[u.k.: new institute for web science]

 "Department for Business, Innovation and Skills   (National)

The Government today announced the creation of the new Institute for Web Science.

It is designed to make the UK the hub of international research into the next generation of web and internet technologies and their commercialisation, and was announced by the Prime Minister alongside plans for a radical opening up of information and data to put more power in people’s hands. The Institute will conduct research, collaborate with businesses, identify opportunities for social and economic benefit, assist in commercialising research and help Government stimulate demand through procurement.

The web was originally a place where people published documents that users could search and pick up. Web 2.0 has enabled users to contribute and create web content more easily. Web 3.0 will take the web to a whole new level by publishing data in a linkable format so that users and developers can see and exploit the relationships between different sets of information.

The development of these technologies will create significant new opportunities for business and the public sector. The impact of these technologies is likely to be as important as the creation of the original web, and could generate large-scale economic benefits for the UK in the global market for web and internet technologies. The role of the Institute will be to undertake research and development, and act as a bridge between research and business, helping commercialise these new technologies. It will also advise Government on how semantic technologies can be used in the public sector, and how public procurement can be used to speed their adoption.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that £30 million would be set aside to create the Institute for Web Science. It will be headed by Sir Tim Berners Lee, the British inventor of the World Wide Web, and leading Web Science expert Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Read more here. 

[colour matters...even in the twitterverse]

New Box UK Study Finds Twitter Users of Both Sex More Likely to ‘Follow’ White Women



Between June and October of 2009 London-based digital agency Box UK (http://www.boxuk.com) conducted two sequential social experiments to test how Twitter users reacted to being followed by strictly controlled test accounts. The results strongly suggest that given a choice of following black and white people of either sex, Twitter users are more likely to ‘follow’ white women, and least likely to follow black women.


This distribution also holds when the data is sub-divided into male followers and female followers for each account, showing that both sexes are most likely to follow White Female or Ambiguous accounts, and least likely to follow Black Females. We can also deduce that on average, female twitter users are 30% less likely to follow a request from a stranger, than a male twitter user.

“While it may be rather premature to conclusively argue that white women get more followers on Twitter than non-white women or men, we do know that a digital divide does exist and that certain groups of people tend to explore new applications with greater speed and enthusiasm. Without wading into a debate on technology users, more information on the aggregate of Twitter users is necessary to come to any real conclusions about their use of technology,” says Dr. Tina Basi a sociologist specializing in ethnography for design.


Basi, who previously worked with Intel’s Digital Health Research Group argues that, “perhaps what the data is pointing to, is that our relationship, as users, with new social media remains somewhat perplexing. We are still struggling with using Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, as ways of engaging and connecting with others, and instead, fall back on using them to simply keep tabs on others. The internet, as a medium, still holds the spectacle of say film or television, and seeing someone on your screen attaches a celebrity like status to them. The lack of reciprocity for some of the Twitter accounts created in this experiment, might better reflect our assumptions about celebrity and tendency toward voyeurism, as opposed to forming any real argument about Tweeters.”


Twitter is an increasingly important platform for conducting social experiments, with its ability to tap-into and measure human communication and behaviour on a massive scale. As the platform grows, we expect to see businesses and academics harnessing this capability to ‘invisibly’ survey the real behaviour and reactions of people, enabling a new wave of social research and customer intelligence.

Read more about the methodology and report here.






Image from Dan Zambonini's post on the report findings.

[cfp: workshop on academia 2.0]

Academia 2.0 and Beyond – How Social Software Changes Research and Education in Academia

(at the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2009)

Workshop will take place on the 8th of September in Vienna, Austria

Organizers:

• Michael Koch, Bundeswehr University Munich, http://www.kooperationssysteme.de/
• Isa Jahnke, Technische Universität Dortmund, http://www.isa-jahnke.de/

Abstract

The Web 2.0 and Social Software is often attributed with a high potential for addressing today’s challenges in knowledge management and distributed collaboration. This development has already reached industry. Using the term Enterprise 2.0, different possibilities to use Social Software in enterprises are researched. But also in academia, cooperation to generate new knowledge, and to add it to the scientific discourse may radically change under open Web 2.0 conditions. In addition, teaching and learning scenarios might be moved towards technology enhanced lifelong learning communities. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the application of Social Software in academia (research as well as teaching and learning) – and how these new kinds of software might change the whole setting – make new ways of doing research or teaching and learning possible or at least easier to do.

Motivation/Theme

New buzzwords have become part of our daily lexicon: Web 2.0, Social Software and Social Web are often used as synonyms. These concepts focus on new or existing software systems, which are influenced by human communication and collaboration (Jahnke & Koch 2009). Thus, Web 2.0 is heavily reliant on social interaction, and so, social web-based applications generate and require a human-centered design approach. Furthermore, this kind of new media influences the people. A new generation of the “digital natives” are arriving (Prensky, 2001). The number of users of Web 2.0 applications in private settings (e.g., leisure) is very high. However, in organizations and enterprises Web 2.0 concepts or such combined applications are still at an early stage (Koch & Richter 2008). The same is true for universities. Franklin & van Harmelen (2007) show some examples of institutional practices. A potential of Web 2.0 for academia show also Rollet et al. (2007). To conclude, there are some Web 2.0 tools in universities, in particular wikis and blogs (e.g., Hookway, 2008) but the usage of these tools and other Web 2.0 scenarios for supporting teaching, learning or research is not yet fully developed. So, the question how the Web 2.0 can support community-based learning (e.g. Barr & Tagg, 1995) or research processes in academia is not yet satisfactorily answered.

