rWorld2

George Roberts’ Work Blog

Archive for September, 2009

The internet society – time to get real : Matthew Taylor via @josiefraser

Posted by george on 24th September 2009

It [the Internet] is as much a new opium for the people as a catalyst for democratic awakening.

This is as true in the “free” west as in the various “authoritarian regimes” identified. It is just that it is not the government regimes or apparatus of the states in the west that are producing and distributing mass opiates via the Internet. Chomsky would argue they do not have to: we manufacture our own consent and complicity, fomented by the media and marketing arms our corporate institutions.

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Online Database of Social Media Policies via @dtssmithers

Posted by george on 21st September 2009

Empowerment with Accountability

Now that is a useful link: a page of links to the social media policies of 82 organisations such as the American Red Cross, BBC, Cisco, EFF, Dow Jones as well as a host of universities and Web2.0 companies. Policy wonks, enjoy!

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Can we assemble around tag cloud normalisation @jiscssbr @cheeky-geeky

Posted by george on 20th September 2009

I wonder if there is a WordPress or other blogging platform plug-in that uses a mash-up to suggest tags from an underlying, emerging vocabulary formed from various social knowledge sites?

 Within a social tagging system such as Diigo, Delicious, Technorati, Digg, Twine: even in your own blog, tags and categories emerge and are guided. One’s own tagging practice converges and key terms become more often used: variants (plurals, -ing forms, caps, etc) get ironed out or normalised.

 However this facility doesn’t appear to extend across social tagging platforms easily.

 In the Planet aggregator (http://planet.inin.jisc-ssbr.net/) of the project feeds from the 3 phases of the JISC Institutional Innovation programme, from 21 feeds (just under half the projects in the programme), there are 256 tags, of which many of the most used: “project” (11 instances), “jisc” (9 instances), “funded project” (5 instances) are useless for sorting this category: they are all JISC funded projects. Most of the tags are used only once or twice. There are many variants of what is probably the same item: “mobile” (1), “mobile app” (1), “mobile phone” (1), “mobile technology” (2), “iphone” (3), “iphone ipod touch” (1), “ipod touch” (1), “itouch” (1).

 There may be some indicators of clusters: “podcasting” (15), “pedagogy” (7), “APL” (5), “learning space” (5) and “learning spaces” (2), “mashup” (4), “open content” (4), but they are weak signals amidst a lot of noise.

 Mark Drapeau points out the similarities between Twitter and Wikipedia (http://tinyurl.com/musjhb).

 Faviki (http://www.faviki.com/) has implemented a semantic tagging approach on their site based on DBpedia

 I wonder, if such a thing does not exist, can we – or someone – build one of these for any common platform using existing tools?

 Could a person, for example, mine the specific wisdom of their, say, Twitter community by using a tag vocabularly drawn only from items found from blogs and other social network sites claimed by that set of people? Or could they normalise across their Delicious, Diigo and Technorati accounts? Or, in my particular instance, using a tag vocabulary drawn only from the blogs of the Institutional Innovation Programme?

 Would anyone in the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme like to come together in an “Assembly” (http://assemblies.inin.jisc-ssbr.net/) to explore the tag-cloud field looking for helper tools to help us to make sense of the burgeoning folksonomic wisdom (?) of the Internet?

 Or if there is a super easy tool that does this that I have not found, just point me at it! Thanks.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Fallacious Celebrations of Facebook Fans via @cheeky_geeky

Posted by george on 20th September 2009

They’re so organized at America’s Next Top Model that we might consider asking them to inform people about the resurgent H1N1 flu virus.  We might also consider hiring Bravo’s producers as government public affairs consultants.

If you think I’m joking about that, you probably have no business working with social media for the government.

Asks all the right questions about egovernment and social media use by the various agencies of the state

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Faviki social bookmarking based on emergent (?) ontology dBwiki

Posted by george on 20th September 2009

Faviki is a social bookmarking tool that allows you to tag webpages you want to remember using Wikipedia terms. This means that everybody uses the same names for tags from the world’s largest collection of knowledge

If the wikipedia ontology: dBwiki and the ontologies from Delicious, Digg and Diigo could be mashed up into a tagging facilitation tool that plugged into WordPress, Blogger, etc I’d use it. Would you?

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Science of the Invisible: Poem 180909

Posted by george on 19th September 2009

In the hallway
Black bin bags of VHS tapes
Remember when this was
Learning technology

I like it :)

in the hallway black
bin bags of VHS tapes
new technology

(haiku-ized)

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Is Twitter “Not a Conversational Platform”? @cheeky_geeky – O’Reilly Radar

Posted by george on 19th September 2009

Here I argue that the underlying mechanics of Twitter more closely resemble the knowledge co-creation seen in wikis than the dynamics seen with conversational tools like instant messaging and interactions within online social networks.

This article significantly deepens our understanding of Twitter, but I do not think the either/or structure or negation in the title of the piece helps.

He is splitting hairs (bloody academics, eh?). If you create a definition of “conversation” that doesn’t map onto Twitter, then it is a tautology to say Twitter is not a conversation platform. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Indeed, better to say, maybe, that Twitter is as much of a conversation platform as Wikipedia: cast the argument as positive assertion of the affinities. Then the real light of the piece: that Twitter is a knowledge sharing and co-creation platform (as much as Wikipedia) shines through.

Unless the definition of conversation is crucial to some pragmatic end?

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Structure101 Tour – Define architecture / dependency rules for Anything

Posted by george on 11th September 2009

Prevention is better than cure. Structure101 allows you to define how the world should be, promote a shared vision through the team, and enforce (or just monitor) conformance.

Wow. How far would they go to do that?

Posted via web from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

ITTE: education is fluid, non-linear, iterative (chaos innit?) #falt09 #altc2009

Posted by george on 10th September 2009

IT in Teacher Education (ITTE)

 Session: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/talks/show/6869

 Barriers-research to understanding factors that inhibit IT practice in a fluid, nonlinear, iterative culturally complex world. Pathway is not an appropriate way to describe this multi branched space: cultural cartography or learning terrains. Communities (of practice) are the answer?

 cites Beetham, McGill & Littlejohn 2009

 CF Brown Lauder & Ashton 2008

Posted via email from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Two 72-hour txt sims are mini ARGs #altc2009 #falt09

Posted by george on 10th September 2009

Sarah Cornelius describes two 72-hour SMS simulations using edutxt (http://www.edutxt.co.uk). These are small alternative reality games (ARGs), or models of social action that run in real-time.

 Session is here: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/talks/show/6869
Slides: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/attachments/0000/4429/alt-c_2009_sim.pps

 - Flood Sim: Flood control. You are the local civil defence chief faced with a flood event based on Vaison la Romaine floods of [date]. This sim was run for 4th year undergraduates for whom the phone is an extension of themselves. Texting is the primary use.

 - Mentoring Sim: TQAL mentoring training. Simulation of mentoring relationships. Older cohort for whom the phone is a convenience not a relationship. Talking is primary use.

 Both groups liked the innovative aspect of using the phone for learning.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »