London Knowledge Lab: Social Software

hack the system

yishaym — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:18:43 +0000

I can think of a lot of reasons to buy the WorldChanging book. But there’s one reason to buy it today:

Here’s how the system is supposed to work: you write a book. If people think it’s good they buy it. If enough people think it’s good it becomes a bestseller and widely read, spreading new ideas into the public debate.

Here’s how the system actually works: you write a book. Unless your publisher spends large sums of money on marketing and promotions to convince booksellers that you will be a blockbuster, your book remains obscure, often quickly sinking out of view, and few people have a chance to see it, let alone encounter the ideas it contains.

(Digg it)

Workshop series on Technology, Media, Communities, and Learning

Mark van Harmelen — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:01:16 +0000

The Learning Technology Unit in the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science is to host a workshop series on Technology, Media, Communities, and Learning.

The series is specifically concerned with convergences between:

Social software
New media-capable hardware devices
Interactive / broadcast media
Community formation and maintenance
Learning and e-learning
Greater inclusion, and the growth of social capital

The aim of the series is to build knowledge and skills in these topics and their intersections in order to facilitate research and practice. It anticipated that the workshop will be of interest to participants from a broad spread of practices and disciplines that bear on the areas of concern, including the social sciences, media studies and computer science.

The series will be open to all from inside or outside the University.

The series will run for ten sessions. This period may be extended if the participants decide that there is utility continuing in the series.

Workshops will be held fortnightly, from 3.30 to 5.00 pm on Wednesday afternoons, in the School of Computer Science, with a break for the Christmas holidays. The first meeting will be held on the afternoon of Wednesday 8^th November 2006, in Atlas 1.

Enquires and further information:

Mark van Harmelen, mark -a-t- cs.man.ac.uk or mvh -a-t- machester.ac.uk

Interesting resonances with our workshop series

Mark van Harmelen — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 16:23:52 +0000

I chanced upon Online Course Design from a Communities-of-Practice Perspective (John Smith and Beverley Trayner) in eLearn Magazine. (The title is a slight misnomer, in the authors’ practice, there are also face-to-face meetings.) As I was reading the article I found myself picking up on various points that the authors make and on the phases of community development that they describe. To me, these points and phases resonated with what we experienced, both as individuals and as a group, and how we informally evolved our learning practice.

In the article, the authors provide several ‘heuristics’ which characterise different phases of community engagement, from inception to conclusion. They choose the word ‘heuristics’ carefully, to characterise events and to indicate “the ongoing tension and contradiction” between their interpretations and that that is interpreted.

Bullet renditions of the phases, which may be repeated, are:

Getting into the online space
Finding your way: asynchronous discussions
Experiencing a new kind of community
Engaging in a larger social space
Anticipating face-to-face engagement
Meeting individuals face-to-face
Participating in groups face-to-face
Framing one’s experience in a new context provided by the group
Diaspora: Moving back to the online space
Online closing or transition

The authors also provide some conclusions for education and development of (largely) online Communities of Practice, the headings to their recommendations are:

Design for learning using CPD model is productive.
Spending time on social processes.
Using different media to negotiate language as part of a larger process.
Creating new possibilities: subgroups and outside experts as resources.
Demonstration of leadership roles in different media.
Provoking shifts in “comfort zones.”

Some of these titles are a little less explanatory than those in the first list. I won’t describe further, but instead recommend that you read the original.

Tories2.0? yeah right.

yishaym — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:00:09 +0000

The tories have launched webcamron, in an attempt to ‘reach disaffected young voters‘. Isn’t sometimes embarrassing when someone tries too hard? Like a 60 year old banker with a leather jacket and a mohawk.

The thing is, boys, that it’s not about having your videos on the web. Its about having ours. Its not about you tagging the content, its us. But hey – here’s an idea. I can download your clips, upload them to youtube, and then really have me some fun.

I gotta admit though, you have a good copywriter. webcam-ron. cute. just watch out you don’t slip too far down that slope.

digg story

Its going to get hot

yishaym — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 02:14:22 +0000

Larry Sanger is forking Wikipedia.

(digg)

design faults in democracy?

yishaym — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:34:27 +0000

Muhammad Saleem has a very perceptive article on the Wisdom of Crowds and why it fails on Digg.

lkl soso frapper

yishaym — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 12:21:35 +0000

On a mission to world wikination

yishaym — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 09:57:18 +0000

Wikisapces has a mission:

Today, we’re proud to raise the bar on a program we started back in January: we’re setting the goal of giving away 100,000 wikis to K-12 educators.

Vini, vidi wiki

yishaym — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:26:19 +0000

Wired runs a review on the state of wikis, education included.

and the winner is..

yishaym — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:30:35 +0000

Wired’s webmonkey has just published the results of their user survey on tinkers & stinkers of web-too-oh. I liked LibraryThing. Even the name is enough to make you feel warm. Basecamp, on the other hand, seems very useful.

Interestingly, MySpace seems to be out. Have we (as in we 12 yr old girls) outgrown it? Migrated to facebook? Or simply got bored of looking at ourselves making funny faces in the mirror-on-the-web?

Is this actually the first survey of web2.1 apps – things that don’t make a fuss about sharing, ajax, social features – simply use them as given to do something useful?