Categories
Education

Social Computing Experiment

I have been introduced to an experiment in Social computing by some members of AECT called The Overlay. If anyone is interested in looking at their system and what they have done they are looking for people to play around with it. It is still somewhat rough and under developed, but it is worth a look for those who are curious and they certainly would like any feedback you may have.

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Uncategorized

Spike-Tail

I do believe that there is a connection between Critical Mass and the Long Tail. They are not separate, but part of the same continuum. You are right that if the long tail “GETS a critical mass, it ceases to be the long tail and becomes, instead, the Big Spike” except that there is an unnamed bridging area where the long tail merges with the big spike. I was talking about moving the more diverse elements of the conversation up the tail to get closer to or even a part of the big spike.

If it were easier to access the diversity of conversation it would be correspondingly easier to demonstrate the real value that is already present in the blogosphere. I like what you said that “My success from blogging is not dependant on having 45 people reading every deathless word. If nobody reads my blog, I still win.” The problem I see is that a major benefit of blogging is the opportunity to get diverse feedback for your thoughts and diverse access to the thoughts of others. If, in fact, you are the only one blogging there is no benefit beyond writing out your thoughts in a file on your own computer.

I see that Rovy took your post in a different direction, and he is also right in stating that “the critical mass is the entire population in the curve, including those on the high-end (most popular blogs) and those trailing out near the end of the tail.” The feature that distinguishes the members of the big spike from the members of the long tail is a critical mass in the readership of their individual blog. We do not need to cross that line for each diversant blogger, but we do need to introduce people not to blogging as a practice (because most people are aware of it) but to the richness and diversity of the conversation, we need to introduce them to the value that is present so that they can participate or appreciate the richness of ideas that are being presented through blogs. All the “ranked players” know the value of mixing ideas and distilling new insights from the mixture (that’s how they got “ranked”), what they ned to see is that that rich mixing is improved and accelerated through the medium of blogging.

I have been thinking about this a lot since yesterday and I realized one of the major problems with this conversation is that it is taking place in the blogosphere – we’re preaching to the choir. If any of the ranked players want to get started they should not email a blogger to get help starting, we should take the discussion to them through publications and presentations. We should be presenting this at AECT in October. We should gather a rich variety of blog feeds to introduce people to the diversity out there and we should show them how to explore for new ideas according to their interests and we should show them how to lurk. What we should do is make writing lower on the list of things we teach and emphasize exploring and reading as the first steps to participation.

We’re not too late for the second deadline for submissions to AECT this year. What do you guys think?

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Exactly

Rovy has taken my previous post exactly where I wanted it to go. I agree on all his points. The educational bloggers with the highest rankings are still worth reading for those who are not wholly into the technology side of things, but we meeds to develop those “unexplored corners of the blogosphere” so that they do not require so much digging to find. I have been doing this for months and I still have not found the kind of variety that we need.

I believe that those well-known members of our field need to find a way into the discussion. We need to get the variety farther up the tail. And if anyone can direct me to some of those hidden places of variety I would be most grateful.

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Uncategorized

Thanks

I wish to thank Nate and Rovy for the conversation that they have been having about the digital divide and the participation or lack thereof in the blogosphere of many distingushed educators.

I have been following this conversation from Rovy’s side, but I finally did what I should have been doing the entire time and went out to find Nate’s blog for his full thoughts – what a treat. The conversation, which I already appreciated, was even better and more crucial than I had realized.

I have been having a very similar conversation with Andy Gibbons, who is one of those distinguished non-participants. One of the reasons for this digital divide, I believe, is that the conversation within the blogosphere thus far has been two dimentional – it has been more focused on the technological aspects of improving education and has not had much depth as far as broader theories of learning and instruction are concerned. This is not conducive to bringing in those who are not interested in the technology for technology’s sake. What we need is not just a critical mass, but a crtical mass of variety in the ideas being discussed though the medium in question. That is where it will begin to gain the validity and prestige that will bring a wider range of people in. So far there is no vision among the non-bloggers about how fundamentally different the world is as a result of these new communication tools.

I believe that the critical mass of topical variety is the lack of critical mass that we must address. Thanks again to Nate and Rovy for this conversation, but even more thanks to both of them for having a broader range of substance on their own sites than I generally find among educational bloggers.

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Uncategorized

Roaming Notes

I was looking around some new blogs to see if I would be interested and I found this blog which I was not particularly interested in, but before I left I found this little tidbit on grading groupwork which led me to this little tidbit on assessment. I would consider that to be some successfull/valuable roaming around the blogosphere.

