This is simply not possible anymore, and attempting it just makes you seem heavy-handed and out of touch. Far better to listen to what other people are saying about you and engage when appropriate.

The US Air Force produced a useful guide to blog assessment which susequently found its way onto the internet. It’s good, but I wanted something more generic, in plainer English, and more suitable for UK Third Sector organisations.

So I’ve had a crack at making my own version, which you can download here. It’s released under a Creative Commons licence so you can re-hash it providing you don’t do so for commercial gain.

Download my flow chart for managing online reputations (pdf) (the link takes you to another page, which contains a link to the pdf; one day I’ll figure out why WordPress won’t let me link directly to the pdf from here).

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(This is not a detailed report of the evening; it is my resultant thoughts, combined from the debate and the informal chatter afterwards.)

Informal learning happens already, without any intervention. Steps can (and should) be taken to encourage it and to encourage its methods within formal education structures, but informal learning should not become formalised. If we try to quantify it – at least using existing measuring tools – then the informal becomes formal, and vital aspects of it are lost.

Times will change, as the technologies become more pervasive and the education system is managed by those with longer and deeper experience of them. So I don’t think there’s a great problem with bringing the informal into the formal, providing those involved continue to chip away at the barriers and continue to ask challenging questions.

For me the issue is much more about how we harness the educational value of our relationships, both online and offline (something that School of Everything is trying to address).

It’s interesting that most of the discussion about ‘social networking’ still refers to websites, or at least to identifiable locations; and indeed that seems to be how the providers of these services see them. MySpace and Facebook, for example, seem to be understood primarily as locations rather than services for connecting relationships (Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be used via a much greater range of tools: many users access it without using the website, and mix it with other services).

But even Twitter could well have ceased to be in vogue within the next few months. Therefore concentrating on helping people traverse a steep learning curve for specific tools seems a little misguided; but helping them to understand the nature of online relationships, how they relate to offline ones, and how to harness the benefits of both, seems more fruitful.

One problem is how to identify those relationships. How can a blogger, for instance, make sense of the relationships between people who leave comments? Users of online networking services (such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace) tend to have flat relationships: in other words, everyone is a ‘friend’; there is no mechanism for identifying hierarchies or nuances within the relationship. As Andy Gibson complained: there is no way in Facebook of defining one person as a learner and another as their mentor.

In theory this is very simple to rectify: taxonomies already exist, such as XFN – now used in the ubiquitous blogging platform WordPress – which allows the labelling of such information. It could just be a case of suggesting that the list of relationships it identifies is extended to include ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ (or something similar).

There are (at least) two issues though. Firstly, how do we define the taxonomies and languages? As Dan Sutch pointed out, labelling a resource for two different curriculum subjects will require different taxonomies, although the resource itself may be valuable to both: how then should a teacher label that resource?

The subsequent issue then, once the taxonomies are agreed, is of encouraging developers to build simple ways for users to apply them (as WordPress implements XFN). But, in fact, a lot of this work is already being done (see Microformats).

And of course the relationships already exist. Understanding that and helping teachers make sense of it is, I think, where the value is for the formal education sector. Of course that means helping to bring down technical and beurocratic barriers, but it also means encouraging them to just do it: to help them identify tools to augment their relationships with other teachers, institutions, etc, and to get involved in discussions with the informal education sector.

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Of course, this happens in ‘normal’ conversation too. The difference now though is that we have to adapt our understanding of social norms for every social networking tool that we use (be that Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed), because they all have subtle – but significant – differences in what is acceptable. And these cultures are not definitive; they are not written into rules but evolve: shaped of course by the careful crafting that went into the tool being used, but ultimitely by those who use it.

Take Twitter for instance. I would presume that if a user hasn’t made their updates private then it is fair game for any who follows them to reply to their tweets: if you want to send someone a private message they have to be following your updates too.

But then take FriendFeed. I started following a few people that I hardly know but got cold feet because of the constant use of the word ‘friend’. Yes these people have made their information public, but do they really want me following their every online move?

In both cases the tools seem clear in their intentions, but there is always room for the culture to adapt: how are the social norms of each actually understood by the users?

Which brings me to my concern about the digital divide: yes it needs addressing urgently, but sometimes people will be more comfortable with what they know. We must remember that and not presume that ‘social media’ tools are neccessarily beneficial.

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I want to endorse the idea of ‘digital mentors‘ [link updated], really I do; but the more I think about it the less able I am to do so.

