This class gave me an excellent taste of what teamwork and collaboration can do. This is especially true for P2.
P1 helped reinforce my belief in myself as a cook - where I can take existing ingredients and combine them into something new.
As I mentioned in the discussion board thread, I do not have a job to apply this to immediately.
However, in my future professional life, I am likely to take efforts to remain curious and updated on information about new tools and technologies. Where feasible and ideal, I will use these tools to help improve working. This does include professional development for myself.
The class has introduced me to many new things and made me realise that there are a lot of things out there for me to use in my work and that I ought to keep up with them. I should be adding some more edu blogs to my feed reader soon - still not convinced with twitter...
In my personal life, beyond using some social networking and perhaps visiting someone's flickr / blog spaces, I don't see myself engaging in too much produsage.
Not for a lark, anyway - and frankly, I'm happy to rid myself of the slightly pretentious word itself. ;) (And yes, by that, I mean "produsage" )
Friday, August 7, 2009
Prompt 6
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The games people play
Hi, I'm AJ and I'm a boardgamegeek.
I've wanted to blog about this for a while now. This is more sharing the site than anything else but this class has made me aware about mashups.
www.boardgamegeek.com seems to be a fairly good example of a mashup.
It's not fancy. It looks very 1.0 but dig a little deeper and you have something different. Maybe Web 1.5
When you go to the main page, it looks like many other web sites, yet if you look closely, it is a wiki, disguised as a website. Sometimes, without having the word "wiki" in the description, we can't quite tell what's what.
Yet, it isn't entirely a wiki.
There are certain parts you can't edit. The main page, for instance. Yet, you can edit game info.
You can add your own images to the games, to share what you have been up to.
On the left hand side, you have a "hotness" bar for games, developers and companies.
This works a little like digg. New games being discussed "hot off the presses" shoot up the list and gain visibility. Yet, as the discussion dies down and stabilises, the actual hotness of a game can be evaluated.
There are also feeds on Ebay auctions.
Games are also actually rated based on player rankings and they have an "all time" list.
Finally, there are forums, which is quite 1.0, but where people set up trades, game meetups and share ideas.
If we had to look for a true mashup, I'd call this one. It's a blend of 1.0 and 2.0 that works very well for gamers!
Monday, August 3, 2009
The argument between online and offline friendship and their respective proponents continues...
848 friends on Facebook? Really? (You'll see what I mean near the end of the video)
The FCC is asking Apple and AT&T all the right questions - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Brainstorm Tech
Kent shared Google Voice with us a little while ago.
Looks like it might turn into a mini soap opera.
The Federal Communication Commission seems interested in why Apple declined Google's application for the iPhone and removed any apps from its store that had anything to do with Google Voice.
Robot band obsesses over online popularity - CNN.com
Looks like social networking is no longer only for humans. This robot feels sad if it isn't popular on Facebook and Myspace. It also twitters its mood.
As cool and awesome as this sounds... I think I'm ready to leave this planet. When's the next ship out? :P
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/03/robot.band/index.html
Other videos found via Social Networking
After the last post, I decided to to add two more videos I've found over the years, through friends on social networks.
You may or may not have seen both but I thought it would be good to share with others.
Kiwi is the first - the one I mention in the previous post.
The second is more uplifting in its tone.
Hope in Melancholia?
I found the following video because a friend linked to it on twitter.
I also posted it on Reflections but thought the mode of my discovery made it appropriate to be shared here. Plus, I really want to know what you think.
I don't know what draws me to slightly sad videos. A few years ago, it was Kiwi. Not it's Reach. I look at this as the effort of the endeavour rather than anything else. Some people found it futile. Others think it talks about all the things holding us back from doing what we want to do. Still others looked at the power cord as oxygen. What does this video say to you?
Musing
It is funny how my posting died down with my mood.
For the last few days, I've been trying to catch a flight home. Unsuccessfully.
It's a long story that involves standby tickets that I won't get into here. Suffice to say I've been pretty gloomy recently and as a result, haven't posted much here.
However, it's equally funny to see that my regular "source" of postings - news articles - also dwindled during this dull and dark phase.
