Tag: social software

Student generated multimedia – what about a justification?

My academic upbringing left a residual of guilt. I think that was the idea. I don’t feel quite right when I advocate for something without being able to offer references and the references are much more heavily weighted if they contain a methods and results section. Else, how does one avoid the tendency of falling into the fanboy trap of advocating for the latest fad and falling for the attention that comes with promoting the new and exciting?

So, I struggle with what I should say about classroom use of participatory web tools. I look and I look and I find little that involves applied research. By the way, I don’t buy the excuse that technology moves so fast that research cannot keep up. This represents a position taken by those trying to quiet their own guilt. Try explaining such an argument to those grad school mentors who trained you. Try testing this position against the best practices of other fields. Think the medics you visit when feeling ill would suggest that you try a new, but untested therapy explaining that there simply hasn’t been time to evaluate whether the treatment actually works?

So, without convincing research offering evaluations of specific uses of participatory web activities, just what can I offer. My most recent focus has been on the literature evaluating the benefits of peer tutoring FOR THE TUTOR. Consider that classroom applications of certain tech tools might be represented as teaching others.

I think that “mature research” offers some interesting characteristics. Often, initial studies that hope to identify simple generalizations give way to studies that offer more sophisticated analysis. I link to think about the big idea studies and the follow-up nit pickers. Sometimes the sophistication seems annoying if you are seeking clear guidelines or simple recommendations, but sometimes the details are important. In this case, consider that teaching may be helpful in benefiting the teacher for several different reasons – e.g., knowing that you must explain something to others might influence your preparation, teaching others may provide feedback that leads to deeper understanding. My initial investigation of studies in this area leads me to the conclusion that “preparation to teach” offers fairly reliable benefits. I think this is helpful. As “assignment givers”, we might then consider what tasks involve the preparation to teach. There are questions to consider. For example, is a task that involves summarization the same as a task that involves explanation? What if explanation sets a standard for understanding that only some within a typical group can meet? Perhaps such questions give us a place to begin.

Coleman, E.B., Brown, A.L. & Rivkin, I.D. (1997). The effect of instructional explanations on learning from scientific texts. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6, 347-365.

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Acknowledge your perspective

One of the down sides of social media is that we have control over the connections we make. We tend to select sources that fit our own biases and while we assume the inputs we process are making us more knowledgeable, we may simply be becoming more entrenched in flawed positions.

I have summarized the comments of others on this topic in previous posts (e.g., Keen) and proposed that we all force ourselves to read different positions before we consider ourselves informed (e.g., Bauerlein). I still like the mental image of simultaneously watching Fox and CNN news.

I cannot remember exactly how I came by this resource, but I recently visited Political Compass and completed the instrument supposedly designed to reveal my political “leanings”. The concluding representation was pretty much how I would describe myself without going through the process. A bit of a liberal supporting individual choice. Still, not that far off center. Hence, this blog originates from such a perspective.

Maybe all bloggers should provide such information on “personal perspectives”.

I do think it a concern if online services could connect such data (and responses to individual items) with any individual. I am willing to share, but the instruments asks some specific questions in order to arrive at this more global representation. As a university affiliated researcher, I know the safe guards institutions require before they will let a research collect data. The Political Compass claims that no personal data are retained (no login is required, but an IP could potentially be stored), but does warn that a Facebook app collecting similar data does not offer the same assurance.

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Personal data mining and possibilities for discovery

Late last evening after exploring lala, I tweeted the following:

Wow – you can now scrobble from lala to last.fm – update for the digital natives. Check under beta.

It was kind of a challenge from one 60-year-old to the digital natives of the world.

For those needing a translation (digital natives included) – LaLa and Last.Fm are online music services with interesting features. LaLa allows you to purchase music for download (or in CD format), but you can also play any song once for free and for 10 cents play any song any time. In addition, LaLa knows what music you own (if you enable the LaLa music mover) and you have access to these songs without payment even when accessing from different machines.

Last.Fm is a social music service. It offers streams based on your interests and  your neighbours (British company), but the feature I like most is that it keeps track of the music you play on your computers (I guess to be more accurate I also have an app on my iPod and other apps may exist for other devices). I have been a pro member since Nov. 2006 (you need not pay the $4 per month if you want fewer services) and in this time it knows I have listened to 82944 songs. It knows my favorite artists and songs (Guns N Roses – Sweet Child of Mine with 80 plays). I can examine data for the last week, 6 m., year and for the duration of my membership. Lots of data to mine.

lastfmdata

The discovery feature works this way. The service uses your musical preferences to identify those with similar interests. You can visit their public profiles and possibly identify new artists/songs you may want to investigate and purchase. When I explain the use of online social tools as opportunities for discovery, I tend to use this example. Imagine visiting the home of someone with similar tastes and browsing through their CD collection. Would you locate something new? Of course! Might it interest you? Perhaps.

