Category Archives: Digital Life

cluefulness, constructivism, critical thinking, Digital Life, Education, linkfest, ramblings, textbooks

Thought Streams about Online Literacy

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Interestingly enough, in the last several days, at least five unrelated items of online content have made me think about what I’d call “online literacy.” Not too surprising a co-occurrence, given the feeds I follow, but I think still interesting. Especially because different perspectives were behind these items and the ways I was led to them.

Here are the five items I most directly connect with my streams of thought about online literacy, during the past few days.

Several items in my streams of thoughts on online literacy have found their way into a Moodle Lounge thread where they were mostly connected with the future of textbooks.

My notion of “online literacy” might be idiosyncratic. The concept, to me, relates to “media literacy” which (as far as I can tell) refers to the efficient use of a set of conceptual tools meant to help in approaching media items from the perspective of critical thinking and intellectual engagement. “Online literacy” would be the same thing applied to the Internet in general. One element specific to online literacy, I would argue, is that some basic principles of the Internet (including its decentralized character) make the critical/engaged approach very prominent. Simply put, the way the ‘Net is set up almost forces people to apply critical thinking to what they read, view, watch, or listen to, online. In something of a “cool medium” sense, the ‘Net also encourages active engagement in the material (though for reasons different from McLuhan’s description of medium coolness).

Furthermore, I tend to associate “book literacy” with modernity while “online literacy” seems quite compatible with orality which is itself typical of both post- and pre-modernity. I’m guessing this last point seems exceedingly weird to a number of people, but it really seems to fit in a larger scheme.

There are ways to discuss these issues which are more tech-friendly or geeky. Synchronous communication, many-to-many relationships, peer-to-peer (file) sharing, distributed processing… But as I think out loud, these concepts are mostly in the background.

My basic claim in all of this is that, regardless of how positive we think the move toward online content and away from mass-produced books, it’s important to train ourselves (and others) to gain a level of savviness in the online world. This form of online literacy is especially important with students because of their active engagement in the construction of knowledge.

Digital Life, geek culture, hype, Open Source Movement, open-source, participatory culture

Product Differentiation

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A chart meant to show the merits of Participatory Culture’s Miro video platform over a competing product from Joost.

Miro vs. Joost – Head to Head Comparison

Interesting approach. After the obligatory feature and content comparisons, details about the organizational structure for Participatory Culture (creators of Miro) and Joost N.V. (creators of the Joost program, with links to Skype and Kazaa). Even the “technological” comparison focuses on Miro’s openness.

It seems that social and cultural factors may be important for folks at Participatory Culture. Seems like members of their target audience should care about enterprise size (11 people for Miro vs. 100 for Joost) and about connections to the Open Source community (Participatory Culture is claiming that Joost uses Open Source without making its own source code available). However, this chart makes it a bit difficult to distinguish statements about these factors from typical marketing hype.

blog comments, Blogging, Cluetrain Manifesto, comment-fishing, Digital Life, linkfest, mailing-lists, online communities, ramblings, readership, responsiveness, shameless plug, statistics, tags, WordPress.com

Readership to Comments Conversion

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As mentioned recently (among other times), I’d like to get more reader comments than I do now. Haven’t been really serious about it as I’m not using any of the several methods I know to get more comments. For instance, I realise shorter, quick-and-dirty posts are likely to get me more comments than my longer ramblings. Everybody knows that inflammatory (Dvorak-like) posts get more comments. I also know that commenting on other people’s blog entries is the best way to receive comments from fellow bloggers. Not to mention generating something of a community aspect through my blog. And I could certainly ask more questions in my blog posts. So I guess I’m not doing my part here.

It’s not that I care so much about getting more comments. It’s just that I do like receiving comments on blog posts. Kind of puts me back into mailing-list mode. So I (frequently) end up wondering out loud about blog comments. I don’t really want to make more of an effort. I just want my cake and eat it too. (Yes, this one is an egotistical entry.)

One thing I keep noticing is that I get more comments when I get less readers. It’s a funny pattern. Sounds like the ice-cream/crime (ice-crime?) correlation but I’m not sure what the shared cause may be. So my tendency is to think that I might get more comments if I get lower readership. I know, I know: sounds like wishful thinking. But there’s something fun about this type of thinking.

