Web2.0 Project continues

The semester is coming to a close. Deadlines are now days instead of weeks away. My project team has been updating our wiki and blog with Web2.0 tools and I got to thinking beyond the tools of the Web2.0 movement.

Paul Anderson states 6 big ideas surrounding Web2.0 in his article "What is Web2.0? Ideas, technologies, and implications for education". One of the big ideas is titled architecture of participation. The idea is that Web2.0 is based on easy, open collaboration. Anderson uses the example of citizen journalism on CNN.com that gives the public the ability to report on breaking news as it happens.

I have been collaborating with fellow students to update and improve our blog and wiki formats of Backpack2.0 and I've noticed that we aren't perfect architects. The architecture of participation for our websites is based mostly off of the hosting service (blogger and wikispaces respectively) so we don't have much room to change everything we want to.

The frustrations that I felt in Blogger wasted a lot of time. I still can't figure out why my blog posts didn't carry the desired format. I typed everything how I wanted it in "edit posts" section, but it all the spacing disappeared upon posting.

Comparatively, the wiki was a dream. I clicked the "edit" button, edited what I wanted, and saved it. Done and dusted.


Perhaps if I had the appropriate skills, I could adjust the formatting problems. My teammate Brandon McCloskey chalked the problem up to Bloggers difficulties with hosting more than one editor at a time. I don't know if that's the case. What I do know is that a wiki is a proven collaboration tool.

Digital Revolution begins December 9th

Web2.0, microfinance, diigo, prezi, wikipedia: does any of this interest you? If you want to see some of the coolest stuff online, come to an evening of presentations by your peers. There will be 10 five minute presentations with questions after each. The presentations begin at 7 p.m. at 3108 Jesse Knight Building on Brigham Young University campus.

Backpack 2.0: Breaking Free from the Spiralbound

Backpack 2.0 is a developing resource for students to update and get updated on the new web tools at their disposal. We need your help. I'm part of the team making the beta series of the site (a realization of a past blog post), and we want the site to live beyond this semester.

Backpack 2.0 has everything to do with the "Web 2.0" movement. When the internet first came out, it was used by a very specific community of programmers and researchers. That has all changed. Now that practically everyone is on the internet, we need to create time-effective ways of handling all the information and tools that are coming out everyday. Web 2.0 is the new version of the internet, an ever changing version.

Backpack 2.0 is an ever changing guide to the most important web tools of today and the tools to be discovered. The efficacy of a tool is not only related to its use, but also to its popularity(why we still use Microsoft tools even though their frustrating and difficult to learn). Through Backpack 2.0, students can find the useful tools that are growing in popularity.

Web 2.0 is a broad topic, but I believe that community building, sharing, and improving the digital world are at its heart. If you want to check out the Backpack 2.0 sites, give suggestions or contribute posts on your favorite web tools follow these links: Backpack 2.0(blog) and Backpack 2.0(wiki)

Don't forget to check back often to see the new posts and stay updated on the newest tools. Thank you for adding your wisdom to the web.

Create: A digital resource for digital students

My life is so easy. I'll restate that: my life is easier thanks to google.docs.

I've got this project for my Civilizations class to create an online resource for students, so they can learn digital tools to help them in their education. Though we've got a group of dedicated students to hash this all out, making a good site takes a lot of planning and execution.

We're just finished our data mining stage and now we're going to make sense of it and try to make a quality site out of all the information we've obtained. Each group member spent a couple hours finding links on the internet to dozens of new tools like Prezi and google.docs. We posted all of these tools on a google.doc and it was a mess of information. Their was some order since the tools had been put into a table as shown.

I wanted to do some organizing, so I used copy and paste functions to move all the tabulated info into a google.doc spreadsheet. One of the nifty tools (under the "Tools" menu on the toolbar) is a sort Column from A to Z.

What took possibly 12 hours of collaborative work took 30 seconds to sort. It still needs some clean up, but the worst is over. Thank you google.docs for saving me enough time to write this post and a paper.

