Bogong Moths in Sydney, Starlings in Rome and Edu_Bloggers at Conferences

After Navcon2k7 we snuck in an extra day in Sydney before returning to New Zealand on what turned out to be a flight of interruptions, postponements and delays.  To listen to more seasoned Aerolineus Argintinas travellers it would seem that these cheaper flights always come at a cost. We could have flown most of the way to Auckland during the 3 plus hours we spent watching wait weary kids run amuck in the departure lounge.  Smearing Bogong moths across the departure lounge plate glass windows with PEP bottles proved a popular activity with the under fives.   The cries of exuberance, whilst smudging moths suggests that moth smearing counts as an engaging and authentic learning experience.

A day unleashed in Sydney (with no expectations about learning outcomes for the 21st Century Learner and no need to communicate anything to an audience of educators) was a lot of fun – my only regret being that my inability to look at my life more than one day ahead of the calendar meant I missed connecting with the ever fabulous RoseG.

The best part of the unleashed day was not the Mediterranean feta cheese, tomato and olive tossed  breakfasts beside Darling Harbour, the shopping, the architecture or the diversity of landscape and seascape – the best part was the plague of Bogong moths.     The moths were everywhere we ventured - inside and out - the Magnet could not search through a clothing rack or lift up an alarmingly pointy nosed shoe without releasing a flutter of moths into the air.

The size of the flutters fascinated me.  The population biologist buried deep within emerged – I wondered - how do we track the distribution and behaviour of moth flutters? What influences the Bogong moth’s  decisions of where to flutter? How do they organise the fluttering?  How do Bogong moths manage to keep together in flutters rather than spreading themselves randomly across the city?

All this thinking about fluttering meant I was alert to the 3Quarks article on the flocking behaviour of starlings in Rome.

Inspired by the aerial displays, a group of scientists led by theoretical physicists in Rome set up StarFlag, a multidisciplinary, multinational collaboration to study the birds' flocking behavior. The main aim was to determine "the fundamental laws of collective behavior and self-organization of animal aggregations in three dimensions," says Cavagna, the project's deputy coordinator. 

If we can track starlings and determine the fundamental laws of collective behaviour - could we not track the collective behaviour of Bogong moths?

And then I wondered if we can determine the fundamental laws of collective behaviour and self-organization of Bogong moth aggregations in three dimensions," what would we make of the "collective behaviour and self organisation" of edu_bloggers posting on their latest conference experience on Hitchhkr?

I’ve been trying to find posts of critical analysis on the ULearn07 conference many of our teachers attended in Auckland during the school holidays.  I wanted to read any critique of the new learning on offer.  So it was disconcerting to read through the 427 Ulearn07 Hitchhkr links and find so little analysis and so much flocking sentiment.   If I was reliant upon Hitchhikr alone for feedback on the conference I’d be tempted to conclude that ULearn07 attracted educators of such similar minds that they shared the same emotional response to all the experiences on offer - or perhaps I must conclude that blogging about an educational conference induces a  Josie Fraser described homophily in educators.

Given that Hitchhikr was “invented, to provide you with a virtual space where, thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event” it would be a shame if homophily amongst edu_bloggers meant that the posts collected at the site were more remarked upon for their mimicry  than for their critical analysis.

And this made me wonder if there was some way we could represent the 2-D text blog opinions offered in 3D -  a spatial aggregation of blog comments and podcasts - with diversity of opinion offered represented in three dimensions?

All this thinking about collective behaviours and how to represent them means I am looking for a new collective noun for bloggers who blogthink in synchrony about a shared learning experience like a conference ..

We enjoy a flutter of moths, and a murmuration of starlings .... so what would fit best for a collection of like minded homophilic bloggers ... 

a herd, colony, army, state , swarm, shrewdness, pace, drove, culture, cete, battery, shoal, colony, cloud, sloth, sleuth, family, drift, hive, swarm, bike, drift, cluster, erst, nest, flock, flight, parcel, pod, volary, brace, dissimulation, sedge, sounder, singular, chain, brace, clash, chatter, troup, gang, obstinacy, drove, swarm, rabble, kaleidoscope, flutter, wake, caravan, train, drove, drift, mob, clowder, pounce, kindle, litter, intrigue, clutter, comfort, coalition, brood, flock, clutch, run, peep, chattering, bed, quiver, intrusion, rag, covert, gulp, flight, kine, pack, train, band, bushel, siege, congregation, sedge, bask, float, murder, horde, litter, cowardice, bevy, troop, kennel, school, pod, trip, pace, flight, dule, dole, pitying, raft, paddling, bunch, team, brace, bed, flight, flock, fling, convocation, congregation, array, parade, crash , mob, business, charm, draft, nest, school, run, stand, flamboyance, cloud, hatch, business, swarm, dazzle etc ...   

Comments

[robertogreco]

An echo?

The NY Times ran an article on the starling studies back in April. It was accompanied by a beautiful narrated slideshow.

And on a possibly related note, here's some caution about quality work being lost in a sea of contributions. A taste:

"But I would argue that the feel-good sentiment of shouting “just be creative” to every impressionable young person leads us into a very dangerous dead-end—in which we become a nation of navel-gazing dreamy-eyed so-called creatives who no longer consider it worthwhile to roll up their sleeves and get down to hard work to get a job done, or, even worse, who no longer deem it worth their time to bother checking out any of the stuff that anyone else has made."

[robertogreco]

And regarding homophily (which you also touched on back in May), wouldn't it be great if teachers were able to attend non-education-specific events like Picnic and Lift more often. There would be some wonderful cross pollination there.

[Stephen Downes]

What we are seeing in these communities is classic 'group' behaviour. Groups are characterized by emotional attachment to an idea or cause. Hence the 'me too' posts, as posts consisting of statements of loyalty to the group will be most valued by the group.

Group behaviour common accompanies homophily because groups are created - and defined by - similarity and identity. What's important in a group is that everybody be in some way relevantly the same. Thus it becomes important to obtain statements of conformity (in the case of hitchhkr tags) and to define boundaries.

(It is interesting to compare hitchhkr, which, because it used Technorati, demanded explicit affiliation to a group, with the conference feeds created by Edu_RSS, which, because it harvested RSS feeds directly, required no affiliation - in Edu_RSS you tend to get more criticisms and "outsiders'" perspectives).

What should be kept in mind is that homophily is only one of several means of creating associations between entities (and hence, clusters of those entities, aka 'communities').

Homophily is, essentially, simply Hebbian associationism. When neurons fire at the same time - that is, when they are stimulated by all and only the same sort of thing - they tend to become connected.

But there are other principles of association. I would like to list four (usually I list three, but I think that the fourth should become part of this picture). I'll give brief examples of each:

1. Hebbian associationism. People are connected by common interests. Affinity groups, religions, communities of practice - these are all examples of similarity-based association.

2. Accidental, or proximity-based, associationism. People who are proximate are connected. You may have nothing to do with your neightbour, but you're connected. The mind associates cause and effect because one follows the other (Hume). Retinal cells that are beside each other become associated through common connections.

3. Back-propagation. Existing structures of association are modified through feedback. Complain about the 'me too' posts, for example, and they decline in number. Adversity creates connections.

4. Boltzmann Associationism. Connections are created which reflect the most naturally stable configuration. The way ripples in a pond smooth out. This is how opposites can attract - they are most comfortable with each other. Or, people making alliances of convenience.

Two of these forms are qualitative. They are based on direct experience. They are not critical or evaluative. They tend to lead to groups.

The other two - Back Propagation and Boltzmann associationism - are reflective. They are created through a process of interaction, and not simply through experience. They are critical or evaluative. They tend to lead to networks.

It has been said, by way of criticism of my other work on this subject, that we need the elements of both groups and networks. That may be true. But the problem is, they cancel each other out.

Groups are based on conformity, networks are created out of diversity. Groups are based on compliance, networks are based on autonomy. Groups are closed, networks are open. Groups communicate inwardly, networks communicate outwardly.

Most social networks to date have focused on groups (indeed, they are explicitly about creating groups) and hence, on Hebbian and Accidental association. It's easy to find similarities. But the similarities are so broad (as Fraser says, sex springs to mind) the groups thus defined are formless, and when you define the similarities more narrowly, the members of the group have nothing to say to each other (other than to chant the slogans back and forth at each other).

Finding reflective connections is more difficult. We do not have automated back-propagation and Boltzmann mechanisms on the internet - it's possible that we won't be able to. Right now, the only mechanisms we have are messy things like conferences and chat rooms and discussion lists and blogs. And the connections have to be made, not by machine, but by autonomous reflective individuals.

[Josie]

Thanks for the link credit and the comments A. Stephen re-posted his response over at Half and Hour (http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/10/homophily-and-association.html), & the homophily thing quickly came in for some shouting...

[lucychili]

the book Pandemonium about bird flue pandemics and industrial modes of animal production provide an interesting poi parallel to conversations about risks of social monoculture.

[Janet Hawtin]

flu

[ailsa]

"Flocking sentimentality" = the disparaging extremes of Group think.
How eloquent.

[lucychili]

Cory Doctorow on scaling =)
http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2007/10/13/cory-doctorow-fiction-tech-future07-cx_cd_1015money.html