Now, how can I decrease my readership? Well, since a lot of readers seem to come to this blog through Web searches and Technorati links, I guess I could decrease my relevance in those contexts. Kind of like reverse-SEO.

As my unseemly large number of categories might be responsible for at least some of that search/Technorati traffic, getting rid of some of those categories might help.

On this WordPress.com blog, I’ve been using categories like tags. The Categories section of WordPress.com’s own blog post editor makes this use very straightforward. Instead of selecting categories, I just type them in a box and press the Add button. Since WordPress.com categories are also Technorati links, this categories-as-tags use made some sense. But I ended up with some issues, especially with standalone blog editors. Not only do most standalone blog editors have categories as selection items (which makes my typical tagging technique inappropriate) but the incredibly large number of categories on this blog makes it hard to use any blog editor which fetches those categories.

Not too long ago, WordPress.com added a tagging system to their (limited) list of supported features. Given my issues with categories, this seemed like a very appropriate feature for me to use. So the few posts I wrote since that feature became available have both tags and categories.

But what about all of those categories? Well, in an apparent effort to beef up the tagging features, WordPress.com added Category to Tag Converter. (I do hope tagging and categories development on WordPress.com will continue at a steady pace.)

This converter is fairly simple. It lists all the categories used on your blog and you can either select which categories you want to convert into tags or press the Convert All button to get all categories transformed into tags. Like a neat hack, it does what it should do. I still had to spend quite a bit of time thinking about which categories I wanted to keep. Because tags and categories perform differently and because I’m not completely clear on how tags really work (are they also Technorati tags? Can we get a page of tags? A tag cloud?), it was a bit of a shot in the dark. I pretty much transformed into tags most categories which I had only applied to one post. It still leaves me with quite a few categories which aren’t that useful but I’ll sort these out later, especially after I see the effects tags may have on my blogging habits and on my blog itself.

As luck would have it, this change in my blog may have as an impact a decrease in readership and an increase in comments. My posts might end up being more relevant for categories and tags with which they are associated. And I might end up having sufficiently few categories that I could, in fact, use blog editors on this blog.

While I was converting these categories into tags, I ended up changing some categories. Silly me thought that by simply changing the name of a category to be the same as the name of another category, I’d end up with “merged categories” (all blog posts in the category I changed being included in the list for the new categories). Turns out, it doesn’t really work like that and I ended up with duplicate categories. Too bad. Just one of those WordPress.com quirks.

Speaking of WordPress.com itself. I do like it as a blogging system. It does/could have a few community-oriented features. I would probably prefer it if it were more open, like a self-hosted WordPress installation. But the WordPress.com team seems to mostly implement features they like or that they see as being advantageous for WordPress.com as a commercial entity. Guess you could say WordPress.com is the Apple of the blogging world! (And I say this as a Macaholic.)

Just found out that WordPress.com has a new feature called AnswerLinks, which looks like it can simplify the task of linking to some broad answers. Like several other WordPress.com features, this one looks like it’s mostly meant as a cross-promotion than a user-requested feature, but it still sounds interesting.

Still, maybe the development of tag features is signalling increased responsiveness on the part of WordPress.com. As we all know, responsiveness is a key to success in the world of online business ventures.

advice, Digital Life, Education, Facebook, Learning, Moodle, online privacy, profiles, social networks, Teaching

Facebook for Teaching and Learning

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My friend Jay Pottharst has created a Facebook group for a section he’s teaching. Thought about doing the same thing myself but I still prefer Moodle for learning and teaching contexts.

One thing which could be quite useful is Jay’s Tips for people who are concerned about joining Facebook. Though he wrote those three tips for his students, they could apply more widely. They’re quite straightforward and sensical. (Which shouldn’t be surprising as Jay’s in math at Harvard. If he were to not make sense, the world might collapse.) Summarised (from Jay’s already brief tips): use privacy settings, think about using a pseudonym, get a friend to register for you.

Personally, I’d say that it’s probably best to heed the first of the three tips. While Fb does encourage members to post all sorts of potentially sensitive information, it’s good practise to carefully treat any information you may provide online. Despite the ongoing media coverage on privacy concerns on Facebook and elsewhere, the main point here is that there are varying degrees of privacy which can be applied to information distributed on- or offline.

There’s a lot more to say about learning/teaching uses of Fb.

Of course, there’s a Facebook group about Teaching & Learning with Facebook. And I created a moderated group for passionate teachers on Facebook.