Obligations: Condemning and Redeeming

What's in an education? Being a college student, I sometimes ask myself why I'm taking classes on art history or Latin when my career plans necessitate the sciences only. It's easy to rant about the general education credits that every student of formal education is required to take.

Before this semester I was certainly one to condemn G.E.'s for the time they take from my specialty. However, I was struck this week with this remarkable thought: obligatory education is its condemning and redeeming quality. Let me expound.

The obligations of a formal education take time from a busy schedule. By forgoing all these extra classes students could graduate sooner and enter the workforce with specialized training from the classes they absolutely needed. To keep back students from working to pay off their increasing educational debts is condemnable. I certainly felt this way about an art history course I took last year that taught me nothing of importance and in so far as I can tell did nothing to improve my education.

Oppositely, these same obligations can afford special educational opportunities that would not happen in specialty classes. For instance, I'm obligated by my honors program to take classes and attend events that increase the amount of writing I do perhaps ten-fold (compared to earlier semesters when I wasn't in the honors program). This extra writing was condemned in the process and is now praised. This semester I have been forced to improve my pre-writing and that has improved my writing only through practice and volume. This educational outcome would not have taken place without the obligations of formal education.

The obligations of education, though condemned now, are justified in the end. That sounds like Machiavelli's Prince and perhaps what would be his approach at education.

Crowdsourcing!?! What Can I do with It?

Crowdsourcing is a new way of getting a lot of work down by a lot of people in a short time. I've posted before about Jeff Howe and his book on the subject and now I state my views after reading the book.

WOW!

That's a bit dramatic, but crowdsourcing is really cool. I have become a solver for Innocentive (though I'm no where near solving anything on their website). I've seen the inexpensive, high-quality photos at iStockPhoto and the cool T-shirts at Threadless. All these websites incorporate crowdsourcing (people create and compete against others for reputation and/or prizes). There are limits to crowdsourcing (I'm sure), but I'm not sure what they are. Crowdsourcing is finding ways to make so many things better: better quality, better prices, and always merit-based.

In Howe's book, he concludes with his ten pointers on crowdsourcing which I've mostly paraphrased below for everyone who would like to get their work crowdsourced.

1. Pick the right model--Crowdsourcing can be used in different ways; Collective Intelligence uses the wisdom of the crowd to solve problems (Innocentive is an example); Crowd creation facilitates the crowd in the creative process (iStockPhoto gives a place for people to sell their photos to the masses); Crowd voting(Threadless lets the designing community vote on the posted designs to choose a regular winner: also crowd creation); Crowd funding lets the crowd fund small businesses through loans that are impossible through corporate banks (Kiva and 40billion.com)
2. Pick the right crowd--in order for your idea to take off you need a bunch of people who are willing to participate; find the people who are interested
3. Offer the right incentives--even a token amount of money will excite some people. There has to be a satisfaction factor from participating, whether it comes from money or a reputation in the community of volunteers.
4. No pink slips--be careful about restricting people and punishing users. Crowdsourcing is also community building and improving.
5. Benevolent Dictator--People are generally good, but they often need infrastructure and commands to tell them what to do. The crowd is usually sensible and will recognize if someone is taking advantage of them.
6. Keep it simple; break it down--Whatever the big picture for the project is, keep it simple so people understand your purpose and know what to work towards. Then break down the work into manageable pieces so that people can do their part and get the satisfaction of finishing something.
7. Sturgeon's Law--Sturgeon said, "Ninety percent of everything is crud." Don't expect everything that the crowd gives you. Especially in creative circles, a lot of stuff isn't worth your time.
8. 10% is the antidote to sturgeon's law--The reason crowdsourcing works is that the 10% is not crud. And when we consider the millions of people on the internet, ten percent is a lot.
9. The community is always right--Once you've formed a community, the community makes decisions. As a benevolent dictator you have some power, but your power over the community is lent from the community and the community can take that power back whenever they want.
10. Ask what you can do for the Crowd--Remembering the famous quote from our beloved JFK, "Ask not what (the crowd) can do for you, ask what you can do for (the crowd)."

I encourage everyone to find the excitement of crowdsourcing and to use it. It's not an evil entity. The Church uses crowdsourcing to improve the church media sources.

I invite you to check the links to the different crowdsourcing websites that I have liked thus far. You can also check out some cool posts on member crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing analyzed by my professor, Gideon Burton. Finally, I invite you to comment with other cool crowdsourcing sites and ideas.

Crowdsourcing has potential, so get in a community and make a difference.

October Reflections

Overall, I feel like I’ve been improving with my blogging. A month remains and while I feel I’m improving, my realistic side tells me I need to learn much more by semester’s end in order to call this class a complete success.

I made the mistake of reading Brad’s evaluation of my blog so I feel I’ve poisoned the well of my self-evaluation. The Digiciv class is difficult in part because of its interdisciplinary studies and in part because the concepts are complex on their own. I have struggled with connecting historical content with computing concepts. Considering blogging content, lack of connecting posts to other posts and connecting historical and computing concepts in a post have been my chief failures. Right now, I’m averaging one blog per class period. I think that’s all right, but my goal is to double my blog posts in half the time that it took me to get where I am (a bit of Moore’s law, though it would be ridiculous to reproduce: writing 48 posts in two weeks and then 96 in one week). Hopefully, more frequent will lead to more connected and more varied.

I have made a maiming error in my approach to digital culture and computing concepts. Over the past month I’ve been spending my walks to campus reading Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing. While it was a great book and I did blog a little bit about it, I failed to post often on the ideas that it gave me by persuading myself that I would write a magnificent post once I finished. I finished sampling from each chapter tonight (look for that post in the coming week), and realized that I have been sidetracked by crowdsourcing and my self-directed learning narrowed.

I’ve also been trying to limit the time I spend blogging because I’ve felt the sprawl of internet learning. A fun youtube video then an interesting diigo bookmark. If I wasn’t swamped with homework and classes, I’d be swamped instead with diigo bookmarks and commenting on blogs. In the Consume, Create and Connect areas, I’m hit and miss.

Consume: I’ve been learning better focus techniques (timing my consumption, avoiding the internet, creating rewards for finishing in time) and it’s helped. However, I still spend too much time. I need more sampling practice.

Create: I’ve been getting more frequent with my blogs and I’ve tried to find videos and pictures to engage readers. I’ve found also that shorter is better (except this blog) for mine and other's time and for receiving comments. Make my point and let the uninterested move on. I still feel there’s something lacking.

Connect: Networked blogs opened my narrow mind. I connected my blog to facebook and over one day I got more pageviews then the entire month previously. So I decided a good way to connect is facebook. Anyone from the class that I knew by name and face, received a friend request. It’s nearly meaningless to some people, but to others it means a lot. I’ve also made an effort to comment on other blogs at least as much as I post. However, I’m still not feeling socially discovered. I need to read the Social Discovery blog that Prof. Burton wrote and revive my desire to attain social discovery.

***A note to those who aren't teachers of my digital civilizations class, I really appreciate feedback like brad's evaluation on his blog. If anything came to your mind while you read this post please make a comment. I appreciate your creative help.

Review: Uma Pitada de Tolices

For this blog, I’ve been assigned to review Sean R. Watson’s blog “Uma Pitada de Tolices”. The overall feel of the blog is well-refined. A sidebar quote foreshadows the appealing sound of Sean’s blog posts. Indeed, I think his thoughtful writing forces me to slow down and ingest his ideas (somewhat frustrating when I’m not in the educational mindset), so that I stretch my thinking.

In reading his posts, I have no doubt that he has done research and thought a lot about his posts. He gives great opinions and insights into historical content. His post “Sigmund Freud, a Lunatic” shows research, thought, and application. (Coming from a scientific background, I sometimes wish Sean would get straight to the point, but that may be an unfair desire.)

