Interesting tool from Simon Buckingham Shum and gang that combines concept-mapping, argument visualisation and other cool features in a user-friendly, Java-based tool. It is a little clunky when used collaboratively, but is a very helpful weapon in the e-learning armoury, making things possible that would have been difficult or impossible before net-connected computers.
Created:Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:54:58 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1301
Posted: June 12, 2007, 4:54 am

A rather lovely art installation that maps activity throughout a building using webcams and other sensors, representing it in a large, skeletal 3 dimensional LED structure which changes as the building’s use changes. It is described as a ‘continuous spatial log, concretising the movements as much as the monuments of form within the building.’
I love this idea – augmenting social navigation in meat-space, heightening a sense of community and social presence, and also looking incredibly cool.
For those on smaller budgets and with limited space, it might be inspirational rather than imitable: we might try something similar with a smaller number of sensors, a smaller space and maybe a simpler 2D visualisation on a display panel or two. I guess the security-minded might be a little concerned about what it might tell malicious people, which is a potential weakness of social software in general. On the other hand, there are visualisations that could be both helpful and less revealing than the lighthive, albeit losing the potential of social navigation. At the University of Brighton, for instance, which is spread over multiple campuses and multiple towns, a sense of activity throughout the university might help to bind it all together and reduce the current sense of fragmentation.
Created:Sat, 09 Jun 2007 04:25:39 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1300
Posted: June 8, 2007, 10:25 pm

A nice metaphor for the social web – ‘weaving’, where the medium is the relationship, as well as reference to Chris Locke’s notion of social networking as relationship bricolage.
I like both metaphors as they capture different things that are important about social software. Weaving is about connection and (to an extent) diversity, but also about constructing a matrix that incorporates not just people but software. I actually prefer ‘bricolage’ as it is about assembly of disparate and disconnected things, capturing the fact that they are reassembled into a new and recognisable order rather better than ‘mashup’.
Created:Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:19:29 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1299
Posted: June 7, 2007, 3:19 am

Meetmoi is an online dating service that works via SMS – offers ‘speed-dating’ by text message for 10 minutes to those who meet in a virtual lobby, determined by post code.A neat, bottom-up idea. A sort of geocaching where people are the geocache. The idea may be transferable – isolation is a notorious problem for distance learners: if it were possible to find others nearby in near-real-time it might help a lot.In fact, though geographical collocation would be nice, even the ability to find other ‘lonely learners’ would be beneficial.
Created:Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:57:35 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1297
Posted: June 6, 2007, 8:57 pm

That old chestnut of lack of diversity raises its ugly head again.It appears that 3M may have been losing its legendary creative edge as a result of a (successful) drive to improve efficiency through the Siz Sigma process. The new chairman, Buckley says, “Perhaps one of the mistakes that we made as a company—it’s one of the dangers of Six Sigma—is that when you value sameness more than you value creativity, I think you potentially undermine the heart and soul of a company like 3M.” His answer is to reduce the control in creative areas, getting rid of a one size fits all approach.As ever, parcellation is the key to successful innovation. We need islands in which innovation can take hold and grow, unthreatened by the grey masses.
Universities should listen.
Created:Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:51:42 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1296
Posted: June 6, 2007, 12:51 pm

It seems that things are not going well for those who used to make money out of porn thanks to user-generated content and the likes of the worryingly named ‘Pornotube’. Interesting because the porn industry has long been the bit of seaweed stuck to the wall that tells us what the weather will be like soon for the rest of the Internet community, including those of us in education.
Created:Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:11:48 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1295
Posted: June 6, 2007, 8:11 am

Useful overview article with some nice examples on some of the issues of trust, authorisation and authentication in the context of social software.
Created:Tue, 05 Jun 2007 05:18:51 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1294
Posted: June 4, 2007, 11:18 pm

At last, someone has done what I’ve been trying to get done for years now – written a tools to liberate data from Blackboard and turn it into something useful. Free, downloadable, runs on any system.
Created:Sun, 03 Jun 2007 06:28:15 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5258&resid=1292
Posted: June 3, 2007, 12:28 am

Some fair points by Nicholas Carr, observing the importance of a balance between the top down and the bottom up, framed as a critique of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I think he is misleading though, in a couple of important respects:
Firstly, he suggests that the crowd is only good at debugging, not creating. While it is true that someone needs to start the whole thing rolling, clustering, chunking and other forms of parcellation can enable a crowd-based system to evolve in small pieces. Carr mentions Linux as an example, but a huge amount of the success of Linux has to be attributed to the wider GNU (and other open source) applications that surround it. It is about building small pieces that can be assembled and reassembled.
Secondly, he has a naive view of the crowd. Terry Anderson and I have been talking a lot lately about different ways that crowd behaviour can be mediated and the different kinds of groups, networks and collectives that occur. No particular approach is right for all circumstances and there are many ways that crowds can be wise.The recommendations of Google are a good example: not always perfect, but often good enough to help us find the needle in the haystack.This is not debugging behaviour. This is generative: stigmergic but blended with collective wisdom and individual intelligence.Crowds can be subtle and complex beasts.
Created:Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:44:49 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1291
Posted: June 2, 2007, 1:44 pm

Thanks to Donald Clark for pointing this one out. This is awesome. Truly awesome. Unbelievably awesome. Astonishing. Microsoft have really done something amazing and incredible here. I never thought I’d write those words. But this is the sort of thing that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and applaud, then come back and ask for an encore. I am humbled.
Created:Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:49:35 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1290
Posted: June 1, 2007, 2:49 am