I'm finally headed home tomorrow and feel more chirpy. Maybe there will be new articles to post again? Let's see!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Prompt 5
Remix Artists for the win!
Much of what I feel about IDers as remix artists has already been said on the appropriate thread on the discussion board. I did not wish to chime in with just a post saying: "I agree."
However, my opinion can be elaborated upon in my blog post and here it is.
I agree with the notion that there are very few original things in this world. Ideas, stories, what have you. Everything I come up with is definitely inspired by something or the other in my past experiences.
I call myself a cook - I can work with available ingredients to whip up new things.
I am not an inventor or even an explorer, attempting to discover new things.
How do I foresee authorship, copyright and open access impacting my future professional life?
Well, recently at a summer job at CIMES, I got to work with images in training production and got a little sneak peak at all the copyright issues that come along with image use.
I expect to respect copyright and obtain it as economically as possible when using graphics in my future productions. Authorship/ownership credit will definitely be included. That goes without saying.
Open access is good as far as the community's combined knowledge is concerned. There are definitely some things that are not for all eyes to see and open access can't be taken for granted as being entirely available to everyone. Allowing complete open access can throw up issues concerning privacy, confidentiality and expertise of testimony.
I also agree with people who say that sometimes creation is just for the act itself, and not for financial gains. If I ever came up with a creation that others wanted to use and would actually be useful to someone other than me, I see no problems with making it available to everyone without cost. I believe this sort of action will lead to higher attributions of authorship, if nothing else.
However, given that I'm not an inventor, chances of me coming up with something ubiquitously useful are slim.
Thus, as I approach produsage in my professional life, I will hold these tenets close to my heart. My ability to engage in produsage is only limited by my curiousity about new tools. I'm definitely curious about such things. My willingness will depend on who is asking me to do what I'm doing. If it's part of my job, most certainly, I will be willing.
Yet, as I glossed over the personal life aspect of the prompt, I will say that my desire to engage in spontaneous produsage will be low to none. Just too much work and not enough ideas.
Does that seem antithetical?
Maybe it will change.
I did consider editing a travel wiki with updated information on entrance fees to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle recently, as I was there a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe I will still do it. Let's see.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Real Twitpocalypse: Asteroid Alerts Come to Twitter | Wired Science | Wired.com
Here's a slightly bizarre use of Twitter. It's one thing to know asteroids and the such are in the vicinity of Earth, but if one decides to pay a visit to the planet itself, I'm not sure any amount of tweeting will help...
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/the-real-twitpocalypse-asteroid-alerts-come-to-twitter/
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Five jobs for Facebook addicts - CNN.com
The title says it all!
Possibilities:
- Recruiter
- Strategist
- Enterprise Architect
- User Operations Analyst
- Director of Social Media
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/07/28/cb.best.job.facbook.addict/index.html
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Prompt 4
Expertise on the web is a funny beast.
My notion of this does differ from my concept of expertise in face-to-face settings.
I assume that in such a setting, an expert will be introduced to me by someone who has vetted the person's credentials. In face-to-face interactions, actions do speak louder than words and one can judge someone's expertise in procedural/physical activities just by observation alone.
In an online setting, we may have to look at actions more than words. This is where things get tricky.
On a community I visit, they use a form of karma related to forum titles.
Every so often, after a specific milestone of posts, your forum title changes and everyone knows what these milestones are - so a person with a certain title will also have a certain number of posts/activity that they have engaged in and ostensibly, will be an expert.
I go by forum karma in an online setting.
However, a large amount of activity does not mean that activity has been useful. Bruns points that out in Chapter 12. Some people might just like to see their post counts add up. In my experience, judging someone's expertise online also involves evaluating other people's interactions with the person in question (are they civil/reverential/derogatory?) and also - observing how often this person in question is called upon/quoted in the popular colloquy.
Sometimes a large number of posts need not reflect either - good or poor quality/expertise. It might simply indicate a longevity of existence on a particular forum.
This is where vouching from the community comes in.
On this same web forum, some people get custom titles, which are suggested by the community, not requested by the person. If you get a title which reflects on your expertise, which has been popularly chosen - well then, you're golden.