As for computing concepts, Sean gives examples of his personal discoveries on the topics. “Instructions to Everything” shares a personal argument that led to a desire to make all points empirically based. His ties to algorithms and noncomputational ideas shows he’s thinking about how the class computing concepts links to his life and experiences.

In my skimming of multiple posts, I didn’t find direct uses of digital culture, but I feel his blog shows that he’s got it. He seems to post frequently and not always about something regarding the class. His blog carries more than his name; it carries his personality.

And regarding his self-directed learning, again I feel that his frequenting blogging reflects his personal research beyond the readings from class. He has done several digital literacy labs recently (though it’s hard to tell when since his posts don’t have dates) and his connection with the onca scholarship seems to be a physical representation of the connecting that he is doing outside the class.

My only request for Sean is to dumb down some posts for me (although the monotonous mind of a future scientist caught up in his little lab world of experiments may not be the exact audience that he’s writing for). Keep it real Sean; your frequent and personal blogging is the idea that I will try to incorporate more in my blogging.

McCarthyism

Photo by Aradic-es

In our class discussion on the Atomic Age, we discussed the changes rendered by atomic weapons. The atom is powerful, and at the end of the Second World War that power was showcased at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Turbulent times followed during the Cold War; fear was read in every newspaper as the Red Scare commenced.

Senator Joseph McCarthy used this fear to catch the public’s attention by falsely accusing hundreds of government workers of communist ties. I found a two hour documentary called “McCarthyism” at the library after class and was amazed by what I saw.

I had heard of McCarthy and his scare tactics before, but seeing it helped me appreciate how the American audience must have felt. I was amazed by McCarthy’s use of a variation of the word “communism” in nearly every sentence. And to any who might oppose his unsubstantiated accusations: you must be a communist.

The documentary focused on Edward R. Murrow’s program “See It Now”. Murrow risked his career to enlighten the American people of McCarthy’s unruly behavior. Murrow had a calm, educated aura with a defiant edge that struck down McCarthy’s unsubstantiated claims.

The documentary concludes with McCarthy’s personal attack of Murrow’s patriotism and alleged communist ties and then a segment with Murrow’s comeback. Poignantly and methodically, Murrow addressed and negated every claim that McCarthy made. I loved seeing education overcome scare tactics. You can watch the 30-minute clip of McCarthy (part 1, 2 and 3) below and hopefully follow it to Murrow’s educated response on March 9, 1954.



Murrow won the public’s approval, and McCarthy’s popularity declined. America never turned to communism. I wish I could say that we’ve really turned to education. I think there’s so much to be scared about today that the public heeds politics very little. We talked about computer security in class with this. I would liken computer security to the knowledge that Murrow had. There are pop-ups all over the internet that introduce harmful agents into one's computer. There are so many scary things that can happen on the web, like identity theft. How do I know this pop-up isn't a malicious McCarthy virus that will steal my identity (and maybe turn me into a communist). We must become digitally educated so that we can avoid the scare tactics and the harmful effects of digital McCarthyism.

Good night, and good luck. (Now I'd like to hear from you. What are your thoughts on how McCarthyism is used in digital culture?)

$13,723,330,060,510.52 Have We "Bought" into Keynesian Economics?

According to TreasuryDirect.gov as of November 5, 2010 the U.S. National Debt is an astounding $13.7 Trillion. For anyone who may not comprehend that amount, if I was to make the average U.S. wage of $40,711.61 I could accumulate $13.7 Trillion in about 337 million years of honest work.

My wife is from England, not far from Cambridge University where Maynard Keynes attended, so I thought I'd compare national debts. The UK is sitting at 1 Trillion pounds.

Deficit spending isn't without it's successes, the Great Depression being the chief representative in my mind. We wouldn't have the many interstates and other public works if not for the government of pre-WWII spending money that it didn't have.

