web 2.0 from a basis of ignorance comes across as cheap grandstanding – the sort of thing Andrew Keen has been doing – an effort at self-promotion, an attempt to make income by creating controversy.

Enough. People who take cheap shots should expect lolcats in return.

> it’s OK to disagree with people… even to take the piss – where it’s justified

I don’t disagree with that as a general principle.

But then how do you justify taking the piss out of David Thornburg when he attempts to respond to some of your points seriously?

In your original post
you said:
> WTF is an ‘object-to-think-with’?

This does display some ignorance on your part on the history of key ideas in educational computing

you said:
> To discount a technology (even a little bit) because it has no explicit ‘educational’ input is nonsense

You would need to justify that statement. Papert’s ‘Mindstorms’ is an important book about technology, learning and epistemology. Shouldn’t the developmental stage of children by a factor in the development of educational technology?

you said:
> … talk about a nonsensical straw man, where’s this ‘democratiziation of knowledge’ come from, who’s holding this up as a fundamental principle and what on earth has it to do with pedagogy?

What on earth are you talking about, you don’t see a connection between democracy and pedagogy?

you said:
> Apparently, the main issue with the above is that (to jump ahead a little) “there is no educational theory on which the tools are designed” and “no critically acclaimed or even popular manifesto”. I might suggest that to insist on a manifesto for tools or the design of them – is almost as ridiculous as to insist on a manifesto for school buildings (OK , go on and Christopher Alexander me) – but more importantly, are we not a little beyond a manifestor driven society, are not most of our beliefs informed by far more than they once were

What are you doing here but denying the importance of theory just by picking on the use of one word (”manifesto”)?

you said:
> Return to your Logo, your education technology as it should be – designed, lead and owned by academics and people (surprising this is!) like you dear self

You want to deride logo here (despite your praise in the first paragraph – some internal lack of consistency here) and you are ignorant of Gary’s educational record. Why?

I thought your tasteless defacement of books about logo was particularly offensive. I love logo and am angry at you for deriding logo in this way. What do you actually know about it?

I see you have left a comment at Tom Hofmann’s blog so you would be aware that other bloggers interpreted Gary’s post in a generous and thoughtful manner.

I also read your comment on David Warlick’s blog where you say it’s ok to meet disrepect with disrespect. Well, it’s not really like that IMO.

Here’s my take on this. IMO Gary’s original post was a mixture of good points (some insufficiently elaborated on – since web2.0 movement is in general so ignorant of any history of educational computing then it does need spelling out), counterproductive points and trivial points. Read my blog for more detail if you want it.
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/09/web20-spray-stager-versus-downes.html

Your response is open derision and I don’t think the original deserved that.