Assessment

1. I found the Ke and Hoadley article interesting in its discussion about online learning communities. A really broad question that I have is, based off of the Kowch and
Schwier (1997) definition, can there truly be classroom-assigned learning communities? After all, the definition says that "natural will" is one of the bonds forming the community, which in my mind, goes against the brute-force creation of a community. Beyond that, though, I think that the framework provided does a good job in pointing out just how many different things could be looked at when talking about assessment in an online learning community.

2. In these assessment articles, there seems to be a lot of exploring going on for a framework or more specific way to evaluate the impact of social computing. However, it seems to me that only the Ke and Hoadley reading in our bunch get anywhere close to mentioning the measure of student performance. The others seem to be more about perception or the "how" of social computing. Is this because we know online learning works and just want to know why (or how to make it better) or is it because it is too hard to narrow down student performance and causation?

Health and Support Groups

What I found interesting about several of the readings for this week were the various perspectives being looked at. While the Russell et al. article about CHAIN looked at how researchers and practitioners share information with each other, the Farnham et al. article looked at how patients may use a social network. The Nutbeam article then discusses a model moving towards health literacy where access to information equals health empowerment.

1. From the Farnham et al. article, I did not find it surprising in the least that the patients generally chose to use their computer access to communicate with family members instead of using the HutchWorld environment that was created for them. It seems to me that, as the authors point out, there were just too few people in this study to really examine how social interaction might work. Having such a small group, with perhaps only a few people logged in at a time, makes it less likely to "bump into" people and, from my experience, if I log into a system and find that the environment is empty, I tend not to think about going back there. My question is ... seeing as this research was from 7 years ago, what would the results be now? I'm wondering if the internet has become so much more ingrained that control groups would complain about not having it. I would also hypothesize that the results would still be more time dedicated to talking with family, especially now with easy-to-use software like Skype available.

2. I think that the Russell and Nutbeam articles look at an issue that is somewhat related though in different contexts: the sharing of health information. While the Russell article is focused on people sharing/asking for timely, needed information, the Nutbeam one looks at how to help a society become health literate on a macro-level. In reality, I find the Russell article much more interesting because it describes a system and how it is used, though I wonder if, given more information, we could apply Nutbeam's model to it? Perhaps, perhaps not. My problem with the Nutbeam model is that it is more of a series of levels than a map towards a course of action. I never got the sense in the Nutbeam article about how it could truly be implemented (with examples, etc) and how its structure was better than what was currently being done. The biggest flaw that I see in the Nutbeam model is that I got the impression that he equates health literacy with healthy decision making, which I don't see as true. We all know that smoking and drinking are bad for us, but that doesn't necessarily stop us from doing it. Just like in the Farnham article, assumptions are made that because information or a system exists, people will use it . Instead, I think that the Russell article helps to demonstrate that people will use a system or information once a) they perceive a need and b) they see the information/system as being an easy way to meet that need.

Social presence

Whoops ... posted on wrong blog ...


In the Rettie article, she attempts to address confusing terms in regards to online presence and interaction. She creates the large category of awareness and then breaks that down into social presence and connectedness. She separates these using instant messaging as an example: in looking at a buddy list, a person may feel connected but without engagement, may not feel experience any presence. In her discussion, the author believes that this separation will help in the creation of new learning systems. My question is, when is the difference between the two important? Are there any learning situations where awareness alone is enough to enhance an experience?

In the Swan article, three different factors were found to be associated with successful online courses: a clear course that skews towards simple rather than complex, an instructor who is plugged into the course with a notable and helpful presence, and peers who usefully contribute to the online discussions. In the second study, the researchers found that verbal immediacy was able to be achieved in online courses and contributed to student learning. Taking into account these preliminary findings, as well as the attributes of social presence in Rettie, is it possible for instructors to encourage social presence by modeling behaviors that lead to verbal immediacy, or is this something that will happen organically as students adjust to working in a totally online environment?

