Getting To Know You... Are Online Friends Real?

I know several people that I consider friends that I have never met face to face (F2F). Some I have know for several years - we correspond through text, e-mails, or hang out represented by our avatars in places like Second Life. Are these people any less my friends than those I see regularly F2F in the "real world"? The only differences are that in many cases I probably say more and open up more to my online friends than my F2F friends, and I can't visually see my online friends.

Can you have friends that you have never actually met in the physical world? I think you can.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on this one - can you get to know someone better online than you can in a F2F (face to face) environment? Just think of the people who met online and ended up together in the "real world". Many of the couples like that I know say that one of the advantages was they "knew" each other before they met F2F.

Here is my premise:

• It's easier to get to know someone on line because a lot of the social strictures are gone - it's not bosses and employees or peers it's just a group of people doing the same thing
• It's sort of like the opposite of Cheers - "where NO ONE (instead of every one) knows your name...". People who would be too shy to say something F2F are comfortable to share online - they are not hampered by appearance, or position, or place...

Do you think this is true or is it just my fevered imagination? I've become so comfortable online that I no longer really differentiate between the two - I have friends - it's just that some of them I have only met in text. Hmmm...

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009 - I'm in Truro!!

Well took me a month, and I'm behind schedule, but I'm in Truro Nova Scotia about 103 KM from Halifax. I'm blaming my slow progress on the weather and all of the salt and slush along Highway 102. I'll need to pick up the pace if I'm to celebrate New Years Eve in Vancouver...

There's a New Sheriff In Town...

Wow! What a day - I think the whole world is breathing a little easier now. Lots of cheers, lots of tears, and we now have the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. Today was definitely one of those I remember where I was when kind of days.

At my campus we set up a TV in the cafeteria for those who wanted to watch - over 200 people showed up, with overflow in another classroom, and you could hear a pin drop. Then when Barack Obama took the oath of office, spontaneous applause and cheering erupted - and we are in Canada! Perhaps the only Canadian politician who would have even come close to that reaction would have been Pierre Elliot Trudeau at the height of his popularity. There were a lot of tears around the room too - a very emotional, global impact day. For those of you who didn't get a chance to see President Obama's (that has a very nice ring to it) inauguration and address, here it is courtesy of YouTube:

Facebook Is The Malt Shop Of The 21st Century Or Where Do You Hang Out?...

This post is one from my To-Do list. Thought it was about time I got around to this - some thoughts on how we as a species, at least in the connected world, have changed how we meet people, make friends, and hang out...

When I was growing up we hung out at drive-ins, bowling alleys, hockey rinks, community centres, sports fields, and other real spaces. The people we met and the friends we made were local and we met face to face. I moved around a lot as an army brat and over the years lost track of old friends, making new friends at our new posting. Some you kept in touch with by letters, but I was (and am) a lousy letter writer. Our friends were "real" we knew their names and we knew what they looked like.

Welcome to 2009 and Web 2.0, virtual worlds, micro-blogging sites like Twitter, and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Orkut (among literally hundreds), not to mention online dating sites like e-Harmony. The whole meeting, making, and keeping friends paradigm has changed. You can now meet people from all over the world, get to know them and create lasting friendships and relationships without ever meeting. Staying "in touch" is easy and is now pushed to your friends by simply updating your status. You can develop a deep or lasting relationship that once it becomes face to face (or "real" as some would say) continues to be stroong.

The question is can you be friends with someone you have never met? My answer to that question is yes. I know several people that I consider friends who I have never met face to face, yet our relationships are normal and friendly. I've met most of these people through Second Life, and some through Facebook. Some I have met face to face in the "real world", some I will probably never meet yet I still consider them friends and no less a friend simply because we have never met face to face. What sites like Facebook and Second Life have done is simply expanded my "First Life" - my social circles and networks are now global, not loacal...

Anna Pickard in the Guardian posted an article called "Virtual people, real friends" (thanks to Randommind for finding this). It's a great read and makes the point that you can have real friends with virtual people. In the article Anna says:

"The friends I've made online – from blogging in particular, be they other bloggers or commenters on this or my own site – are the best friends I now have. And yet, when I say this to people, many times they'll look at me like I'm a social failure; and when surveys like this are reported, it's always with a slight air of being the "It's a crazy, crazy, crazy world!" item last thing on the news. Some portions of my family still refer to my partner of six years as my "Internet Boyfriend".

Call me naive, but far from being the bottomless repository of oddballs and potential serial killers, the internet is full of lively minded, like-minded engaging people – for the first time in history we're lucky enough to choose friends not by location or luck, but pinpoint perfect friends by rounding up people with amazingly similar interests, matching politics, senses of humour, passionate feelings about the most infinitesimally tiny hobby communities. The friends I have now might be spread wide, geographically, but I'm closer to them than anyone I went to school with, by about a million miles.

For me, and people like me who might be a little shy or socially awkward – and there are plenty of us about – moving conversations and friendships from the net to a coffee shop table or the bar stool is a much more organic, normal process than people who spend less time online might expect.

Depending on the root of the friendship, on where the conversation started, the benefit is clear – you cut out the tedium of small talk. What could be better?"