One thing I like about Fb in educational contexts is that it encourages a type of candour or, at least, some amount of transparency. Public information about members of a class (registered students, instructors, assistants, auditors…) can be very helpful as a course progresses. In fact, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Fb-like features in Moodle, such as elaborate profiles, ability to build links across courses, ad hoc groups, etc. Moodle and Facebook share several features and there could be a rich integration of features from both.

cafés, Coffee, Digital Life, globalization, glocalization, iPhone, iPod touch, iTunes, music

Music, Coffee, Digital Life

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“These are a few of my favourite things…”

I keep thing that music and coffee have a lot to do with one another. I’m also a wannabe geek. So I’m quite interested in the recently-announced Apple/Starbucks partnership to distribute music via wireless connections.

Apple – iTunes – Starbucks

Haven’t read much discussion about this deal yet. After all, the iPod touch is generating a lot more buzz. But I think this partnership can lead to something.

Makes a lot of sense, this deal. Brand recognition. Co-branding. New avenues for music distribution. “Physical locations” and computer networks. Music discovery through exposure. Impulsive buying. Selling an ambiance.

As it so happens, I’ve been a fan of many Apple products. I’m not a total Apple fanboy. And I’m certainly not an “unconditional” of the company. But I do tend to be overly enthusiastic about some products they release and the approach they’re taking. I did get contracts as a campus representative for Apple about ten years ago. And I have high hopes for the company. So, I think this can be a good thing for Apple and I’m looking forward to that, even if it doesn’t change anything in my life.

I’m also an ethnomusicologist and a musician. I care about people’s enjoyment of music. And I care about musicians making a living through their musical activities. Because this can mean increased music sales, “I’m all for it.” Of course, I have some reservations about the way the iTunes music store works. But the basic principle makes a lot of sense and is pretty much musician-friendly.

I care a lot about cafés. I do think they’re important locations for a lot of things to happen. I even take notes about what I think the ideal café would be for me. And I celebrate the opening of new cafés where I live. So I think my love for cafés is well-served by an association with music. I had been thinking about a similar system for a while now, thinking that cafés would be great places to “diffuse” music. So I can’t complain that this dream I had is being fulfilled.

The only thing is, I have a thing about Starbucks. Not that I think it’s the most evil company in the world. But I dislike a lot of the effects they’ve had on the world of coffee. Some of their business tactics are very close to bullying so I enjoy it when they lose to a café owner. I also find the quality of their coffee to be subpar. Contrary to what many people in the United States seem to feel, I don’t get the impression that Starbucks increased my ability to get quality coffee. In fact, because of Starbucks and other café chains, I feel that coffee has often decreased in quality and certainly in diversity since Starbucks started its “worldwide” expansion. I’m not anti-globalisation. But I’m against the bulldozing of café culture.

Not to mention that I prefer local initiatives to provide free WiFi connections to local communities to T-Mobile’s restrictive business model.

So, though the partnership between the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and Starbucks should fill me with joy, I feel sad that Starbucks had to be the target of this deal. It makes a lot of sense and I understand Apple couldn’t have a more appropriate partner in the deal. But I would prefer a move toward broad partnerships across a wide range of people. Who knows, maybe this will spark a movement by online music distribution system (besides iTunes), wireless providers (besides T-Mobile), and cafés (besides Starbucks) to connect music listening and café-going in new ways.

It’s not the whole world that’s consolidating in a few multinational conglomerates.

comment-fishing, Digital Life, Facebook, online privacy, social networks

Facebook Platform: Post-Game Analysis

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Just read Marc Andreessen’s very insightful analysis of what happened with the Facebook Platform (the development of new applications) during the first three weeks after its launch.

blog.pmarca.com: Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in

Andreessen’s entry was written in June and provides an appropriate snapshot of what people must have been thinking at the point.

What now?

Well… My perceptions are only as a lowly user of Facebook, not as a developer. And though I’m fairly active on Facebook, I can’t claim to be a Facebook “Power User.” Yet, as an ethnographer, I can’t help but notice something going on.

The Facebook Platform was an important event in Facebook’s history but many things have happened since Facebook started out, a few years ago. I only joined during the Fall semester, 2005 and I wasn’t very active on it until February, 2007. But I now use Facebook rather extensively and end up talking about it on several occasions. I’m really not sure about the timeframe and I’m too lazy to look things up but I’m hoping to find out at some point. Comments are obviously welcome.