Research questions

The main research question of the workshop is: Are there any innovative research and/or teaching designs or arrangements (e.g., Alexander, 2006; Downes, 2005) using social software and what can we learn from these scenarios? Some derived research questions which we will discuss in our workshop:

• a) What Web 2.0 applications exist in universities, in research or in learning? Do Web 2.0 applications in academia make a difference to existing Internet applications like email, content management systems or newsgroups?
• b) Do you have success stories or success criteria of Web 2.0 usage in academic fields? What changes are observable or essential when introducing Web 2.0 concepts in teaching (e.g. new design/balance of teaching and learning) or research settings?
• c) How can we introduce Web 2.0 applications in the academic world, and support the change management process? How can we successfully distribute the concepts into a university?

Aim

Our aim is to collect proposals for academic practice with Web 2.0, to specify research questions dealing with Web 2.0 in academia (e.g., new forms of interactions, changing research practice, new learning scenarios, organizational change by using new media) or to discuss new research methods (e.g., e-ethnography) and their challenges in this topic. In our workshop, we want to share practical experience or research results about using Web 2.0 in teaching and research, for example, e-learning goes Web 2.0, scientific communities goes Web 2.0, research publications goes Web 2.0 or university goes Web 2.0. Therefore, we strongly invite researchers and practitioners who have ideas or experience of using Web 2.0 applications in academia.

Participation Requirements

Workshop participants are requested to submit a position paper covering practice with Web 2.0 in academia, research focus or research questions, proposals for academic practice with Web 2.0, proposals for new research methods with regard to Web 2.0 in academia or specific case studies (if applicable) and findings to date. Using practical examples the participants should demonstrate how the concepts and developments behind the Web 2.0 and Social Software movement are used in academia, what Web 2.0 characteristics could make a good basis for academia.

Deadline for position papers: June 29, 2009 (new deadline)

There is no size limit or formatting requirement for position papers.

Please send position papers as PDF or document files to the two organizers:

• michael.koch@unibw.de
• isa.jahnke@tu-dortmund.de

Position papers will be presented and discussed during the workshop.

Read more here and here.

[social media analytics]

Great post from Ben Parr on Mashable on how to track social media stats:

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Understand what you want to track

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As with most things in life, you can’t conquer what you don’t understand, or at least what you haven’t really though about.

What is your goal? Do you want to track how people are sharing your website? Do you want to track a specific social media campaign? Or maybe you’re just interested in trends related to a specific meme or social media phenomenon? Each one requires different tools and different focus.

You’re going to focus on traffic statistics if you’re tracking social media website engagement, while if you’re tracking a wider campaign, TwitterTwitter reviews response and positive comments might be a more appropriate metric.

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Optimize your existing analytics software

---

Most of us use analytics software like Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics reviews, Woopra, or Omniture to track website data like traffic, visitors, pages per visitor, and traffic sources. Most of these analytics tools can track a wealth of data, but they are not designed to track social media data. Luckily, there are a few ways to beef up your analytics software for social media. Some quick tools and suggestions:

Social Media Metrics Plugin: Social Media Metrics is a greasemonkey extension that adds a social media information layer to Google Analytics, providing information on Diggs, stumbles, delicious bookmarks, and more for each individual page. Be aware - it’s not perfect.

Set up specific campaigns and events for social media: Most analytics software has custom campaigns to make it easy to track specific events. You can track a specific Twitter traffic campaign or DiggBar URL with campaigns.

Reorganize dashboards and set up email reports: To get specific information on social media, have traffic stats from top social media websites (i.e. Digg, FacebookFacebook reviews, Twitter, etc.) emailed to you so you can see it all in one place. In addition, reorganize any dashboards you have to show this information for easy access.

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Add new analytics tools

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Even with web analytics tools, you don’t have all the tools necessary to get started tracking analytics related to social media. Why not add some more tools to your inventory that track detailed social metrics? Some suggestions:

Bit.ly: When you use a URL shortener, it’s always a smart idea to use one that has analytics information, like Bit.ly. This will track information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.

Xinureturns: Despite the funny Scientology-inspired name, xinureturns provides a great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.

PostRank: Formerly known as AideRSS, PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeedFriendFeed reviews all in one place. It’s best for blogs and websites with a lot of content.

SocialToo: SocialToo is a comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social stats. It also will send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter.

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Aggregate your analytics

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There are a lot of tools for gathering social media information, but no one place has everything you need. You don’t have time to look at all of the tools, so aggregate your analytics information.

There is no single tool that will bring this information together, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Export data into excel, pdf, or email and record all of the information to one area, whichever works best for you. Building a spreadsheet may be best for playing with the numbers. Make it easily accessible.

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Analyze and engage

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The last step is always the most important one - the actual analysis. It takes years of dedication to the art of web analytics to really understand how each variable affects website traffic and user engagement, but by looking at this data in one place and comparing the information, you will hopefully be able to pick up on trends.

This guide is only how to get started with social media analytics. Take the time to find great tools and to understand how each of the social media levers affects traffic and analytics data. But most of all, use the data to engage your audience. You can figure out what they’re looking for using social media analytics, so be sure to act upon the data once you’ve analyzed it.

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Read the post here: http://mashable.com/2009/04/19/social-media-analytics/

[social media and sustainability]

Recently I was asked to give a presentation to a group on the theme of social media and sustainability. I began with an introduction to some web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, twitter) and the usefulness of rss. Then I gave some examples of organisations employing aspects of social media to generate interest/support in an environmental issue or to garner information. Early into my introduction I asked the group (there were about 35 or so) to answer some questions to give me (and them) and idea of how they are situated in relation to social media.
The questions I asked included:

• Do you send txt msgs?
• Do you blog or comment on blogs?
• Do you listen to podcasts?
• Do you have a Facebook profile?
• Do you participate on an e-mail list?
• Have you watched a YouTube video?
• Do you Tweet?
• Do you have a Flickr account?
• Do you aggregate RSS feeds?

How do you think the group did? Would your prediction change if I told you this was research-oriented group? That mostly everyone there was over 35 (except perhaps for a few ph.d students who joined us and the speaker of course...)?

Well no one had a blog though a few did listen to podcasts and the question about tweeting generated a few giggles. Two people in the room had photo-sharing accounts but no one knew what RSS was so definitely no one was using a feed aggregator. Having said this, I think I'd have received similar answers with a younger group. In fact, having posed this questions to my first year and third year media undergrads they too did not have blogs but they watched and uploaded videos and shared photos and updates with facebook. No one there knew about rss either. So, not too dissimilar...which leads me to...

Someone at the talk implied that *we* (harumph) are digital immigrants and that our students and the groups we're trying to target (in this case, to instill change and be proactive about the environment) are digital natives, ergo they *know* this *stuff*... Firstly, I disagree that technology-use is a generational thing (think of silver surfers). Secondly, just because you or your child or your niece or whomever...has access to a nintendo ds or a psp or txts all the time does not mean that they are literate and know how to protect themselves online and recognise issues related to identity theft, bullying and even future employment (do you really want your future employer to see evidence of a drunken saturday night - I know my first and third years did NOT realise this).

I think there's often talk about helping students become *literate* (or transliterate) in the online environment - how do they navigate all the different modes alongside identity and IP (especially for researchers) etc...but what about the teachers? Where is the acknowledgment that those doing the teaching also need time to learn, absorb and choose how and if they're going to implement web 2.0 applications? I'm wondering more about this because although the group I was talking with weren't there in terms of pedagogy the questions they asked were just as applicable:

• why *should* we use [enter application here, twitter/facebook/blogs/podcasts/youtube/flickr]?
• doesn't this just add more work?
• what are the benefits?

I think it's to be expected that there is anxiety with new things; adding to our work and generating frustration but I think the examples I showed of organisations leveraging social media to share ideas and generate buzz illustrated well the potentials. I quite like what ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club BC, the three leading environmental groups that have worked with the B.C. government, First Nations and industry leaders to British Columbia’s globally unique Great Bear Rainforest. Together, they launched a social media campaign using facebook, twitter, blogs and youtube videos. They also made it easy for supporters to send pre-written protest e-mails and add their voices to the campaign. On the 31st of March 2009 the social media efforts paid off:

"March 31, 2009, Vancouver, British Columbia – The promise made three years ago to protect one-third of British Columbia’s globally unique Great Bear Rainforest and develop the foundations for a conservation-based economy in the region has been fulfilled. Today’s announcement is greatly welcomed by ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club BC, the three leading environmental groups that have worked with the B.C. government, First Nations and industry leaders to ensure the promise would be kept. Today’s announcement lays out the tremendous ecological and economic gains for the region and the long-term commitment to ensure the health of the rainforest and communities."

Have a look at the youtube video:

The questions after the session were enlightening. Most were excited to explore social media themselves but admitted that they didn't really know about "these sorts of things." They wanted to learn but weren't sure whether they had the institutional support. So key the to us being able to pass on knowledge is institutional/work support in terms of teaching the teachers (employees etc...) and giving them the time to learn how to use tools effectively (of course this goes for anything right? not just social media or computer technologies). I must say, the IOCT is brilliant in that respect - using twitter and facebook and blogging are recognised aspects of research and demonstrate interaction with/in the field. (disclosure: I am employed as a Research Fellow at the IOCT).

