Archive for August, 2004

Folksonomy

Friday, August 27th, 2004

Some very interesting discussion taking place on Folksonomies. It takes me back to my library days, when the web was just starting to take off and the Librarians were all busy trying to correctly classify every new website that popped up, dublin core and all that. Every library conference was full of speakers trying to reassure other librarians that the world needed them to bring order out of the caos of the web - search engines would never provide adequate access to quality resources on the web! Is time (and google) starting to prove them wrong on that point?

Another interesting read on the cognitive cost of classification here. Both articles should give some food for thought to the learning object cult that is putting a lot of cognitive energy into working out how to classify all those wonderfully reusable learning objects.

Another bandwagon?

Tuesday, August 24th, 2004

Derek  points out that the latest article in the NY Times re blogging in the classroom doesn't really provide any sound evidence of the educational benefits of blogs - have to agree with him there ;-)

While I agree with him that there is a lot of potential for the use of Blogs in education, I wonder if it isn't another case of educationalists jumping on a bandwagon and trying to bend and modify a 'trendy' technology to try and meet their objectives. Perhaps they would be better off spending their time analysing exactly what they wanted to achieve and developing specific tools to do so - and perhaps even lead the trends, rather than follow them ;-) 

Tacit Knowledge

Tuesday, August 17th, 2004

Further to my previous posting on knowledge management in elearning found an interesting article on Collaboration in Elearning - and I quote

"Collaborative learning allows a process for revealing and using tacit knowledge …. Unbeknownst to an individual who is able to express her tacit knowledge, her ideals may hold the key to a new approach or innovation for another individual or group. Only through group interaction does this tacit knowledge become useable. This is the power of groups — the ability to transfer learning. It is not always trainers who train, educators who educate, or gurus who gurunate, but the learners themselves who transfer their knowledge and skills so that others may learn."

For a definition of tacit knowledge look here.

Interact and blogs

Friday, August 13th, 2004

Just been modifying Interact to include a blog function for the navcon2k4 conference.  Will hopefully integrate it into the main release over the next couple of weeks.

Report on online communities in business

Tuesday, August 10th, 2004

An interesting report on Online Communities in business

http://www.sageway.com/ocibreport.pdf

What's missing from the meme

Thursday, August 5th, 2004

Have just realised what is missing from the gomeme below. Shouldn't everyone send $5 dollars to the person at the top of the path list, take them off the list and move everybody up one, so by the time your name makes it to the top of the list you should end up with a letterbox crammed with $5 notes ;-)  probably showing my age here by confessing to know what a chain letter is!

Blog user interfaces

Thursday, August 5th, 2004

Have just been adding blog functionality to the elearning and collaboration platform Interact, and after looking at a few blog interfaces for ideas it is amazing how bad the user interface is on some of the existing options given how simple basic blog functionality is, ie. when logging in to the admin interface for one when a wrong password is entered it takes you to a page that says 'you entered the wrong password' with no back button or anything! What is so hard abaout giving the user the login box again rather than making them use the back button. The other things is, why have an admin backend that you have to go to every time you want to make a post, etc. ? Why not let the blog owner add/edit posts from  the frontend?

Amother meme!

Thursday, August 5th, 2004

Copy This GoMeme From This Line to The End of This Article, and paste into your blog. Then follow the instructions below to fill it out for your site.

Steal this!!!! This is a Gomeme — a new way to spread an idea along social networks. By adding this GoMeme to your Weblog you can get higher Google rankings for your site, and help your friends get higher Google rankings too. You will also be participating in an experiment to generate a distributed Blog survey and test how memes spread through social networks.

By following the instructions below, your blog will be linked from every other blog that discovers this GoMeme downstream from your blog (from your readers, their readers, and so on). And that will raise your Google rankings in proportion to the number of downstream bloggers that get this GoMeme from you and post it to their blogs.