Reputation/Trust

1. David and Pinch discuss the "6 degrees of reputation" using Amazon.com's review system as a model. Within their article they discussthe usefulness of the review system, problems they've uncovered, some users' experiences, and even drill-down to talk about why people post reviews in the first place. I found the various perspectives of the article intriguing, and it also made me reflect why I typically don't write reviews on Amazon but am perfectly willing to on other sites.

Here's my view: Amazon is to huge and unweildy to form real community. Sure there are message boards and reviews, but it covers so many products and so many people respond that I've never seen any use in it. I've found that I prefer to post other places with a much more defined (and much smaller, though still large) audience such as DVDTalk.com or CruiseCritic.com.

Given the affordances mentioned by the authors to opining online, the real question is, what signals to you that reviews/opinions have merit? The tiered system is in place, but even that must be assimilated by the user into action. For me, it comes down to patterns action. If many people say that a certain dvd player is slow to load or breaks down after a few months, I may weigh that more heavily than single complaints. Store suggestions and professional reviews are also considered because they have more to lose with a misleading reviews.

2. I think that the conclusion about Yhprum’s Law in the Resnick, Zeckhauser, Swanson, and Lockwood manuscript about eBay is fairly spot on ... eBay ratings systems can fairly simply be rigged or used maliciously, but the system tends to work decently well. Does this demonstrate that at little assurance is enough for most people to "get over" the idea of shopping/bidding online? Is a listing fee and a little bit of oversight enough to scare away most scams? I think it would be interesting to compare eBay with a free service like Craigslist which, at least according to reputation, is a haven for scam-artists and items not available on eBay such as illegal substances, prostitution, etc.

Participation/community network

1. In the McDonald article, they make the case that lurking is, depending on the context, a legitimate participatory activity within an online community if practice. I'm not sure I agree with this fully, though I guess it depends upon what we deem a lurker. Sure, they can learn plenty of stuff, I won't argue that, and from the Lee article I also won't argue that lurkers can still "participate" in the learning. McDonald seems to want to classify lurkers as people who don't participate in a particular discussion but perhaps do in others or who participate in back channel communication. I can buy that ... I obviously don't participate in every online discussion I read. However, if someone NEVER participates online, how can they be a part of an online community of practice? Is it different in real life? Does "showing up" count as participation in a physical CoP? The line I draw between the two is that participation can be singular, but for me, a CoP requires give-and-take beyond a single person.

2. I found the "day without facebook" reading amusing. The railing against feeds is an interesting argument, but obviously a failure as well as feeds are obviously still around. Do these kind of 'net boycots or petitions ever actually work? Does the presence of feeds really hurt privacy when we are talking about the fact that they share information consciously given by the user to people consciously accepted as friends? If employers, police, or anyone else wants to use that information to pass judgement, are the information users at fault or those who post the information in the first place? I see facebook like any online community ... whatever you say, post, or share will somehow always be available so it is best to be a little forward thinking AND/OR make your information as private as possible.

Friendships and relationships

1. Many of the readings (specifically Tyler) seemed to spend a lot of pages with faint praise and fault, ending with a general conclusion that the Internet is neither good or bad or that online communication can be both a positive or negative influence. I see it as the Internet has moved from a novel tool to a very ingrained part of a lot of people's everyday life. Do you think it is inherently biased to ask people to compare online with face-to-face communication (or phone to phone)? Even though the Internet is such an everyday thing to me, I still think there is a stigma associated to online things ... online shopping ... online dating ... online friends. Is the desriptor "online" a neutral word?

2. I found the Sigman Press reading interesting, especially the the information linking mortality to living alone. I'm not sure that any of the other readings truly supports that people who spend time online are more lonely or have fewer interactions ... instead, I don't think it is a balanced scale ... just because I spend time online doesn't mean that I don't spend time interacting. Do you agree with the authors that online networking may not be "social" from a biological perspective? If you thought that your online habits were leading to a potentially shorter life, would that cause you to give it up, go outside, and socialize? ;)

Notes from 2/23 Session on Blogs and Wikis

Here are my recorder's notes for the 2/23 class session. I hope you find them interesting/helpful. :)


Chris's Recording Notes from 2/23 class

Week 7: Web 2.0 Behaviors

1. In the Metzger article, one of the findings was that students minimally verify the content of the information they receive from the Internet. Then again, students minimally verified the content of the World Book when that was the hot research source, though admittedly, the World Book did have some sort of peer review process. Does this mean that, with the advancement of technology, we need to shift the focus of how we think about research, especially in a K-12 classroom? It wasn't that long ago, but when I was in public school, both the topic and the methds for researching the topic were important. With so much information at hand, do the research methods actually begin to trump the information itself?