[the future of curriculum]

I read this article in the guardian with great interest...On the surface some curriculum reforms seem positive: promoting critical digital literacy...but focusing on certain applications per se (like Twitter and Wikipedia) might be a bit too constraining...Twitter is hot now, but in 5 years? Another app. will have come along with which our students (and teachers) should be au fait. Interestingly the new curriculum notes that children need more time to acquire these kinds of skills (ok) and that it's up to each teacher how and when to use these technological tools (of course)...but where is the time to help the teachers themselves come to terms with each new device? Plus, as always it seems, shifting the focus to technology raises more fears about the death of the book: "Computer skills and keyboard skills seem to be as important as handwriting in this. Traditional books and written texts are downplayed in response to web-based learning." I mean, surely digital literacy is not nearly as important as cursive writing...


Read the entire article here and the comments here.

[web 2.0 tools and education]

I've been reading the JISC report on Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in
Higher Education and on page 8 the authors have this useful list of ideas on how to use certain web 2.0 tools to facilitate learning. None of them are new to me but still good ideas. I'd be interested to hear what innovative uses other educators are coming up with.

Podcasts can be used to provide introductory material before lectures, or, more commonly, to record lectures and allow students to listen to the lectures again, either because they were unable to attend, or to reinforce their learning. Podcasts can be used to make lectures redundant while still supplying (possibly didactic) presentations of learning material by lecturers.
· Vidcasts can be used to supply to supply videos of experimental procedures in advance of lab sessions
· Podcasts can be used to supply audio tutorial material and/or exemplar recordings of native speakers to foreign language learners.
· Distribution and sharing of educational media and resources. For example, an art history class could have access to a set of art works via a photo sharing system.
· The ability to comment on and critique each others work; including by people on other courses or at other institutions.
· Flickr allows for annotations to be associated with different areas of an image and for comments to be made on the image as a whole, thereby facilitating teacher explanations, class discussion, and collaborative comment. It could be used for the example above.
· For Flickr, FlickrCC18 is a particularly useful ancillary service that allows users to find Creative Commons licensed images that are freely reusable as educational resources.
· Instructional videos and seminar records can be hosted on video sharing systems. Google Video allows for longer higher quality videos than YouTube, and contains a specific genre of educational video

"Education in every country and in every epoch has always been social in nature. Indeed, by its very essence it could hardly exist as anti-social in anyway. Both in the seminary and in the old high school, in the military schools and in the schools for the daughters of the nobility [...] it was never the teacher or the tutor who did the teaching, but the particular social environment in the school which was created for each individual instance" ~~Vygotsky

[web 2.0 apps for education]

As always, I've been browsing the web looking for handy tools which let me (easily) link social media and web 2.0 with life-long learning.

Here are a few keepers:

Moodle: free, create and share online learning communities


LectureShare: share lectures and notes (similar to slideshare.net)


Lifelong Learning Network: social networking for lifelong learners


Smart.fm: "the place you go to learn"

E-Learning Community 2.0: "a social site for knowledge seekers to enrich their knowledge through online learning, sharing and socializing to make new friends without boundaries"

Barbelith: "Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century..."

Flashcard Friends: Interesting but does require you to register (for free) before doing anything

Classroom 2.0: One of my favourites, with a helpful community of teachers

Top photo of a computer lab by Amber Coggin and found on classroom 2.0.

[lecture MEDS2009: new media, new identities]

Following on from today's lecture, please feel free to answer the following questions here or within blackboard.


How similar is the “you” of the blog to the “you” in various real-life contexts?

What happens when people who know the “you” from one context suddenly encounter the “you” from another?


Two videos to watch.

One from a DMU student:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQoCtIv-zk

Another famous one from Professor Michael Wesch:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g&mode=related&search=

[assessment in the 21st century]

Along with helping students learn and develop skills suitable for the 21st century, our assessment techniques should also correspondingly change.

"In too many schools, too many students suffer an education of drill and memorization but are deprived of high-level thinking activities, of intellectual discussions, of opportunities to synthesize information and respond creatively—elements that form the basis of education for other students in other schools."

[going paperless = a tidier desk]

Time for some procrastinating after all my work today...by procrastinating I erm...mean work. Because, everyone knows that tidying up one's work area is really part of the job description and...a tidy desk means more work gets done which has nothing to do with procrastination...


1) What do I do with the myriad of business cards I've collected from conferences, meetings, interviews and general travels (you'd be surprised who one can meet on the train out of London). Ah ha. I'll send my clutter cards over to shoeboxed and because it is now mashed with evernote, it means I'll be able to folksonomize all my cards...hey, tagging business cards, that'll make them way more searchable.

2) Next, looking around I see my desk has a lovely collection of receipts; train tickets, that ever-necessary coffee in the morning from the station shop, museum tickets etc...I think my receipts or pixily will be able to help. Interesting with my receipts, seems that they're partnering with shops so that receipts begin as digital copies rather than paper in the first place. This is how pixily works:

3) Ok. So papers on my desk are disappearing...but what about all those wires. Ugh, mouse wire, keyboard wire, web cam wire, camera cable, power cord, external hard drive cable, speaker wires, headset cables, printer, scanner...the list goes on. I think I'll be ordering the nice blue cable turtle from, hurrah, a uk company. So this doesn't really help me use less paper...but it does help with the digital tidying.

