I am not sure what to say in response to the first two chapters of this book. There was a lot of good stuff in there. I really appreciated the note cards analogy for wikis. I am going to remember that one. The history of the wiki was cool to learn about, and it was nice to wet my beak with some of the basics of wikis.
Still, there is something that has kept my mind spinning over all of this wiki stuff. It seems to ebb and flow. It seems like I have a time where I think wikis are the most amazing thing ever and can’t believe that everybody isn’t using them all the time and then I come back down to earth and get the feeling like wikis are too much work for too many people who aren’t that interested. I know the truth is floating out there in the center of all this mess, but I haven’t found it for myself yet. I’ll get there, I know I will, but until then I am cautious about any lofty thoughts I have about employing wikis.
I spent a summer as a telemarketer raising money for various political organizations. I hated it. Specifially, I hate making people do things they don’t want to do, or just asking them to do those things. Forcing wiki participation is like making a rebelious teenager sit through a lecutre about elastic versus inelastic commodities in economics class- they’ll be there, but they won’t get anything out of it. Situations like that are what messes with my ideas of these “communities” that wikis are said to be. Yeah, there going to be those vigilant neighbors who look out for the trouble-makers on their block, but there are also going to be the citizens who don’t care about their neighbors, aren’t interested in whose house was robbed down the street, and don’t want to talk to you when they come out to grab their mail.
I want, ideally that is, a place that is more friendly to all of these types of wiki-goers. I’m not talking about a classroom thing specifically. If you’re making mandatory wiki participation part of a class to get collaboration on papers and stuff like that, that’s cool with me. I wouldn’t mind doing that, but I’m talking about more of a free-range wiki. I work in Oak Hall for the FYRE (first year resident experience) program. I am an RA that works in an all-freshman program. I work with forty some other staff in my building alone. Someone is always running a program or asking a question or having a problem. We have a staff meeting once a week, but that’s not enough of an info flow for such a busy place. We have a staff wiki- which is nice, but just not used a lot. I am not sure a straighup wiki is the right thing for this type of group. We have staff who chose to take on the job, but have a wide variety of views on what “being informed” means. Some care about what’s going on more than others. Some are much more active in what’s going on than others. Wikis are for those who are active, who want to change things- at least these small ones. I’m not talking wikipedia here. Can there be a wiki/blog hybrid? Something that has the abilities of a wiki, giving the active staff a place to post all work-related documents, but also has a neat and simple desktop-type arena where other staff can just check the front page to see what’s going on and what people are talking about? Can just a wiki do all of that? Does it just depend on what you call it? Really- wiki is a word that sometimes can scare people away. Does it just take a good amount of skill to set up the type of wiki I am talking about? Well, hopefully I can find the answer to all of these questions sometime in the near future.
Those are the thoughts that came about from my reading of the first two chapters of wikis for dummies, as well as some contribution from the connections I made from commenting on the class wiki’s wide open spaces stuff.
I think I want to delve into some personal narrative type blogging. Whenever I get that narrative itch I usually turn to my journal for a scratch. I don’t know how much I’ll really able to talk about in specifics. It seems like I do a lot of complaining in my journal before I get to the good writing, but I am going to give this medium a shot regardless. My blog seems lonely without any new postings on random things that I like. Maybe I’ll keep up with that as well. It has a value just like journaling- it is therapeutic in a way. This message is more for me than anyone to remind myself to get something new shaking on this page. In that case- “HELLO FUTURE TONY!” I love doing that. Hells bells.
I had a good time doing the group project. I certainly think we built upon each other’s comments and opions- which is what I would call a success. The way we rounded things up, with Orie dropping some cool links to us, leaves the idea open for any of us to continue investigating on our own. I like that. I think it is important that we did this little assignment. It’s important to have at least one win under our belts- one good example of the power of blog discussion. I wish I could get in touch with a dedicated group of people like this outside of class and have conversations about other things- not that talking about network theory in classrooms and all that wasn’t interestin and fun, but there are so many other things to talk about with people, I just don’t know how to tap into that sort of discussion. Where do you find that? Do I just need to search until I find people talking about things I am interested in? Do I seek out those weak links on the net or do I find weak links in person and invite them to communicate with me through my blog? All possibilities I suppose. It was a good experience and I had fun with it- and that’s all I have to say about that.