Discovery works in a similar fashion across different tools (Twitter, blogs, social bookmarking) and content domains. Identify individuals with similar interests and pick up on what else they are reading, listening to, or viewing.

Scrobbling? Try Wikipedia for a formal definition. I think of it as a centralized accumulation and aggregation of data about your behaviors. LastFM accumulates and aggregates information about the music I listen to whether I use LastFM, PandoraFM, or iTunes. Until recently, Lala did not offer scrobbling and I really liked the LaLa features and cost. Not an unusual tech dilemma – stick with a service you have invested a lot of time in and have used to accumulate a lot of useful information or move on to a better system (think delicious vs diigo). Anyway, LaLa added scrobbling so I am happy (BTW – you find the scrobbling option by going to edit personal information and then selecting the Beta tab (not the easiest feature to discover).

lalascrobble

And that, digital natives, is how to get your geek on 😉

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Knol

Welcome to Knol

A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.

Google has entered the competition for your information needs. Of course, Google has always been serving your information needs via search, but now it wants to organize and serve information more in the format of Wikipedia.

Acording to Wikipedia:

Knol is a Google project which aims to include user-written articles on topics ranging from “scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions,” according to Google

For some reason, being able to learn about Knol from a competitor strikes me as amusing. Maybe that is just me. Maybe that is Wikipedia confidence.

Knol is a different type of venture for Google. This is not about software engineering in the way I normally think about complex programs, unlimited storage, and large server farms. Wiki software is pretty much wiki software (or at least it seems so to me). My students do a project using MediaWiki which is pretty much how they would author an article on Wikipedia and the software runs on very low end equipment. Anyone with a server can attempt to attract authors and offer information. The advantage in this “market” goes to concept and visibility. There might be an advantage in doing something a better way (sometimes it is better to go second). Authoring a Knol can be a solo venture and the author can keep it that way. OR, others can be invited to modify a post.The default places the original author in the role of moderator (edits must be approved).

There is also the opportunity for revenue. Google includes Google ads in Knol posts and authors will receive some revenue when a reader clicks through a Google ad.

Now the challenge will be to ramp up to critical mass. All things being equal, the Google concept has some advantages – IF, Knol can attract readers.

It is interesting to consider where this might be going. The idea of securing a publisher for some writers may be solved by Google. I am guessing most writers receive very limited financial benefit for their products. Here you have a distribution channel and the potential for some compensation. If readers shift their attention to online distribution, authoring “nonfiction” material for Google may be attractive.

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Wordle

This from my wife:

Wordle.net is a service that turns your tag cloud into an image. The following is the image generated from Cindy’s del.icio.us tags. I saw this a few days ago, but I could not figure out how to use the tags from my social bookmarking system in a way that would generate text size differences. Seems to work great with del.icio.us.

What would be cool would be an independent app that would aggregate public tags across multiple services and then could be shared. What would be REALLY cool would be such a service that allowed access from the core aggregator.

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Twitter

I guess I must admit being wrong. My initial reaction to Twitter was based on a present frame of reference without anticipating that an existing frame of reference can be changed by new experiences.

I have discovered I like to keep Twitter open in a side bar while I do other things (see image). This is a capability built into Flock (see image). I have also discovered that Twitter is down A LOT (see image) and you will not necessarily know this until after you carefully craft a message in < 140.

Man, my posts are getting short. Must be the Twitter experience. (Twitter address – so I feel the pressure to post).

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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Twitter

I have been experimenting with Twitter for a week or so. I am still not certain what I think. Letting folks know what I am doing on a regular basis does not come naturally. BTW – I am in MSP, babysitting, and watching the Twins game. Twins are down to NYY.

I have also decided that I develop a different opinion when following individuals by Twitter and by blog. Over the years, I have focused on certain bloggers and have a high opinion of those I read on a regular basis. My reaction to their Twitter posts (if that is what the brief comments are called) has been very different. I get the impression they are trying too hard. I think big name bloggers are not the appropriate test cases for evaluating this tool. These folks don’t really interact and reading their short comments is not that interesting.

I will have to give it a little more time. Perhaps with a few more followers I will form a different opinion. I am guessing “regular folk” may use Twitter in a different way. I am guessing I will also have to do a better job of contributing to benefit much in return. BTW – I am “grabe” on Twitter.

I am experimenting with a new plugin (tagaroo) from Calais. The service is supposed to suggest useful tags. So far I am not impressed. The suggestion was “twins”. Perhaps I have said nothing the intelligent agent can interpret.

Wait – tagaroo generated intelligent agent.

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