4) Some fiction books that I won't read again, an unopened box of Christmas crackers (don't ask) and some photo frames are going to my local freecycle site. Most already off to good homes.

5) Of course, what desk would be complete without a few old mobiles scattered around? With all my important information (i.e. my memory) in my snazzy pink blackberry, I can send my old mobiles to envirofone and even make a bit of cash in the process.

6) Online banking means no more silly paper statements messing up my lovely and now visible desk!

7) I'll be using remindr to, wait for it, remind me to do things like return those pesky library books that have been sitting on my desk, all used and ready for the bookshelf. I can also use remindr when little kitty needs to be combed (trying to keep fur balls at bay), bring in the laundry, return that dvd or pay the newspaper bill...I can get reminders to my mobile, via twitter, e-mail or gtalk. Excellent stuff.

8) Instead and jotting notes while I talk on the 'phone, I'll add my scribblings directly to a google doc or perhaps if I'm driving, I'll add my voice notes (hands-free of course) as a memo to spinvox.

9) So I'm addicted to my lovely pink leather filofax (how old school, I know) and I get a good overview of my time because I can flick though pages and see weeks and months at a glance. However, a useful online tool is google's calendar where I can let friends and family add their info too so it becomes more like a community calendar. There's an app. for my blackberry too so I can sync the two, perfect.

10) Though most of my communication is done online, there are times when I need to send physical post. Handily, the Royal Mail now lets me buy stamps online which I can then print out. So, no more books of stamps sliding to hide indefinitely under my keyboard.

11) Those cds that I used to love now sound soooo 2001...I'll be sending them to music magpie. They also accept dvds and games.

That's so much better now...

[conference: language in the (new) media]

Language in the (New) Media: Technologies and Ideologies

Thursday, September 3 to Sunday, September 6, 2009
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA

Download a PDF version of this call for papers

Keynote speakers

• Naomi Baron, American University, USA
• Sally Johnson, University of Leeds, England
• Jannis Androutsopoulos, Kings College London, England
• Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Background
This is the third in a series of conferences organized around the role of the media in relation to the representation, construction and/or production of language. The first two conferences were held at Leeds University, England: in 2005, Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies, and, in 2007, Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Policies. In 2009, the conference will be leaving Leeds and coming to Seattle.

Conference theme
We invite you to submit abstracts for papers which explore the representation, construction and/or production of language through the technologies and ideologies of new media - the digital discourse of blogs, wikis, texting, instant messaging, internet art, video games, virtual worlds, websites, emails, podcasting, hypertext fiction, graphical user interfaces, and so on. Of equal interest are the ways that new media language is metalinguistically represented, constructed and/or produced in print and broadcast media such as newspapers and television (see below).
With this new media theme in mind, the 2009 conference will continue to prioritize papers which address the scope of the AILA Research Network on Language in the Media by examining the following types of contexts/issues:

• standard languages and language standards;
• literacy policy and literacy practices;
• language acquisition;
• multilingualism and cross-/inter-cultural communication;
• language and communication in professional contexts;
• language and class, dis/ability, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality and age;
• media representations of speech, thought and writing;
• language and education;
• political discourse;
• language, commerce and global capitalism.

Abstract submission
Please submit abstracts for papers (20 minutes plus 10 for discussion) by email to lim2009@u.washington.edu no later than Thursday 26 February 2009. Abstracts should include a title, your contact details (name, mailing address, email) and a description of your paper (250 -350 words). The conference committee will begin reviewing abstract submissions immediately after the deadline; notification of acceptance will be Thursday 19 March. (Please send your abstract as a Word document or in the body of your email.)

Program and registration
In order to help your early planning for the conference, we have already finalized the basic program structure for the conference a copy of which can be downloaded here (as a PDF). This outline shows the start and finish times of the conference, the main social events (reception, BBQ and conference dinner), as well as lunches and coffee breaks. The conference planning committee is also arranging an optional program of tours and activities for Sunday 06 September. A business meeting for the AILA Network will also be scheduled for the Sunday morning.

Official conference registration will begin on Thursday 19 March, with early registration ending Thursday 21 May. The final deadline for presenter registration will be Thursday 23 July in order to be included in the final program. Registrations after 23 July will be charged an additional late registration fee of $25.00.

Conference registration
Early registration – until 21 May	$350
Early registration (full-time students)	$300
Registration – until 23 July	$380
Registration (full-time students)	$330
Day rate registration (accepted until 20 August)	$150

[ether pad]

According to the creators, EtherPad is "the perfect way to collaborate on a text document and keep everyone literally on the same page."

So I had a little play around with it and my first question was "how is etherpad different from google docs?" After a bit more research and reading of the faqs it seems a few other beta users have wondered this very question and the creators are quick to point out that "No." EtherPad is different from googledocs:

"Google Docs is a suite of products that do many things, from word processing to spreadsheets to document management. One thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time collaborative text editing. We think this is an important use case, so we built EtherPad with real-time collaboration as the focus.

For example, with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other people's screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire (such as an "ethernet" cable)."

