Flow Journal: the value of user-generated content

Flow TV is one of my favorite media studies journals, the fact that it is online and open-source makes me like it that much more.

The newest issue features the article "Keep on rockin' in the free (virtual) worlds: why user-generated content matters." The article discusses Google's virtual life experiment, Lively, its relation to Second Life and earlier user-created virtual worlds, and the co-opting of user-created design, content and creativity.

"From the very beginning, the personal computer industry has been fueled by the desire to empower users, and it is disheartening when virtual world entrepreneurs overlook this bedrock principle.... What about the international cadre of volunteers who make sure that the Second Life Library on Info Island is staffed around the clock with reference librarians? Or the global teenagers who combine their creative energies to organize symposia and create multimedia presentations about transnational political issues?" Read the article here.

Elit 2.0: A Guide to Literary Works on Social Software

Do you want to teach Web 2.0 technologies but need some exemplary creative texts for students to "read" as examples and/or illustrations of the tool's creative potential?

Check out ELit: A Guide to Literary Works on Social Software

"While students are still developing literacies in new technologies it is important that their adoption involves more than just accepting the software at interface value. What these technologies are and can be has yet to be decided and this set of electronic literary works offers an artistic exploration of their possibilities that will enrich the quest for software literacy."
From: WRT: Writer Response Theory: a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing text arts forms

Social Technographics defined

I hadn't heard this phrase used before to describe the various roles users entail when using/interacting with social technologies.

This online slide presentation from Forrester quickly outlines the multiple roles, which are:
Creators
Critics
Collectors
Joiners
Spectators
Inactives

I think many users can operate in multiple roles depending on the social network and tasks at hand.

These role definitions also offer a nice conceptual structure in which to introduce students to the current internet landscape of production, consumption, and socializing.

Web 2.0 and Institutional Challenges

Juan Freire writes a thought-provoking article on the challenges educational institutions are having adopting Web 2.0 tools in eLearning Papers. He lists the bottlenecks for adoption as:

1. "Rejection by the users, personnel and students. Many of the users of the tools available in the Internet 1.0 are reluctant and fearful of learn new abilities needed to use new software and change their attitudes about education and knowledge. Also, in most cases, change is a matter of personal interest and work without any specific incentive system adapted to these objectives.
2. Lack of an incentive system or perverse effects.
3. Available pre-web 2.0 technology. Universities have made large investments during 1980 and 90s to develop in-house or buy software platforms. This infrastructure could become a barrier . . . .
4. Universities show in some cases a culture of aversion to innovation and entrepreneurship. Bureaucracy, governance, procedures for decision-making and inertia in large institutions are in many cases the worst environment for inside innovation and entrepreneurship. However, the adoption of technology and working methods associated with web 2.0 requires a high dose of experimentation and creativity. "

His solution would involve:

1. "Learning from previous and on-going experiences. Successful uses of web 2.0 are yet an experimental field where trial-and-error is the basic approach. A considerable base of experience is being developed (and shared) by lead users and organizations that could be mined by other interested parties to gain efficiency in their processes of adoption.
2. Open access and use of contents. Web 2.0 is especially useful and creative when knowledge is digitized, modular and allowed to be used and distributed in a flexible way.
3. Design the organization as an open platform for knowledge creation and sharing, both among members of the internal community and with the participation of external users."

You can read the full article at http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media15530.pdf.

Pedagogy 2.0

Great article on how Web 2.0 can create pedagogy 2.0. Here's a snippet. The rest of the article is at Innovate, a journal on online education.

"Pedagogy 2.0 is defined by:

• Content: Microunits that augment thinking and cognition by offering diverse perspectives and representations to learners and learner-generated resources that accrue from students creating, sharing, and revising ideas;
• Curriculum: Syllabi that are not fixed but dynamic, open to negotiation and learner input, consisting of bite-sized modules that are interdisciplinary in focus and that blend formal and informal learning;
• Communication: Open, peer-to-peer, multifaceted communication using multiple media types to achieve relevance and clarity;
  Process: Situated, reflective, integrated thinking processes that are iterative, dynamic, and performance and inquiry based;
• Resources: Multiple informal and formal sources that are rich in media and global in reach;
• Scaffolds: Support for students from a network of peers, teachers, experts, and communities; and
• Learning tasks: Authentic, personalized, learner-driven and learner-designed, experiential tasks that enable learners to create content.

With this learner-based, communal, media-rich, flexible approach, Pedagogy 2.0 uses social software tools to enable the development of dynamic communities of learning through connectivity, communication, and participation."

Online mini-lectures

Here's an article in the Chronicle on the value of creating "mini-lectures" when converting a traditional class to online. A snippet is below, and the rest of the article is at http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i41/41a00901.htm.

"Dalton A. Kehoe, an associate professor of communication studies at York University, in Toronto, has for decades won teaching awards and praise for his lectures. So when he was asked to do his first online course, a couple of years ago, he was excited to head into a studio to capture his 50-minute talks on video.
When the recordings went online, however, they were anything but hits. The main complaint: They were much too long.
"It was the most extremely boring thing my students had ever seen," Mr. Kehoe acknowledges. His course evaluations, usually glowing, grew dismal.
"I had to sit to down and look at these lectures and realize that when you're looking at someone online as a talking head and shoulders in video, you just want to kill yourself after about 20 minutes," he says with a laugh.
So, for the first time in his 40 years of teaching, he decided to overhaul his lectures. He broke them up into 20-minute segments, each focusing on a narrow topic."

All things Twitter

You'll find an impressive list of both Twitter tools and ways to use Twitter at http://www.typepadhacks.org/2008/03/twitter-tools-t.html. Some favorite listed uses for Twitter include:

• Microblogging
• Note to self
• Link Sharing
• Polling

Plus there are dozens of links to Twitter tools and related applications including:

• Twhirl
• Tweetscan
• Twitpic
• Loudtwitter

The author of this blog entry (John T. Unger) said that he went from wondering why anyone would use Twitter to having it become one of the most important tools he uses to work and socialize, and he provides plenty of reasons why. A very interesting post to read and explore!