One of the most important things in Facebook’s history was when they opened registration to the wider world of (English-speaking) Internet users as a whole. Prior to this, Facebook was restricted to university, college, and school campuses. For a little while, some businesses could have their own networks. But a real shift happened when Fb opened the gates and let everyone in. There were some discontentment on the part of long-time users but, on the whole, it was a rather smooth transition. At about the same time, the “Mini-Feed” feature was set up. With it, users can see pretty much everything their friends are doing, from status updates and friend adds to wall posts and pokes. This feature also occasioned some controversy but the Fb team reacted promptly and rather openly. On the whole, this was handled rather well.

I think one of the first killer apps, before the release of the actual semi-open platform, was Facebook Mobile, which lets users interact with Fb through SMS. The reason I think this was an important application is that the Canadian Fb community seems to have at the same time Fb Mobile became available on Canadian providers. Oh, sure, it might be pure coincidence. But the feature probably made me more active on Fb and chances are that it happened with other users.

Over the past year, there has been a fair deal of coverage of Fb in both tech and general media. Much of it has been rather critical if not outright alarming or inflammatory. But the end-result was increased exposure to Facebook. For instance, the first time I heard about Facebook was in a podcast version of a talk at Indiana University about online privacy (still a very important issue). The presenter had analysed some trends in what information students were willing to share on Facebook. Being interested in online networks, I decided to join Fb out of mere curiosity and, right away, some of my students added me as a friend. Concepts like “network effect” and “viral marketing” apply too obviously to such cases to be worth explaining.

The launch of the Facebook Platform happened in this context. As a non-coder, I was personally impressed by the rapidity with which developers were able to release Facebook applications. It felt as if new applications sprung up within hours of the platform release. It probably took longer but it really looked like an almost-synchronised release for the platform and new apps.

Andreessen talks about the platform launch from the point of view of application developers. As a non-coding Fb user, I think the apps were quite important in intensifying the buzz about Fb but I don’t think applications themselves have changed Fb that much. Yes, people are much more active on Fb thanks to cool apps. And some of these apps are actually very useful. But, to me, there’s a clear continuity between Fb groups and apps (even though they are completely different in other ways). In fact, an important similarity between apps and groups is summarized in the name for a Facebook group: “I read the group name, I laugh, I join, I never look at it again.” Andreessen alluded to this, in a way, but the important point is that both group memberships and application additions are more toward the “passive” than the “active” part of the online behaviour continuum. In all the discussions about online “bubbles” and “busts,” such issues should be kept in mind.

Many application developers seem not to understand this. They create apps which create very little value to users and try to monetize by forcing application users to invite friends or to click on some irrelevant links. Bad form, IMHO. Like most other Fb users, I add apps when I see friends adding them. But I’m increasingly weary of the adding apps which seem too eager to disseminate quickly. IOW: please, pretty please, stop the “application invite” madness!

I also notice that several Facebook users are sorting out their applications and groups. Part of it is pure information overload (many people left a local group after being sent daily updates of blog posts in their Fb mailboxes). But part of it is simply about finding what place Fb plays in our lives. Sure, many of us were excited about the possibilities and most of us are increasingly active on Fb. But after the initial excitement, we go into a phase during which Fb is just a tool.

And that might be a Good Thing(tm).

Digital Life, social bookmarking, tagging, Twitter, workflow

TIU: Spurl

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Tools I Use: Spurl.net 1.0 – Free online bookmarks with so much more…

Been using Spurl for a while now. Far from perfect but very useful. To me, it brings together the functionalities of Del.icio.us (and other “social bookmarking” services) with those of the Scrapbook Firefox extension. Like Delicious, it allows you to tag and share bookmarks. Like Scrapbook, it keeps a copy of the bookmarked page.

At this point, I got the habit of spurling just anything that I find interesting on the Web. In some cases, I also blog on the bookmarked item. But I don’t necessarily feel a need to put everything in my “to-blog” list. I don’t even tag my bookmarks.

The upshot of my spurling habits is that anyone who wants to know what I’m reading on the Web can just look at my Spurl RSS feed (or Atom feed). In this case, Spurl serves one of the purposes people are using Twitter and other nanoblogging tools for. Yeah, I know it’s not the same thing at all. But, to me, spurling is the lazyperson’s version of nanoblogging.