Hey group, here are some of my thoughts on network theory in chapter three and how it applies to my specifc major. Looks like some of the other groups are humming along and whatnot so we should probably get chatting about whatever we have on our minds. Post something, anything, just to get the wheels spinning. Emily missed class on wednesday so I said she could chime in on our group stuff too since she is an ED major as well so I’ll try to bring her in to all this as well. I’ll be looking for your posts later tonight.
Blogs are a relatively free-form type of social software, and are decentralized, often running on their author’s own domains and connecting haphazardly to other blogs. Social software is often centralized on a single server, like Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, where all users have profiles on the same domain, and the system automatically link to the profiles of the people you’ve designated as friends.
There are many interesting possibilities and applications for classrooms when it comes to utilizing networks to gather information. Not only do teachers need to recognize the importance of strong and weak ties in online information, as well as in a broader epistemological sense, the students need to adapt this type of schema or technique as well. As Rettberg said in chapter four, this new sense of Truth in Blogging and social networks, truth as an amateur project, is more similar to the truth of novels than “facts”. So even though blogs and places like Facebook may not be the go-to sources for straight-up research, for explorative, investigative, creative narratives compiling opinions from the weak ties (strong ties being classmates and close friends) utilization of alternative sources could prove invaluable.
Granovetter was interested in how ideas spread through communities, and argued that weak ties between individuals are more important that strong ties for the bread dissemination of information.
Blogs step in as maybe the strongest weakest ties because they beg to be read. They aren’t a blip on your friend count. You don’t follow a blog unless you are interested in it. You are actively engaged in the information being disseminated there. I wonder how a blog type assignment could be set up in a classroom. Not a blog writing, at least not starting out that way, as much as a blog following. If students can become avid followers of distant blogs they can in a way strengthen their weak ties, giving new perspectives of the world that they are comfortable with sharing. How do we get students to pursue such a venture? Facebook has become giant but with such stagnation even in the weak ties, which pile up forever and are rarely if ever utilized as informational resources, the site seems to have become more of something to do than something to use.
Chapter 4 Response
Although freedom of speech was recognized as an important human right in the twentieth century, in practice only a tiny percentage of the population in twentieth-century democracies could easily share their ideas with more than the people immediately surrounding them.
I hadn’t really thought about blogs in relevance to freedom of speech. Like Rettberg acknowledges, freedom of speech was known to be important and valued for a long time before blogs, but there was little or no opportunity for most people to broadcast their opinion to the world. Because of this type of situation, I think that many people today fail to see the scope and potential of Internet communications. This idea may actually tie more into the narrative concepts of chapter five, but there is something to be said about the way in which personal narratives are looked at in relationship to blogs. Well, for one, the word “personal” has a misleading concept when it comes to the Internet. When we partake in the action that may loosely be called journaling, which twenty years ago was something done for small or single audiences, and likely by written hand. People are used to that type of journaling and I think it is barring potential journalists from joining in. Although the ideas of personal reflection for the benefit of self, that idea of a limited audience and therefore limited potential, is appealing to some, repainting the personal narrative blogging style as a way to express opinions outwardly and share them with the world could bring many more writers into the fold. This, of course, has more implications for my particular major, English Education. I see blogs being used in classrooms to get have students develop a more globally minded perspective communication. They are going to grow up in a world that views the idea of truth quite differently. As Rettberg says: Truth here has become an amateur project, not an absolute value, sanctioned by higher authorities’. As the world of communication becomes re-tribalized stronger communication skills are going to skyrocket in value. Later on she states In this sense, the truth of blogs may have more in common with the truth of novels. Like I said, truth is changing, the pendulum is swinging back to this subjective and yet higher consolidated understanding of truth and actuality. For students to understand the truth of blogs as being similar to the truth of a novel would be a dream. Some dreams come true.
Chapter 5 Response
On the Web, we read in fragments- maybe we spend five minutes a day checking a favorite blog, wonder around looking at YouTube videos for twenty minutes, read some email and then follow a link to a Web site a friend recommended. This means that fiction is not always marked as such. Or even if it is, we might not see those signposts, because we haven’t read the entire diary or seen all the videos in the YouTube channel.
Hmmm… very interesting. Even though things are not marked as fiction or non-fiction on the web, when we get into certain arenas, like blogs or YouTube, we develop expectations for the content that we are going to view. Even when the source of the content, for example a celebrity’s blog, is not that sort of “everyday average joe” web gusto stuff we still expect honest, personal, or clear information. If a celebrity who has been blogging about his or her personal life regularly for years suddenly starts posting only shameless plugs for their future movie projects followers may become quite disappointed. It is hard to keep barriers and boundaries between a blog relationship and any other type of relationship. You get to know people by reading their personal thoughts, a trust is developed- just like in any other type of relationship- except there is a controlled feed here from the blogger. In a face-to-face relationship it is difficult to control what a person is able to know about you, information you would rather not divulge is hard to contain. On a blog a person only elicits what information they want to, nothing more and nothing less. This doesn’t mean that people all lie on blogs, but that type of control over personal narratives begs for editing. So we get into these seemingly personal relationship, not being fooled by a person but by a genre, and in some cases may end up disappointed. I think that people need to see blogs and other similar phenomena in perspective, take things with a grain of salt. Like Rettberg said in chapter four, the truth in blogs is more similar to the truth in novels. People still enjoy novels even if they are fiction- it is not the actuality of blogs but the ideology. People read books about poor little girls dying of cancer and enjoy them- and they don’t hate an author for writing the story either. The places like YouTube and blogs are blame free zones- no one has to justify fiction or non-fiction- those places thrive of presumed subjectivity, but since we see only what other people want us to see, these small episodes, we get fooled. We hear electronic galloping of hooves and think horse, but it just might turn out to be a zebra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY
Well, I made it through the first three chapters of the book Blogging by Jill Walker Rettberg. Honestly, there was a lot more information dropped on me than what I expected. I have taken the Mass Media and Society class at BSU already and so some of the historical stuff in chapter two was not new to me, although I still much enjoyed reading it. I really like this whole development of language talk. As a future english teacher I look forward to blowing a lot of students minds in my first days of class with descriptions of language like this book had. Whenever I think about the transition from oral to written language I think about this scene from the movie The Thirteenth Warrior (based on the Michael Crighton book The Eaters of the Dead). Bascially what happens is Ibn Fadlan (atonio banderas as a well educated arab circa about 100 a.d.) shows a viking warrior (who comes from a far more oral based culture) how to write. The Viking is amazed and calls the act of writing “drawing sounds”. Just a random thought. Well, to take a little bit from what I learned in my previous class, the term we used to describe this returning to a more public forum of communication was retribalization. It’s like this. Prior to written word, people had to stay together in order to share information- talking was the only way to learn things. After the invention of the printing press gathering information (in other words, reading) (which Rettberg talked about) became an act one could accomplish as an individual. But now information is becoming collaborative again- everything on the web has become open to debate, to discussion, to editing. The problems the reliability of information (like Rettberg said) are things that will need to be dealt with, but essentially we are moving away from individual pursuits of knowledge and back to the tribal/communal stores of knowledge and communication. I liked the part in chapter three about information is shared on social networking sites (the person A being more likely to get new information from person D, a more distant friend, than person B or C who are more likely to only have the same information as person A)- that was something new to me- it helps me wrap my head around how all of this stuff really works. Hmmm… what else to talk about. I was surprised by the length of the chapters. This is surely not a “for idiots” book, I’m getting much more than a “how to” synopsis- more of a “how to do well with intelligence and style”. Oh, and the link from above is from the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall- a wink and a nod to Marshall McLuhan (mentioned in chapter two), a guy who had a lot to say about the effects of media. Well, I don’t know of what else to talk about right now. I might add more later. All in all, I like this book so far, but did you? Hells bells.