Now any economist would be quick to point out the many comparisons that I'm not making. For instance, the annual GDP of the U.S.A. is still higher than the national debt at nearly $15 Trillion whereas the U.K. creates substantially less GDP because it's a smaller country. There's lots of other considerations to be made in such a complex economy. However, just looking at the raw numbers can be somewhat disconcerting. Should we be concerned? When does Keynesian Economics fail to improve the macro-economy? I do suppose that since we've lived by Keynes we may very well die by Keynes.

A Full-ride, Digital Scholarship to the Invisible College: A Final Project to Improve Literacy

As members of this digital civilizations course we have been given a new lens with which to see the past, present, and future. We've learned and shared our knowledge. We've failed and we've grown.

One requirement for this class was to perform digital literacy labs. I have learned valuable skills from the labs that I have done and I've learned from the sharing that takes place after class on Thursdays. It would be a horrible waste if we didn't bring all these labs together so that future immigrants to the digital world could acclimate to the digital society more quickly.

I propose that we have everyone from the class donate their expertise from their labs and then a team of students could check the labs for understandability and post them all on a central site.

This project would include several different sub-projects so we can divide the labor and perhaps divide groups if there's enough interest:

• We need to compile all the digital literacy labs that have all ready been performed. This will take plenty of time to contact all our fellow students and make cooperation for busy individuals as easy as possible.
• We need an appropriate place to keep all this information and accessibility. We need a well-designed site with the ability to be added to in the future and cataloging so that everyone can find the stuff they want. (I was thinking that we could follow the consume, create, connect idea from the class)
• We need to improve the user-friendliness of the labs so that someone that happens on to the site by chance will be able to understand what it is and be able to begin use right away.
• We need more labs always. There is so much out there to learn about. We could make some really high quality tutorials and invite anyone and everyone to contribute their knowledge.

This is all coming from a guy who stayed up way too late last night, so I realize there's probably a lot more to it. I'd love to hear ideas of how to make it better or if someone has found something like it already.

Great Thinkers; Great Writers

While I was reading a long list of quoations and some terminology from the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, I remembered a chance encounter with an old friend in the English Department. Bentley was grading papers when I saw him in the JFSB. He's teaching a Freshman English class as a graduate student. I feel like I write like a freshman anyway so our conversation gets on that topic. Paraphrasing he said that writing takes a lot of thought. And then he said, "You can find a thinker that doesn't write well, but rarely will you find a writer that doesn't think well."

I've seen this simple idea repeated so frequently this semester. Carl Jung is a renown psychologist(obviously a great thinker) and he has also developed his writing so that reading quotations from him is thought provoking. I have been writing a lot more this semester and I have learned how easy the act of writing has become following thoughtful pre-writing (this idea never occurred to me until now).

There are also plenty of examples of good thinkers writing poorly. For my major, I am ever reading more and more primary research articles. It takes unparalleled mind power to understand it at all. I understand that they write to a different audience, but it's even difficult for specially educated people. Here's the point, and it's been re-iterated in class many times: improve your thinking by writing; improve your writing by thinking and writing. Great writers are great thinkers.

Modernism and other "ism"s

Modernism--positivism, realism, perspectivism, romanticism, capitalism, communism, humanism, nationalism, conservatism--this is only the beginning. This link leads to a list of lists of movements on wikipedia. We need catalogs to show the relations of different movements and what type of movement each movement fits into. With so many "ism"s I don't know what to think. How is modernism different from other "ism"s?

The suffix -ism denotes a principle, belief or movement. I suppose that includes Mormonism.

Beyond wanting a good grade, why should I learn about modernism anymore than to believe that a lot of people decided that there was no absolute truths and that things are all relative? I believe there are absolute truths. I believe there is a God in heaven that cares deeply about me among billions of others of His children. I believe He is the Father of my spirit. So where does that leave me in regards to modernism?

I do see value in thinking outside the box. Abstract thinking leads to unbelievable discoveries like Albert Einstein's theory of relatively and the entirety of Quantum physics (It's crazy to me that those ideas are proven empirically). In the same paragraph, we see the social decay that follows a world that is losing it's grounding in absolute truths. Is there a balancing-point? There's lots of questions. What's your answer?