The aspect of real-time updates is something I've noticed first-hand when working with people on google docs (hi Sue! hi Kate!) and EtherPad lets you see changes/revisions/additions as they happen. This has interesting possibilities for classroom use too.
Thanks to my brother for the tip.

[infusing semantic web into operational data systems]

Patrick West, Peter Fox, Deborah McGuiness and Stephan Zednik from the High Altitude Observatory present their project on integrating data and the semantic web.

From their
"As part of our semantic data framework activities across disciplines from solid-earth, lower, middle and upper terrestrial atmosphere and solar atmosphere to integrative subjects such as climate response and space weather, we have collected a set of experiences: technical, collaboration and social that relate to how easy or hard the infusion process has been. We cover both the semantic web and knowledge infusion as well as underlying service infusion such as catalogs and OPeNDAP data servers."



Interesting points:

• It's easy to identify experts in each field and goo idea to get groups together to provide community support and external buy-in

• Tricky to conduct face-to-face meetings which are imperative to share expert knowledge between disciplines/fields
• Require a general ontology too cross data from one "data catalogue" to another
• tricky to gain access to data holdings etc...which are external to group
  

[17 year old drives web app development]

How amazing is this? A 17 year old student was faced with a problem: how to keep track of school work? Well, Andrew Shaper just went and created an amazing free online resource that allows students (it is geared toward secondary school and undergrad. students) to add assignments, classes and, the best bit (it's also the best bit for Christopher Dawson at ZDNet) is the ability to upload assignments via e-mail or text message to the site. Very well connected. I can imagine asking my own students to read Chapter 5 "Encoding and Retrieval from Long-Term Memory" in Cognitive Phsychology: Mind and Brain, and then they'd text this assignment to Soshiku. A really excellent example of filling a gap and being creative.


From the site:
"What is Soshiku?

Soshiku is a simple but powerful tool that manages your high school or college assignments. Soshiku keeps track of when your assignments are due and can even notify you via email or SMS.

And it's totally free."

[webology and folksonomy]

The latest issue of webology is guest edited by Louise Spiteri at the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University, Canada. This entire issue is devoted to folksonomy. We all know that folksonomy was coined by Thomas Vander Wal: "Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information." From the editorial: "The papers in this special issue reflect the diversity of approaches taken to create Web resources that reflect better the needs of end users. Particular emphasis is placed on the need to manage the increasing volumes of tags and information available on the Web, particularly as more people are becoming engaged with numerous social applications. As is discussed in some of the papers in this special edition, there is certainly scope to consider ways in which to combine the more traditional controlled vocabularies with the free-flowing nature of tagging." Bruce's report on the A Million Penguins wiki-novel fits in well with this issue of webology especially when read alongside Isabella Peters and Katrin Weller's article on wiki gardening as Bruce told us about "gardners" who tend the wiki novel, rather unlike vandels who go in to mess it up. However, Peters and Weller go a step further to suggest a way to weed out mess. They suggest introducing a tag garden that matches synonyms together. Any of you who have search on flickr or delicious (just two examples) will know that search for blog doesn't always turn up results that are tagged with blogger or blogging. But, more literate users realise this and begin to craft their own vocab. controls. I know I don't tag things with blogging or blogger anymore, I just use the term blog. "For our garden this means, that we have some plants that look alike, but are not the same (homonyms), some plants which can be found in different variations and are sometimes difficult to recognize as one species (synonyms) and others which are somehow related or should be combined. Thus, we have to apply some garden design or landscape architecture to turn our savage garden. We may use labels for the homonyms, and establish flower beds as well as paths between them and pointers or sign posts to show us the way along the synonyms, hierarchies and other semantic interrelations (see Figure 2). We need some additional structure and direct accessibility to provide additional forms of (semantic) navigation (besides tag clouds, most popular tags and combinations of tags-user-document co-occurences)."

Peters, Isabella & Weller, Katrin (2008). "Tag gardening for folksonomy enrichment and maintenance." Webology, 5(3), Article 58. Available at: http://www.webology.ir/2008/v5n3/a58.html.

[howard rheingold's social media classroom is live]

Thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Howard Rheingold has been developing: "an online community for teachers and students to collaborate and contribute ideas for teaching and learning about the psychological, interpersonal, and social issues related to participatory media. This digital learning space will both feature and analyze the use of blogs, wikis, chat, instant messaging, microblogging, forums, social bookmarking and instructional screencasts for teachers and students."

Sarah Perez at Read Write Web explains the impact of a Social Media Classroom:

"Social media and the participatory web have had a greater impact on our world beyond just how we connect and socialize with our friends online. The base concepts surrounding how these interactions take place has influenced a whole new generation of web users who now expect to participate in discussions and not be dictated to...whether online or offline. We've seen this influence occur in the workplace, where millennial employees demand to know "why" they're being asked to do something instead of just doing it. We've also seen it effect the business of marketing as social media users now feel strongly that brands (companies) should be listening and conversing with them in an open, transparent matter. So why not bring the social media revolution to the classroom, too? It only makes sense.

