from The Best of Technology Writing 2008

A Collection of PLE diagrams
As preparation for a workshop I am giving this fall I thought it would be interesting to collect together all the diagrams of PLEs I could find, as a compare and contrast sort of exercise.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0010.305. A consideratio of CommentPress and new practices in academic publishing

Dave Weinberger. "transparency is now fulfilling some of objectivity’s old role in the ecology of knowledge." that is, "Transparency gives the reader information by which she can undo some of the unintended effects of the ever-present biases. Transparency brings us to reliability the way objectivity used to."

Educase PDF. Overview.

Really just a technique or two > A better model for twitter integration was suggested which I quite like. This would involve defined periods when students were encouraged to ‘tweet’. For example, 20 minutes in you say to the students “for the next 3 minutes discuss with your neighbour the issues raised so far (or have a specific question you want them to answer). Please feel free to ‘tweet’ your thoughts or questions using the tag #xxxx”. The lecturer could then choose to take a couple of minutes to respond there and then or follow up after the class.

Updates and weak ties. Always on means a return to village life, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Monitor your online persona so you can control it. "This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating." "“It drags you out of your own head,” she added. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself. "

Fun stuff, with a Wired editor arguing for causation, an academic author arguing a fluke, and commentators arguing both ways. The article is written so that all can have their say, which by my book, is the New Journalism.

R Beach at MCTE 2009. PPT OV of some web 2.0 moves in HS.

A PR piece version of Rhetoric 101. Useful and revealing for the language the authors use to frame their version of social exchange - even while they hold themselves up as non-experts.

"People aren’t lured into relationships simply because you cast the bait to reel them into a conversation.

"Sincerity extends beyond the mere act of creating a profile on Twitter or forming a fan page on Facebook or a group on LinkedIn. The dual definition of transparency serves very different forms of both genuine and hollow separated by intent and impression. Relationships are measured in the value, action, and sentiment that others take away from each conversation. Talking “at” or responding without merit, intelligence, or quality grossly underestimates the people you’re hoping to befriend and influence.

"If participation were this simple, then perhaps everyone would excel as a Social Media “expert.”'

Wesch. "As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able."

While well worth reading and citing, there isn't much new in this article. It's solid anthropological principles and understanding applied to teaching and learning.

Wake up. We draw on an build on what came before. Documentors of the world unite. Originality is over-rated, and quilting is a form of sampling.

From a marketing and heavily invested perspective.

I, for one, don't really mind being open online. I think that having a blog is one of the best ways of managing your personal brand and controlling your reputation. A blog allows you to write your side of the story -- always. If there was a picture that was posted or comment that was made about you that you didn't approve of or that you want to explain... your blog is the place to do it.

a style of meeting that can foster collaboration and be supported by wikis, or by stickies and markers. Defines a fairly well-orchestrated rhetorical situation for collaborative compostion

Article by K Fitzpatrick published in CommentPress.

Mainly addressed to librarians, but good for wiki admins and teachers

Web Trends map as clickable. Still difficult to use, but interesting to play with.

Web trends mapped modeled on London Underground map. Requires some work to actually use it, but engaging.

Martin Weller. Students form social groups to study and learn, yet the typical IMS doesn't support this. Better, web 2.0 tools that let students form and work in social groups.

Wiki of all published books. The idea is to create one wiki page/book, thereby weaving print and web closer together.

students — faculty, too — are increasingly aware of and irritated by the clumsiness and inflexibility of the tech tools that higher education currently uses.

Search aggretator

quick review of implications of social software in teaching, Students are certainly using social software, but on their own terms. Leaver observes that last year in Australia,

Nice blog post about how hugh sees and sets his use permissions. See the work as social object rather than hoarded possession and you change the relationship between object and viewer, object and creator

readme

Many of the organizations I've worked with use e-mail for nearly everything, when a different tool (like oh, say, a wiki) could be more beneficial. Here are a few ideas -

from MIT building a semantic web. A set of Java/rfd tools in development. Includes Timeline and Timeplot apps. Mashups go pro.

Books aren't dead. They're just gathering dust in the nooks and crannies of our libraries. Joe's latest look at the effects of changing literacies

Joe Moxley's latest effort in progress

Using Twitter to create community in the classroom

Commentary version of the Ithaka Report on Univerisity Publishing paper. Contains the original text of the paper and demos how CommentPress works.

A category and series on freelancing with a weblog, managing work using web2.0 tools and approaches.

RU Sirius starts with Clay Shirky on the spread of literacy, and a string of men (no women represented here) weigh in. The discussion's open.

Libraries look at the long tail.

A pretty good recap of some of the issues re: second life and interaction there. By the sound of it, SL just gets boring to work in.

When shopping for phyical notebooks wears you down. Parallel this with top 10 apps for education. In both cases, IMSs are given a good drumming.

No Blackkboard, d2l, or WebCT in sight.

Brian Lamb on mashups - for art and for education - learning objects (RIP), conditions of acceptance, and "Educators and higher education decision-makers have an obligation to carefully and critically assess new technologies before making radical changes.

Microblogging and lifecasting: not one to one but many to many.

An extended and close debate on web 2.0, the values behind it, and the representation of it.

"network literacy and how blogging is not simply keeping an electronic journal, it's distributed and collaborative; it's learning to think and write with the network. I'll also talk a bit about the ethics of insisting students blog in public."

Captures and plays back composition in real time.

About projects capturing and playing back the writing process (micro level) in real time. Follow the link to Dlog and have a go.

Chapters and sections as chunks of the hypertext called "book.: "a big part of the consumer market that book publishers have owned for 200 years want the nuggets, not a narrative" If books go the way of albums and chapers are singles, then tagging and a f

podcast. Richard Sedley. Solid intro to persuasion - and how it applies to web development and writing, with a focus on basing rhetorical strats on current psychological theory.

Thomas Mann.

"only a human guide or a classification system controlled by librarians can effectively sort the wheat from the chaff, Mr. Mann writes." Libraries have always had a space in web 2.0, even with increased findability.

Tony Long is copy chief at Wired News. Tony Long's brief consideration of _Cult of the Ameteur_ aka: in defense of professionalism

On the changing measures of authority and scholarship under web 2.0. An OV and a what to watch for: You'll gain your academic kudos by getting your academic stuff on line and engaging in academic exchanges. Jensen is dead reasonable and even a little ta

Gorman goes back to the interplay of print = Authority and net does not. Good entry point to the main issues: "Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in exp

Chronicle OV of Gorman's crit of web 2.0

A look at Wikipedia, folksonomy, and shifts in authority that come with the move away from print: "The real upheaval lies just ahead, as a generation of school kids (and their teachers and librarians) struggle to reconcile traditional notions of education

Considering the role and discipline of IA in the near future: "This future is self-evident in the undisciplined, unbalanced quest for sexy Ajaxian interaction at the expense of usability, findability, accessibility, and other qualities of the user experie

Peter Morville's blog, focusing on findability and IA

A web 2. metafilter, tracking social networking and social practices apps

Wesch. An anthropologist makes a video argument about web 2.0. Solid rhetorical use of new media. Discuss a) the argument: what is it exactly? b) the use of the visual techniques in making the argument.

Vlogging, like blogging, connects people, and relies on a (rhetorical construction of) authenticity: "If you could name a core value on YouTube, it's authenticity," says Mr. Wesch.

Counterpose with the Beeb's recent analysis

Videos, including Englebart's demo and old Apple promos

Most of the material on the site stems from Meatball Wiki.