This link has been bookmarked by 24 people . It was first bookmarked on 08 Aug 2006, by Christopher Sessums.
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Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape
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software
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Social software includes many communication media
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interactive
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interconnected
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bottom-up and communitarian
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Four Vignettes
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First, students can, as a class activity, actually use the tools
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John Seigenthaler Sr., a retired journalist, found that the wikipedia entry referring to him contained a false, and insidious, piece of misinformation
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Mr. Seigenthaler responded by trying to force a restructuring of the wiki tool--rather than simply fixing the error by editing the page (and publicizing that change, bringing the community editing force to bear), Mr. Seigenthaler attempted an appeal to authority. He attempted to track down the source of the misinformation, and then to push wikipedia to cease allowing anonymous edits. He moved to lock down editing, rather than participate in the editing. While this response was perhaps understandable, it reflected an estimation of the new tool, wikipedia, as the equivalent of the old tool, the encyclopedia or newspaper almanac. Mr. Seigenthaler's "solution" to the problem of false information actually avoided all the advantages of the new tool, and enforced its disadvantages. I will return to this theme below.
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Flickr, as an image-sharing site, is also an example of social software, which uses "folksonomy," rather than a taxonomy, to categorize and reference the items in its database. As the term implies, a folksonomy is a taxonomy which is created and maintained by users, organically, rather than one which is imposed externally and a priori. Flickr is one example of this type of system, and works similarly to other folksonomy-driven social softwares, like del.icio.us, furl, and technorati. In all of these, when users post photos (in the case of flickr) or bookmarked websites (in the case of del.icio.us and furl) or weblogs (in the case of technorati), they do not post the content into predetermined categories (Michelangelo, Hajia Sofia, David, Napoleon), they post the content first, and then add the tags (as many as they want) which seem appropriate to them. And later viewers, creating their own search paths and sets of content, can add new tags, new slices through the datasphere.
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, and connections that were not easily seen before. The Hajia Sofia or Michelangelo's David become not only "architecture" or "Renaissance" but also "vacation" or "gaffe." Seeing how others have categorized and linked and cross-referenced material provides a reconsideration of one's own categories, and leads to an encounter with new material that wasn't even on the radar before.
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Serendipitous searching, stumbling on connections, can produce new views of the material (the human in the artwork, the experiential perspective
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In preparing this very essay, I used furl (which allows online storage of a "favorite" or bookmarks list), to keep the sites I found useful. And because my links, and others, are publicly available, I was able to see that someone who had "furled" a site I wanted to use had also "furled" other sites with which I was not familiar, but which were relevant and helpful.
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Of course, this type of evaluation has always been possible in newsletters, or letters to school officials or paper evaluation cards, but the difference when these responses move online is significant. In online reviews, users can make their ratings and comments—and respond to one another's ratings or comments—with complete anonymity, and with extremely wide circulation and availability.
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The last new tool I want to discuss is user reviews.
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A user called in with a question about a set of wireless headphones. Laporte, on the air, tells the caller that he is really not sure about the answer, "but let's check the user reviews on Amazon.com. I think these days," he says, "more than the journalists (and I'm a journalist myself), it's real people who really know how things work."
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What Can We Do with These New Tools?
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I think the best approach is not to try to force it into a mold which does not fit (teaching online is not the same as teaching face-to-face, wikipedia is not Britannica). The best approach is not to reject the new tool as being unable to serve the same function as the old tool. A hacksaw is not a hammer. So when you try to pound a nail with one, and it doesn't work very well, it makes little sense to blame the hacksaw. What I am suggesting here is not ways to hold the saw while hammering, or alter the shape of the nail, but ways to use the hacksaw as a hacksaw--or the new tools as new tools.
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All of these tools are, by their nature, user-friendly.
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when a student's work is published, in a forum which is open and has the potential to attract acclaim and attention (whether positive or negative), the responsibility for the quality, efficacy and accuracy of that work is deepened.
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Another way to use these tools is to have students evaluate them—and challenge them
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The third practical use of these tools is one that I have been exemplifying in this essay with the vignettes I provided at the beginning. Students need to know, and must internalize, the difference, for example, between an article in a medical journal and the opinion of a member of an online community
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(reviews come from people who are very pleased, or very displeased—the middle is often excluded
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work in the classroom setting to promote and reward a feature of learning which is too often absent in the classroom. Serendipity
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The new online tools lack the sensual element of those library searches
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But these tools provide more fluid and multi-faceted connections than physical browsing ever can.
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serendipitous discovery easier to achieve, and easier to incorporate into classes and assignments. The trail of breadcrumbs which might have been necessary in physical space is automatically constructed in cyberspace, so the joyful surprise can be rediscovered by others, or analyzed for later re-creation.
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The title of this essay, "Three Stars and a Chili Pepper" of course refers to a possible rating at ratemyprofessor.com—the place where not only the quality, but also the "easiness" and the "hotness" (that's the chili pepper) of a professor can be revealed. In thinking about these new tools, the tools of social software, reviews, and folksonomy, we need to be sure to think about how we are judging, and what we are doing with, the material that is judging us, and that we and our students will continue to use.
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06 Jan 07
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06 Jul 06
Marja VerstelleAcademisch docent Engels beschrijft mogelijkheden social sw. Toch wel docentgecentreerd, lijkt het?
Bekijk het als hacksaw, niet als hamer.
Another way to use these tools is to have students evaluate them—and challenge them. Testing different resourc -
04 Jul 06
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30 Jun 06
Trey Martindalearticle on social software, where it is going, and how to use it in education.
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Wytze Koopala young part-time teacher gets a phone call from her department chair. He wants her to take a look at the student evaluations of her class,(..). She calls up the site, (..) Before she has even scrolled halfway down the page, she is nearly in tears. Severa
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18 Jun 06
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