This is the new reality of where people are "hanging out" and meeting - many social places of my youth are gone or are no longer safe to hang out at - we have switched to an online world of common interests, acquaintances, linked friends (the real six degrees of separation), and online communities where we meet and make friends.

This new reality has implications for educators too - our learners are hanging out in these new online spaces, making friends, collaborating, defining relationships and creating networks. We need to understand how this works, understand that friends made in this new paradigm are just as real and just as important as any "real-world" friends and that these virtual friends will impact on learning environments and how we will relate to our learners.

As we move to more and more blended or online deliveries, many of our learners will only be known to us through their online presence. Does that make them any less a learner or are the friendships and relationships they develop with their classmates and us any less relevant or important? Hmmm...




(Photo - "Blast From The Past" by Steve_Tango)

My Virtual Cross-Canada Trek 2009

This past year (after all we're one day into 2009, so that would make 2008 this past year), we had a walking challenge at the college - each group picked a destination off a map and then our accumulated walking totals went towards the distance to our destination. I ended up walking 978 KMs in 2008 that I actually recorded on a pedometer. I got to thinking that it's something I wanted to continue for 2009, but on a larger scale - so here it is - in 2009 I will virtually walk from Halifax to Vancouver, a distance of 4443 Kms according to WikiAnswers.

I'll update the map periodically with my progress. We're in the middle of a New Year's Day blizzard here on the East Coast today, so I'm off to a slow start - my walking today will be of the indoor type. I'm just a little worried about dodging rush hour traffic in Montreal and Toronto, and that trek up the Rockies is goingto be a killer! Wish me luck...

Looking Back, Looking Forward 2008...

Well, tonight is the end of one year and the start of another. Time to look back at the year that was and look forward to the year that will be.

Here are the things that I said back on December 31st 2007 would be the big things of 2008:

1. Blended learning and blended learning opportunities will increase - in the end (maybe not the end of 2008 but soon after), more learners will be taking a blended approach to learning than a traditional classroom only model
2. Second Life will continue to grow and will be bought by one of the big players in the Internet (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft...)
3. Open Source will continue to take away from proprietary software - Google Docs and similar online collaborative "suites" will increase in use and popularity
4. Web 2.0 apps will become mainstream as businesses and educational institutions start to use them regularly
5. E-Mails use will decline in favour of IM, Twitter, Facebook and other more immediate forms of communication - EMail will be for "communicating with old folks"
6. Facebook will still be big, but may decline as people become tired of all of the "applications" cluttering up the interface. Look to Orkut and other social networking sites to grow among those wanting to be social without all of the "other stuff". Ning will grow in the creation and use of personal and customized social networking sites
7. I hope that someone creates the social networking equivalent of Meebo allowing me to use one interface for all of the social networking sites that I belong to - Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Ning...
8. Microsoft Windows Vista will continue to struggle, good news for Apple and Linux distros like Ubuntu. More and more educational institutions will look at multi-boot Apple computers as the solution to their IT infrastructure needs.
9. The iPhone will come to Canada - PLEASE!!!! The iPhone is the future of learning...
   
10. I'll continue to blog in 2008, focussing on education and other things that make me go hmmm... including my new mantra of ECMO - Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness - it's where education has to go...

It looks like Kreskin's job is safe - some of these things came to pass and some didn't, and some sort of happened. So what will be the big events of 2009?

1. The downturn in the global economy will impact all sectors including education - enrollments may go uo because learners want to stay in school and avoid a down-turned job market, or enrollments may decline because no one can afford to come to school. Hmmm... I'm betting on the first choice.
2. Blended learning will continue to grow as more and more learners and more and more academic institutions look for more flexible learning opportunities
3. The iPhone is in Canada and it along with other smartphones from RIM and Google will change the way many learners get their information, and even the way they learn
4. Web 2.0 tools will mature - the space will mature and shrink somewhta with many Web 2.0 tools disappearing or being assimilated (see Pownce as an example). More and more people will begin the move to cloud computing. That will have huge implications ofr educators. Hmmm...
5. I'm still hoping that someone will create the social networking equivalent of Meebo allowing me to use one interface for all of the social networking sites that I belong to - Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Ning...
6. Educators will continue to struggle to understand millennial learners and adpat learning environments to meet them where they are while at the same time giving them the skills they will need to be successful in a world trhat won't be quite as flexible in accomodating them. Millennials may change the world, but they won't do it in 2009...
7. Open source and cloud computing is the future and the future will continue to develop in 2009.
8. I'll still continue to blog in 2009, still focussing on education and other things that make me go hmmm... including my not so new mantra of ECMO - Engagement, Collaboration, Mobility, and Openness, modified with its corollary "Learning Is a Team Sport" - it's where education has to go...

Have a great year everyone! It's goingto be interesting. Hmmm...

(Photo - Janus Coin by Marco Prins)

Happy New Year - Welcome to 2009!!...

Happy New Year all and welcome to 2009. May this new year be everything that you want it to be and may it bring everything that you want - good health, wealth, adventure, good friends and family and whatever else you desire.

2009 is going to be an adventure, one that I am looking forward to sharing with you. Never have the words "May you live in interesting times" ever meant so much. Hmmm...