On another website, members have the option of "vouching" for each other and a little icon appears next to the vouched person's name. Yet, this person can't vouch for anyone else until at least three people vouch for them in the first place.
This is a fairly robust system of expertise recognition.
In a nutshell, credentials and actions would be bases for expertise evaluation that I'd use in "meatworld" and activity + popular vouching (not popularity) would be bases I'd use in an online environment.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Does Facebook Replace Face Time or Enhance It? - TIME
We were discussing this in the first week of the class.
It's actually interesting that my "IM time" with friends has gone down once I started blogging about interesting things that happen to me. Since my friends have already read stuff, I don't get to tell many stories any more...
This hasn't cut down the quality of "face time" much but may cut down on topics of discussion...
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Still trying to get my head around this...
I happened to come across this presentation/talk while I was chatting with my friends here in Canada.
The video embedded below is a demonstration of Sea Dragon technology from Microsoft, however, things get interesting from about 3:30 on the timeline. He talks about using images off flickr to create spatial representations of places.
The speaker also mentions how a "semantic richness" could be added to user experience by the use of Sea Dragon. I'm not quite sure what the implications of this are. Are we looking at Web 3.0 here?
As I discussed it with my friends, one mentioned that he likes the idea of being able to explore any place on earth through pictures and representations created by the software. However, he also mentioned how one might be able to follow any single life of a person who's had pictures posted somewhere on the web.
That is the scary part.
Like I said, I'm trying to get my head around this but wanted to share it to see what other people thought. I'm not sure whether this merits a discussion post or not... maybe comments on this post will help me make up my mind on that.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Facebook 'breaches Canadian law'
I saw this in one of the papers here the other day. I was hoping to find an online article.
Facebook's holding on to information has been a contentious issue for a long time, in many places. Recently, I was "refriended" automatically when a (Canadian) friend of mine reactivated his account. While I was happy at his getting back in touch, the "auto reboot" was slightly disturbing. Now it turns out that such an action is actually breach of Canadian law. It should be interesting to follow this story and see where it goes...
BBC NEWS | Technology | Tech 'has changed foreign policy'
Embattled British PM Gordon Brown seems to believe that the awareness brought about by new technologies like twitter and blogs is a good thing. I wonder how many politicians actually agree with him about such issues of transparency... Someone should ask Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (that was the obvious one) or perhaps Silvio Berlusconi...
I wonder what would happen if these technologies were used to pull Brown down any further...
Yahoo launching front page open to others' content - CNN.com
Yahoo seems to be all set to have its main page be a mashup. It's interesting how they are becoming more open to collaboration with some of their direct competitors.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/07/21/cnet.yahoo.new.home.page/index.html
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Prompt 3
I foresee myself working in two separate environments.
K-12 and Corporate Training.
In a K-12 environment, a collaborative blog might be a good idea to keep the parents updated about various activities that happen in the school, maybe send out a call for volunteers for events, or reports on events that took place in school, policy updates etc. The blog could be written by the principal and a designated faculty member who may put up pieces on behalf of the various departments.
A wiki does not have a particular use at the admin level in K-12 settings, in my opinion. However, it could be used to foster collaboration and slightly divergent thinking of part of the students if used as a tool in class or as a project requirement.
In a corporate environment, there are already documented instances of wikis being used for knowledge management. Gina's blog is a good example of the use of blogs to "educate" people on various issues pertinent to the organization and others like it.
A K-12 blog doesn't really support learning per se or performance but it does let the public know about the school's performance and as such allows for a sort of accountability and transparency in its functioning for its stakeholders - the parents. One could say that the parents learn about the various happenings in the school through it.
For students, use of a wiki in project work would foster the spirit of collaboration, held develop team work skills, thinking and filtering skills and if the teacher sets some sort of criterion about quality of work, it would also help them in reseach/writing skills.
In a corporate environment, wikis help provide "just in time" training. Where procedural knowledge is not required, one could replace training seminars with information on a wiki. People don't waste time and money in training but just pull up information on a need to know basis.