The dataset from this experiment is public, open and decentralized — every blog that participates hosts their own data about their own blog. Anyone can then get the whole dataset by just searching Google for this unique string: 98818912959q This code is the "global unique identifier," or GUID for this GoMeme — it marks every web page that participates in this GoMeme so that it can later be found with all the others. (Note it may take a week or longer before Google indexes your blog, so be patient).

To find out what a GoMeme is, and how this experiment works, or just to see how this GoMeme is growing and discuss it with others, visit the Root Posting and FAQ for this GoMeme at www.mindingtheplanet.net .

Disclaimer

This is purely an experiment and is just for fun. We are really just curious to see what will happen and this is not a commercial project. Participation is voluntary. We don't mean to annoy anyone. However, if you don't have much curiosity, or at least a sense of humor, you may find this experiment to be upsetting. In that case, you might try drinking a good strong cup of coffee. If after that you are still unhappy with us, just don't read any further and have a great day! (If you don't want your blog to get better Google rankings, that's purely your choice!) On the other hand, if you are interested in exploring new technologies and pushing the envelope, then keep reading and we look forward to your participation in this experiment. We also request that participants in this experiment refrain from spamming anyone with this GoMeme. To spread it, just put it on your blog; that should be enough.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADDING THIS GOMEME TO YOUR OWN SITE

Step 1 First, to add your site to this experiment, copy the GoMeme to your site from the "Copy This GoMeme From Here" heading above to the End of this article. Please copy this whole article and try not to alter the text so that it is authentic for the people who get it from your blog.

Step 2: Now, fill in your answers to these Required Survey Fields (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers). These will later be automatically data-mined by bots to compile the survey results.

(1) I found this GoMeme at URL: http://www.mindingtheplanet.com

(2) I found this GoMeme on date (day/month/year):05/08/04

(3) I found this GoMeme at time (in GMT format): 08:00:00

(4) I foundit via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Newsreader Software

(5) I posted this GoMeme at my URL (use a hyperlink): Admioc

(6) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 05/08/04

(7) I posted this at time (in GMT format): 08:08:00

(8) My posting location is (city, state, country): Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand

Step 3: If you're feeling very altruistic today, also fill in these optional survery fields (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(9) My Weblog is hosted by: plog

(10) My age is: 35

(11) My gender is: Male

(12) My occupation is: Web application developer

(13) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Sharpreader

(14) I use the following software to post to my blog: plog

(15) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 05/06/04

(16) My web browser is: IE

(17) My operating system is: Windows XP

Step 4:Now add an entry for your site after the last entry in the PATH LIST below:
Your entry should be of the form: line number, URL, hyperlink, optional personal GUID for your blog.

(Note: If you would like to track all postings of the Meme that result from your posting of it, once Google has indexed them, you may add your own optional GUID after your hyperlink on your line of the Path List — just make sure it is short, unique, and doesn't return any results on Google — for example "mysitename137a2r28". Also note, if the path list gets too long, you should still try to include the whole path in your blog — even if you have to put the list on a continuation page rather than the excerpt for your posting — and make sure others copy the whole GoMeme along with your Path List when they get the GoMeme from you — If they don't copy it, your blog and your upstream blogs won't be linked from their blogs).

PATH LIST

1. http://www.mindingtheplanet.net Minding The Planet, mindingtheplanet14798
2. http://www.interactlms.org/admioc Admioc, admioc040569
3. (your Path List entry goes here in the form URL, hyperlink, GUID. Also, please add a new line after this one, for the next person.)

The End

You did it! Now spread it! If all goes well and others find this GoMeme from your blog, you should see some interesting results. Please comment back on the original post and tell us how you're doing or what you observe, if anything noteworthy happens.

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) — results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://www.mindingtheplanet.com

(2) I found it via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Newsreader Software

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.interactlms.org/admioc

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 03/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 08:16:00

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Christchurch,Canterbury,New Zealand

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(7) My blog is hosted by: plog

(8) My age is: 35

(9) My gender is: Male

(10) My occupation is: Web application developer

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Sharpreader

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: plog

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 03/06/04

(14) My web browser is: IE, Firefox

(15) My operating system is: Windows XP