Social Bookmarking

Facebook and Twitter may be the king and queen of popular social bookmarking. A page on Facebook constitutes a collection of personal data, either created by the individual or tagged by him/her. I have mentioned before somewhere that I'm really thankful for Facebook, since it teaches several skills and people learn them by playing Bejeweled® or Farmville® or tagging their embarrassing photos. It all depends on who your friends are, of course. There are other Facebook users who only post serious links and photos, but at the end, most of us learn how to broadcast information.

http://dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html

“Social Bookmarking Tools” (2005) presents a very good starting point for anybody who wants to learn more on social bookmarking, but move beyond Wikipedia. It is sometimes refreshing to read something online that has not been modified in several years—at the bottom of the article, we can read this note: “(A misspelling of the name Pito Salas in note 14 was corrected on May 23, 2005.)”

Tim O'Reilly—with his book series on how to use and develop software, and his Make Magazine—has always amazed me with the way he creates, distributes, discusses, and sells knowledge. For some reason, I had never identified O'Reilly with social bookmarking. But as Make subscriber, it made sense to me that he was involved, or at least talked about this type of application. The article says,

“Originally elaborated in relation to open-source software development, but equally applicable to any online community, Tim O'Reilly has talked about an 'architecture of participation' whereby a grassroots user base creates a self-regulating collaborative network. The result of this approach is that the best applications become more useful for all participants the more that people make use of them.”

I like the idea of calling social bookmarkers “grassroots users.” Now there seem to be more people using social networks and therefore bookmarking. This is why I believe that this term needs to be used for the people who bookmark as part of their job or artistic creations.

"7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking" (Educase) makes an observation related more to Web 2.0 than Web 1.0:

 It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using a framework created by and shared with peers and colleagues.

The “architecture of participation” becomes more important than the site where something was located. The problem is that young students usually forget to cite sources, but since social bookmarking means doing research Ringo Star style (with a little help from your friends), then it becomes a great tool for teachers. This means that it is easier to make students collaborate and help each other, and have the correct sources and citations in their papers

RSS

RSS feeds have been part of my daily life for several years now. The Wikipedia entry is not new to me, because I read it several years ago out of curiosity. But I have never taken advantage of them in the way described in Educase's “7 Things You Should Know About... RSS.” For me, the Google Reader and other RSS feeds have been only a personal virtual bookshelf. There are only two other friends in Google Reader that share materials with me or who allow me to share materials with them. It's not that I don't want to share with more people, it's that there are not that many people in my email list who use this service. The feeds I'm subscribed to in Google Reader are related to Adobe Flash, photography, science, and food. I have subscriptions to RSS feeds outside of Google and I use those more often. The word of the day, the New York Times, the BBC, etc. have become part of my routine. For me, these stand alone feeds with their orange-y broadcast symbol are the newspaper, while I see the Google Reader feeds as the equivalent of the magazines that arrive every month or so to my mail box.

In my classes, I use a wiki from pbworks.com, and this site has an old system to subscribe to a page—the email. The problem is that I get 10 or more emails a day from the this site telling me that a page has changed. Pbworks.com user may choose not to receive the emails, which is what I recommend to my students, but I hope they soon use RSS feeds instead.

iTtunes aggregates feeds as well. My favorite podcast is the one by the National Gallery of Art, which offers the recorded live talks at the museum.

I have met several individuals who confuse RSS with podcasts. In essence, they have the same principle and as a subscriber, I may use them in the same way. But the technical definition seems to be different. An RSS may feed news about text, mashups, and news, while podcasts resemble more a radio or tv show that comes up at a regularly.

Is ____(blank)____ Making Us ___(blank)__?

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (2008)

Carr, N. (July 01, 2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Why you can't read the way you used to. The Atlantic Monthly, 56.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

When I read this article, I was able to relate it to several ideas, books, and references that I have read before. The good part was that this article is deep and succinct at the same time. After I read it, I thought about the structures and comparisons Carr uses to make his point. He uses, for example, a scene from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to describe how Google—I would say, the Internet, not just Google—has shaped him into an automaton, similar to the machines in the movie. Therefore, the question can be a little bit more precise, “Is Google Making Us Act Like Machines?” And the answer, according to what Carr describes, should be “YES.” However, Nicholas Carr, the “machine” produced/shaped by Google, still has the ability to manage and discuss metaphors and comparisons. I agree with him that we now read, think, and write with different tools and even different parts of our body—one or two thumbs for texting, the index for writing on a screen-touch application, or our voice, even our thoughts—instead of one hand. But, just as Marshall McLuhan would say, the cell phones, the iPhones and iPads are still extensions of our body.

Short, short, short.  Everything has to remain short and meaningful. Otherwise, readers will fly away to other sites.

In an effort to follow the idea of shortness, I will make a list of topics in Carr's article. My intention is to also mimic Nietzsche's aphorism-like writing after he got used to his typewriter:

• Reading War and Peace (long attention span) vs reading online (short and scattered attention span).
• “We are what we eat” becomes “We are what and how we read.”
• Friedrich Nietzsche and Nicholas Carr changed their way of thinking and writing after they acquired a new technology.
• The typewriter is similar to the computer.
• Deep, analytical thoughts versus short, shallow thoughts.
• The brain of a child is similar to the brain of an adult.
• The intellectual knowledge vs the intellectual technology.
• Frederick Winslow Taylor similar to the founders of Google.

Marshall McLuhan wrote in the 1960s that old tools and technologies are assimilated into new ones. This seems to be one of the main topics of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” We assimilate new technologies because we know the old ones. The question is not new either. We can actually drop “Google” and stick any technology in its place. Thus, writing, bookmaking, printing, mass-printing, cinema, radio, television, pop-culture, Windows, Apple, the Internet, Google, the iPhone, etc., can fit into this rhetorical question, “Is _____ (blank, usually something new) Making Us Stupid?” We can also change the “Stupid” part for fat, lazy, and other adjectives. This simple question, however, is as philosophical as “Who are we?” “Does God exist?” or “What is happiness?” etc. Carr remains skeptic and knows that it is probably too son to condemn Google for making pancakes out of our brains. But he also knows that we are facing a new way of writing or composing written language.

7 Things You Should Know About Collaboration (2009)

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutColla/182641

Collaboration tools, specifically the ones for tagging, intrigue me and make me think that we may be witnessing the birth of a new language, or languages. Tagging is basically marginalia, writing glosses. The Spanish language, for example, was born when the scribes from the Middle Ages wrote notes in a much clear Latin on the margins of a Latin codex called Emilianense. Those notes are the first written vestiges of what we know today as the Spanish language, and the glosses/tags are called “Glosas Emilianenses” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glosas_Emilianenses

I agree with “7 Things You Should Know About Collaboration” that tagging plugins have the risk of not running everywhere. When a great software or an online tool morphs or disappear--for example Shockwave or Flowgram ( http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/12/flowgram-was-cool-now-its-dead/ )--, a lot of our work has to change to new formats, which may result in loosing information, functionality, visual appeal, etc.

After Thought

After reading both Carr and the piece about collaboration, I thought about Ted Nelson, http://www.xanadu.com.au/ted/, the first person to describe the Internet and several of the technologies we use now—Google Earth, Google books, collaboration tools, pages linked to other pages, the Apple time machine, etc. Nelson also coined the work hyperlink. In his book “Dream Machines,” he suggested a software that we can use to learn and work by adding, erasing, and commenting on different pages and documents. Nelson, who I consider to be one of the first philosophers of the Internet, also remains skeptical of what the Internet has become. He doesn't agree with the interface, the speed, etc.

We cannot avoid technology and become a world of Unabombers. Writing has helped passed knowledge from one one civilization to another; books have allowed literacy of the masses; the Internet lets remote places to connect with large cities, etc. In other words, I'm not as skeptical of the Internet and Google as Carr or Nelson are. But I do agree that we have to stop and think, continue and rethink.  We cannot loose the ability to ask ourselves if whatever is new ( the blank ) is changing us, not only if it's making us stupid.

Reflect, Refresh, Repeat

For this week, we had to read three blog entries from three different blogs. I read twice Henry Jenkins's “Why Academic Should Blog” on his Aca/Fan blog, and read several posts in “The Bamboo Project.” But, for some reason, I only read once “The Reverend asked me question” on the blog Gardner Writes. It's not that I disrespect or don't understand the latter, it is that I found that several of his asseverations resonate with what we had mentioned in class, or with what I have thought since the first day I saw and read a blog.

Now, this says a lot about me. Why did I read Jenkins twice? Is it because he's from MIT? Probably. But I believe that the main reason is that his entry resembles a page or two from media studies essays. He provides some terms that I understand, links, and general information. The first time I read “Why Academics Should Blog” I clicked on most of the links, while the second time, I read it without clicking on anything. It's easy to look at and read the bits and pieces of “The Bamboo Project,” because they follow more a business format, like a meeting agenda, or a check list in a magazine. I imagine that when Jenkins and Gardner jot (or typed) down a few thoughts before they started writing their entries, those thoughts probably looked like the list presented by Martin. Of course, the public of each blog is different. Jenkins speaks to his students, former students, readers of his books, the media, prospective students of MIT, etc. Gardner writes like he's giving a lecture or presenting a paper in a conference. Gardner's language mimics more a conversation than a book. Maybe this is why I read his entry only once: because when I read his blog, it was as if I was listening to him talk. Martin minimalistic entries remind me of my own entries in my photo blog. Sometimes I write a sentence or incomplete phrases, since the purpose for this blog is to show the photos that make reflect the most, even if they're not the best ones.

The term that I like the most in Jenkins is "just-in-time scholarship." I remember how intellectuals and regular people in Mexico City spoke about the earthquake that killed several hundreds of people and destroyed large areas of the city in 1986. The only other time I heard or read something similar was after September 11. Jean Baudrillard and others published essays about terrorism and how the global village had also bad guys, etc. It seemed very opportunistic to me that so many philosophers/academics rushed to publish their comments on book form, even if they only repeated what we have already thought and discussed in our daily lives.

I like the idea that the blog allows “just-in-time scholarship,” unfortunately, similar to the print academic journals, not everybody reads scholarly blogs. In other words, it would great if every blog had “just-in-time readership.”

Jenkins writes, “As honest brokers of information, academics may be ideally situated to bridge these more specialized conversations. As a consequence, our various blogs attract readerships that extend well beyond the academic sphere...” The first time I read this phrase, I thought, “this is only for famous universities, like MIT, Harvard, etc.,” because the media and general public will search and choose to read first a blog from an ivy league university, than from a small university in Virginia, let's say the University of Mary Washington, Gardner's university. Like the latter said, “blogging means being intellectual” and if you “build, manage and maintain your network” of readers, as Martin suggests, readers will read your blog. Therefore, we cannot blog once or twice, but rather periodically and consistently, otherwise those entries are like web pages that are updated once in a while.

Jenkins, Martin, and Gardner emphasize that we have to reflect, refresh, and have our own voice. The refresh part means also “repeat” and not once, but many, many times. This semester I'm taking 3 classes and all of them require a blog. I hope I can keep up with all three even after December.

Technology, Teaching, Learning

Fuente
Originally uploaded by Lulú De Panbehchi

I read two essays, “From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments” by Michael Wesch (from 2009), and “Learning Networks in Practice” (from 2007) by Stephen Downes. Both authors deal with the issues of technology, teaching and learning. Usually, I do my readings in chronological order, so that I can analyze the changes in perspective and technological references. But this time, I decided to start with the most recent one. The only reasons I can cite are that this was the order in which the professor posted the materials on Blackboard, and that I always tend to read first any books or articles with the word “knowledge”--or any of its variants--on the title.