One could argue that procedural training could be achieved through use of videos and pictures, as has been discussed on the discussion board. However, this training would require setting aside specific time for the creation of the resources and also their distribution.
Blogs are a similar source of knowledge, which are not as easily edited by members of the organization. One would assume that SMEs might be in-charge of blogs where any member might be a contributor to a wiki.
As far as design/implementation challenges go, in my experience (and I mean no disrespect to anyone here - either in this class or otherwise), teachers who've taught for a long time tend to be extremely resistant to change and bitter in general. There are of course, exceptions to this rule. However, some new activity that might require extra work on their part, above and beyond their job description will likely cause some sort of resentment. How would this be handled by management?
Well, in India, it's pretty authoritarian. So people will be expected to do as they are told, and moaning will ensue. The job will get done though...
[This has been your fix of cynicism for the day)
Resistance in corporations might come from training departments, who might think their duties are being usurped by a wiki. A centralised pool of knowledge might make instructors obsolete. Then there are employees who prefer to be told what to do and might prefer a training scenario, as opposed to being self-regulated and learn on their own. Further... wiki scripts have their own particular syntax and it involves learning a new skill before you can contribute to the effort. Some people might find this irksome.
How might opposition/resistance be solved in such a situation? Especially in a multi-national corporate environment?
That's a very good question.
However, the prompt doesn't ask for solutions. So I will leave it hanging. ;)
Friday, July 17, 2009
Prompt 2
After the internet blackout, I thought I'd still answer last week's prompt, late as it may be.
I am fairly interested in new technologies but still maintain that some times there's just too much to choose from and too much information and too many tools to sift through.
As such, I may have used differing produsages, created by other people. However I have not created one yet. The assignment due on monday would be the first official one.
Having little or no work experience, I have not needed to create one for my professional life. My limited summer jobs and time in school back home in India dealt mostly with proprietary software and "chalk and talk"
Like I mentioned in the Pro-Am thread, I hope to function nearly at the professional level in certain skill sets, which are not quite ISD skill sets and I foresee using different Web 2.0 technologies to create produsage in my future professional life.
Just what those will be... we can't know yet.
Twitter Treasure Hunts
On the "Uses of Diigo" discussion thread, I mentioned how I foresee using diigo to lead middle and high school students on a treasure hunt webquest across the internet, using its annotation tools.
Looks like New Yorkers like to hunt for treasure using twitter!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Twitter hack raises questions about 'cloud computing' - CNN.com
This seems to be in lines with Gina's concerns with security and cloud computing from last week's discussion.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/16/twitter.hack/index.html
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Google vs. Microsoft: What you need to know - CNN.com
Here's a follow-up to the previous post on Google's new OS
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/15/google.microsoft.battle/index.html
Twitter + Diigo
With an aim towards familiarising myself with technologies I want to use in my first produsage, I am now on twitter and diigo.
Diigo seems to have a lot of potential for use in a field like ours, where networking, sharing of information/knowledge and just building knowledge bases together is very important.
Twitter... is still evil :P
If you want to friend me, I'm razanur on both sites.
Time to get caught up!
So I've been offline since around this time last week as my cousin moved to a new house and had no internet.
That was Seattle. I'm now in Victoria, B.C., visiting some friends and even though I'm here to relax, we've just been doing so much stuff!
However, I've begged off from activities tomorrow in order to catch up!
In other news, we spotted a pod of Orca while on the ferry from Seattle to Victoria. That was cool! :D
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Is it really worth the effort?
A lot of the class participants have mentioned that they struggle to cope with the amount of information and the sheer scope of tools that Web 2.0 and social networking offers.
Reading this article makes me wonder if it is at all a viable and valid use of our time to set up, and indeed go through, multiple networks as we traverse the web in search of human resources.
I've heard employers often look up prospective employees' facebook accounts to check what they've been up to. I have no idea whether this is true or not. Yet, how far do we stretch the HR department's resources?
Should we only stick to professional networks like LinkedIn?
Should we stick only to our rolodexes?
I see the usefulness and importance of being able to connect with someone at a distance.