2. In their article, Adar and Huberman discuss "free riders" on the Gnutella network and lament their damage to the community. This discussion made me reflect on my experiences (past only, of course) with downloading from peer networks. I remember, at the very beginning, downloading from FTP sites. Some allowed free downloaded, while others required that you upload in order to download. For these sites that required an upload, 1:1 or 1:2 ratios were not uncommon, meaning that you could only download an amount proportional to what you uploaded. Then came the peer networks ... Napster, Gnutella, LimeWire, KaZaa, and now BitTorrents. On these networks, especially the ones offering copyrighted materialas, of course there are a lot of freeriders. Why? Well it is the people who share, not download, who tend to be targeted by groups such as the RIAA. Do many people use services like Gnutella to share non-copyrighted material? While peer-to-peer services may have a noble calling, in my mind, they are mainly the way to obtain Warez (cracked or otherwise made-free commercial software), MP3s, video (TV shows and movies), and pornography. Are there actually legal uses (with the stipulation of people actually using them)?

Week 6: Blogs and wikis (well, mostly blogs in my readings)

1. With my English Ed background, I found the Kajder and Bull article interesting as it dealt with the integration of blogs within k-12 language arts. One issue I still have, though, is privacy. Students are interested in blogging because they can instantly publish and access material, but I wonder what conversations/discussions in class have been had about what is appropriate to post and what is not. With Facebook, MySpace, etc ... I think that some people don't really think about the consquences of putting their life online. If this was done/started as a school assignment, is the school/teacher liable at all if anything happens? If it is made private, does that defeat the purpose of a blog?

2. The Glenn article discusses scholars who blog. I keep several blogs, but I don't keep one about my "profession." Why? Well, first of all, perhaps I don't feel confident enough to publish my thoughts/comments in such a public forum. Secondly, and this happens with any post I make, I wonder how my posts will reflect on me as a future employee of a company/univeristy, etc. I understand that blogs offer easy discourse, but then again, it is discourse that is not generally accepted as furthering knowledge, for use in promotion/tenure, etc. Would potential employers be upset that I am using my time to publish freely accesible information without any sort of formal peer-review process? Would they think that this would limit my publications or perhaps my status in the professoinal community? Do they think that, for any argument in the field, I would use the public forum to air my dirty laundry?

Week 5 Questions

As stated in the Johnson (1994) article, there are five major elements of cooperative learning:

1. Clearly perceived positive interdependence
2. Considerable promotive (face-to-face) interaction
3. Clearly perceived individual accountability and personal responsibility to achieve the group's goals
4. Frequent use of the relevant interpersonal and small-group skills
5. Frequent and regular group processing of current functioning to improve the group's future effectiveness
   

This reading in particular dealt entirely with face-to-face groups. My question is, how does social computing or social technologies affect these elements? Are technologies a help? a hinderance? Both? Are there extra elements you would add when talking specifically about cooperative learning using technology? The Curtis and Lawson article focused mainly on text interaction, but what about technologies that are more advanced?

2. All of these papers talked about the benefits of collaboration, but in my experience, most students groan when they find out they have to do a group project. What causes this separation between research extolling the benefits of collaborative learning and the students that dislike groups? What is the role of the teacher to make groups more collaborative? What is the role of the students?

Video that ties with some of the readings ....

I found the Resnick article interesting about how learning/knowledge differ in their use and acquisition between school and the "real world." It made me think of something I had just seen last week on an HBO show called The Wire. The show depicts fictional police and drug dealers in Balitmore, and in this instance, a young child comes to one of his mentors (a teenager) asking about a school math problem. The response might not be what you'd expect ....