Those involved with this project believe that today's students need more than a class where a professor lectures for an hour - that has no hope of engaging their interest. Students need a classroom where learning is a more participatory experience and where the tools they use in their everyday lives - social networking, videos, chat, aren't checked at the door. The Social Media Classroom is an important project to make those types of tools available to educators who might not be as up to speed with the latest technology, while also simplifying the use of those tools through the introduction of a single platform that integrates the best of the Web 2.0 world."

Read more here and here.

Join the community of practise here.

[web 2.0 and education report]

Interesting report issued by BECTA on the use of web 2.0 technologies in elementary classrooms in UK schools.

Report 2: Learners' use of Web 2.0 technologies in and out of school in Key Stages 3 and 4 (June 2008)

This report focuses on learners' use of Web 2.0 technologies both in and out of school, including their use of social networking sites, online multi-player games, instant messaging and other web-based activities.

• At Key Stages 3 and 4, learners’ use of Web 2.0 and related internet activities is extensive. Despite most learners being confident or even prolific users of Web 2.0 sites, use is not generally sophisticated. Broadly speaking, learners may be characterised as consumers rather than producers of internet content
• Of the 2,600 learners surveyed across 27 schools, 74% have social networking accounts and 78% have uploaded artefacts (mostly photographs or video clips from phones) to the internet. However, nearly all Web 2.0 use is currently outside school, and for social purposes
• In the sample, the percentage of learners with home access to the internet was high and the range of personal devices used by learners was extensive. However, PC/internet access outside school was often shared, and this could limit its use by individuals
• Overall, although most learners use the internet for learning, there is only limited use of Web 2.0, and only a few embryonic signs of criticality, self-management and meta-cognitive reflection
• Many learners lack technical skills, and lack an awareness of the range of technologies and of when and how they could be used, as well as the digital literacy and critical skills to navigate this space. Teachers should be careful not to overestimate learners’ familiarity and skills in this area. There is a clear role for teachers in developing such skills
• There is a disparity between home and school use of IT, both in terms of the larger range of activities and the increased time spent on IT at home. Many learners do not see some aspects of Web 2.0, such as social networking, as relevant to learning in school.

Download the report summary in Word (311KB) PDF (182KB) or ODT (224KB)

The points that I've bolded are exactly aspects which I've been attempting to address through my pedagogical work with the digital story Inanimate Alice. There are quite a few educators who are employing I.A. for many of these reasons and I know several, like Angela Thomas and her students, have had great success. It seems a key to many of these bolded points comes down to teaching...and teachers receiving appropriate training/time/resources to bring web 2.0 into the classroom and encourage both critical and digital literacies.

There are five parts to this report with statistics (quite helpful) and suggestions for further reading.

[transdisciplinarity and communication]

A little while ago I tweeted that I was working on a transdisciplinarity check list (things to read, watch and listen to) as a way of mapping the field and setting the scene for a conference I'm going to run and a journal I'm going to start (no prob!). Christy Dena, transmodiologist extraordinaire, saw my tweet for help, tweeted back and wrote a blog entry with loads of links and information on transdisciplinarity. Interestingly:

"there are (at least) two very different implementations of transdisciplinarity in the methodological realm: one that argues it should be about collaboration between academia & non-academia to address world-scale problems, and another that argues it is a conceptual approach that can be applied to anything, by an individual or group."

I prefer the idea that connections can be made between any kind of group rather than making an initial separation between "academic" and "non-academic." I'll be following the Nicolescu and Dena school of thought.

Have a look at Christy's post here.

[twitter overload]

[my rss + wordle = tag cloud 2.0]

You can make your own text cloud at Wordle by uploading a link to any site with an rss feed, linking to a delicious feed or pasting in text manually. This application seems to have quite a bit of potential in the classroom...perhaps as a way to help students summarise important aspects from their reading or as a way of offering a visual interpretation of data.

[conference: science in the 21st century]

Sounds like a conference that anyone interested in transdisciplinarity and web 2.0 (for lack of a better term) should go to. Just take a look at some of the talks like Katy Börner's talk on "domain maps of abstract semantic spaces" ( scimaps.org) or Jacques Distler on how blogs, wikis etc... are reshaping communication in the sciences or Barry Wellman and Rainie Lee on "Networked Individualism and the Triple Revolution: Networks, Internet and Mobility."

"Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these technological developments influence the way science is done, and they also redefine our relation to the society we live in. Information exchange and management, the scientific community, and the society as a whole can be thought of as a triangle of relationships, the mutual interactions in which are becoming increasingly important."

Sep. 8th-12th 2008, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario

[wesch & edu]

thanks to timoreilly's tweet I've seen this great post at PILOTed about michael wesch and his views on education:

"50% of students do not like school.

0% of students do not like learning.

Is it that some students just aren’t meant to learn? Or is it that schools just aren’t connecting with half the students?

Should we just dismiss that because it was a small survey (fewer than 200) of college students, or should we take a closer look at the way schools work?

The data come from a 60 minute video by Michael Wesch on The Future of Education. Here are some more gems from the video:

The reality is that practically any student could pull up any of the answers on most class tests by entering a query on his or her mobile phone. Why are we emphasizing this type of information and these types of tests?