A rolodex may not be as useful for non-local contacts; or perhaps, the rolodex will only include contacts for people you've actually met, closing down the chances of you finding someone equally qualified, only because you've never met them.
What do you think?
Now posting from...
Flock, the Social Browser...
It's actually handy to have most of the things I'd use in one place... Though perhaps a little heavy on the sidebars and streams...
Check it out and share your thoughts!
Web 2.0 and cybersecurity
Here's a little clipping from the entire article.
This is a little scary.
But I wonder if the R&D departments need Instructional Designers to create training... ;-)
Do you digg the Governator?
I rather like the idea of Digg Dialogg.
Social filtering = nice.
One might argue that allowing the powers of judgment (what is good, what is bad) to trickle down to the masses might invite a plunge in quality. Yet, I think with most people being sensible, more often than not... some pretty good questions should arise out of such an activity.
What is Web 3.0?
Kent commented on my Ubiquity post, saying perhaps it (Ubiquity) should be called a Web 3.0 tool.
I replied asking him what he thought the Web 3.0 would be like.
Now, I don't know if he'd read something along these lines but I stumbled onto something today...
Click.
It's an old article, but what do you think of the idea of a semantic web?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Prompt 1
What have been your prior experiences with Web 2.0 technologies? Do you consider yourself a leader or follower in this realm, or something else altogether? Why? Also, discuss what you hope to get out of this class.
I consider open source, IM and facebook to be part of Web 2.0. That is about as far as my active experience with Web 2.0 technologies goes. I am aware of Twitter - I don't necessarily see a need to tell everyone about every little thing I do. I am not as self involved. I hope others are not so minutely interested in me...
However, after reading my classmates' responses and sharing, I've begun to realise that perhaps there is a wider application for twitter in the Learning and Development sphere.
I will be signing up for the service soon. I will also be using it in my first produsage assignment.
Am I a leader or follower? Well, I'm utilitarian. I thoroughly believe in the spirit of collaboration and participation. However, I do not go all out exploring ALL the available tools. I follow word of mouth and marry that with necessity and curiosity - in whatever project goal I'm trying to achieve at some particular time.
What do I hope to get out of this class?
Exposure... I am curious about a lot of things. I dabble in a lot but there are many times when I don't follow through with a few things if I'm not accountable to anyone about it. With the class, we are required to post on this blog regarding our explorations. We are required to use the technologies in the produsage assignments. The discussion board posts are also good for ideation...
This brings a certain amount of accountability to the exploration of Web 2.0 and as I said in my first post, I think I needed just that little push out of the door and hopefully, like Bilbo, I will adventure for a really long time...
Ubiquity
I have been introduced to a new word in this course: "mashup".
The end product is exactly what it sounds like but for some reason I couldn't intuitively figure out what it meant. So I went exploring...
One neat tool I came across is a plugin for Firefox called Ubiquity.
It does a number of different nifty things (some of which I hope to use in my produsage assignment) including creating a sort of mashup.
I believe at this point this is as close to an actual mashup that most of us will get, with most of the class having no programming knowledge.
However, rather than trying to explain all the things it can do - I'll embed a video from the site.
The "google map in the email" bit is a mashup. Some of the other utilities - not so much.
Anyway... here you go:
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The darker side of Web 2.0?
Where Twitter and related networks were hailed as being the most reliable sources of news and happenings in Iran recently, in another society, perhaps with different priorities and problems... Twitter and Facebook can also be used for mischief...
Read this article on Celebrity Death Pranks...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Just a little push out the door...
Gandalf always said that Bilbo Baggins had an adventurer inside him all along.
Though the Bagginses were supposed to be down-to-earth people, with no interest in, and definitely no business with adventure, once Gandalf gave Bilbo just a little push out of the door... Bilbo tumbled forth and never looked back.
I suspect a lot of us might need just a little push out the door into the depths of Web 2.0 and I'll be looking to see what sort of mischief I can get in to, during this journey and document it here as best as I can.
I wish us all good fortune and great treasure and hopefully, no dragons a-lurking nearby...and definitely not Balrogs!
Posts