(WARNING: There is quite a bit of bad language in this link, be prepared).

In particular, focus on 1:30 when the kid asks his question. There is an interruption in between with some plot stuff, then back to the math problem at 2:55.

Week 4 Questions ....

1. In all three readings for this week, ideas about learning were presented that are do not necessarily gel with what is considered “traditional” teaching in today’s public schools. The Resnick article, in particular, examined how learning and application differ for school and the “real world,” and that was written in 1987. In our education classes, we’ve learned about more student-centered approaches such as constructivism, PBL, etc. In your experience, has public education evolved any in the over 20 years since the Resnick article was written, or are have ideas like social learning and ecological psychology actually had an impact in at the K-12 level?


2. Both the Saloman & Perkins and the Resnick articles discuss the use of tools by learners. Both indicated a debate about the transfer of skills to a tool from a person, with Resnick noting that as long as the tool has the skills, the system as a whole has lost no intelligence. I think this makes the point, though, that the person has lost that skill and would not be able to function that particular task without the tool. At what point do acknowledge the tool’s role and absolve a person from knowing those skills? For example, in early math classes I’ve taken, no calculators were allowed, though in advanced classes, calculators were required. When does this shift happen? Is it dictated by society? I can see a student now being puzzled about having to learn about multiplication or division when almost everyone has easy and immediate access to a calculator by way of phone and/or computer.

Why I started a new blog ....

Lily raised an interesting point in class ... how many of us started new blogs for this course, even if we already maintain other blogs. I realize that some, or perhaps most, of the class didn't already have blogs, but I actually have two other ones.

Why then, did I start this blog as a separate space?

Well, to be honest, I think it's because I didn't want everyone in this class to be forced to weed through my personal blog updates in search of things relevant to the course. I've had my personal blog since May 2005 and, while my activity on it varies from constant to rarely, I'm fairly sure that I will post more frequently on that space than I probably will on this one.

With that being said, I'm not ashamed of my other blogs ... heck, I wouldn't post anything that I'm not willing to share with the world. You can see my other two blogs by clicking on my profile information on the left of this page.

Someone asked me why I keep a personal blog. At first, I started it as a creative outlet. Now, it is just kind of a place where I can be creative, post some photos I like, and share other things with my friends. I link to my blog in my signature of several message board communities, such as Cruise Critic. It's funny ... I ran into a lady on a cruise once who not only recognized me from my blog, but she also confessed to me that she had actually read through the entire thing (we are talking over 500 posts at that point). Nothing on my personal blog is too special, but I found it fascinating that it was interesting enough for someone else to spend that kind of time on it.

Week 1 Questions ....

1. Much of what we read about for social computing and Web 2.0 talks about how it is user-driven and somewhat organic in its nature. With that in mind, is it important to make a conscious effort to include those specific tools within public education, or will those tools emerge naturally through acceptance and use? Does social computing lose something if it becomes an assignment or prescribed process and is not completely voluntary (blogs for this class, etc).

This question is one part of a question I thought of last semester in EDCI 660 when Scott tried to turn our class into a learning community or a community of practice. I spent the entire semester wondering … can communities be formed from brute force, or is it something that must just emerge because of the needs/desires of its members. Perhaps key words might be useful and effective.

2. In the reading from Six Degrees about the power grid, examples are used to demonstrate how people can become dependent on networks, such as the electric grid. This idea made me reflect on how dependent we are with the cellular network … what was once a luxury has become a necessity to many people (how will we know where/when to meet up, etc). When does a network hit critical mass such that it topples from a luxury to something you assume everyone has? In a public school classroom, we generally can’t assume that every student has a computer or internet access, but we generally assume that they all have electricity and phones. Will this be a key to these tools’ widespread use in education … when they have reached proliferation?

Third time's a charm ....

Well, this is my third blog created on Blogger ... though this one may actually have a purpose. ;) I kid, I kid.

Anyway, this is where I will be posting for EDCI 627: Social Computing, which I'm taking in the Spring of 2009. Outside participation is, of course, always welcome.