The result is that the most meaningful student questions in class are

1. Is this on the test?
2. How long does this paper have to be?
3. How many points is this worth

The most common classroom experience is based on the assumptions that

• Information is scarce
• Good information comes from an authority
• Authorized information is beyond questioning

But Web 2.0 shows that everyone is better than anyone; a large group working together can create information rivaling the content of experts. In fact, where we are moving is

• Ubiquitous networks
• Ubiquitous computing
• Ubiquitous information
• At unlimited speed
• About everything
• Everywhere
• From anywhere
• On all kinds of devices

The goal of education should be to teach students to identify significance and create meaningful connections. It should enable students to understand how things relate to, contrast from, are similar to, and affect other things; and it should help students find out who they are and how they fit in.

Students only read 49% of what they are assigned, and, of what they read, they find only 26% relevant to their lives.

You improve that by giving some sense of meaning to the class beyond the grade

1. constructing a larger narrative around the material, a bigger picture that is significant
2. creating a learning environment that values the students themselves
3. leveraging existing media and the environment, using the Web which is all around us

Ten free ideas to leverage the Web:

1. Set up a class page with headlines from Google news on the topic via an RSS feed
2. Offer a page (Wiki or portal) where students can comment and share videos and articles they find on class topics
3. Have students responsible for posting and editing the lecture notes online from classes
4. Devise an online list of topics that will be on the test and have the students write, and provide links for, the study notes
5. Use a widget that enlarges a student’s picture on the class portal as he/she contributes to the class notes
6. Assign topics to students or groups, and have them responsible for the content on the class website, portal, or wiki
7. Maintain online discussions around relevant, interesting topics
8. Develop online groups or sandboxes for research topics
9. Have students prepare lectures (video or audio with slides) that can be posted online
10. Create a Twitter stream that students can access, follow, and contribute to for the class.

Two other videos from Wesch, each just over 4 minutes:

• The Machine is Us/ing Us which explains and dramatizes Web 2.0
• A Vision of Students Today, which shows how traditional classes disengage students."

[nlab social networks conference - andrea saveri]

Andrea Saveri on The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Jobs & Organizations

Institute for the Future - founded in 1968

How to forecast the future, applied to business, government and non-profits

Think about the future though aware of the present

Amplified individual uses twitter to get information out. Thinking of global events and tweets becoming quick and powerful ways to sort, filter and disseminate information.

Amplified individuals are also highly collaborate - work with others to collectively solve problems, tap into an contribute to the intelligence of crowds. Re: businesses this might expand staff without necessarily hiring new staff. Through social media can actually attract people to you to provide people to you without hiring somebody.

Wikis - a great example with wikis on just about everything. Imagine being a small business, putting up a wiki page about a new process, technique or technology you're inviting other people to contribute to that knowledge base. Identify your own need (HR: you get other people to scratch your itch).

Prediction Markets - imagine what it would take for small businesses to do their own market forcasting, accessing intelligence from a broad community about a focused question. See: http://us.newsfutures.com/home/home.html

Another way to use sociology and collective action might be to bring in ludic concepts. Gaming allows different kinds of associations and people get interested in solving puzzles etc...

Amplified Individuals are highly improvisational. Andrea tells us about a group of work-from-home people who band together to work in a real space and share infrastructure and resources.

Amplified Individuals are also highly augmented. They employ systems, tools, and hacks to enhacne cognitive abilities and coordination skills. This is particuarly important for small businesses as they are likely to fill many hats, the kinds of techniques and practises to enhance memory, attention etc...is important.

See chumby - way to control information. Have a look at the chumby website. Totally into social media, they have a section where the audience (are they really called customers?) can upload (via flickr) their own photos or videos (via youtube)
of a chumby: http://www.chumby.com/pages/showoff.

Key Characteristics:

moddable, influency, ping quotient (measure of your responsiveness to other people's requests for engagment, your propensity and ability to participate), protovation (fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles), open authorship (creating content for public consumption and modification), multi-capitalism (fluency in working with different capitals, eg. natural, intellectual, social and financial), longbroading (thinking in terms of higher level systems, cycles, the bigger picture, can you rise above and look at the higher-level system), signal/noise management, cooperation radar (ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task)

Why Important for Small Biz?

This really does amplify scope for info. Individuals have the motivation and know-how to create new strucutres and processes that bypass traditional constraints

Key Ways:

Economies of sociality

Asymmetric power

Responsive resilience

New market niches

***Questions

How to monetize the individual? Go to that multi-capitalisation skill. Understanding of the relationship between building social captial and reputation might be a way to convert that into monetising. What do you give away and what do you charge for? This is a real area of fluidity right now. We shouldn't think about monetisation alone...we should think about other kinds of capital.

If you're talking about micro-businesses and the amount of time that should be spent on this kind of social networking/web. Andrea: it's not just a chunk of time...what is it that they're doing on the web. Are they participating in a discussion related to their job...that would be related to their work. The question is why are you going out there? You need a good reason for using that kind of technology, a way to enhance the staff that actually makes them more productive.