Minutes 26.06.07
With Jim Slotta and Associates: Jim feels that we are behind in social
networking.
- Jim teaches a course KMD2003 through the KMDI.
- They explore the KB literature and refer to it a lot.
- There is a sense from outside of the IKIT community that there is a
single way to do KB.
- There has been considerable progress in social networking software,
i.e., wikis and sites like facebook.
- Therefore, concepts: KB is something that people do; IKIT is much
more than just software, it researches around the dynamics of
learning; there has been a rapid explosion of software.
- They hope in this discussion to go over some of the good software
that they have found.
- Some of the things that came out of talking about KF:
- They want a deeper sense of connectivity, a greater wealth of
media, should be more immersive, semantic connectivity.
- They want to see enhanced and new forms of collaboration; new kinds
of user experience; generative formats; and flexible, adaptive use.
Powerful Ideas:
- social networks;
- semantically indexed/layered information;
- emergent networks;
- collaborative structures.
They are the Encore Lab: http://encorewiki.com/display/encore/Home
- "ENCORE is an Educational Network and Community for Open Resource
Exchange. It is created, managed, and maintained by volunteers from
within the learning sciences. Our goal is to support researchers as
they exchange open source or open content materials, including
relevant support documentation, constraints to implementation, and
contact info. ENCORE is implemented in an enhanced wiki format,
allowing for easy maintenance of small thematic spaces and
collaborations. Researchers may find great materials here, and get
support from colleagues to embed or intermingle those materials
effectively and appropriately. Instructors or students in learning
sciences courses may find and contribute reviews of papers,
technologies, or other resources. Small groups can form
"Collaborations" to support their efforts to exchange materials or
develop new ones."
- See also http://www.encorewiki.com/display/KMD2003/Introduction
(Registration required.)
Wikis:
- Some other wiki sites:
- Wikipedia;
- BarCamp is a community that works with self-organizing conferences
(or unconferences.) They have created a world-wide wiki of all the
BarCamps.
- When to go to Bar Camp: BarCamp is still in its early stages. When
people don't really know how something is going to turn out.
- If you were writing a paper and wanted commentary on it, put it
into BarCamp.
Facebook:
- Recent research indicates that there is a social divide between
Facebook and MySpace users. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/
6236628.stm
- Cheryl demonstrated Facebook (http://www.facebook.com).
- James noted that Facebook takes away any hope of intellectual
property rights.
- Facebook is a socializing tool. We need to look for the nuggets in
Facebook that made it successful and look at how these should be used
for education.
- Carl notes how impersonal wikis are, and how personal Facebook is.
LinkedIn:
- Used to develop a list of known and trusted contacts in business.
- Similar in some ways to Facebook, but more private and restrictive
in membership (one needs to be invited to join.)
- It lists the number of degrees of separation among the connections.
MashUp Media
- Slideshare: You share slideshows, but people can add to or change
these. They are tagged with metadata.
- Digg: News aggregator (www.digg.com). As with SlashDot, users vote
on the stories and the 'best' (most voted on) bubble up to the top.
SNA:
- Marlene: We should look at the different social networks that are
forming in the various different social networking sites.
- Jim: Some of the software applications are publishing their APIs,
etc. If we don't like the way they work, it can be changed. For
example, we could create a new news brokering system for Digg, etc.
LastFM:
- Marlene: We'd have to take the underlying structure and add it to
our system.
Del.icio.us:
- It allows you to create a DB of all of the sites you have visited.
- See http://del.icio.us/
- IT records your stuff in an easily organized form. It also has a
collaborative aspect that allows you to see others who have tagged
the same things that you have. IT can allow you to see how other
people tag things so that you use a vocabulary that is consistent
with that of others who are looking at the same things.
Jim: There are different layers of semantic information (knowledge).
It's meaningful and can be used by others who come later. It's not a
community per se. In reviewing these, they offer a lot of potential
to connect people with one another and can form the basis for
communities.
Carl: Is there anything that addresses the problem of bringing in
the outliers.
- These are commercial sites, and therefore are worried about large
numbers and not the outliers.
- The number of friends a person has is registered on Facebook.
People with few 'friends' can use it to connect to larger groups. You
can also see the number of comments coming on your wall.
Marlene: Individually, these are not KB environments, but if their
various features are aggregated they would be.
- Jim: The wiki used in this meeting was a KB environment.
- Carl: How does this work with people who have half-formed ideas.
- Jim: Wikis have a low barrier to entry for KB classes.