Time is important. With technology, just like with medicine, the time of publication becomes as important as the information published. Wesch's essay appeared on January of last year (2009) on the journal Filtered: The Academic Commons Magazine; which means that it was written in 2008, and that Wesch probably started his research in 2007. Stephen Downes' essay falls into a similar situation. It mentions mostly 2005 and 2006 technologies and social changes. This is not new or bad, but it is important to have this time references in mind, since some of the statements and arguments make even more sense now, even if some of the technologies mentioned are fading out or have changed names or features, never took off or are dead. (ipodder is now juice; and jumpcut is no longer a tool for online video editing).

Stephen Downes defines “Personal Learning Environment” (PLE) and explains its characteristics and the tools used to build it. What amazes me from this essay is how easy Downes makes it for the reader to follow the essay, without presenting a graph or an illustration. By the time the reader looks at the final page, he or she has no problem following the graph about “future virtual learning environment” (FVLE). In a way, Downes works out his essay very similar to a good poem: a metaphor or a symbol slowly, slowly take form and at the end, the reader understands and owns that metaphor or symbol. Aside from the structure, Downes essay describes a reality that was changing in 2006 but one that we are living in now in 2010. Four years ago, Facebook didn't have more than 300 millions of users and Twitter didn't exist.

A section of “Learning Networks in Practice” by Downes that I highlighted and will probably stay for a few days in my jumpcut memory—the software that allows the user to retrieve erased text in several programs—is the following:

“The PLE connects to a number of remote services, some that specialise in learning and some that do not. Access to learning becomes access to the resources and services offered by these remote services. The PLE allows the
learner not only to consume learning resources, but to produce them as well. Learning therefore evolves from being a transfer of content and knowledge to the production of content and knowledge.” (p. 19)

The first sentence makes me think that most services teach us something, even if the knowledge is, let's say, meta knowledge or, in Wesch's terms, the site makes us more knowledgable. Twitter serves as a way of finding and disseminating information in just 140 characters or less, in a very fast way. Access is a key word here. Not only the students have access to resources in remote servers, they also have access to the teacher's resources at all times. The teacher's office hours are extended now until whenever the teacher decides to stop answering emails, text messages, Skype calls or chats, etc. Therefore the access has to be extended to the teachers who lead the class, plus other teachers who may have their own resources online, like the MIT teachers who have their lectures online.
One point that Downes doesn't mention is that even if they're surrounded by technology and they use some of the services, some students may still be reluctant to use those services as a learning tool. In my experience, there are some students who have never quoted Wikipedia as a source for a presentation or a paper, or students who pretend not to know how to upload photos to a wiki.
There are a few students who still believe that a good teacher is the one who lectures at all times, gives paper-and-pencil quizzes and exams, and never demands the reading of an online document or reference.

Michael Wesch's “From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments” offers the reader several ideas and multiple layers of information, from how he teaches his anthropology class to philosophical reflections on why we learn.
The quote that I believe is most important is the following:

“The technology is secondary. This is a social revolution, not a technological one, and its most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in an almost limitless variety of ways.”(p. 4)

If Downes mades the reader aware of the multiple connections and access to remote services, and how this environment promotes learning, Wesch goes a step up by saying that “[t]his is a social revolution” and that what becomes more important is to teach and learn how to approach, broadcast and create information than knowing or recalling facts. The student becomes knowledgable and both, the teacher and the student, participate on producing and sorting the same knowledge.

As I mentioned before, some students still believe that technology doesn't improve, support or facilitates knowledge and the way we acquire that knowledge. Wesch calls it “the crisis of significance,” which is ”the fact that many students are now struggling to find meaning and significance in their education.” Last semester, I took a class on curriculum. In several of the articles we read the authors mentioned that “content is king.” Wesch thinks that “content is no longer king,” however, we now have tools to keep this content somewhere and retrieve it whenever we need it. If somebody asks me what my husband's cell number is, I would answer “I have no idea. I have to check my speed dial, where it's a the top of the list.”

Maybe school—any school level—is now similar to graduate school. Students are responsible for doing research and producing knowledge.

Adult Learning

My log for ADLT 641.