Now, once the Flock browser does “spell as you type” and Spurl does del.icio.us syncs, I could just use keystrokes to spurl pages I visit.

Hey! Who do you call “lazy?”

Academia, academic podcasting, Concordia, Digital Life, Education, eLearning, open access, pedagogy

Creative Inquiry

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This should be interesting. My proposal for a session at the Spirit of Inquiry conference has been accepted.

Here is the description which should appear in the conference program:

Free, Open, Flexible: Rethinking Learning Materials Online
Alexandre Enkerli, Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University

Considered as a whole, learning materials such as textbooks and lecture notes constitute the “shoulders of giants” on which learners and teachers stand. In this session, academic publishers, instructors, librarians, and administrators are all invited to rethink learning materials through their own experiences with online technologies. A short, informal report on the principal presenter’s experience with podcasting and other online applications will be followed by a facilitated discussion. This session will pay special attention to issues of open access, academic freedom, and flexible strategies for learning and teaching. Together, session participants will construct a new understanding of the implications linking technological changes to the use of learning materials online.

My views are quite close to those of Richard Baraniuk of Rice University’s Connexions project providing open access to learning materials. Discussions of Open Access tend to focus on research articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals but this session will focus on pedagogical uses of online content, including podcasts, lecture notes, and textbooks.

I do hope that people from the publishing and “knowledge management” side of the equation will be present.

Academia, Concordia University, constructivism, creativity, Digital Life, eLearning, Ethnography, informality, innovation, learning and teaching, Web 2.0

What to Rethink?

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Prepared a proposal for an upcoming Spirit of Inquiry conference at Concordia University.

In a recent video ethnography of the “Web 2.0” concept, anthropologist Michael Wesch invited the online audience to rethink a wide array of concepts, from copyright and authorship to identity and commerce. My session, if accepted, should follow these ideas along with specific emphasis on academic freedom, open access,  and flexible strategies for learning and teaching.

Here is my proposal:

Presenter Biography: An ethnographer as well as a blogger, Alexandre Enkerli has taught at diverse universities in the United States and in Canada. He currently teaches cultural anthropology and the anthropology of music at Concordia University. An avid Internet user since 1993, Alexandre has participated intensively in a large array of online activities, from mailing-list discussions in informal groups to creative uses of learning management systems such as Moodle, Sakai, Oncourse, Blackboard, and WebCT.
Title Of Session: Free, Open, Flexible: Rethinking Learning Materials Online
Session Learning Objective: This session seeks to help participants rethink the use of learning materials (such as textbooks and lecture notes) in view of opportunities for freedom, openness, and flexibility afforded recent information and communication technologies.
Session Approach: Facilitated discussion (45 minutes)
Abstract: Considered as a whole, learning materials such as textbooks and lecture notes constitute the “shoulders of giants” on which learners and teachers stand.

In this session, academic publishers, instructors, librarians, and administrators are all invited to rethink learning materials through their own experiences with online technologies.

A short, informal report on the principal presenter’s experience with podcasting and other online applications will be followed by a facilitated discussion.

This session will pay special attention to issues of open access, academic freedom, and flexible strategies for learning and teaching.

Together, session participants will construct a new understanding of the implications linking technological changes to the use of learning materials online.
Additional Room Needs: Preferred but not required: podcasting equipment.

Digital Ethnography » Blog Archive » The Machine is Us/ing Us Transcription

We’ll need to rethink copyrightWe’ll need to rethink authorship

We’ll need to rethink identity

We’ll need to rethink ethics

We’ll need to rethink aesthetics

We’ll need to rethink rhetorics

We’ll need to rethink governance

We’ll need to rethink privacy

We’ll need to rethink commerce

We’ll need to rethink love

We’ll need to rethink family

We’ll need to rethink ourselves.

Digital Life, DRM, music, students

The Quest for Student Ears

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College students take to Ruckus | CNET News.com

(Also talks about other music-related services showed at the Digital Music Forum – East.)

Talked about Ruckus and music discovery on one of my other blogs. Still like part of the system as a way to explore musical diversity (especially if they get more diverse music).
The idea, here, is to hook students-as-music-consumers to a music delivery system. Not even sneaky. But a bit ill-advised, IMHO.