Tony
NOTE: Okay, I sorta dropped the ball on this first assignment- this post is a mess compared to what I was supposed to do, but I will get it organized in short order. Basically, I need to be checking the class website more often.
UPDATE:
Chapter 1 of Blogging by Jill Walker Rettberg
The difference between a medium and a genre has become blurred with the Internet. It’s easy enough to say that television is a medium, and that soap operas, tlak shows and sitcoms are genres. The differentiation is more difficult- and perhaps less useful- on the Internet. Scholars have suggested that, rather than lookinng at the Internet as a single meduim, it makes more sense to consider different authoring software as providing different media.
Very interesting. I was going over how I thought of blogging surely as a meduim and not a genre, and had the thought come to me that this idea about a new medium (the Internet) spawning sub-media (like blogging) and wondering if this was the first time this had ever happened. I quickly pushed that thought away. Just looking at recent technology, there are enough examples of sub-media being formed. I think satellite radion may be one, satellite TV,or HD TV may apply too. All come in the same medium as previous versions, but the content (quality, availablility, accesibility) is veru different- which could be said for blogs as well. They are accessed vie Internet and heck, in situations like Wikipedia and other news blogs, they serve the same purpose as other Internet sub-media while their content is inherently different.
Although, if these examples apply correctly, blogging would not be the first sub-media, I would say that sub-media formations developing from the Internet, which is a media giant compared to TV and radio, are far more earth-shattering and should be considered forerunners of the next generation exponential technological growth.
Just as an artist chooses to use oil paints rather than watercolour or a director chooses to work with cinema rather than television or theatre, a blogger has chosen to work within the set of constraints and affordances offered by blogging soft-ware.
Fascinating. It is, in a way, similar to how I prefer to play the ukulele over the guitar. I have a cousin who is an amazing artist. He is currently training to be a tatoo artist, but anyway- I remember when we were kids we would sit at my grandma’s kitchen table with a 24 pack of crayola crayons and he would draw the most complex, detailed, and beautiful pictures. I knew a kid back in elementary school who could pull off the most amazing tricks with a yo-yo. Limited media but, because of the personal factor, the artistic aspect, limitless content.
Chapter 2
One advantage of increased dissemination was that bringing texts together showed contradictions between them. For instance, having threee different atlases side by side, it would become very obvious if a country wer portrayed differently in the different maps. This led to a greater level of standardization.
First things first, blogging is a social experience. For most blogs, the content is supplied and monitored only by the authors- meaning that it is, in some way they are based on opinions. Then bring in the mass dissemination that electronic media has allowed blogs, bringing social banter to the table of world-wide discussion. Forget about comparing the accuracy of atlases, finetuning the details of information that the world has generally accepted as factual knowledge, we are vaulting the creative potential of personal expression towards the heavens- giving each original thought, observation, and idea (which would in other media such as personal journals or really any other format that lacks the reach that the Internet posseses) the opportunity to be spurred and encouraged by an infinite amount of other thoughts. While the printing press allowed for the collaboration of the known, blogging and other similar media allow for mass collaboration in the unknown- the sharing of ideas, opinions, and thoughts that, without proper channels would be tossed in the trash, ideas and opinions that are not necessarily correct or accurate, are being share none-the-less. The possibility for personal development of ideas, beliefs, and world views to be altered and enhanced is infinite. Higher truths and loftier ideas are waiting to be reached by the group efforts of the new world-wide blogging communities. Mass dissemination of the imagination.