Categories
life

Life

I spoke about life overcoming death. It just occurred to me that we have another instance of life replacing death as the focus of our existence. Later this year we will have another life to think about.

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Uncategorized

Guru of the Obvious

I have noticed a number of posts lately in reaction to the grand entrance of the “Guru of the Obvious” into the blogosphere. I have to admit that I am slightly jealous of someone so brazen as to blatantly try to goad all of the most popular bloggers into linking to his blahg to increase his ranking.

I have also noticed a few other practices – such as not allowing comments. I think I know why he has set his blahg up that way – comments do not help ratings but trackbacks do. He may claim that this is an attempt to avoid comment spam but I personally receive 20 times as much trackback spam as comment spam. I would not be put off by such tactics if he had anything at all to say, but he doesn’t. In response to a question related to his lack of content he said “I have been so busy fielding lucrative consulting offers and fending off media requests that I simply do not have the time to write everything I would like today.” What he failed to say was that he had been to busy to write anything of any substance.

Courtesy of his “no comments” policy I refuse to trackback to the blahg of Leon Lighips, but if you are reading this post the chances are pretty good that you have already read posts linking to the “guru” from those he is planning to take down. Too bad he has nothing with wich to replace them.

Categories
politics technology

As I Was Saying

I had a thought when I posted Excess Capacity. Now I have seen this story in a few different places and I cannot stay silent on the subject. Basically, the story can be summed up like so:

“Whether building a wireless system, installing fiber directly to homes, or exploring broadband over power lines – or some combination of these options – local communities are finding they can get better service for less money if they do it themselves.

“Big telecom and cable companies have responded by furiously working to slam the door on community wireless. The telephone and cable giants are trying to use their lobbying clout in state capitals to pre-empt local control, preserve higher prices and preclude competition.” (thanks to Matt Barton for quoting this perfect synopsis from Freepress.net)

Everybody should realize that the telecom companies have nothing to gain when municipalities prove that broadband can be affordable. Somehow they need to be held to the standard of capitalist doctrine and forced to actually compete to create a system that provides the best service possible for the lowest price. If the municipalities can offer equal service for less than the telecoms then the telecoms should get out of the business.

Categories
life

Aftermath

I have been thinking about this whole process of death and grieving since Grandma’s death. I am amazed with how unpredictably predictable it has been. If you had asked me to predict two months ago – before Grandma was even ill – what it would be like for my grandma to die I would have said that I would be sad but functional for quite a while. I would have said that my grief would not be exhibited as visible emotion.

Now that the funeral is over and I am able to look back (from close proximity) I am amazed to find how much the weight of Grandma’s death was exhibited as outward emotion. I was also amazed to discover that it could not really be categorized as sadness. Even after such a brief illness it was a relief for her to be released from her pain. The other amazing thing is that the grief seems to be over so soon after the funeral.

What I learned, in essence, is that there is a whole lot of therapeutic value in attending the funeral and processing the grief and pain in concert with others who are sharing the loss in common with you. This may not be completely over for me, but it is certainly no longer at the forefront of my mind – life has once again replaced death in my thoughts.

Categories
Education

Heidegger

I have long known that some people will do things one way and other people in the same situation will do things a different way. I have incorporated my blog into this social computing class and a few other people have as well, but most of the class have chosen not to do so. There is nothing wrong with that, but I recognize some benefits that would come if we were all blogging as a means of communication for our ideas. There is the preface. . .

As I read about the work of Heidegger (Dourish p. 109) I began to recognize why the blog is so easy for me to use and to see why others look at it as an oddity. For me the blog is ready-to-hand because I already had it set up. I did not have to create my blog, I am comfortable with the world of blogging, I have my computer with me almost constantly and I have created tools that give me access to publish on my blog almost instantly. Now I begin to recognize that the blog would be present-at-hand for most other people in the class. They would have to set up the blog. They would have to get used to the rhythm of blogging (thinking of something and deciding to share it with others, finding something to share and making sure to create links and references to the source) and they would have to take the time to acquire the tools that would make the blog useful or ready-to-hand. I have tried to facilitate the ready-to-handness in previous postings (RSS Tools) but I must not confuse the availability of tools with the familiarity with those tools.

It would not be completely easy for others to pick up blogging merely because of this class, but that does not mean that the benefits of blogging are not worth the effort for those who are willing to pick up the tools and learn. In short, it is worthwhile, but I must not get trapped into thinking that because it is easy for me it will be easy for others.