For a start the funding would run out eventually. Any mentoring programme would therefore reach a finite number of people within a very specific time window. Developments in technology will move on regardless.

More importantly though, what point of understanding would mentors be trying to reach with their charges? What aspects of social media would be seen as important? Would their efforts be welcomed, or would some people rather stay digitally divided?

Definitely I agree that education is as least as important as access to technology, but there’s no point in one without the other. And I think that maybe the education is best embedded in the (ever-evolving) formal structures, so that we can develop a culture of understanding and appreciation of the changing nature of technology and the different speeds and levels at which people adapt to it.

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When this happens – and it happens a lot these days – I feel that I’m on an irreversible and rapid ascent to the peak of my sanity, at which point I shall burn-out: not from work but from trying to keep abreast with technology (and currently with today’s hot potato of ‘social media’). I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch-up, desparate not to fall behind. The world is changing incredibly fast; I already feel as though it’s running away and I no longer have the energy to keep up.

It’s inevitable that I (and all of my contemporaries) will eventually become part of the technologically disenfranchised section of society, that we will slip over to the wrong side of the digital divide. Doubtless some of us will fight it off longer than others; but it will happen, as technology develops in ways that we are unable to comprehend within the confines of our experience.

My understanding of the world is already inconcievably different to that of my nieces, whose world has always been inhabited by the internet and mobile phones. My understanding of those technologies was shaped by experience of more than 20 years without them, whereas Vicky and Rebecca are starting from a very different place; consequently they will have a much more profound awareness of technology than I. As with every generation gap, they will have no way of appreciating my understanding of the world and I will have no way of appreciating theirs.

And things are changing more quickly than ever. Life online is much faster than life offline, and that pace is increasing. Yesterday I replied to a tweet (a message via Twitter) ten hours after it was posted because I hadn’t been in front of the internet in that time. I felt I should apologise for the delay, because ten hours is a long time on Twitter.

Although that can happen offline too, it is much easier online to flick back through your messages and catch up with conversations, giving a perspective on the rapid progress of what you’ve missed; while this at least keeps you in the loop, it can also leave you feeling as though you’ll eventually run out of the energy to keep up.

So how do we tackle this problem of a growing digital divide? (And I believe it is growing, and always will: not just access to and understanding of technology, but pace of life, social development and personal education.) Should we be providing people with access to technology? Should we be educating people on how to use it meaningfully? Do we really want offline and online interactions to fuse?

In short, should we be educating to tackle the digital divide or accepting that it’s always going to be there?

The Prime Minister recently pledged £300m to provide internet access to the technologically disadvantaged. There is a ripple of debate around the futility of that, and a suggestion that the money would be better spent on ‘digital mentors‘. Stuart Parker argues: ‘It’s not about the access. The ongoing evolution of the Internet … means that people who are still to use the technology or have limited experience, are being left behind at an unacceptable rate’.

But plenty of people I know want to be left behind. They don’t want to embrace technology completely. They may feel frightened of it, and a little more understanding may even exacerbate that. I may well be one of them. And I suspect the limits of experience and understanding will prevent them (and eventually us, including those charged with the educating) from progressing past a given point.

This isn’t to say that I don’t agree about education being more important than mere access to technology. But I do think we need to think carefully about what that education is. For me it should be as much about understanding how we all live together in a ‘multi-technical’ society as about anything else.

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I manage the corporate website of a charity, but part of my remit is to ensure that new sites are commissioned with standards compliance firmly in mind. We also have a number of other sites, all of which were either commissioned independently at the behest of the associated funder, or were transferred to us from other organisations.

Each of our existing sites is managed by someone different, although in theory I have a sort of oversight (but not management) role for them. And as each manager has vastly different web expertise I have quite a big challenge in encouraging people to understand what these technologies do and persuading them of the benefits of compliance.

I’m trying to raise the issue by introducing a basic standards document (based on the BBC’s Accessibility Guidelines) and inviting discussion.

I would like to go further and encourage training, but it would be impossible at this stage to find the 50+ hours required for the Opera curriculum plus the hours to research and adapt it in the first place. However, if there was more momentum behind it from the sector it might be a more attractive option.

Any thoughts?

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Anyone can view it, and extra features (such as searching) are available to those with a Google account (grab a Google account here).

If you have an event you would like to see there, or you would like to be considered as a contributor, contact the calendar owner.

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First is a list of ‘podcasts for general studies and citizenship‘.

Second is the Grassroots Channel, inspired by the Birmingham Community Empowerment Network, which “tells the stories of ordinary people who decided to change the world around them”.

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