Chapter 3
The negotioation of multiple audiences who know you in very different contexts is also familiar to many blogger, and is the cause of many unhappy stories. Blogging and participating in social software sites often feels like participating in an intimate conversation- one may be ‘famous to fifteen people’, to quotes Dacid Weinberger again, but, really, fifteen peole don’t sound very intimidating or a large enough audience to really worry about. However, the fifteen people who read your blog of Facebook profile today will probably not be it’s only readers.
I enjoy the freedom of expression that the Internet allows. I can be far more creative in a blog or on Facebook than what I would permit myself to be in face-to-face interaction. I, in essence, use the Internet as an escape from one social circle and a way to travel to another. Then I get my goofy aunt or uncle who gets on Facebook and wants to add me. I think to myself “What should I do?” The disequilibrium only wants to make me retreat further into my digital identity, to run away from the worries about what a relative will think of my posts. There’s not much to draw upon from this. Only that I whole-heartedly agree with Rettberg here- I’ve had tough times on the net. An interesting twist on another one of my endeavors was the ending of a long-term relationship I had with a girl that refuses to reflect itself in the mass of cob-webbed dusty corners in the Facebook universe. Here too I agree with Rettberg. At better than a year out from that messy break up I am still attempting to eliminate those pesky reminders of the past locked up in Facebook applications. Not only is the coming together of two social arenas very difficult, to attempt to erase that connection once it is made is quite a task. I’m not saying that it is impossible, at least I hope it is not impossible. It isn’t too hard to be famous to fifteen people, but being ignored by the one person you wish to avoid- now there’s a challenge.
Okey dokey, there is my updated attempt at blogging about chapters 1-3. There aren’t top-notch, seeing as I had to back track a lot through the text in order to talk enough about it, but I think I reached some higher ground. I shook out a few good ideas from the text that, at least for me, helped to better clarify the meanings therein and see blogging in a new way. All in all, hells bells.
Tony
I value getting things off my chest, and so withh exploit that technicality under my blog’s manifesto by ranting about the movie Titanic. A few problems I have with the movie: for one- the two watchmen who were in charge of looking for icebergs were distracted by jack and rose kissing only leading them to not detect the iceberg until it was too late for the ship to evade it, which means that jack and rose pretty much are responsible for sinking the Titianic, just saying- and another thing, if Rose had just stayed in that lifeboat then, once the ship sank, Jack could have potentially floated upon whatever Rose floated upon AND LIVED, so way to go Rose. Not only are you responsible for Jack’s death because of your cowardice, but also everyone the death of all those other poor people too. Having said that, I did NOT watch Titanic this afternoon- just in case you were wondering. I like getting things off my chest, but will you? HELLS BELLS!
Tony
Here’s a quick one. If you take one part Harry Potter, one part sarcastic Chicago private investigator, and a good amount of well-packaged addicting action, mix thoroughly and you get the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. Here’s an excerpt from page one of the first book Storm Front (above):
My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I’m a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I’m the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under ‘Wizards’. Believe it or not, I’m the only one there. My ad looks like this:
HARRY DRESDEN — WIZARD
You’d be surprised how many people call just to ask me if I’m serious. But then, if you’d seen the things I’d seen, if you knew half of what I knew, you’d wonder how anyone could not think I was serious.
You get the idea. There are eleven books out now with number twelve due out in April. The series has aspirations to go twenty books or so Each book averages350 or so pages. A few years back the SyFy channel did a tv show version of the Dresen Files that was cancelled after one season- it didn’t do justice to the story, but remains a testament to the looming popularity of these books. This is one of my favorite book series and I could really go on and on about it forever, but it’s better if you see it for yourself. You don’t have to be a huge magic head, not such a harry potter type to love this series. The books are smart enough to make fun of themselves and still take on very serious/awesome stories with unforgettable characters. I recommend first time readers to avoid the tv series if possible, or at least until you’ve read a few of the books. The Dresden Files: I like it, but will you? Hells bells (one of Harry Dresden’s trademark exclaimations).
Tony
