Monthly Archives: October 2007

Catching up with the crowd: Networks & Communities

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I even took part in the event last year ::FLNW:: but I had not really taken part in the Network vs Community vs Group conversations. Didn’t feel the need. Didn’t see the point. I think I will need to face this soon however.

SO: Marshalling some references.

Social Networks vs Online Communities. David Coleman

Often the terms “network” and “community” are used interchangably, but they are not the same. The best definition that differentiates the two comes from Amy Jo Kim (author of Community Building on the Web):

A network is composed of loose ties, often the focus is on a topic or particular type of content or behavior. A community may have the same focus but the ties are stronger. No one misses you in a network; they might if you’re a popular and vocal member of a community.

Thus a community is based on fairly intense interactions between its members, while a network is not. According to Ross Mayfield, the founder and CEO of Socialtext, communities are:

  • Top-down
  • Place-centric
  • Moderator controlled **
  • Topic driven
  • Centralized **
  • Architected

While Networks are:

  • Bottom-up
  • People-centric
  • User controlled
  • Decentralized
  • Context driven
  • Self-organizing

**NOTE: Moderator ‘controlled’/Centralised are NOT givens, but I do believe community needs a place.

Amy Jo Kim again. Her Nine Principles. Definitly NOT a network thing.
=I read a lot of this book while at Bronwyn’s place recently. It is surprisingly prescient. Amazingly so.

Lizzie Jackson. “Online communities and social networks are very different, the first offers a sense of place, the other is not a place but a kind of group consciousness grown from comments, images, addresses, photos, and appointments to do something or be somewhere (whether real or virtual). <snip>Social Networks are largely managed or organised by the user-interface in tandem with the content posted into the network”.
=Clarification. All Networks are not Social Networks.

Mark Nichol’s comment on Stanley’s Blog. “Perhaps it might be more accurate to suggest that the role of the teacher solely as transmitter of knowledge is subsumed into more of a holistic role, as a high-status member of a *network* made up of ontological equals. True, we are all equal – but we are not all the same”.

Plus there is Leigh there also: “This networked communication is different to what many of us are used to, and different to what the majority of us experience. But it is significant. It is this form of communication – with all its promise of equality, democracy, and other egalitarian principles”
=Hmm. Leadership, roles, hegemony.

Networked learning. networkedlearning.wikispaces.com/
=Not looked here much.

What about tools? In some respects this is also an issue that impacts: Blogs vs Forums, the impact of blogs and wikis on community practice. Nancy White’s article is significant and worth a read. I’m worried if there were ONLY blogs and wikis and not closed forums some could not make the leap. We need the closed home space, the ‘kitchen/parlour’ metaphor of cpSquare. And we need the free range feeding grounds in formal taught courses, or graduates will emerge with their wings atrophied.

Something new has happened, something in our minds and habits and attitudes.

Things I want to consider:

  • Roles: moderation vs facilitation vs leadership (Teaching??)
  • Modes: Open/closed
  • Care and nurture: Will anyone care for you in a network? Where does care come from? Where is someone to love outside communities.
  • Take some case studies: What is Nancy White’s Online Facilitation list? What is CPSquare? What is TALO/FLNW? What is a typical Facebook group? The group behind WikiHow?
  • To have a place or not? To NEED a place or not?
  • Language.
  • Membership and Identity.

Open source Cola and other links . . .

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I remember reading years ago that the secret ingredient to Colonel Saunders was pepper. Tried it, and you know, they may be right. But you need pressure cooked deep fryers to really bury the fat molecules and the taste.

Now, OpenCola. www.wikihow.com/Make-OpenCola

Other odd links.

Comparing IE and Firefox and Safari. Photos in a blog.

Yet another list of web2.0 apps: www.shambles.net/web2/index.htm

shambles.jpg

Too good to forget: www.flexilearn.com/?p=5

  1. e-learning 2.0 or the ‘network way’ is the future of learning – we will all ‘learn’ by using web 2.0 tools and linking our personal learning environments to others in a complex ecology of connected nodes. The traditional role of the teacher as the transmitter of knowledge is over. We are all equal – no more groups, no more unequal power relations, no more hierarchies. There is no need for the structures and constraints of schools and universities as we know them – indeed, the network way is rapidly dissolving them. You can get education direct from the ‘teacher’ and assessment is an optional extra – when you want a qualification. We will all pursue our individual learning desires unhindered by institutional constraints of curriculum and timetable. A Catholic school in Australia is hailed as the exemplar of this new approach. Stephen has just posted a comprehensive philosophical basis for this which I haven’t had time to read properly yet.
  2. Institutions will still be around for the foreseeable future, but is possible to incorporate the innovative features of e-learning 2.0 into institutional practices. But instead of focusing on the cool new tools, widgets and network hype, we should more think about the process of learning and whether the new modes are actually effective for learners across different fields of knowledge. Teachers will still be needed to model values and guide development, culture will still be created in groups or communities, and the institutions will continue to play an important role in the accreditation, funding, and quality of learning.

www.toondoo.com/Home.toon “ToonDoo is a wacky way to get creative with comics. You can now create your own comic strips, share them or insert them in your blogs with just a few clicks and drag-n-drops!”

