Issue Entrepreneurship … Still Going …
For my Issue Entrepreneurship Project, I had this huge ambition of single-handedly creating an online community that will bring science teachers and other educators together to share ideas. My rationale for this was that most science educators in the developing world do not have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information especially pertaining to scientific facts, principles and discoveries. This forum was therefore to serve as a one stop shop for educators who are both seeking knowledge and also willing to share their knowledge, ideas and expertise.
So I started my ambitious (albeit empty)
Science Demystified Wiki and sent out e-mail notices to persons I felt will be willing join the forum. I was however was quickly humbled after receiving a few responses, most of which were surprisingly discouraging. However, after reading some literature - especially Barabasi's book:
Linked - and being enlightened on how sustainable networks are created and maintained, I realized why creating such a forum from scratch was going to be virtually an impossible task. The best option for me then was to join an already established network, participate actively and meaningfully so as to gain credibility, and possibly move towards carving a niche out of that network which will then ultimately grow to become a formidable resource as earlier envisaged.
So I joined MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
http://www.merlot.org, and have been reviewing some articles submitted by other members, even though I am yet to submit one myself! In the meantime, I will be focusing more attention on my wiki (which is woefully incomplete) and hope that my interaction with other members of MERLOT will at some point make them feel that a visit to my forum will be worthwhile.
Lessons Learned 1. Creating an online community involves much more than simply having access to connectivity and social software. The issue to be addressed need not be only unique, it should also resonate with the potential participants' thinking and aspirations.
2. Communities formed by "bottom-up" processes - where individuals spontaneously congregate (in cyberspace) and prescribe lines of action - are more likely to be vibrant and sustainable than those formed by "top-down" approaches in which users' roles and activities are determined by an external person and rigidly conceived software mechanisms.
3. The affordances of social software - one-to-one communication (e.g., email and instant messaging), one-to-many communication (Web pages and blogs), and many-to-many communication (wikis) - ought to be used in combination if one hopes to build a community in cyberspace.
4. Still Learning...
Reflections on Social Software - Q&A
1. What is 'social' about social software? The affordances of the software can be harnessed to create communities of social interaction.
2. How is the notion of community being redefined by social software?The traditional notion of communities being permanent (and oftentimes, closed) entities no longer hold as communities get created as and when the need arises - thanks to social software
3. What aspects of our humanity stand to gain or suffer as a result of our use of and reliance on social software?Sharing of knowledge and ideas has become more feasible, but this is to the detriment of the over 3 billion people on this earth who have no access to computing resources.
4. How is social agency shared between humans and (computer) code in social software?Humans use the affordances of social software to enhance their social activities, whilst computer code serves to minimize the constraints of social software to human interactivity.
5. What are the social repercussions of unequal access to social software?With a social divide being created where only people who have access to social software will be responsible for decisions and actions that affect the larger society, people who feel left out of this social/technological movement are bound to react, probably in unpleasant ways, to ensure that their voices are also heard
6. What are the pedagogical implications of social software for education?The Anytime, Anywhere learning afforded by the internet and World-Wide-Web is redefining pedagogy as teaching and learning activities are being migrated from traditional face-to-face settings to learner-centered online settings.
7. Can social software be an effective tool for individual and social change?Certainly. Apart from broadening individual perspectives and as such leading to attitudinal and behavioral change, social software is also being extensively used to organize pressure groups whose collective voice often result in societal change.
World's Poorest Don't Need $100 Laptop?
I bookmarked an article in del.icio.us/tag/ccte titled
World's poorest don't want "$100 laptop" -Intel. In the said article, Reuters report that Intel chairman Craig Barrett is claiming that potential computer users in the developing world will not want a basic $100 hand-cranked laptop that is due to be rolled out to millions. The reasons being that "similar schemes in the past elsewhere in the world had failed, and users would not be satisfied with the new machine's limited range of programs."
Barrett continues to say that "what people are looking for is something that has the full functionality of a PC, - reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown-up PC ... not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power."
Though I am inclined to believe that Barrett's campaign is motivated more by economics - as his profits will surely be eroded if the $100 laptop is accepted globally, I also feel that he might be right to some extent, especially if I consider Paul Dourish's notion of embodiment as it relates human-computer interaction. Dourish states in his book -
Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction - that embodiment is not a property of systems, technologies or artifacts and disembodied cognition, but a property of engaged interaction (p.189). Embodiment involves tangible computing (i.e. creating smart environments and specialized devices that would enhance the work we do), and social computing (i.e. applying social underpinnings to the design and deployment of interactive computer systems). Embodied interaction should thus, in my opinion, be the guiding principle in the design and deployment of human-computer interactive systems.
The $100 laptop whose functionality is predetermined whilst content is developed somewhere else and then delivered to users via the internet will most probably defeat the concept of embodiment. Of what benefit is a computer if it cannot be made to do whatever we wish to do under the circumstances in which we operate?
Using Social Software for Fun and to Make History
In an article titled "
Ultimate Snowball Fight" that was bookmarked in del.icio.us/tag/ccte, an individual is trying to "rally as many folks as possible for an all out winter melee," not only for the fun of it, but also to make history by breaking the world record of the highest number of people ever involved in a snowball fight! This person is trying to use the power of the internet and social software to get the message across and also to whip up interest in as many people as possible, and eventually get them motivated enough to come out and participate in the event.
This is a very interesting and ambitious adventure, but I have no doubt that it will succeed considering the fact that not only is the idea itself quite interesting and challenging, but the ability of social software to disseminate information, motivate and mobilize people into action is very enormous.
Wikipedia vis-a-vis Ethics on the Internet
Wikipedia has been compelled to tighten its rules for submission of articles following a complaint that an article falsely accusing someone was published in the online encyclopedia.
See story. This is one of the downsides of anonymity and invisibility, as well as the low barriers to publishing in cyberspace.
In an article - "Ethics on the Internet: A comparative study of Japan, the US and Singapore" which appears in Feenberg and Barney's book: Community in the Digital Age - Yumiko Nara and Tetsuji Iseda outlined their findings when they investigated online behavior in the three countries. One interesting finding they made was that "
the more the respondents are aware of the anonymity, invisibility and uncertainty of the internet, the more undesirably they tend to behave." Though they emphasize that this is just a statistical result, it should not be surprising as it is the nature of the human being - we tend to misbehave more only if we are sure that we may never be caught.
As it stands now the authors of Wikipedia have no idea whoever posted the article. But requesting that users should register before being allowed to submit articles is more or less a futile attempt control unethical behavior - as the mischievous people are the ones who will submit "authentic" registration particulars in the first place.
Folksonomies
The article -
Folksonomies: Power to the People bookmarked on del.cio.us/ccte, is quite an interesting piece. Simply put, Folksonomy is a user-generated flat classification of information as opposed to the traditional hierarchical classification. Tagging bookmarks with appropriate keywords as is done in delicious, flickr etc. is of great benefit to users as they can easily find information without having to drill through a hierarchy of keywords as we have in digital directories.
Having read Paul Dourish's book - Where the Action Is.. - I realize that the Folksonomies vrs. Hierarchical classification schemes are clearly related to what Paul classifies as
Work Practice and
Work Processes (p.62). He describes
Work Processes as the "formalized and regularized procedures by which work is conducted … captured and codified in rulebooks, manuals, recipes etc."
Work Practice on the other hand is the informal but nonetheless routine mechanisms by which these processes are put into practice and managed in the face of everyday contingencies. Paul continues to say that work practice "involves .. approximation, invention, improvisation and ad hoc-ery … reflecting a more fruitful adaptation of the process to specific circumstances in which the activity is carried out" (p.63).
Folksonomy is clearly a "
work practice." With information now produced and consumed by the masses through blogs, wikis, webpages etc., Folksonomy has emerged naturally as individuals have now resorted to lose and ambiguous classification of information devoid of all the rigid, conservative and centralized method of classification that is typical of the hierarchical classification akin to a work process.
So, in our search for information, we are beginning to drift away from the traditional "drill-through" procedures and resorting to the this flat, ambiguous and oftentimes misleading system. The important thing however is the get the work done within the circumstances in which one finds him or herself, and not following a particular procedure to get the work done. Folksonomy, I guess, is here to stay.