And a thought for the day: “Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” – Brian Kernighan

Using the Access Grid

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The Access Grid Linkup for the Launch of the FLLinNZ toolkit has now been and gone. This was both stressful and a lot of fun. Blog Link. AKOWiki page Link.
I did not have a clue what I was getting myself in in for. I have done a score of VC linkups, but never the Access Grid. I thought I had done my homework, but NO WAY.
The AG is a room, painted green with a computer at one end for the operator, and a wall at the other end with 3 data projectors. There are three cameras. When things are going we could see 8 windows:

  1. Auckland, Wellington, 2 of us and 2 of Dunedin.
  2. The powerpoint.
  3. Leigh’s shared web browser.
  4. The Blackboard

ag-overview.jpg
I lined these up in order Auck > Well > Dunedin. The picture was too fuzzy in Auckland to see expressions. I relied on the ‘tell‘ from Dunedin’s folk to see how things were going. :-)

Things I learned.

Time is needed to set up the ‘view’ of each group. I never managed to see all the Dunedin folk even though we had two windows for them.

I had this romantic idea that in between times (like when we were watching a youtube video) we could snack and socialise a bit. Hmm. Didn’t quite come together. :-)

I was told we could have a “shared browser” and Powerpoint, so I based my entire presenation around this. However, a shared browser meant only the operator could press the buttons and use the mouse. And no shared sound. The AG version of the web was like silent movies. Apparently there is a problem to play sound: we ended up getting each of the four operators to load the podcast and play it sumultaneously.

This meant no Youtube.com or Podcasts . . .

PowerPoint kept crashing. (M$. Not unusual)

Everything is operator dependent, unless you have some software on a laptop. I thought “No problem, lets install it” but the software was not there in the room. Next time I will sort this.

Powerpoint slides could be visible to me and not them and vice versa. It could get out of sink somehow. But when it went it was fine.

Collaborative note taking is a MUST for sessions like this. There is not whiteboard (a fact I had forgotten) so we used a blackboard from the hallway.ag-blackboard.jpg

Possible solutions: use one window as a sort of wiki, maybe a whiteboard opened up to a shared browser.
There is a document camera. This would be OK as well.

We tried a scenario where each group had a few moments to interact and answer a question – this worked well.

Basically it fulfilled the need – sort of. We had some dialogue over the main issues around staff development . . . in another post I will talk about this.

ag-bruce.jpg

Web 2.0 Cyber threats . . .

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Just to keep things in balance.  A Link via Gregor.

Web 2.0 Tops ‘Emerging Cyber Threats’

10/9/2007 -By David Nagel

The ever-nebulous “Web 2.0″ is emerging as one of the five top security risks to watch for both consumers and the enterprise–this according to the inaugural edition of the “GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2008” out of Georgia Tech’s Information Security Center. The report, released at the GTISC Security Summit on Emerging Cyber Security Threats and Countermeasures, identifies the key data security threats that are likely to expand and evolve in the coming year.

According to the report, the chief motivator for all of the top emerging threats will continue to be financial gain, taking advantage of holes in continually advancing applications whose development has been, to date, outpacing the development of countermeasures.

Commenting on the report, GTISC Director Mustaque Ahamad said, “As newer and more powerful applications enabled by technologies like Web 2.0 continue to grow, and converged communications applications increasingly rely on IP-based platforms, new challenges will arise in safegaurding these applications and the services they rely on. The GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2008 highlights those areas of greatest risk and concern, particularly as continued convergence of enterprise and consumer technologies is expected over the coming year.”

The report listed five broad categories of data security risk . . . .

You can read them in the report . . .

I’m still playing with facebook.  No, actually more than playing, I am now doing business.  But the speed with which something like a new app can travel is incredible.  One little bug . .   OK, here we are not protecting the crown jewels . .  But you can be watched.

I have noticed twice in the last week someone commenting “I;m not stalking you, BUT . . .  ” when commenting in a slightly more personal way. I still feel like a lot of the invitations on facebook (to add wierd and unusual apps in particular) are a little off putting.  There is no “Polite TJHANKS BUT NO THANKS” option.  But hey, if they get offended – were they are real friend?